From Harmony to Protest: An Evolution of Jewish Theodicy

One of the most striking insights from reading Finding God: Ten Jewish Responses is that Jewish theodicy is not a single answer, but an evolving concept. Tracing a line from Philo of Alexandria to Erich Fromm reveals a clear trajectory: from explaining God to redefining God, to ultimately relocating responsibility in human hands.

Philo and Rambam: Preserving Divine Perfection

I was curious about the inclusion of Philo, since generally, he represents a variation of Hellenism that didn’t creep into our rabbinic tradition except in dribs and drabs. He certainly seemed to harmonize Judaism and Greek philosophy, in that for God to be perfectly good, God had to be perfectly rational. Evil, then, either was a privation or byproduct of the material world. Theodicy here is philosophical: suffering does not compromise God’s perfection because it stems from lesser realities.

This approach also manifests in Maimonides. For the Rambam, much suffering is the result of human ignorance, poor choices, or the natural order, and not direct divine punishment. God remains perfect and just but increasingly removed from day-to-day causation. Already, we see a move away from the Biblical “follow these commandments and live; sin and you will perish” model toward a more intellectualized, almost impersonal system.

Luria: Catastrophe within God

With Isaac Luria, father of Kabbalah so to speak, things shift dramatically. Evil is no longer just a human or material issue. It’s built into the very structure of creation. The doctrine of tzimtzum (divine contraction) and the “shattering of the vessels” seems to tell us that being broken is a primordial state.
This is a bold departure: instead of defending God against the existence of evil, Luria internalizes the problem within the divine process itself. Human action becomes essential. Theodicy begins to pivot from explanation to participation.

Spinoza: Dissolving the Problem

At first blush, I find a symmetry with Rambam, in the sense that God’s goodness is beyond human comprehension. Spinoza identifies God with nature, and in so doing, eliminates the problem of theodicy altogether. There is no divine will choosing good over evil, just reality unfolding before us.
In this framework, evil is simply a human label for what we do not understand or what harms us. The cost of solving the problem of evil is enormous, and that’s the loss of a personal and responsive God. It’s attractive, and perhaps what earned him cherem, but there were no moral gymnastics required to justify suffering.

Buber: Relationship over Explanation

Maritn Buber restores something deeply Jewish: relationship. For Buber, God is encountered in the “I-Thou” relationship and is not explained through systems. Theodicy becomes secondary, but I think this is an identifiable shortcoming with the presentation of Buber in Finding God. It does not touch in great deal on Buber’s writing, The Prophetic Faith, which focuses on the Book of Job as an exploration of suffering. In that, one of Buber’s direct responses to the suffering is a “rent theology”, where we believe in a God who is good despite no evidence of one. Suffering is real, and it may not be explained, but it doesn’t obviate the possibility of a genuine encounter. The question for Buber isn’t “Why does God allow evil?” to “Can I still stand in relation to God in this world?”

Kaplan and Fromm: God as Process to Human Agency

Mordecai Kaplan goes further than any except perhaps Spinoza, by redefining God entirely. God’s not a being, and I poorly sum this up, but as the amalgam of processes that make for human salvation and fulfillment. In this view, theodicy dissolves because there is no supernatural agent to blame or defend.
God becomes a functional concept rather than a metaphysical one. The focus is entirely on human agency and ethical progress.

Erich Fromm continues this trajectory, interpreting God in humanistic and psychological terms. Evil is not a metaphysical puzzle. Evil is a product of human alienation, fear, and destructiveness.

Theodicy, again in the traditional sense, disappears. The real question is how humans can overcome their own capacity for evil and build a more loving, sane society.

The Progression

I’m reminded of a story my mother tells me of a student from the developing world years and years ago when she taught English as a Second Language. I think she questioned her own faith over this: one of her students spoke of their coconut trees being haunted by ghosts, because that’s how coconuts fell out of their trees.

This sort of explanation for a plant life cycle is on its surface, risible, but one could also argue that as humanity has matured (questionable), so too has our understanding of causality. We’ve gone from defending God’s unfathomable justice, to questioning or redefining God’s power, to metaphysical definitions, to existential and ethical responses, to human responsibility over the course of our Jewish existence.

Personally, I see it as a necessary development.

While I find elements of later thinkers compelling, I land closest to Maimonides. His approach to theodicy feels both rigorous and sustainable in a way that many later responses, for all their moral sensitivity, do not.

Rambam’s key move is to reframe the problem rather than resolve it emotionally. Much of what we call evil, he argues, can be understood as natural conditions of the world, harm caused by other people, or harm we bring upon ourselves. This dramatically limits the need to attribute suffering directly to God in a way that doesn’t obviate God. The world operates through consistent laws, and human beings bear real responsibility within it. God remains perfect, but not subject to a simplistic moral accounting.

I would be remiss if I didn’t nod to my friend and teacher, Rabbi Bill Siemers, and say, this is where Hakham José Faur adds an important layer. Faur consistently warns against projecting human categories onto God. In that sense, he sharpens Rambam’s project. The problem of evil is often intensified not by reality itself, but by theological confusion.

For Faur and for Rambam, the danger lies in turning God into a character in a story, whether that story is one of suffering or redemption (cough, Job). Once we do that, we inevitable create contradictions that demand resolution. Theodicy becomes a problem, in part, because we have framed God improperly to begin with.

What I find compelling here is the discipline both thinkers demand. We don’t over-attribute causation to God. We don’t anthropomorphize divine action, and we most certainly do not force moral explanations where none are warranted.

Final Reflection

If the trajectory from Philo of Alexandria to Erich Fromm shows anything, it’s that theodicy becomes more morally sensitive over time, but also willing to denude it of the “theo” component altogether.

Rambam, especially as read through Faur, resists that move.

Choosing this path means accepting that some, if not nearly most, suffering will remain unexplained. There’s no right answer, just the pursuit of the right theological question.