Modern Theological Classics: Dorothee Sölle's Suffering
God, Suffering, and Solidarity
During Holy Week, Christians are called to contemplate Christ’s suffering for our sake, but as Pope Leo XIV reminded us in his Palm Sunday homily, we are also called to be in solidarity with those who are suffering in our world: “As we set our gaze upon him who was crucified for us, we can see a crucified humanity.”
Perhaps no recent theologian has delved as deeply into the theme of human suffering as the Lutheran theologian Dorothee Sölle (1929-2003), especially in her 1973 book titled simply Suffering. Sölle is usually grouped together with her fellow German theologians Jürgen Moltmann and the Catholic Johann Baptist Metz as representatives of “political theology,” an approach to theology that critically challenges the way the privatization of religion in the modern world too often renders Christians silent in the face of injustice and suffering. All three theologians were haunted by the horror of the Holocaust and the complicity of German Christians in either perpetrating or accepting it, and all three insisted that suffering is a theological question and not just a human one.
I recently read Sölle’s Suffering for the first time and thought it would be worthwhile to share my thoughts on the book as part of an occasional series on modern theological classics which retrospectively includes my earlier articles on Henri de Lubac’s The Mystery of the Supernatural and Karl Rahner’s essays on the Sacred Heart of Jesus. This series is also a good excuse for me to pick up some of those classics I have neglected to read over the years or that are worth revisiting.
In Suffering, Sölle diagnoses two interrelated pathologies in how Christians often think about suffering: Christian masochism and theological sadism. Christian masochism is the belief that we should willingly accept and endure suffering, without conditions. To suffer is to imitate Christ. Or perhaps suffering is our just punishment for humankind’s sin. Or suffering provides us an opportunity to grow in virtue. Sölle argues, however, that this Christian masochism makes us insensitive to the suffering of others and fails to distinguish between that suffering which we can do something about and that which we can’t. It also leaves us indifferent toward or unaware of suffering’s causes.
Although Christian masochism can be interpreted in a way that emphasizes God’s love and mercy—God uses suffering to draw us closer to Him—theological sadism goes further and insists that God, directly or indirectly, causes our suffering, either as a manifestation of His glory through his justice toward sinners or as a means to some greater good. This theological sadism is, Sölle writes, “the vindication of divine power through human powerlessness. Affliction is regarded as human weakness that serves to demonstrate divine strength” (17).
Sölle argues that it is difficult not to object to this understanding of God when faced with the enormity of human suffering. She suggests that the root of the problem is the emphasis on divine power:
Perhaps it is possible to conceive of a combination of omnipotence with righteousness, viewed as absolute and perfectionistic, making demands that by definition cannot be fulfilled. There is, on the other hand, no way to combine omnipotence with love. (25)
Sölle seeks to develop an alternative theological account of suffering that avoids both Christian masochism and theological sadism.
