Do Jews & Christians worship the same God?

As one of many who have benefited from Jon Levenson's brilliant readings of biblical texts (and as one who sympathizes with his opposition to religious dilution in the ongoing Jewish-Christian dialogue), I am baffled as to why he completely missed the main point of my book, For the Sake of Heaven and Earth: The New Encounter between Judaism and Christianity, in his November 5, 2004, review, "Chosen Peoples."

The linchpin of my argument is the distinction between absolutism, relativism, and pluralism. Absolutism represents the classic traditions of Judaism and Christianity that argued God dictated every word and religious symbol/message in the canonical sources. Consequently, their authority is absolute and unlimited. These claims extended without limit, which meant that other religions were of no validity. (Christianity: Judaism is superseded; the Jews were rejected for their blindness; there is no salvation outside the church. Judaism: Christianity is idolatrous and irrational; Jesus is a false messiah; the righteous of the nations are saved if they come to their ethics through Jewish revelation.) I contend that as modern culture exposed believers to the quality of other religionists and the vitality of their faith, this convinced many that the absolute religions were "lying." Liberals removed offending norms but the revision process has continued to erode all authority claims and leads increasingly to relativism. Relativism undercuts all religious claims and leads to a religiously and morally untenable cultural situation. My book argues for pluralism in which classical absolute claims are upheld but their limits are affirmed. They do not encompass (and demolish) other valid religions--although pluralist faiths may disagree and contend with the other faith's norms.

I propose that God reveals and signals pluralistically. It was the will of God that Christianity be born within Judaism, then separate itself and reach out to the gentiles with the good news of God the Creator, the God of Israel, and of the divine call to humanity to perfect the world. The two religions were intended to work side by side, appealing to different groups and disagreeing on important issues but, nevertheless, serving as partners with God and humanity, and with each other.

For Jews, pluralism means recognizing that Incarnation is a Jewish trope (to close the gap between humans and God in order to enable the partnership), albeit Jews rejected that the Incarnation happened in this case. In the past, acceptance of the central Christian claims would confirm the Christian allegation that Judaism was superseded. Instead, as I propose in my book: "Jews should understand that Resurrection and Incarnation were not putative facts to be argued over; they were signals intended for and recognized by the Christian community to bring them closer to God."

For Christians, pluralism means upholding Incarnation and Resurrection without denigrating Judaism (and other faiths). Some accept the modern critical scholarship version of these events. Others ("for the substantial majority of Christians--for whom the Gospels speak a more unmediated word of God") affirm that "God was manifest and the redemption visible inside--but only inside--the community of disciples and followers." This "allows God to be present with a different name and a different manifestation in another faithful community." And there are other Christians who affirm that Incarnation and Resurrection "were objectively visible events," but who nonetheless "recognize that God reveals divine wisdom and participates in other faith communities' lives as well." In short, Christians need only give up the triumphalist claims "that the Incarnation and Resurrection were so radiant that only the willfully blind refused to see them and be captured by the message," and that these events constitute "unprecedented ... decisive divine witness to the supremacy of Christianity" and, therefore, are a refutation of Judaism and all other faiths.

I do not underestimate the enormous effort it will take to put this "covenantal religiously appropriate limit on their religion." But I would point out that vast numbers of Christians are already doing this. Indeed, by upholding Judaism as an ongoing valid covenant, Pope John Paul II has already tacitly put this limit in place.

Basing himself on an essay written in 1979 (before I began working in this positive theology), Levenson states that I dismiss the Crucifixion "as true degradation ... rather than as redemptive suffering"--incidentally, a misreading of that essay. He ignores my repeated subsequent writing that the Crucifixion is a later (after Sinai) revelation for Christians, which evoked the deeper faith that formed Christianity. I suggest that Jews see Jesus as an "unfinished messiah"--(unfinished, for Christians also affirm the Second Coming)--for the gentiles, while Jews continue with their own valid covenant and way of life. This would allow Jews "to acknowledge that for hundreds of millions of people Christianity has been and continues to be a religion of love, consolation, and redemption." In fact, Levenson's review never communicates to the Commonweal reader that mine is the most positive theology of Christianity ever written by a believing, practicing Jew.

Levenson has every right to reject pluralism as a valid alternative to absolutism, but he should not have lumped my book with latitudarian callow surrenders of tradition for the sake of mutual affirmation.

Similarly, respecting the variety of God's love and choosing of plural peoples and faiths is not indifferentism. Levenson suggests that in speaking of God's multiple choice, and of Jews and Christians (and possibly Muslims) being second cousins in Abraham's family (while all humans are more distant cousins through Noah and Adam's family), that I am emptying out the substance of chosenness. Rather, I strongly affirm that God chooses and reveals out of love. God has chosen Jews to be Jewish, Christians to be Christian, etc. This is pluralism, which simultaneously calls for preserving and honoring differences, including ongoing disagreements (about the balance of grace and works, whether God incarnates literally, the role of halacha, that is, Jewish law, in religion, etc.). These controversies should be for the sake of heaven and should not prevent partnership for tikkun olam (perfecting the world).

Irving Greenberg

Rabbi Irving Greenberg is president of Jewish Life Network/Steinhardt Foundation.

Rabbi Greenberg begins his rejoinder with the accusation that I missed his main point, but near the end it becomes clear that his real problem is that I disagreed with it. Regrettably, he mistakenly attributes this to my supposed adherence to the crude, indefensible position he labels "absolutism." Our actual disagreement centers on rival claims about the nature of a conceptually coherent religious pluralism.

In Greenberg's version of pluralism, each tradition is valid only within its own sphere. In order to sustain such a view, though, Christianity, Islam, and Judaism would each have to undergo the sort of radical reconstruction that Greenberg, in fact, advocates in his book. For Christianity in its classical form (and not just in its fundamentalistic "absolutism") does not affirm that Jesus came only to the lost sheep of the church or that God so loved the Christians that he gave his only begotten son for their salvation. Nor does the Muslim tradition affirm that every community has a Scripture that is as excellent as the Qur'an, delivered through prophets who are the equal of Muhammad. There is a reason that Christianity and Islam have historically been missionary religions, and it derives from their claim to have a message that is universal. That claim is so central to their respective self-conceptions that it is arguably constitutive of their deepest identities.

Judaism, though it is not a missionary religion, proclaims a universal truth no less and sees all of humanity as bound by certain norms (though not by Israel's whole Torah). The belief that any human being was God incarnate runs afoul of those norms, as Greenberg seems to recognize at the end of his response. What he seems not to recognize is that this requires serious qualification of his claim that "God has chosen Jews to be Jewish, Christians to be Christian, etc." If Christians believe that "God incarnates literally" (as most do), Jews cannot fully accept that "God has chosen ... Christians to be Christian." I wonder, though, whether Greenberg fully accepts it himself. Would he recommend that his fellow rabbis refuse to accommodate any Christian who seeks conversion to Judaism?

I am encouraged by Greenberg's remark about "Jews and Christians (and possibly Muslims) being second cousins in Abraham's family." This is, in my judgment, an advance over his more extreme claim in his book that Christians and potentially Muslims are the people Israel and thus spiritual descendants of Abraham's grandson, Jacob, who, in Jewish tradition, is (unlike Abraham) the ancestor of the Jews alone.

Contrary to what Greenberg implies, my review never disputed the claim that there are profound spiritual commonalities among Jews, Christians, and Muslims. His argument for God's "choosing of plural peoples and faiths," though, misses the key point that "choosing" in traditional Jewish and Christian theology implies (like the English word) a selection out of a larger set, so that with each additional group that is chosen, the utility of the word decreases. Part of Greenberg's problem here seems to be his impression that the idea of a single chosen people underestimates the abundance and universality of God's love. But why should we assume that God loves only the chosen?

My review claimed not that Greenberg dismisses the Crucifixion, only that he reinterprets it so thoroughly that many Christians will not recognize it ("the true lesson of the Crucifixion has been misunderstood by Christians because of their past triumphalism"). If the essay authored in 1979 (in which he seeks to dissociate the Crucifixion from "redemptive suffering") does not reflect his current thinking, in future editions of the book he should revise or omit it or preface it with a disclaimer.

Although Greenberg thinks I "reject pluralism as a valid alternative to absolutism," my actual position is that both Judaism and Christianity have ample resources to affirm the spiritual integrity of the other tradition. I differ with him, though, in believing they can do this without having to appeal to a putatively neutral, extratraditional vantage point that is somehow capable of pronouncing each tradition equally valid. Mine is thus not a view that fits comfortably into Greenberg's trichotomy of absolutism, pluralism (as he conceives it), and relativism.

Finally, I should like to reciprocate Rabbi Greenberg's kind words at the beginning of his response by noting that his many accomplishments in the Jewish community and impressive contributions to Jewish-Christian relations to which I alluded in my review are only the tip of the iceberg.

Jon D. Levenson

Jon D. Levenson is the Albert A. List Professor of Jewish Studies at Harvard Divinity School.