Kushner’s Theodicy

This is part of a series for a course on theodicy.

I find Harold S. Kushner’s theodicy in When Bad Things Happen to Good People deeply compelling on a pastoral level, but ultimately I find it theologically incomplete.

The strength of Kusher’s text lies in his lived realism. Writing as a congregational rabbi responding to real suffering, especially the illness and death of his son, he refuses abstract answers that blame victims or justify pain. His insistence that suffering is not punishment, and that people should not be burdened with guilt on top of grief, is both humane and religiously responsible.

It’s also easy to find the same in Midrash (Mishlei 31) or Talmud, so it is not like the concept is especially new to Judaism.

However, I cannot accept his central theological move: the claim that God is not all-powerful. To assert that God cannot prevent suffering crosses a line. In classical Jewish thought, especially as articulated by Maimonides, God’s power is not in question. Only our ability to understand how that power operates is ever in doubt. Limiting God’s omnipotence resolves the problem of evil too quickly by redefining God rather than wrestling with Divine mystery.

Perhaps that’s the point. Kushner’s book is not an academic work, but rather Oprah Winfrey book club material.

In that sense, I would argue that Kushner’s pastoral insight does not even require his theological concession. You can affirm that God is fully powerful, that God’s justice is real, and still acknowledge that human beings cannot grasp the workings of that justice. What Kushner attributes to divine limitation, I would attribute to epistemological limitation, or our lack of access to the totality of God’s plan.

Why is this book popular?

I think the strengths that keep Kushner’s book enduring in popularity are its emotional honesty and its accessibility. As an aspiring rabbi, I think clergy requires a deeper dive than Kushner’s work, but it is reading we could certainly recommend to laity in grief.

The book speaks to the universal experience of undeserved suffering. Kushner rejects explanations that feel morally offensive. Tragedy is not punishment or part of some hidden, esoteric reward system. This does make the book a sort of comfort food.

It also does present a modestly usable theology. Rather than asking readers to accept paradox or mystery, even with my objections to the limitations he places on God, he gives a clear and intuitive framework that gels with most of classical Jewish theology. Bad things happen because the world is imperfect, not because God wills it. This is especially appealing in moments of grief, when philosophical subtlety feels hollow.

For the sake of this writing, I don’t have time to research my assertion, but I think this book reflected a shift in modern religious life towards pastoral care over metaphysical responses. I think it exists on the same plane as thinkers like Mordecai Kaplan, where from a 1000 foot view, the emphasis shifts to what religion does for people over what it asserts in abstract on theology.

The tone is also personal rather than academic, which fuels part of my frustration with it. Readers do not encounter a system, but a rabbi walking through their suffering, and that yields an enduring relevance.

Comparing Kushner to Jewish Thinkers, Who Would be Most Comfortable with him?

I think Rambam would reject Kushner’s limitations on Divine power as reprehensible. Baruch Spinoza would still find him too theistic. Buber, too, might value relational aspects of God’s presence, but the denial of omnipotence would be theologically problematic.

I think Mordecai Kaplan and Erich Fromm would align the most. Because Kushner moves away from classical omnipotence, viewing God as a force or process within the natural world rather than a supernatural controller fits nicely. And since Fromm tends to emphasize the ethical and psychological dimensions of religion rather than metaphysical claims, Kushner’s focus on how belief helps endure suffering resonates with that human-centric approach.

Kushner would probably fit most comfortably in the modern and pastoral scheme, where we have a naturalizing strand of Jewish thought.

Reflection

Kushner’s answers to me aren’t as useful as his refusal to offer the wrong answer to grief or suffering.

I find that often, theodicy becomes an attempt to justify suffering in ways that diminish human dignity. Kushner rejects that instinct. He protects the moral intuition that suffering is genuinely tragic and not something to be explained away.

He’s not getting naked in the bathhouse like Rabbi Eleazar and Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai when the latter’s son died, but the sentiments are very close.

At the same time, I am reluctant to follow him into his diminishment of God. There is something religiously important to me in maintaining that God’s justice exists, even if it is beyond mortal comprehension or unfolds on an inaccessible timeline. In this, I return to the classical stance: God remains greater than our ability to make sense of anything.

In the end, Kushner’s greatest contribution, to me, is pastoral rather than theological. I do not feel that he nor his book advanced the limits of a discussion of theodicy. He teaches that in the face of suffering, the primary religious task isn’t to explain, but to accompany. Even for those like myself who disagree with his theology, that lesson is indispensible.