Beyond Theodicy analyzes the rising tide of objections to explanations and justifications for why God permits evil and suffering in the world. In response to the Holocaust, striking parallels have emerged between major Jewish and Christian thinkers centering on practical faith approaches that offer meaning within suffering. Author Sarah K. Pinnock focuses on Jewish thinkers Martin Buber and Ernst Bloch and Christian thinkers Gabriel Marcel and Johann Baptist Metz to present two diverse rejections of theodicy, one existential, represented by Buber and Marcel, and one political, represented by Bloch and Metz. Pinnock interweaves the disciplines of philosophy of religion, post-Holocaust thought, and liberation theology to formulate a dynamic vision of religious hope and resistance.

Dorothee Soelle is a pioneering figure: a leader among German Christians in grappling with Auschwitz; a poet expressing utopian longings; a political activist, socialist, and liberation theologian; a mystic offering a vision of faith for people disillusioned with bourgeois Christianity. This is the first English language collection of original essays analyzing Soelle's work. It explores her contributions to biblical hermeneutics, Christian feminism, social ethics, post-Holocaust thought, Mysticism, literature, and political and liberation theology. Three recent pieces by Soelle, newly translated into English by Barbara and Martin Rumscheidt, are included. Contributors include Anne Llewellyn Barstow (retired, SUNY College at Old Westbury), Andrea Bieler (Pacific School of Religion/Graduate Theological Union), Christine E. Gudorf (Florida International Univeristy), Beverly Wildung Harrison (Emeritus, Union Theological Seminary), Nancy Hawkins (St. Bernard's Graduate School of Theology and Ministry), Carter Heyward (Episcopal Divinity School), Flora A. Keshgegian (Episcopal Theological Seminary of the Southwest), Dianne L. Oliver (University of Evansville), Sarah K. Pinnock (Trinity University), Rosemary Radford Ruether (Graduate Theological Union), Martin Rumscheidt (retired, University of Windsor and Atlantic School of Theology), and Luise Schottroff (Pacific School of Religon/Graduate Theological Union). Sarah K. Pinnock is Assistant Professor of Contemporary Religious Thought at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas, and is the author of Beyond Theodicy: Jewish and Christian Continental Thinkers Respond to the Holocaust.

What do we learn about death from the Holocaust and how does it impact our responses to mortality today? Facing Death: Confronting Mortality in the Holocaust and Ourselves brings together the work of eleven Holocaust and genocide scholars who address these difficult questions, convinced of the urgency of further reflection on the Holocaust as the last survivors pass away. The volume is distinctive in its dialogical and introspective approach, where the contributors position themselves to confront their own impending death while listening to the voices of victims and learning from their life experiences. Broken into three parts, this collection engages with these voices in a way that is not only scholarly, but deeply personal. The first part of the book engages with Holocaust testimony by drawing on the writings of survivors and witnesses such as Elie Wiesel, Jean Améry, and Charlotte Delbo, including rare accounts from members of the Sonderkommando. Reflections of post-Holocaust generations—the children and grandchildren of survivors—are housed in the second part, addressing questions of remembrance and memorialization. The concluding essays offer intimate self-reflection about how engagement with the Holocaust impacts the contributors’ lives, faiths, and ethics. In an age of continuing atrocities, this volume provides careful attention to the affective dimension of coping with death, in particular, how loss and grief are deferred or denied, narrated, and passed along.