tremendum

In this essay Cohen proposes a radically revised understanding of God that reduces His traditional attributes and removes Him from active participation in human history. There is a divine being but He does not enter into, or ,direct, human affairs. At the same time, however, Cohen advances a revised version of "free will defense" of God according to which the Holocaust was not God's doing but, rather, the consequence of the misuse of human freedom. Indeed, in a world in which God does not interfere regularly and directly in human history, the actions and decisions of men and women become all the more consequential and decisive.