TURNING TABLES.

Christianity in
Jewish Terms
Edited by Tikva Frymer-Kensky,
David Novak, Peter Ochs, David Fox Sandmel, and
Michael A. Signer
Westview Press, $30, 438 pp.

This collection of essays symbolizes a new stage in the long and usually rancorous conversation between Judaism and Christianity. The Jewish editors who seek to inform Jewish readers about Christianity in its post-Shoah posture of repentance and reconciliation here initiate the dialogue. "Taking a careful second look" at those expressions of Christianity that have renounced the path of anti-Semitism and supersessionism, the editors hope to identify which moves of this dangerous dance partner are good for Jews, and to honor Christian thinkers who are willing to dance as equals rather than insist on always taking the lead.

The sense of equal partnership is implicit in the book's title--Jewish scholars are engaging Christianity on their own terms and in their own idiom--and is made explicit in the recognition that Christianity's weakened political presence in the world corresponds to the increased political power of Jews (expressed above all by the state of Israel). This self-confidence is shown primarily, I think, in the willingness to engage Christianity theologically. Before now, "theology" tended to be viewed from the Jewish side as a peculiarly Christian game, and one in which Jews always came out losers. Particularly after the Holocaust, some Jews took the position that tradition was fundamentally fractured, that God-talk was at best a distraction from the only thing that really mattered, namely the survival of the people. But here we find the revival of theology precisely as an aspect of a renewed commitment to tradition. While the shadow of the Shoah is by no means removed, neither do these essays demand the recognition of the Holocaust as (in Emil Fackenheim's term) a historical novum that determines all future interpretation. Instead, we find revealed the astonishing (though scarcely unexpected) resilience of the midrashic instinct to clothe even the most radical experiences in the garments of Torah in obedience to the God who both smites and heals beyond our easy knowing. The editors therefore boldly claim and articulate a tradition that itself requires revivification; they see the book as "only the beginning of an effort" encouraging Jews to recover their religious traditions, to "relearn the vocabulary of their own faith" even as they employ that vocabulary to understand the main tenets of their neighbors' faiths.

Where courage is required, danger may be assumed. The other side of the confidence reflected in the volume's title is the concern voiced by both parties that every form of traditional monotheistic religion is under fundamental threat because of the overwhelming power of secularity. A partial subtext of this venture is similar to the one haunting intra-Christian dialogue: If we don't learn to get along, we'll all go under. A petulant version of such worry is found in one editor's fretting over the marginalization of the traditional and theological within American departments of religious studies. The response recommended is the formation of separate academic guilds. The real way forward, in my view, is to enable and encourage new forms of properly synagogal and ecclesial scholarship.

In the introduction to the book, David Novak suggests things to seek and to avoid in a dialogue: positively, each tradition should try to represent the best in the other without distortion, and, negatively, to spurn disputation, proselytization, syncretism, relativism, and triumphalism. All the remaining contributions clearly meet this agenda: an appreciation of values in Christianity is a remarkable constant even in essays that draw firm lines of distinction. From the Christian side, likewise, exchanges are marked by openness and candor, but without the sort of self-loathing that has marked too much of post-Holocaust Christian reflection. The next three essays set a basic historical framework for the remaining essays: Robert Chazan sketches Christian-Jewish interactions over the ages; Irving Greenberg addresses the Shoah and the legacy of anti-Semitism; and Christopher Leighton reviews Christian theology after the Shoah. The pattern of two Jewish authors to one Christian continues a legitimate and welcome dissymmetry in the book. A first Jewish perspective on an issue is followed by a second, with the Christian response directed mainly at the first Jewish perspective.

The essays take on in turn God, Scripture, commandment, worship, suffering, embodiment, redemption, sin and repentance, and the image of God. The contributors are worthy and in some cases (such as Stanley Hauerwas) renowned, and the essays are, for the most part, substantial.

Such collections invite each reader to find different things to praise and fault. I found the more specific the subject, the more satisfying the discussion. The consideration of incarnation, embodiedness, image of God, and worship, seemed to enable participants from both sides to find not only common ground but also new perspectives on their respective traditions. I was particularly struck by the openness of the Jewish writers to some positive understanding of incarnation, even while finding the specific Christian claims concerning Jesus difficult. In contrast, some of the more standard dialogue topics, such as redemption, commandment (law), and repentance, tended to reveal gaps in knowledge of the respective traditions. The thorniest of the topics treated is that of God. The essays from both sides approach the subject gingerly, finding comfort in the assurance that Christians and Jews all worship the God of Abraham, but only with great caution engaging the really tough question of the "nature" of this God, given a strong Trinitarian position.

Among other difficult topics that the book does not take up is messianism. Some essays touch on it tangentially, with reference to Zionism or incarnation, but there is no formal or sustained treatment. Yet this is surely a concept or ideal that both unites and divides the traditions. Similarly, I found little attention paid, even in passing, to eschatology, whether understood in terms of the classic "four last things" (death, judgment, heaven, hell), or in more apocalyptic terms as the future triumph of God in the world. Likewise, the shared conviction and diverse understandings of resurrection, whether individual or communal, are given too little attention. All these were standard elements in both traditions. Have they disappeared? Should they have disappeared? And since the Jewish side of this conversation so self-consciously adopts the voice of "tradition," one wonders at the remarkably small place given to mysticism. It is not a separate topic, and a reader whose knowledge of Judaism and Christianity derived solely from these essays would have little sense of how important Kabbalism and Hasidism have been, or how engagement with Christian mysticism might legitimize esoteric as well as exoteric understandings of tradition. Indeed, seldom in these essays is the full complexity of "Judaism" and "Christianity" given sufficient recognition. It was fascinating--and surprising--to find a chapter devoted to Philo of Alexandria as an interpreter of Scripture. Still, it was frustrating to find no real argument in defense of that inclusion or discussion of what the consequences of Jewish adoption of that ancient but important diaspora voice might be for an understanding of "Jewish tradition." In the same way, fuller attention to the ways in which Judaism and Christianity are themselves controverted territories would have sharpened the discussion. Occasionally, explicit attention was given to the differences among Orthodox, Reform, and Conservative, as well as the distinctions among Roman Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox. But for the most part, Judaism is represented by Talmud and Midrash, and Christianity by Karl Barth!

Despite the level of sincerity and seriousness, the essays do not as a whole demonstrate impressive knowledge of each other's tradition. Indeed, Michael Signer's "Searching the Scriptures: Jews, Christians, and the Book" has a number of significant factual errors, making George Lindbeck's wholehearted endorsement of it--"There is to my knowledge no better brief sketch of the last two thousand odd years of biblical hermeneutics"--the more discomfiting. And Menachem Kellner's reading of Romans is not careful: "Paul's view of redemption as expressed in Romans seems to be wholly other-worldly, divorced from good works, and focused entirely on truth." At least the Jewish scholars engage Christian texts, however naively. They all show that gameness and willingness to learn expressed so well by the title of Nancy Fuchs-Kreimer's essay, "Redemption: What I Have Learned from Christians." The Christian respondents reveal none of the same curiosity about or engagement with Jewish classic texts.

So the book is not perfect. But it was intended not to be an endpoint, only a beginning. And as such a beginning, it is to be applauded and appreciated. I disagree with David Novak on this point: I think that whereas "relativism" is a bad thing in one's life of faith, it is a necessary element in religious dialogue. To the degree that these scholars, in life deeply committed to their respective versions of the truth about God, are willing in conversation to allow space for another version for the purpose of healing the world, they do us all a service. And they point us forward by showing us how a positive engagement with otherness can yield positive growth for all, as well as peace. As the Letter of James has it, "the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace."

Luke Timothy Johnson is the Robert W. Woodruff Professor of New Testament at the Candler School of Theology, Emory University. Among his more recent books is Living Jesus (HarperSanFrancisco).