Books by Peter W . Ochs
Yale University PhD Dissertation, 1979
In recent years, several Academia.edu subscribers have asked if I could upload my 1979 PhD disser... more In recent years, several Academia.edu subscribers have asked if I could upload my 1979 PhD dissertation at Yale University Department of Philosophy. With the courtesy of the University of Virginia Library, I have finally uploaded a scan of the original dissertation as I submitted it to Yale. Entitled “Charles Peirce’s Metaphysical Conviction,” the dissertation explores the metaphysical conviction that underlies the development of Peirce’s pragmatism. In 1979, I wrote that Peirce’s entire philosophic corpus anticipates its ultimate resolution in metaphysics. I also wrote that Peirce’s metaphysics has the logical status only of an hypothesis, grounded in the pragmatic hope that there is a real independent of any particular cognition of it and that the real is the ultimate object of metaphysical inquiry. In 1998, I published Peirce, Pragmatism, and the Logic of Scripture (Cambridge), which retains the dissertation’s reading of the development of Peirce’s pragmatism, but which receives Peirce’s metaphysical conviction as stimulus to my own pursuit of a pragmatic theo-metaphysics, or what I call a “logic of scripture.”
Reparatives Denken: Lehren aus den Werken von Hasdai Crescas, David Halivni und aus Scriptural Reasoning/ Reparative Reasoning. Lessons from the Works of Hasdai Crescas, David Halivni, and Scriptural Reasoning (German-English dual edition), Übersetzungen von Lea Schlenker und Florian Zacher, Her..., 2024
In an age of conflict, what forms of reasoning help repair broken relations? Peter W. Ochs draws ... more In an age of conflict, what forms of reasoning help repair broken relations? Peter W. Ochs draws old-new practices of Reparative Reasoning out of age-old traditions of Scriptural wisdom. Honoring both empirical science and religious-ethical command, this reasoning follows the dictates, at once, of body, heart, and mind. The author examines three prototypes: Hasdai Crescas, rabbinic leader of fourteenth century Aragon, who showed how to repair the separation of science and scriptural religion in modern society; David Halivni, celebrated scholar of the Talmud, who showed how to re-read the sacred word of Torah after terrible loss in the Shoah; and Scriptural Reasoning, a contemporary practice of inter-Abrahamic study, which shows how to foster long-term dialogue across deep religious divides.
Religion Without Violence: The Practice and Philosophy of Scriptural Reasoning, 2019
This is a book about how to teach and learn the practice and theory of Scriptural Reasoning (“SR”... more This is a book about how to teach and learn the practice and theory of Scriptural Reasoning (“SR”). As we first developed it in 1992, SR names a method for studying scriptures across the borders of any tradition. Our prototype was a study of Abrahamic scriptures: the Tanakh, the New Testament, and the Qur’an studied side-by-side, so that students, adherents and observers of any one scriptural canon would feel welcomed to read and comment on verses of the other canons as well. One of our goals was to find better methods for teaching religions by way of the study of scripture and for teaching scripture in a way that was enriched by both academic and traditional forms of commentary. Another goal was to find methods for peaceful encounter across religious traditions. After about five years of experimentation, we settled on a single method, which we now label "formational SR study.” This method is practiced both as an end in itself and as a means of entering into a broader program of inter-religious work. We often hear the term "Scriptural Reasoning" applied to this broader program. In this book, I will use the term in both senses. "Formational SR" will refer to the original practice, which remains a prototype and the single most effective exercise for introducing folks to the mindset presupposed by all the other forms and applications of SR.
Reliigion without Violence: The Practice and Philosophy of Scriptural Reasoning, 2019
Introduction to Religion Without Violence
Rapid globalization and portents of a post-secular age are driving unprecedented encounters withi... more Rapid globalization and portents of a post-secular age are driving unprecedented encounters within and between traditions. Encountering Traditions seeks to capture this wave of creativity by offering authors a venue to speak unapologetically from any one of the Abrahamic scriptural traditions and beyond. Books in this series explore topics that should interest a broad readership as well as specialists. They highlight the dynamism of encounters between traditions--religious as well as secular, mainstream as well as marginal. Drawing on a rich heritage of scholarly disciplines, they are attentive both to tradition and to social and historical context.
Encountering Traditions seeks to show the multiple ways that the energies of faith and reason, texts and history enhance our life worlds through creative scholarship. Topics that further this goal include inter-religious encounters between and within scriptural texts; modes and habits of thinking within and between traditions; how traditions encounter pressing concerns of poverty, health and the environment; interactions among disciplines of text scholarship, theology, history and critical thought; interactions among contemporary practices of scriptural exegesis, social and congregational life; and, legal or narrative theological reasoning.
SERIES EDITORS: STANLEY HAUERWAS, PETER OCHS, MARIA DAKAKE, RANDI RASHKOVER
SUP EDITOR: EMILY-JANE COHEN
Series Board:
Nicholas Adams, Rumee Ahmed, and Jonathan Tran
BOOKS:
(1) The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam
MUHAMMAD IQBAL WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY JAVED MAJEED (2013)
(2) His Hiding Place Is Darkness
A Hindu-Catholic Theopoetics of Divine Absence
FRANCIS X. CLOONEY, S.J. (2013)
(3) Ethics as a Work of Charity
Thomas Aquinas and Pagan Virtue
DAVID DECOSIMO (2014)
(4) Weird John Brown
Divine Violence and the Limits of Ethics
TED A. SMITH (2014)
(5) Hasidism Incarnate
Hasidism, Christianity, and the Construction of Modern Judaism
SHAUL MAGID (2014)
""The upshot of Ochs's careful, erudite, detailed argument is that postliberal theology escapes t... more ""The upshot of Ochs's careful, erudite, detailed argument is that postliberal theology escapes the traps of both liberal and antiliberal reason and so is not drawn to supersessionism. . . . Ochs, in his practice and in his exposition, exhibits a way of relating and thinking and believing that makes wholeness and healing possible."--Walter Brueggemann, Christian Century
Jewish theologian Peter Ochs argues that a significant and expanding movement in recent Christian theology offers a way for Christians to rededicate themselves to the gospel message and to classical, patristic doctrines of the church without revisiting classical claims that, with the coming of Christ, God has replaced his love of the Jewish people with his love of the church. Ochs examines the christologies and pneumatologies of leading postliberal theologians George Lindbeck, Robert Jenson, Stanley Hauerwas, John Howard Yoder, Daniel Hardy, and David Ford, who argue in their work that God's love of Christ and the church does not replace his love of Israel and the Jews. Another Reformation not only provides a detailed study of the movement of recent postliberal Christian theology in the United States and the United Kingdom but also offers stimulating Jewish-Christian theological exchange. Ochs's realization that some Christian thinkers retain a place for the people of Israel opens up the possibility of new understanding and deepens the Jewish-Christian dialogue.
