I also thought several comments of Pope Benedict during his visit to the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz were interesting (quotes are from the NY Times).Praise the LORD, O my soul; all my inmost being, praise his holy name. Praise the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits- who forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with love and compassion, who satisfies your desires with good things, so that your youth is renewed like the eagle's.
Psalm 103:1-5
Twice he asked where God could have been in the face of such destruction.
But he could not answer the question."We cannot peer into God's mysterious plan, " he said. "We see it only piecemeal, and we would be wrong to set ourselves up as judges of God and history. When all is said and done, we must continue to cry out humbly yet insistently to God: Rouse yourself! Do not forget mankind, your creature!"
AND (did Ratzinger study under Van Til?):
He then cast the war into a larger theological frame: that the Nazis' attempt to eradicate the Jews was an attempt by man to banish, and replace, God. He said that God set limits on man's power, and thus, the war showed the nightmare of a world without God.
"Deep down, those vicious criminals, by wiping out this people, wanted to kill the God who called Abraham, who spoke in Sinai and laid down principles to serve as a guide for mankind, principles that are entirely valid," he said.
"If this people, by its very existence, was a witness to the God who spoke to humanity and took us to himself, then that God finally had to die and power had to belong to man alone, to those men who thought that by force they had made themselves masters of the world.
"By destroying Israel, they ultimately wanted to tear up the tap root of the Christian faith and to replace it with a faith of their own invention: faith in the rule of man, the rule of the powerful."
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment