Further footnotes on Judaism, Yoder and Boyarin.

In his essay, Daniel Boyarin identifies one point of significant agreement with Yoder and two questions. Positively, Boyarin sees reflections of his own work in Yoder's historical de-construction. Both Boyarin and Yoder agree that we can no longer take for granted the 1st-2nd century origins of the Jewish-Christian schism since we cannot point to a normative Judaism or Christianity of that time. From this we learn that: 1) history blurs the boundary lines of each tradition; and 2) historical reconstruction points to the indeterminancy of historical events, allowing us to ask "what could have been?" and liberating us from the dogmatism of self-understanding as it accrues over time.

Boyarin also poses two challenges: 1) doesn't historical de-essentialization result in a loss of identity? and; 2) by contrast, how can we hold this sort of identity preservation without asserting 'too much identity?' Boyarin questions Yoder's tendency to assimilate Judaism to his diasporic account of 'right' Christianity and wonders about the difference therefore between Yoder's account of Christian identity and the rather imperialist tendencies of the religious right.

I will try to resolve these two issues by a theological reconstruction of Yoder's position. Unlike Boyarin, Yoder performs historical reconstruction after theological proclamation.

Point #1: Yoder has a theology of proclamation whereby God is more than our proclamation and our proclamation of God needs time and is insufficient.

In his essay, "The Power Equation Jesus and the Politics of King," Yoder argues that to believe in God and God's justice differs from how we believe in other causes. Usually we assess the veracity of an object of our hope or a cause by the extent to which that object of hope is verified or evidenced in the world. I believe for example that America is right to have invaded Iraq insofar as the invasion works well. Now of course (only now) people are asking whether it is wrong to have believed in America's invasion since it is not going well. Belief in God, Yoder tells us, differs from this kind of believing. To testify to God is to free my testimony from the success or failure of its taking hold. Why? To proclaim God is to recognize that God is always more than any evidence I can conjure up to represent him. To hope in God, Yoder says is "to refuse to project by what dates or by what mechanisms God's victory will come ... [but] to trust in God's ultimate victory ... [to the extent that] there is no correlation between the ultimate victory of God and the immediate prosperity or the power of the saints." (1) There is always a future of our proclamation--a something to say about God's word that is not exhausted by what we say today. Doxology is messianic. It takes time and appreciates the inadequacy of the present testimony. One can identify the same theo-logic in halakhic reasoning--premised as it is on the pull of future revision--of more justice, the realization that the disclosure of the divine Word takes time and frequently corrects prior proclamations.

Point #2: There is a direct link between the temporality of theological proclamation and the identity of the believer. If I am never finished or complete in my proclamation of God, I am never complete or stable in my identity as a believer. Yoder's account of the eschatological pull of all proclamation destabilizes the sufficiency of the Christian's self-understanding as one who successfully proclaims or testifies to God. The believer who asks 'who am I?' always answers 'I am one on the way in my testimony who longs to say more and acknowledges the insufficiency of what I say.' Yoder's recognition of the indeterminancy of 1st and 2nd century Christianity and/or Judaism is as much a novum in historical studies as it is an accurate reflection of his account of proclamation. Historical de-essentialization is shot through with a reformist announcement of God's sovereignty and the finitude or 'pilgrimage' required for witness. In this context it no longer makes sense to speak of oneself as Christian but always a Christian-in-becoming--or a Jew-in-the-making. When historians point to the formation of religious identity they contribute to the theologians' own account of the dialectical character of how we speak about God. When historians enshrine the past in certainty and such historical determinacy grounds subsequent dogmatism, the historian's labor refutes the theological exercise.

Point #3: The correlation between theological proclamation and the fluidity of religious identity helps resolve Boyarin's concern that the de-essentialization of historical studies results in the loss of religious identity. While in the context of a theology of proclamation the exact perimeters and content of what it means to be a Jew or a Christian or (any believer for that matter) are always fluid, a Jew or a Christian's identity derives from her desire to proclaim God on the one hand and proclaim God in and through the language of her tradition as this develops and changes through history. To suggest that to be a Jew or a Christian is not definitive is not to deny that Jews and Christians have something to say--namely, their response to God's acts in history with the language and tradition that they have accrued through time. Identity emerges and is sustained by our desire to say more about God. I proclaim therefore, I am, if you will.

Point #4: That theological proclamation takes time is also to say that theological proclamation takes place within time and is affected by the historical conditions of any time. Religious identity therefore--or God-talk--is influenced by and enriched by the Zeitgeist and language of its day. This deepens the theological response to Boyarin's question concerning the formation and cultivation of religious identity. Theological culture and theological identity derive from (borrowing Barth's language) the humanity of God. Persons are free to proclaim God in their insufficiency--on their way--in the promise of God's future redemption. They may therefore enlist and engage with the questions and language of the surrounding culture. Theological culture--the perpetual expression of God-talk in and through time arises out of two different sorts of engagements between one's religious language and the language of surrounding (and different)cultures. On the one hand, God-talk--what here we are referring to as Jewish or Christian proclamation--is positively funded by the language and questions posed by what I have elsewhere referred to as the "outer sanctuary." (2) On the other hand, there is apologetics--the encounter with a challenge to one's tradition. In the first case, Christianity engages culture, we might say--it permits its testimony to Christ to assume the character of the particular questions and as Tillich described, the 'situation' of the day. From a Jewish perspective we might say that halakha is (ever so slightly in orthodox circles and more obviously in liberal circles) impacted by the questions and language of the current culture. Understood in the logic of the above doxology--Jews and Christians can and need to be cognizant of how the language of the day and the outer sanctuary contributes to their proclamation insofar as it can offer a surplus to better testify to the inexhaustibility of divine sovereignty and develop further the contours of their identity as proclaimers. Jews will recognize this in Samson Raphael Hirsch's famous principle, "torah em ha derek eretz" (Torah with the ways of the world). A positive appropriation of outside culture helps feed my theological desire (that is to say, my religious identity). This principle operates in Yoder's historical studies of Judaism. Judaism's contents can become constitutive elements in the Christian message. All aspects of the world can be signs of God that enhance the Christian proclamation. But here of course we run into Boyarin's second critique. Doesn't the sacramentalization of the other silence the other and require a good dose of apologetics to balance the scales?

Point #5: Yes: The tendency to appropriate the other for my religious identity can wax hegemonic. It can however be held in check by the very limits imposed on it by theological proclamation as these limits are present in a pluralist society. Stated simply, the reference to the inexhaustibility of God's truth should limit the hegemonic drive of proclamation. This limit however can be readily available to the believer from those outside the tradition. The other can function not only as a sign of God in a positive capacity but as a check on idolatry and therefore in a critical function as well. But, what is the nature of the engagement with the other's claim? Modern apologetics held that the other (that is public discourse generally speaking) demanded that I establish the rationality of my beliefs. My belief was, accordingly, held in check by the society's general requirement that I demonstrate the humanism and/or rational character of my belief. But we now know that such requirements were well--a sham. Entrance into public discourse requires much more than a mere demonstration of rationality--for the tolerance hereby apparently acquired can veil an interior dismissal or prejudice. For better or worse, persons seeking acceptance at the table of social discourse have to do a lot more than demonstrate rationality and/or humanist values. They have to respond to the antagonism that culture so frequently presents in the form of prejudices that remain long after the rational defense has been demonstrated. In other words, it is absurd to think that particular believers in a pluralist society do not encounter enmity between themselves and many other perspectives. Any check on the hegemonic potential (that is the idolatrous character) of my belief requires more than recourse to humanism but has to make its way through the fire of enmity first. This happens one might say by the process through which I recognize the ugliness of my prejudice for you after attending to the ugliness in your attack on me. Franz Roseznweig wrote an exquisite essay on apologetics entitled, "Apologetic Thinking" (3) where he argued that authentic apologetics happens when I realize that my effort to demonize the other is my effort to secure my own identity. But in the process of attempting to preserve myself, I expel the possibility of some characteristic of myself by demonizing it in the other. Interestingly enough, Rosenzweig used the example of inter-Jewish enmity to make this point--whereby the Jew who says Judaism is about covenant and not law demonizes the 'orthodox Jew' who says it's about 'law and not spirituality' and the two decidedly excise the positive feature of the other from their own proclamation. This exercise is apologetics of a sort it just takes a little longer and recognizes the enmity that fuels it. Enmity is always present and always an opportunity for overcoming the potential idolatry in one's theological proclamation--why? Because as believers we always want to see our proclamation and identity as finished but as proclaimers of God, it never is. Time takes place in an antagonistic environment and the antagonism sponsors the theological desire that fuels our proclamation.

Point #6: Yoder's account of Jewish-Christian relations neglected the reality of the enmity (difference) between the two, but it didn't have to. Too quickly Yoder asserted Christianity's positive and fluid appropriation of outside culture, leaving his account vulnerable to Boyarin's challenge. This challenge can be offset by detailing his own theological premise and the recognition that herein, the other is not only the material for more proclamation but the check on my tendency to think that I am entirely right. There is an enmity between the Jew and the Christian, and that enmity must be recognized during and after any positive implication of the one in the other.

Notes

1. Yoder, John Howard, "The Power Equation, the Place of Jesus, and the Politics of King" in For the Nations: Essay Public & Evangelical (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company), 1997, 129.

2. See my "The Liturgical Turn," in Liturgy, Time and the Politics of Redemption (Grand Rapids: Wm.B. Eerdmans), 2006.

3. Rosenzweig, Franz, "Apologetic Thinking" in Philosophical and Theological Writings ed., trans., Paul W. Franks and Michael Morgan (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company), 2000, 10-24.