The Impact of the Holocaust on Christian and Jewish Theology of the 20th Century

The present research has been done with the aim of descriptive and phenomenological investigation of the theological consequences of the Holocaust as one of the most important historical events affecting the developments of the Christian and Jewish theology of the 20th century. The Holocaust challenged directly the concepts of “God, evil and faith” and introduced theology into a new phase of problems. With the review and critique of some of the traditional and modern notions of god and evil, we have dealt with how the Jews and Christians respond to the Holocaust in two realms of imagination from god and evil, and finally we discussed the faith in the world after Auschwitz. The most important question of the victims was that in all cases of this crime, where was god and why did not intervene? Hence a variety of god forms in Christian and Jewish theology. In the other hand, by the occurrence of the Holocaust, a new concept of evil has been created under the title of horrendous evil, which systematically destroys a number of people. While there is no opportunity for theodicy, the traditional equation that “Evil is equal with loss of Good” set aside. Henceforth they looked upon the issue of evil not as an abstract affair, but as a tangible reality. This issue was defined in the Christian theology as search for meaning. The Holocaust effect has also differed on the faith of the victims, some became more religious, some became less religious, and some were without influences, the opinion of most of these victims of the Holocaust is that we cannot judge the performance of god in Auschwitz. In the following, we refer to different types of faith in post – Holocaust Jewish theology. Finally we discussed faith in Christian theology, in which faith is more based on hope and empathic interaction.