"Uni meets teaching": Theodicy in the world religions

On the last weekend in June, 17 students from the Catholic religion department and five teachers held a weekend seminar on the topic of "Theodicy in world religions" in cooperation with the Pedagogical Center of the dioceses of Fulda, Mainz and Limburg. The participants were welcomed and guided through the seminar at the conference venue, the YMCA University in Kassel-Wilhelmshöhe, by lecturers Erik Müller-Zähringer and Manuel Raabe.

Before the participants were able to deal specifically with the question of suffering in the individual religions, a good foundation of knowledge was laid with Augustine's attempts at theodicy. In group work, students and practical teachers enriched each other through a constant exchange between theory and concrete implementation in practice. The teachers in particular always kept an eye on the current questions of their students and incorporated these into the discussions and work phases.

Divided into different groups, the students prepared the attempts at theodicy in Islam and Judaism. The participants eagerly followed the different interpretations in both religions and linked them to the Christian idea.

They are familiar with many things from their own religion, including the question of suffering in the world and various approaches to explaining how God can allow suffering. The explanations in Islam and Judaism were new to most of the participants. This made them all the more excited and intensely dedicated to working on the problem of theodicy. They found theodicy in Judaism particularly exciting, where the question of suffering and God's possible involvement became all the more pressing after the Shoah.

The seminar was concluded by Manuel Raabe. He gave an insight into the so-called free-will defense and the theology of Johann Baptist Metz.

The participants, students and lecturers alike, agreed that this form of joint learning was very helpful for everyone to learn new topics both theoretically and in practice.

Tobias Sommer