Contents
1. Introduction: Christian Postliberalism and the Jews
Part 1: American Protestant Postliberalism
2. George Lindbeck and the Church as Israel
3. Robert Jenson: The God of Israel and the Fruits of Trinitarian Theology
4. Arguing for Christ: Stanley Hauerwas's Theopractic Reasoning
5. The Limits of Postliberalism: John Howard Yoder's American Mennonite Church
Part 2: British Postliberalism
6. Finding Christ in World and Polity: Daniel Hardy's Ecclesiological Postliberalism
7. Wisdom's Cry: David Ford's Reparative Pneumatology
8. John Milbank: Supersessionist or Christian Theo-semiotician and Pragmatist?
9. Conclusion: Christian Postliberalism and Christian Nonsupersessionism Are Correlative
Endorsements
"Discerning a close correlation between postliberal Christian theology and nonsupersessionism, Ochs, a Jewish theologian, gratefully receives the gifts this strand of Christian theology has to offer. But then he offers a startling gift in return. Moving qualitatively beyond mere 'dialogue' with Christian theologians, Ochs enters deeply, sympathetically, and critically into the heart of postliberal Christian theology and profoundly assists Christian theology in its work of building up the body of Christ. Are we not astounded by that? One thing now becomes utterly clear: Christian theology, if it truly seeks and prays for 'another reformation' by which divisions among the churches and divisions among Jews and Christians are repaired, can no longer do without such gifts as this--and without giving them in return."--Douglas Harink, professor of theology, The King's University College
"Anyone wishing to discern the contours of a properly postliberal theological ethos in George Lindbeck, Robert Jenson, Stanley Hauerwas, John Howard Yoder, Dan Hardy, David Ford, or John Milbank could not find a more astute guide than Peter Ochs, whose exposition is as penetrating as his critique is incisive. Deftly employing the philosophical tools of Charles Sanders Peirce, Ochs's focus is the bugbear of 'supersession,' yet his clear goal is a mode of exposition and analysis freed from easy polarities. A meticulous reading delineates the contributions each author makes to an inclusive Jewish-Christian theology, and in so doing reveals what renders these thoughts properly Christian."--David Burrell, CSC, professor of ethics and development, Uganda Martyrs University
"Several Jewish thinkers have applauded the recent efforts of Christian theologians to overcome supersessionism--the notion that the Christian church has replaced the Jewish people in God's covenant with Israel as the people of God--without abandoning their own Christian theology. Indeed, the efforts of these Christian thinkers have contributed to the deepening of their theology. Peter Ochs is one of the most prominent of these Jewish thinkers, and in Another Reformation he articulates his applause with unprecedented theological insight and philosophical perspicacity."--David Novak, J. Richard and Dorothy Shiff Chair of Jewish Studies, University of Toronto
"Another Reformation demonstrates why Jewish philosopher Peter Ochs has been a seminal thinker for Jews and Christians seeking reconciliation through fidelity to the divine Word. With profound insight, Ochs engages a set of Christian theologians committed both to classical Christian modes of apprehending reality and to the pragmatic exercise of critical reason, and discovers a correlation between their theological sensibilities and a nonsupersessionist orientation toward the Jewish people. In his own interaction with these Christian thinkers--via personal dialogue and written words--Ochs models the virtues he extols in those he studies: sensitivity to the particularities of historical and social context; reliance upon relational rather than dichotomous patterns of thought; an ecumenical concern to heal wounded communities; and an ear attentive not only to the voices of other human beings but also to the voice of God. This is a masterful example of the way Jewish scholars may contribute to Christian conversations, and a reminder that the Jewish and Christian conversations belong in the same room, where each circle can overhear and learn from the other."--Mark S. Kinzer, senior scholar, Messianic Jewish Theological Institute; author, Postmissionary Messianic Judaism: Redefining Christian Engagement with the Jewish People
Reviews
"The interface of Jewish and Christian theology has always been vexing. . . . Happily, we are at the threshold of a new way of communicating at that interface. . . . More broadly, no one has contributed more to this fresh possibility than Peter Ochs. With his largeness of spirit, his deep theological sensibility, and his practical passion for fresh work with Christians, he has taken on important initiatives that have made room for new communication and understanding. . . . The upshot of Ochs's careful, erudite, detailed argument is that postliberal theology escapes the traps of both liberal and antiliberal reason and so is not drawn to supersessionism. . . . Ochs has performed a formidable interpretive task that awaits follow-up in local settings. . . . Ochs, in his practice and in his exposition, exhibits a way of relating and thinking and believing that makes wholeness and healing possible."--Walter Brueggemann, Christian Century"
How is it possible, after the Shoah, to declare one's faith in the God of Israel? Breaking the Ta... more How is it possible, after the Shoah, to declare one's faith in the God of Israel? Breaking the Tablets is David Weiss Halivni's eloquent and insightful response to this question. Halivni, Auschwitz survivor and one of the greatest Talmudic scholars of the past century, declares that at this time of God's near absence, Jews can still observe the words of the Torah and pray for God to come near again. Jews must continue to study the classic texts of rabbinic Judaism but now with greater humility, recognizing that even the greatest religious leaders and thinkers interpret these texts only as mere people, prone to human error. Breaking the Tablets is important reading for anyone who feels burdened by the question of how it is possible to believe in God and practice their religion.
Text is concerned with 1) How to renew our understanding of Judaism today from out of sacred text... more Text is concerned with 1) How to renew our understanding of Judaism today from out of sacred texts and 2) How to understand Christianity in terms of this Judaism.
Crisis, Call, and Leadership in the Abrahamic Traditions, 2009
"Over three years of study and fellowship, sixteen Muslim, Jewish, and Christian scholars sought ... more "Over three years of study and fellowship, sixteen Muslim, Jewish, and Christian scholars sought to answer one question: “Do our three scriptures unite or divide us?” They offer their answers in this book: sixteen essays on how certain ways of reading scripture may draw us apart and other ways may draw us, together, into the source that each tradition calls peace. Reading scriptural sources in the classical and medieval traditions, the authors examine how each tradition addresses the “other” within its tradition and without, how all three traditions attend to poverty as a societal and spiritual condition, and what it means to read scripture while facing the challenges of modernity. Ochs and Johnson have assembled a unique approach to inter-religious scholarship and a rare look at scriptural study as a pathway to peace.
“Scriptural reasoning, the growing practice of Jews, Christians, and Muslims reading their scriptures together, makes good academic and common sense in a time of crisis. This ground-breaking book, the outcome of an imaginative 3-year experiment by the Princeton Center of Theological Inquiry, shows scholars and thinkers of the Abrahamic traditions going deeper into the traditions and into their contemporary situation. The result is something new, wise, and relevant… full of promise for the future. Where else can one find testimonies to Jews, Christians, and Muslims coming together not only in study, thinking, and wisdom-seeking but also in play, joy, and friendship?”--David F. Ford, Regius Professor of Divinity, University of Cambridge and Director, Cambridge Inter-Faith Programme"
"These four lectures offer groundwork for a Mennonite-Jewish theological dialogue.
One context... more "These four lectures offer groundwork for a Mennonite-Jewish theological dialogue.
One context for the dialogue is a sphere of overlapping interests among Jews and Mennonites who have returned to consider the power of Scripture at a time when both secularism and radical anti-secularism have lost their luster. Another context is the publication of John Howard Yoder's The Jewish-Christian Schism Revisited. Yet another context is an emerging effort among Jewish, Christian, and Muslim scholars to meet together in peace and through conversations about Scripture. A final context is the on-going loss of life, justice, and hope in Israel-Palestine.
The Free Church and Israel's Covenant introduces Mennonite-Jewish theological dialogue as a contribution to the work of inter-Abrahamic peace, and scriptural truth.
Distributed for Canadian Mennonite University Press."
This is the first study of Charles Peirce's philosophy as a form of writing and the first study o... more This is the first study of Charles Peirce's philosophy as a form of writing and the first study of his pragmatic writings as a critique of the modern attempt to change society by writing philosophy. According to Ochs, Peirce concluded that his own pragmatism displayed the errors of modernity, attempting to recreate rather than repair modern philosophy. His self-critique - which he called pragmaticism - refashions pragmatism as what Ochs calls a 'pragmatic method of reading': a method of, first, uncovering the conflicting beliefs that generate modern philosophies and, second, recommending ways of repairing these conflicts. Redescribing Peirce's pragmatism as 'the logic of scripture', Ochs suggests that Christians and Jews may in fact re-read pragmatism as a logic of Scripture: that is, as a modern philosopher's way of diagramming the Bible's rules for repairing broken lives and healing societal suffering.
Features
• The only study of Peirce's philosophy as a form of writing and of Peirce's pragmatism as a critique of philosophic writing
• The only study to correlate the logic of Peirce's pragmatism with a logic of Scripture
• Peirce for postmodern literary scholars and postmodern theologian
This major intellectual response to the leading theologian of liberal Judaism provides a signific... more This major intellectual response to the leading theologian of liberal Judaism provides a significant indication of future directions in Jewish religious thought.
In Reviewing the Covenant, six Jewish philosophers--and one Christian colleague--respond to the work of the renowned Jewish theologian Eugene B. Borowitz, one of the leading figures in the movement of "postmodern" Jewish philosophy and theology. The title recalls Borowitz's earlier book, Renewing the Covenant: A Theology for the Postmodern Jew, in which he lent this movement a theological agenda, and the essays in this book respond to Borowitz's call: to revitalize contemporary Judaism by renewing the covenant that binds modern Jews to re-live and re-interpret the traditions of Judaism's past.
Together with the introductory and responsive essays by Peter Ochs and Borowitz himself, the essays offer a community of dialogue, an attempt to reason-out how Jewish faith is possible after the Holocaust and how reason itself is possible after the failings of the great "-isms" of the modern world. This dialogue is conducted under the banner of "postmodern Judaism," a daunting term that by the end of the book receives a surprisingly direct meaning, namely, the condition of disillusionment and loss out of which Jews can and must find a third way out of the modern impasse between arrogant rationalism and arrogant religion. Representing a major intellectual response to the leading theologian of liberal Judaism, the book provides a significant indication of future directions in Jewish religious thought.
"This book offers a concise yet panoramic overview of a crucial contemporary debate." -- Allan Arkush, author of Moses Mendelssohn and the Enlightenment
"Borowitz invited a discussion of postmodernism and Judaism in his book, but the battle over the term yields to what is one of the clearest expositions of the context in contemporary disciplines, and more importantly the reasons why Judaism needs a postmodern turn now. This is not merely taxonomy, but is rather a deep reflection and, better still, conversation about the way Judaism faces the crisis of modernity." -- Robert Gibbs, author of Correlations in Rosenzweig and Levinas
Contributors include Eugene B. Borowitz, Yudit Kornberg Greenberg, Susan Handelman, David Novak, Peter Ochs, Thomas W. Ogletree, Norbert M. Samuelson, and Edith Wyschogrod.
Peter Ochs is Edgar M. Bronfman Professor of Modern Judaic Studies at the University of Virginia and founder of the Postmodern Jewish Philosophy Network. Eugene B. Borowitz is the Sigmund L. Falk Distinguished Professor of Education and Jewish Religious Thought at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion/New York.
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Table of Contents
Preface
Introductory
1. The Emergence of Postmodern Jewish Theology and Philosophy
Peter Ochs
2. Postmodern Judaism: One Theologian's View
Eugene B. Borowitz
Readings of Borowitz' Renewing the Covenant
3. Gene Borowitz' Renewing the Covenant: A Theology for the Postmodern Jew
Yudit Kornberg Greenberg
4. Reading the Covenant: Some Postmodern Reflections
Edith Wyschogrod
5. Post-Modern or Chastened Modern?
Eugene B. Borowitz' Vision for Jewish Fidelity
Thomas W. Ogletree
6. Is the Covenant a Bilateral Relationship?
A Response to Eugene Borowitz' Renewing the Covenant
David Novak
7. A Critique of Borowitz' Postmodern Jewish Theology
Norbert M. Samuelson
Readings of the Readings
8. Borowitz and the Postmodern Renewal of Theology
Peter Ochs
9. 'Im ba'et, eyma —Since You Object, Let Me Put It This Way
Eugene B. Borowitz
Postmodern Theological Renewal: A Meditation
10. "Crossing and Recrossing the Void": A Letter to Gene
Susan Handelman
Bibliography
Index
Index of Biblical and Rabbinic Sources
"Textual reasoning" is the name that a group of contemporary Jewish thinkers has given to its ove... more "Textual reasoning" is the name that a group of contemporary Jewish thinkers has given to its overlapping practices of Jewish philosophy and theology. This volume represents the most public expression to date of the shared work, over a period of twelve years, of this society of "textual reasoners." / Although the movement of textual reasoning is diverse and multiform, it is characterized at bottom by the pursuit of the claim that there are significant affinities between Jewish forms of reading and reasoning and postmodern thought. These affinities are presently being pursued by scholars throughout Jewish studies, in fields such as the Bible, Talmud, Midrash, medieval philosophy, Kabbalah, and the Jewish phenomenology of Rosenzweig and Levinas, among others. As the essays in this book amply convey, their work has stimulated a lively and creative reengagement with the philosophical dimensions of Jewish texts and, even more, with the textual dimensions of Jewish reasoning. In large part, this new energy has come from conceiving of the postmodern as a place where some of the most distinctive features of Jewish reasoning can be elucidated as well as challenged. / A fine addition to the Radical Traditions series, Textual Reasonings provides a superb review of contemporary Jewish thought.
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Professor Daniel Hardy died on 15 November 2007, just six months after being diagnosed with a... more "
Professor Daniel Hardy died on 15 November 2007, just six months after being diagnosed with an aggressive brain tumour. He was an extraordinary man – and this is an extraordinary book. A sort of theological memoir (if there is such a literary hybrid), it works on various levels: an intimate record of a spiritual journey; thought-provoking theology; an homage to a great teacher; the story of family and close friends facing the loss of someone deeply loved. What holds these levels together is a series of conversations which Hardy held during those last months. Deborah Hardy Ford introduces the book with a portrait of her father and concludes with ‘farewell discourses’ – his ‘parting theology’. She also presents Hardy’s own account of a pilgrimage to the Holy Land just weeks before the diagnosis, a journey of faith which forms the main narrative strand of the book. His son-in-law, David Ford, Regius Professor of Divinity at the University of Cambridge and Hardy’s closest collaborator, provides a commentary on ‘living theology in the face of death’. In summarising and explaining some of the more allusive of Hardy’s concepts, Ford shows how Hardy’s theology was, as he put it himself, being ‘rounded off somehow’. These chapters are personal and heartfelt, interspersed with scripturally based meditations; they are by turns poignant and joyful, witnessing to Hardy’s deep-felt conviction that, in these months especially, he was being drawn deeper into the radiance of God’s light.
It is in the central section, four brief chapters which sketch out an ‘ecclesiology of pilgrimage’, that Hardy’s distinctive theological voice is heard most clearly. Knowing that the book he was working on would never be finished, Hardy held regular telephone conversations with one of his closest friends and colleagues, Peter Ochs, a Jewish philosopher at the University of Virginia. Ochs made himself responsible for writing them up, using the experience of the Holy Land pilgrimage – from the bubbling headwaters of the Jordan to the dark tunnel under the city of Jerusalem – to illustrate the major themes which had most occupied Hardy all his life: God, Church and the Redemption of the world. This pilgrimage was no routine trip round the sacred sites; it’s a journey of personal transformation in which an old and familiar truth, the presence of the Incarnate Lord, explodes with a new and disarming freshness. Some of the material here is technical and difficult (and Ochs’ footnotes are often invaluable in sifting out the different levels of Hardy’s meaning). It is also shot through with Hardy’s occasionally idiosyncratic vocabulary, some of it with a venerable if obscure pedigree, some of it expressing new experiences and insights."
Hearthing: Hearth-Based Reasoning by Peter W . Ochs
Modern Theology, 2021
My deep thanks to the editors of this symposium, Jim Fodor and Bill Cavanaugh, whose journal alwa... more My deep thanks to the editors of this symposium, Jim Fodor and Bill Cavanaugh, whose journal always serves as a home for hearth-to-hearth theological engagement. And my deep thanks also to the authors of these extraordinary response essays. Over the years, we participants in Scriptural Reasoning (SR) have spoken of SR sessions as giving birth to events of reasoning that are unique to the time, place, and participants of each session. When meeting to reflect on the reasoning of SR, we appear to participate in an additional mode of reasoning: a meta-reasoning that asks, "What is SR reasoning?" and that answers with analyses whose matter is our memories of individual sessions and whose form is something we construct, then and there, out of elements of our various intellectual disciplines. These rich and multi-leveled review essays suggest another type of meta-reasoning: a continuing process of reflecting on what participants might call the transcendental conditions of our practices of SR reasoning or, alternatively, on how shared scriptural study may engender unique practices of reasoning. 1 In this essay, I shall both celebrate each individual review essay and glean from it elements of some practice of SR meta-reasoning. In the process, I assemble an overall map of metareasonings that I label the Hearth of Hearths (HH). This assembly remains a play of imagination, of no value unless and until these authors subsequently join the play. In short, this essay is an experiment in multi-layered reasoning. There are scriptural texts (layer 1), received within traditions of scriptural commentary (layer 2), stimulating different individual readings around the SR table (layer 3) that stimulate dynamic processes of group reasoning (layer 4), which processes stimulate many kinds of meta-reasoning among SR thinkers (5+ layers), 2 including those displayed in Religion Without Violence, as reconstructed by the reviewers (layer 6). Reflecting on the reviews (layer 7), I try to imagine a resting place among these levels of reasoning, as if it were a final source and arbiter of SR meta-reasonings: what I call a "hearth." 3
Jewish Theology, Textual Reasoning by Peter W . Ochs
Journal of Jewish Ethics, 2015
When Eugene Borowitz's renews his community's Jewish covenant, he also illustrates a generalizabl... more When Eugene Borowitz's renews his community's Jewish covenant, he also illustrates a generalizable model of what I label "Covenantal Ethics." The model has three features: (a) community-specific covenantal ethics: an account of the network of values that characterize some historically situated Jewish community; (b) the "neutral" space of modern public life: an account of how this community is both strengthened and weakened by the way it adapts to dominant features of its Western social environment; and (c) Reparative covenantal ethics: suggestions for how the community might renew its Jewish covenant: uncovering Jewish sources of the community's strengths and enlisting them as resources for repairing its weaknesses.
Oxford Guide to Modern Judaism, 2005
Throughout Jewish history, Jewish scholars and thinkers have re-described Judaism after each peri... more Throughout Jewish history, Jewish scholars and thinkers have re-described Judaism after each period of terrible catastrophe in Jewish civilization. Still traumatized by the memory of Shoa, the Jewish people lives in one of these periods now, which means that this is an appropriate time to re-describe the Jewish religion. It is therefore, in particular, a time to re-describe what Jews mean by Covenant, since Covenant, or brit, refers to the bond that links each member of the Jewish people (each tribe or denomination) to each other and that ties the Jewish people as a whole to God. After times of catastrophe Jews ask what has happened to the Covenant that forms them as a people: Is it sill intact? Are they still bound to their God and to one another? If so, why has God not protected them from this catastrophe? What have they done – to one another or to God – to merit this suffering? In light of these questions, the Jews come to re-describe their religion by re-describing their Covenant: what it means, what it promised, what went wrong, and what they might do now both to re-form and re-affirm it. This essay re-describes Judaism’s Covenant as a way, also, of re-describing Judaism after a time of terrible catastrophe.
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Books by Peter W . Ochs
Encountering Traditions seeks to show the multiple ways that the energies of faith and reason, texts and history enhance our life worlds through creative scholarship. Topics that further this goal include inter-religious encounters between and within scriptural texts; modes and habits of thinking within and between traditions; how traditions encounter pressing concerns of poverty, health and the environment; interactions among disciplines of text scholarship, theology, history and critical thought; interactions among contemporary practices of scriptural exegesis, social and congregational life; and, legal or narrative theological reasoning.
SERIES EDITORS: STANLEY HAUERWAS, PETER OCHS, MARIA DAKAKE, RANDI RASHKOVER
SUP EDITOR: EMILY-JANE COHEN
Series Board:
Nicholas Adams, Rumee Ahmed, and Jonathan Tran
BOOKS:
(1) The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam
MUHAMMAD IQBAL WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY JAVED MAJEED (2013)
(2) His Hiding Place Is Darkness
A Hindu-Catholic Theopoetics of Divine Absence
FRANCIS X. CLOONEY, S.J. (2013)
(3) Ethics as a Work of Charity
Thomas Aquinas and Pagan Virtue
DAVID DECOSIMO (2014)
(4) Weird John Brown
Divine Violence and the Limits of Ethics
TED A. SMITH (2014)
(5) Hasidism Incarnate
Hasidism, Christianity, and the Construction of Modern Judaism
SHAUL MAGID (2014)
Jewish theologian Peter Ochs argues that a significant and expanding movement in recent Christian theology offers a way for Christians to rededicate themselves to the gospel message and to classical, patristic doctrines of the church without revisiting classical claims that, with the coming of Christ, God has replaced his love of the Jewish people with his love of the church. Ochs examines the christologies and pneumatologies of leading postliberal theologians George Lindbeck, Robert Jenson, Stanley Hauerwas, John Howard Yoder, Daniel Hardy, and David Ford, who argue in their work that God's love of Christ and the church does not replace his love of Israel and the Jews. Another Reformation not only provides a detailed study of the movement of recent postliberal Christian theology in the United States and the United Kingdom but also offers stimulating Jewish-Christian theological exchange. Ochs's realization that some Christian thinkers retain a place for the people of Israel opens up the possibility of new understanding and deepens the Jewish-Christian dialogue.
Contents
1. Introduction: Christian Postliberalism and the Jews
Part 1: American Protestant Postliberalism
2. George Lindbeck and the Church as Israel
3. Robert Jenson: The God of Israel and the Fruits of Trinitarian Theology
4. Arguing for Christ: Stanley Hauerwas's Theopractic Reasoning
5. The Limits of Postliberalism: John Howard Yoder's American Mennonite Church
Part 2: British Postliberalism
6. Finding Christ in World and Polity: Daniel Hardy's Ecclesiological Postliberalism
7. Wisdom's Cry: David Ford's Reparative Pneumatology
8. John Milbank: Supersessionist or Christian Theo-semiotician and Pragmatist?
9. Conclusion: Christian Postliberalism and Christian Nonsupersessionism Are Correlative
Endorsements
"Discerning a close correlation between postliberal Christian theology and nonsupersessionism, Ochs, a Jewish theologian, gratefully receives the gifts this strand of Christian theology has to offer. But then he offers a startling gift in return. Moving qualitatively beyond mere 'dialogue' with Christian theologians, Ochs enters deeply, sympathetically, and critically into the heart of postliberal Christian theology and profoundly assists Christian theology in its work of building up the body of Christ. Are we not astounded by that? One thing now becomes utterly clear: Christian theology, if it truly seeks and prays for 'another reformation' by which divisions among the churches and divisions among Jews and Christians are repaired, can no longer do without such gifts as this--and without giving them in return."--Douglas Harink, professor of theology, The King's University College
"Anyone wishing to discern the contours of a properly postliberal theological ethos in George Lindbeck, Robert Jenson, Stanley Hauerwas, John Howard Yoder, Dan Hardy, David Ford, or John Milbank could not find a more astute guide than Peter Ochs, whose exposition is as penetrating as his critique is incisive. Deftly employing the philosophical tools of Charles Sanders Peirce, Ochs's focus is the bugbear of 'supersession,' yet his clear goal is a mode of exposition and analysis freed from easy polarities. A meticulous reading delineates the contributions each author makes to an inclusive Jewish-Christian theology, and in so doing reveals what renders these thoughts properly Christian."--David Burrell, CSC, professor of ethics and development, Uganda Martyrs University
"Several Jewish thinkers have applauded the recent efforts of Christian theologians to overcome supersessionism--the notion that the Christian church has replaced the Jewish people in God's covenant with Israel as the people of God--without abandoning their own Christian theology. Indeed, the efforts of these Christian thinkers have contributed to the deepening of their theology. Peter Ochs is one of the most prominent of these Jewish thinkers, and in Another Reformation he articulates his applause with unprecedented theological insight and philosophical perspicacity."--David Novak, J. Richard and Dorothy Shiff Chair of Jewish Studies, University of Toronto
"Another Reformation demonstrates why Jewish philosopher Peter Ochs has been a seminal thinker for Jews and Christians seeking reconciliation through fidelity to the divine Word. With profound insight, Ochs engages a set of Christian theologians committed both to classical Christian modes of apprehending reality and to the pragmatic exercise of critical reason, and discovers a correlation between their theological sensibilities and a nonsupersessionist orientation toward the Jewish people. In his own interaction with these Christian thinkers--via personal dialogue and written words--Ochs models the virtues he extols in those he studies: sensitivity to the particularities of historical and social context; reliance upon relational rather than dichotomous patterns of thought; an ecumenical concern to heal wounded communities; and an ear attentive not only to the voices of other human beings but also to the voice of God. This is a masterful example of the way Jewish scholars may contribute to Christian conversations, and a reminder that the Jewish and Christian conversations belong in the same room, where each circle can overhear and learn from the other."--Mark S. Kinzer, senior scholar, Messianic Jewish Theological Institute; author, Postmissionary Messianic Judaism: Redefining Christian Engagement with the Jewish People
Reviews
"The interface of Jewish and Christian theology has always been vexing. . . . Happily, we are at the threshold of a new way of communicating at that interface. . . . More broadly, no one has contributed more to this fresh possibility than Peter Ochs. With his largeness of spirit, his deep theological sensibility, and his practical passion for fresh work with Christians, he has taken on important initiatives that have made room for new communication and understanding. . . . The upshot of Ochs's careful, erudite, detailed argument is that postliberal theology escapes the traps of both liberal and antiliberal reason and so is not drawn to supersessionism. . . . Ochs has performed a formidable interpretive task that awaits follow-up in local settings. . . . Ochs, in his practice and in his exposition, exhibits a way of relating and thinking and believing that makes wholeness and healing possible."--Walter Brueggemann, Christian Century"
“Scriptural reasoning, the growing practice of Jews, Christians, and Muslims reading their scriptures together, makes good academic and common sense in a time of crisis. This ground-breaking book, the outcome of an imaginative 3-year experiment by the Princeton Center of Theological Inquiry, shows scholars and thinkers of the Abrahamic traditions going deeper into the traditions and into their contemporary situation. The result is something new, wise, and relevant… full of promise for the future. Where else can one find testimonies to Jews, Christians, and Muslims coming together not only in study, thinking, and wisdom-seeking but also in play, joy, and friendship?”--David F. Ford, Regius Professor of Divinity, University of Cambridge and Director, Cambridge Inter-Faith Programme"
One context for the dialogue is a sphere of overlapping interests among Jews and Mennonites who have returned to consider the power of Scripture at a time when both secularism and radical anti-secularism have lost their luster. Another context is the publication of John Howard Yoder's The Jewish-Christian Schism Revisited. Yet another context is an emerging effort among Jewish, Christian, and Muslim scholars to meet together in peace and through conversations about Scripture. A final context is the on-going loss of life, justice, and hope in Israel-Palestine.
The Free Church and Israel's Covenant introduces Mennonite-Jewish theological dialogue as a contribution to the work of inter-Abrahamic peace, and scriptural truth.
Distributed for Canadian Mennonite University Press."
Features
• The only study of Peirce's philosophy as a form of writing and of Peirce's pragmatism as a critique of philosophic writing
• The only study to correlate the logic of Peirce's pragmatism with a logic of Scripture
• Peirce for postmodern literary scholars and postmodern theologian
In Reviewing the Covenant, six Jewish philosophers--and one Christian colleague--respond to the work of the renowned Jewish theologian Eugene B. Borowitz, one of the leading figures in the movement of "postmodern" Jewish philosophy and theology. The title recalls Borowitz's earlier book, Renewing the Covenant: A Theology for the Postmodern Jew, in which he lent this movement a theological agenda, and the essays in this book respond to Borowitz's call: to revitalize contemporary Judaism by renewing the covenant that binds modern Jews to re-live and re-interpret the traditions of Judaism's past.
Together with the introductory and responsive essays by Peter Ochs and Borowitz himself, the essays offer a community of dialogue, an attempt to reason-out how Jewish faith is possible after the Holocaust and how reason itself is possible after the failings of the great "-isms" of the modern world. This dialogue is conducted under the banner of "postmodern Judaism," a daunting term that by the end of the book receives a surprisingly direct meaning, namely, the condition of disillusionment and loss out of which Jews can and must find a third way out of the modern impasse between arrogant rationalism and arrogant religion. Representing a major intellectual response to the leading theologian of liberal Judaism, the book provides a significant indication of future directions in Jewish religious thought.
"This book offers a concise yet panoramic overview of a crucial contemporary debate." -- Allan Arkush, author of Moses Mendelssohn and the Enlightenment
"Borowitz invited a discussion of postmodernism and Judaism in his book, but the battle over the term yields to what is one of the clearest expositions of the context in contemporary disciplines, and more importantly the reasons why Judaism needs a postmodern turn now. This is not merely taxonomy, but is rather a deep reflection and, better still, conversation about the way Judaism faces the crisis of modernity." -- Robert Gibbs, author of Correlations in Rosenzweig and Levinas
Contributors include Eugene B. Borowitz, Yudit Kornberg Greenberg, Susan Handelman, David Novak, Peter Ochs, Thomas W. Ogletree, Norbert M. Samuelson, and Edith Wyschogrod.
Peter Ochs is Edgar M. Bronfman Professor of Modern Judaic Studies at the University of Virginia and founder of the Postmodern Jewish Philosophy Network. Eugene B. Borowitz is the Sigmund L. Falk Distinguished Professor of Education and Jewish Religious Thought at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion/New York.
Bookmark and Share
Table of Contents
Preface
Introductory
1. The Emergence of Postmodern Jewish Theology and Philosophy
Peter Ochs
2. Postmodern Judaism: One Theologian's View
Eugene B. Borowitz
Readings of Borowitz' Renewing the Covenant
3. Gene Borowitz' Renewing the Covenant: A Theology for the Postmodern Jew
Yudit Kornberg Greenberg
4. Reading the Covenant: Some Postmodern Reflections
Edith Wyschogrod
5. Post-Modern or Chastened Modern?
Eugene B. Borowitz' Vision for Jewish Fidelity
Thomas W. Ogletree
6. Is the Covenant a Bilateral Relationship?
A Response to Eugene Borowitz' Renewing the Covenant
David Novak
7. A Critique of Borowitz' Postmodern Jewish Theology
Norbert M. Samuelson
Readings of the Readings
8. Borowitz and the Postmodern Renewal of Theology
Peter Ochs
9. 'Im ba'et, eyma —Since You Object, Let Me Put It This Way
Eugene B. Borowitz
Postmodern Theological Renewal: A Meditation
10. "Crossing and Recrossing the Void": A Letter to Gene
Susan Handelman
Bibliography
Index
Index of Biblical and Rabbinic Sources
Professor Daniel Hardy died on 15 November 2007, just six months after being diagnosed with an aggressive brain tumour. He was an extraordinary man – and this is an extraordinary book. A sort of theological memoir (if there is such a literary hybrid), it works on various levels: an intimate record of a spiritual journey; thought-provoking theology; an homage to a great teacher; the story of family and close friends facing the loss of someone deeply loved. What holds these levels together is a series of conversations which Hardy held during those last months. Deborah Hardy Ford introduces the book with a portrait of her father and concludes with ‘farewell discourses’ – his ‘parting theology’. She also presents Hardy’s own account of a pilgrimage to the Holy Land just weeks before the diagnosis, a journey of faith which forms the main narrative strand of the book. His son-in-law, David Ford, Regius Professor of Divinity at the University of Cambridge and Hardy’s closest collaborator, provides a commentary on ‘living theology in the face of death’. In summarising and explaining some of the more allusive of Hardy’s concepts, Ford shows how Hardy’s theology was, as he put it himself, being ‘rounded off somehow’. These chapters are personal and heartfelt, interspersed with scripturally based meditations; they are by turns poignant and joyful, witnessing to Hardy’s deep-felt conviction that, in these months especially, he was being drawn deeper into the radiance of God’s light.
It is in the central section, four brief chapters which sketch out an ‘ecclesiology of pilgrimage’, that Hardy’s distinctive theological voice is heard most clearly. Knowing that the book he was working on would never be finished, Hardy held regular telephone conversations with one of his closest friends and colleagues, Peter Ochs, a Jewish philosopher at the University of Virginia. Ochs made himself responsible for writing them up, using the experience of the Holy Land pilgrimage – from the bubbling headwaters of the Jordan to the dark tunnel under the city of Jerusalem – to illustrate the major themes which had most occupied Hardy all his life: God, Church and the Redemption of the world. This pilgrimage was no routine trip round the sacred sites; it’s a journey of personal transformation in which an old and familiar truth, the presence of the Incarnate Lord, explodes with a new and disarming freshness. Some of the material here is technical and difficult (and Ochs’ footnotes are often invaluable in sifting out the different levels of Hardy’s meaning). It is also shot through with Hardy’s occasionally idiosyncratic vocabulary, some of it with a venerable if obscure pedigree, some of it expressing new experiences and insights."
Hearthing: Hearth-Based Reasoning by Peter W . Ochs
Jewish Theology, Textual Reasoning by Peter W . Ochs
Encountering Traditions seeks to show the multiple ways that the energies of faith and reason, texts and history enhance our life worlds through creative scholarship. Topics that further this goal include inter-religious encounters between and within scriptural texts; modes and habits of thinking within and between traditions; how traditions encounter pressing concerns of poverty, health and the environment; interactions among disciplines of text scholarship, theology, history and critical thought; interactions among contemporary practices of scriptural exegesis, social and congregational life; and, legal or narrative theological reasoning.
SERIES EDITORS: STANLEY HAUERWAS, PETER OCHS, MARIA DAKAKE, RANDI RASHKOVER
SUP EDITOR: EMILY-JANE COHEN
Series Board:
Nicholas Adams, Rumee Ahmed, and Jonathan Tran
BOOKS:
(1) The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam
MUHAMMAD IQBAL WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY JAVED MAJEED (2013)
(2) His Hiding Place Is Darkness
A Hindu-Catholic Theopoetics of Divine Absence
FRANCIS X. CLOONEY, S.J. (2013)
(3) Ethics as a Work of Charity
Thomas Aquinas and Pagan Virtue
DAVID DECOSIMO (2014)
(4) Weird John Brown
Divine Violence and the Limits of Ethics
TED A. SMITH (2014)
(5) Hasidism Incarnate
Hasidism, Christianity, and the Construction of Modern Judaism
SHAUL MAGID (2014)
Jewish theologian Peter Ochs argues that a significant and expanding movement in recent Christian theology offers a way for Christians to rededicate themselves to the gospel message and to classical, patristic doctrines of the church without revisiting classical claims that, with the coming of Christ, God has replaced his love of the Jewish people with his love of the church. Ochs examines the christologies and pneumatologies of leading postliberal theologians George Lindbeck, Robert Jenson, Stanley Hauerwas, John Howard Yoder, Daniel Hardy, and David Ford, who argue in their work that God's love of Christ and the church does not replace his love of Israel and the Jews. Another Reformation not only provides a detailed study of the movement of recent postliberal Christian theology in the United States and the United Kingdom but also offers stimulating Jewish-Christian theological exchange. Ochs's realization that some Christian thinkers retain a place for the people of Israel opens up the possibility of new understanding and deepens the Jewish-Christian dialogue.
Contents
1. Introduction: Christian Postliberalism and the Jews
Part 1: American Protestant Postliberalism
2. George Lindbeck and the Church as Israel
3. Robert Jenson: The God of Israel and the Fruits of Trinitarian Theology
4. Arguing for Christ: Stanley Hauerwas's Theopractic Reasoning
5. The Limits of Postliberalism: John Howard Yoder's American Mennonite Church
Part 2: British Postliberalism
6. Finding Christ in World and Polity: Daniel Hardy's Ecclesiological Postliberalism
7. Wisdom's Cry: David Ford's Reparative Pneumatology
8. John Milbank: Supersessionist or Christian Theo-semiotician and Pragmatist?
9. Conclusion: Christian Postliberalism and Christian Nonsupersessionism Are Correlative
Endorsements
"Discerning a close correlation between postliberal Christian theology and nonsupersessionism, Ochs, a Jewish theologian, gratefully receives the gifts this strand of Christian theology has to offer. But then he offers a startling gift in return. Moving qualitatively beyond mere 'dialogue' with Christian theologians, Ochs enters deeply, sympathetically, and critically into the heart of postliberal Christian theology and profoundly assists Christian theology in its work of building up the body of Christ. Are we not astounded by that? One thing now becomes utterly clear: Christian theology, if it truly seeks and prays for 'another reformation' by which divisions among the churches and divisions among Jews and Christians are repaired, can no longer do without such gifts as this--and without giving them in return."--Douglas Harink, professor of theology, The King's University College
"Anyone wishing to discern the contours of a properly postliberal theological ethos in George Lindbeck, Robert Jenson, Stanley Hauerwas, John Howard Yoder, Dan Hardy, David Ford, or John Milbank could not find a more astute guide than Peter Ochs, whose exposition is as penetrating as his critique is incisive. Deftly employing the philosophical tools of Charles Sanders Peirce, Ochs's focus is the bugbear of 'supersession,' yet his clear goal is a mode of exposition and analysis freed from easy polarities. A meticulous reading delineates the contributions each author makes to an inclusive Jewish-Christian theology, and in so doing reveals what renders these thoughts properly Christian."--David Burrell, CSC, professor of ethics and development, Uganda Martyrs University
"Several Jewish thinkers have applauded the recent efforts of Christian theologians to overcome supersessionism--the notion that the Christian church has replaced the Jewish people in God's covenant with Israel as the people of God--without abandoning their own Christian theology. Indeed, the efforts of these Christian thinkers have contributed to the deepening of their theology. Peter Ochs is one of the most prominent of these Jewish thinkers, and in Another Reformation he articulates his applause with unprecedented theological insight and philosophical perspicacity."--David Novak, J. Richard and Dorothy Shiff Chair of Jewish Studies, University of Toronto
"Another Reformation demonstrates why Jewish philosopher Peter Ochs has been a seminal thinker for Jews and Christians seeking reconciliation through fidelity to the divine Word. With profound insight, Ochs engages a set of Christian theologians committed both to classical Christian modes of apprehending reality and to the pragmatic exercise of critical reason, and discovers a correlation between their theological sensibilities and a nonsupersessionist orientation toward the Jewish people. In his own interaction with these Christian thinkers--via personal dialogue and written words--Ochs models the virtues he extols in those he studies: sensitivity to the particularities of historical and social context; reliance upon relational rather than dichotomous patterns of thought; an ecumenical concern to heal wounded communities; and an ear attentive not only to the voices of other human beings but also to the voice of God. This is a masterful example of the way Jewish scholars may contribute to Christian conversations, and a reminder that the Jewish and Christian conversations belong in the same room, where each circle can overhear and learn from the other."--Mark S. Kinzer, senior scholar, Messianic Jewish Theological Institute; author, Postmissionary Messianic Judaism: Redefining Christian Engagement with the Jewish People
Reviews
"The interface of Jewish and Christian theology has always been vexing. . . . Happily, we are at the threshold of a new way of communicating at that interface. . . . More broadly, no one has contributed more to this fresh possibility than Peter Ochs. With his largeness of spirit, his deep theological sensibility, and his practical passion for fresh work with Christians, he has taken on important initiatives that have made room for new communication and understanding. . . . The upshot of Ochs's careful, erudite, detailed argument is that postliberal theology escapes the traps of both liberal and antiliberal reason and so is not drawn to supersessionism. . . . Ochs has performed a formidable interpretive task that awaits follow-up in local settings. . . . Ochs, in his practice and in his exposition, exhibits a way of relating and thinking and believing that makes wholeness and healing possible."--Walter Brueggemann, Christian Century"
“Scriptural reasoning, the growing practice of Jews, Christians, and Muslims reading their scriptures together, makes good academic and common sense in a time of crisis. This ground-breaking book, the outcome of an imaginative 3-year experiment by the Princeton Center of Theological Inquiry, shows scholars and thinkers of the Abrahamic traditions going deeper into the traditions and into their contemporary situation. The result is something new, wise, and relevant… full of promise for the future. Where else can one find testimonies to Jews, Christians, and Muslims coming together not only in study, thinking, and wisdom-seeking but also in play, joy, and friendship?”--David F. Ford, Regius Professor of Divinity, University of Cambridge and Director, Cambridge Inter-Faith Programme"
One context for the dialogue is a sphere of overlapping interests among Jews and Mennonites who have returned to consider the power of Scripture at a time when both secularism and radical anti-secularism have lost their luster. Another context is the publication of John Howard Yoder's The Jewish-Christian Schism Revisited. Yet another context is an emerging effort among Jewish, Christian, and Muslim scholars to meet together in peace and through conversations about Scripture. A final context is the on-going loss of life, justice, and hope in Israel-Palestine.
The Free Church and Israel's Covenant introduces Mennonite-Jewish theological dialogue as a contribution to the work of inter-Abrahamic peace, and scriptural truth.
Distributed for Canadian Mennonite University Press."
Features
• The only study of Peirce's philosophy as a form of writing and of Peirce's pragmatism as a critique of philosophic writing
• The only study to correlate the logic of Peirce's pragmatism with a logic of Scripture
• Peirce for postmodern literary scholars and postmodern theologian
In Reviewing the Covenant, six Jewish philosophers--and one Christian colleague--respond to the work of the renowned Jewish theologian Eugene B. Borowitz, one of the leading figures in the movement of "postmodern" Jewish philosophy and theology. The title recalls Borowitz's earlier book, Renewing the Covenant: A Theology for the Postmodern Jew, in which he lent this movement a theological agenda, and the essays in this book respond to Borowitz's call: to revitalize contemporary Judaism by renewing the covenant that binds modern Jews to re-live and re-interpret the traditions of Judaism's past.
Together with the introductory and responsive essays by Peter Ochs and Borowitz himself, the essays offer a community of dialogue, an attempt to reason-out how Jewish faith is possible after the Holocaust and how reason itself is possible after the failings of the great "-isms" of the modern world. This dialogue is conducted under the banner of "postmodern Judaism," a daunting term that by the end of the book receives a surprisingly direct meaning, namely, the condition of disillusionment and loss out of which Jews can and must find a third way out of the modern impasse between arrogant rationalism and arrogant religion. Representing a major intellectual response to the leading theologian of liberal Judaism, the book provides a significant indication of future directions in Jewish religious thought.
"This book offers a concise yet panoramic overview of a crucial contemporary debate." -- Allan Arkush, author of Moses Mendelssohn and the Enlightenment
"Borowitz invited a discussion of postmodernism and Judaism in his book, but the battle over the term yields to what is one of the clearest expositions of the context in contemporary disciplines, and more importantly the reasons why Judaism needs a postmodern turn now. This is not merely taxonomy, but is rather a deep reflection and, better still, conversation about the way Judaism faces the crisis of modernity." -- Robert Gibbs, author of Correlations in Rosenzweig and Levinas
Contributors include Eugene B. Borowitz, Yudit Kornberg Greenberg, Susan Handelman, David Novak, Peter Ochs, Thomas W. Ogletree, Norbert M. Samuelson, and Edith Wyschogrod.
Peter Ochs is Edgar M. Bronfman Professor of Modern Judaic Studies at the University of Virginia and founder of the Postmodern Jewish Philosophy Network. Eugene B. Borowitz is the Sigmund L. Falk Distinguished Professor of Education and Jewish Religious Thought at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion/New York.
Bookmark and Share
Table of Contents
Preface
Introductory
1. The Emergence of Postmodern Jewish Theology and Philosophy
Peter Ochs
2. Postmodern Judaism: One Theologian's View
Eugene B. Borowitz
Readings of Borowitz' Renewing the Covenant
3. Gene Borowitz' Renewing the Covenant: A Theology for the Postmodern Jew
Yudit Kornberg Greenberg
4. Reading the Covenant: Some Postmodern Reflections
Edith Wyschogrod
5. Post-Modern or Chastened Modern?
Eugene B. Borowitz' Vision for Jewish Fidelity
Thomas W. Ogletree
6. Is the Covenant a Bilateral Relationship?
A Response to Eugene Borowitz' Renewing the Covenant
David Novak
7. A Critique of Borowitz' Postmodern Jewish Theology
Norbert M. Samuelson
Readings of the Readings
8. Borowitz and the Postmodern Renewal of Theology
Peter Ochs
9. 'Im ba'et, eyma —Since You Object, Let Me Put It This Way
Eugene B. Borowitz
Postmodern Theological Renewal: A Meditation
10. "Crossing and Recrossing the Void": A Letter to Gene
Susan Handelman
Bibliography
Index
Index of Biblical and Rabbinic Sources
Professor Daniel Hardy died on 15 November 2007, just six months after being diagnosed with an aggressive brain tumour. He was an extraordinary man – and this is an extraordinary book. A sort of theological memoir (if there is such a literary hybrid), it works on various levels: an intimate record of a spiritual journey; thought-provoking theology; an homage to a great teacher; the story of family and close friends facing the loss of someone deeply loved. What holds these levels together is a series of conversations which Hardy held during those last months. Deborah Hardy Ford introduces the book with a portrait of her father and concludes with ‘farewell discourses’ – his ‘parting theology’. She also presents Hardy’s own account of a pilgrimage to the Holy Land just weeks before the diagnosis, a journey of faith which forms the main narrative strand of the book. His son-in-law, David Ford, Regius Professor of Divinity at the University of Cambridge and Hardy’s closest collaborator, provides a commentary on ‘living theology in the face of death’. In summarising and explaining some of the more allusive of Hardy’s concepts, Ford shows how Hardy’s theology was, as he put it himself, being ‘rounded off somehow’. These chapters are personal and heartfelt, interspersed with scripturally based meditations; they are by turns poignant and joyful, witnessing to Hardy’s deep-felt conviction that, in these months especially, he was being drawn deeper into the radiance of God’s light.
