ROMAN SOLOVIY

3 April 2022 

As soon as Russian troops occupied some Ukrainian regions, we began to receive witness accounts of numerous atrocities they had committed against the civilian population. Initially, I began reading these testimonies about the executions of civilians, numerous sexual crimes, and mass looting with fear and some disbelief. Was this really possible today, in our country? Was it really possible for soldiers of a country so proud of its culture and thousand-year Christian tradition to demonstrate such satanic malice and cruelty? As the days and hours passed, however, the number of testimonies grew, dispelling any lingering doubts. Yesterday and the day before, Ukrainian troops liberated the entire territory of Kyiv Region. What they saw in the towns of Irpin, Hostomel, Bucha, and dozens of surrounding villages is indescribable. Hundreds and hundreds of unarmed civilians shot dead with their hands tied. Burned bodies of raped women. Corpses strewn in the streets of towns, filling basements, decomposing in looted apartments. Towns and villages razed to the ground. Russian military vehicles stuffed with booty (household appliances, jewelry, underwear, perfumes, plumbing fixtures). Russian soldiers at post offices in bordering regions  sending everything they have looted to their families somewhere in Saratov or Tambov… 

I do not know how to live with this. I think with even greater horror— what else will we learn when we liberate the rest of our territories? We have liberated only a small part of our country from the invaders, yet such an abyss of evil has opened before us that we can already say that the crimes of Srebrenica and Rwanda are being repeated today in Ukraine. Six weeks ago I could have given a lecture or preached a sermon on how to forgive enemies and support victims of violence. But today I can only weep. 

I used to be tormented by the question of why many survivors of the Holocaust later committed suicide. We may recall Paul Celan, the poet; Jean Améry, the philosopher; and Primo Levi, that great witness to the horrors of Auschwitz (in which my grandmother also perished). But now I understand that the level of violence and human depravity that they experienced deprived them of ways to return to everyday life, normal relationships, openness, and trust in other people. Like Elie Wiesel, they found themselves in such an abyss of evil that it later proved almost impossible to turn away from it. 

Who knows how to pray with a woman raped for a week by a Russian soldier, who then shot dead her sick mother when the woman refused to go with him to Russia? What words may be said to the elderly residents of a boarding house that was mercilessly fired upon by a Russian tank? What can be said to people who have been through hell on earth, brought to them by a Russian military drunk on power and impunity? How to comfort a wife whose husband ran out to seek help because she had gone into labor, but who was killed near their home? How to mourn civilians who have been tortured to such a degree that it is impossible to identify them? 

I am not yet ready to talk about this today. Long and painfully, like the Jews after Auschwitz, we in Ukraine will have to seek answers to these questions. To form the contours of our own theology—a theology after Bucha. 

But, no matter what, we believe that we will hold on to our humanity. 

11 April 2022 

My short text of 3 April, “Theology after Bucha,” received publicity that I did not expect. On the first days of April the truth about the war crimes committed by the Russian occupiers in Ukrainian towns and villages around Kyiv was revealed to the world. Born of pain and despair, my text did not contain any answers. It was merely an attempt to pose some crucial questions, which we will have to ponder for many years to come, should God preserve us. Just as the Jewish people strove to understand where God was when their bodies burned in the crematoria of concentration camps, we Ukrainians will have to search long and hard for answers to the question: Where was God when the Russians killed civilians, raped women and children, shot up cars, threw grenades into basements where civilians were hiding? 

The Ukrainian tragedy unfolding before our eyes forces us to rethink radically many important Christian doctrines, or at least to understand their content in the context of our new reality. What does the sovereignty of God mean? And how does it correlate with His kindness and love? What does the image of God mean in fallen humanity? Is it present in a killer and a rapist? How is it possible to forgive what cannot be forgiven because the victims of violence are no longer with us, and the one who could say “I forgive” is no longer on this earth? 

As a professor of historical theology, I am well aware of the answers to these questions offered by Christian theology, from [2nd-century St.] Irenaeus [of Lyons] to [20th-century Reformed theologian Jürgen] Moltman. But this is not enough. We need answers that will allow us, Ukrainian Christians, to trust God and at the same time to remain radically honest with ourselves and with Him. 

Roman Soloviy is director of the Eastern European Institute of Theology, Lviv, Ukraine. He holds two earned doctorates in theology and philosophy from Lviv National University and Dragomanova National Pedagogical University, Kyiv.