Long Night's Journey into Day

Long Night's Journey Into Day is a stimulating and provocative attempt to deal with the impact and meaning of the Holocaust within contemporary Christian and Jewish thought. To Jews, the Holocaust is the most terrible happening in their history, but it must also be seen as a Christian event. The Eckardts call for a radical rethinking of the Christian faith in the light of the Holocaust, examining such issues as the relation between human and demonic culpability, the charge of God's guilt, and the reality of forgiveness. They clarify the theological meaning of the Holocaust and the responsibility that must be borne for it by the Christian Church, and discuss possible responses to it as exemplified in the writings of selected modern theologians and church councils. This enlarged and revised edition takes into account new topics and developments, including the issue of Austrian responsibility for the Holocaust, the significance and aftermath of Bitburg, and antisemitism in German feminism. More detailed attention is also given to other modern genocides and occasions of humanly-caused mass death. Additional literary, historical, and religious works are considered and appropriate quotations incorporated. The new edition also includes a revised preface, an updated bibliography and two new appendices.

For academics and students of theology, philosophy and history, particularly Jewish-Christian relations and Holocaust studies.

Forewords by Irving Greenberg and Franklin H. Littell. Preface to the revised edition. Personal Acknowledgements. Return to the Kingdom of Night. Die Endlösung. Dilemmas of the scholar. Remembering. The temptation in remembrance and the danger in amnestia. Six moral-historical propositions. Singularity. From the unique to the uniquely unique. The "necessity" of the Devil. The question asked of God. Filling the circle of culpability. Dangers and Opportunities. The ruler who is really ruler. Life against faith. Beyond the opposites. Toward conciliation. Forgiveness. Servitude and Freedom. Responses to the Holocaust. Model 1: The pre-Holocaust past as slaveholder. Model 2: Cracks in the prison bars. Jürgen Moltmann and Model 1. Liberation: Model 3. The objectivity of guilt. The Jews and Jesus Christ. The faithfulness of God. Theology of the cross. The issue of the Resurrection. Reaffirmations. Political power and the People Israel. Turn to the Kingdom of Day. Hope and the People Israel. Hope and the Christian Church. Hope beyond hope. Appendix 1. The Christian world goes to Bitburg. Appendix 2. We are called to remember in worship: creating Christian Yom HaShoah liturgies. Notes. Selected bibliography. Index.