Evil, Transcendence, and God

How does Levinas discuss God in connection with suffering? What is the nature of the reflections which he devotes to this theme: are they part of philosophy of religion and should they be viewed as a critique of traditional theodicy? Or are they more in the nature of statements of faith, are they attempts to say something from the experience of a survivor about the possibility and the impossibility of believing in God, or speaking about God, or to God, after the Shoah? In the course of this chapter we will find that there can be no true separation between these two possibilities, because the question about suffering in Levinas serves as a touchstone for philosophical thought on God. This also explains why Levinas’ discourse on God is always a conditional discourse, so much so at times that Strasser can describe it as an increasingly pointed silence about God.