It is in the central section, four brief chapters which sketch out an ‘ecclesiology of pilgrimage’, that Hardy’s distinctive theological voice is heard most clearly. Knowing that the book he was working on would never be finished, Hardy held regular telephone conversations with one of his closest friends and colleagues, Peter Ochs, a Jewish philosopher at the University of Virginia. Ochs made himself responsible for writing them up, using the experience of the Holy Land pilgrimage – from the bubbling headwaters of the Jordan to the dark tunnel under the city of Jerusalem – to illustrate the major themes which had most occupied Hardy all his life: God, Church and the Redemption of the world. This pilgrimage was no routine trip round the sacred sites; it’s a journey of personal transformation in which an old and familiar truth, the presence of the Incarnate Lord, explodes with a new and disarming freshness. Some of the material here is technical and difficult (and Ochs’ footnotes are often invaluable in sifting out the different levels of Hardy’s meaning). It is also shot through with Hardy’s occasionally idiosyncratic vocabulary, some of it with a venerable if obscure pedigree, some of it expressing new experiences and insights."
Chapt 1 Intro by Peter Ochs:
“Prayer in the Shoah” is what we may call a “theological testimony.” It is, for one, written by a survivor of the Shoah and, in that sense, belongs to the literature of witness. But it is also a theological inquiry, composed by someone who is both a profound scholar of Talmudic literature and a rabbinic leader. Halivni’s personal witness to the Shoah therefore, in a sense, brings a dimension of traditional rabbinic Judaism into the horrors the Shoah and then out again. In the process, his witness enables the reader to see what it might mean for rabbinic Judaism itself to endure the Shoah and then persist again as rabbinic Judaism. How does the heart and soul of Talmudic Judaism suffer such an event? How does it withstand the event and not disintegrate in despair? How is it transformed through the event, so that what emerges into life after the Shoah is both traditional rabbinic Judaism and something else? And how does the transformation occur, in detail, to each aspect of rabbinic Judaism: its method of reading Torah, its sense of the Covenant between God and Israel, its understanding of sin and punishment, and its visions of God’s relations to creation and, even, of God’s self-relation?
<csta>Peter Ochs</csta>
In his prologue and epilogue, Halivni states in starkest terms the theological lesson he draws out of the Shoah: “At Auschwitz, God absented Himself from Israel, abandoned them and handed them over to the enemy.” In “Prayer in the Shoah,” he renarrates the lesson as a cosmic drama of tsimtsum: God contracts Himself to leave room for human freedom; when He sees His Presence has “leaked” back in too much, He contracts Himself again, opening a time of maximal human freedom; the Shoah corresponded to such a time. Halivni then reenacts his lesson as a religious directive: this time of God’s absence is a time to pray for Him to return and rule over us again. In the present chapter, “Restoring Scripture,” Halivni articulates a second part of the religious directive: to pray for divine rule is also to seek out the plain sense of God’s will in the Torah. God’s absence has left its mark on Jewish textual study as well as on human history. God’s absence lends text scholars the freedom to read well, which means to seek out God’s intention, or to misread, which means to force their own human reasoning onto the text.
(1) If interpreted within the terms set by text-and-historical critical scholarship, Kadushin's study of midrash appears unsuccessful. Kadushin contemporized, over-generalized and mis-read the rabbinic texts acccording to an overly schematized system of a priori values and meanings. Gershom Scholem said comparable things about Martin Buber's reading of Hasidic texts: Buber read his own concerns into the Hasidic sources, rather than reading Hasidism's concerns out of those sources. The problem, however, is not that Buber or Kadushin failed to perform according to text-and-historical-critical standards, but that, until recently, we have not identified the standards according to which we can begin to understand their scholarly and theological work in its own terms.
(2) Well, it's the last paper of the last paper of the last session of the conference; a time perhaps for post-mortems. Since our session's about post-modernism in Jewish thought, let's call this paper a post-mortem for Jewish post-modernism. At least for one work belonging to one collection of post-modern thinkers. The work is the work of Max Kadushin, z"l; the collection includes at least such thinkers as H. Cohen (in his later work), Buber, Rosenzweig and Heschel. The claim of my post-mortem will be that the works of these thinkers display a certain character and that, surprisingly enough, this character is displayed most vividly in the work of Max Kadushin.
Entry in Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception 14 (© Walter de Gruyter, Berlin/Boston 2016).
Max Kadushin (1895–1980) was a rabbinic scholar who characterized classic rabbinic/talmudic Judaism as a relatively coherent, dynamic system of religious practice that evolved out of antecedents in the late Second Temple religion of ancient Israel. Kadushin argued that contemporary Judaism (Judaism of the mid-20th century, especially in the Americas and Europe) was in crisis, because contemporary Jewish institutions lacked coherent and dynamic systems of religious practice com-parable to those of the ancient rabbinic sages; lacking such a commitment, they failed to socialize the coming generation of Jews in systems of belief and practice that were both comprehensive and responsive to changing conditions of life. Kadushin believed he had discovered a solution: he had identified how the rabbinic sages deployed homiletic interpretations of the Bible (midrash aggadah) as the primary instrument for resocializing Jewish society after the traumas of destruction and Diaspora (1st–2nd cent. CE).
As illustrated in writings of Rav. Abraham Isaac Ha-Cohen Kook (such as Lights of Torah, Orot Hatorah), endtime messianisms argue that God reveals His will in the events of history, that some and only some individuals from among the people Israel may have the capacity to read what is revealed, and that events of our time have, in fact, revealed concrete details of His will concerning everyday life in the Land and State of Israel. As illustrated in the writings of The Hazon Ish, Rav. Avraham Yishayahu Karelitz, meantime messianisms argue that God reveals His promises to the people Israel about the endtime but not His will regarding everyday life in the endtime. His will concerning everyday life inside or outside the Land has already been disclosed in Torah and displayed in its details only by dint of the ongoing work of halakhic inquiry and judgment. I argue, in conclusion, that meantime messianisms lend themselves to the kind of public theology that, in volumes like this, are composed for a general readership, but that endtime messianisms offer the kind of non-public theology that is, in fact, addressed only to a selected readership.
Together with the introductory and responsive essays by Peter Ochs and Borowitz himself, the essays offer a community of dialogue, an attempt to reason-out how Jewish faith is possible after the Holocaust and how reason itself is possible after the failings of the great "-isms" of the modern world. This dialogue is conducted under the banner of "postmodern Judaism," a daunting term that by the end of the book receives a surprisingly direct meaning, namely, the condition of disillusionment and loss out of which Jews can and must find a third way out of the modern impasse between arrogant rationalism and arrogant religion. Representing a major intellectual response to the leading theologian of liberal Judaism, the book provides a significant indication of future directions in Jewish religious thought.
Bookmark and Share
Table of Contents
Preface
Introductory
1. The Emergence of Postmodern Jewish Theology and Philosophy
Peter Ochs
2. Postmodern Judaism: One Theologian's View
Eugene B. Borowitz
Readings of Borowitz' Renewing the Covenant
3. Gene Borowitz' Renewing the Covenant: A Theology for the Postmodern Jew
Yudit Kornberg Greenberg
4. Reading the Covenant: Some Postmodern Reflections
Edith Wyschogrod
5. Post-Modern or Chastened Modern?
Eugene B. Borowitz' Vision for Jewish Fidelity
Thomas W. Ogletree
6. Is the Covenant a Bilateral Relationship?
A Response to Eugene Borowitz' Renewing the Covenant
David Novak
7. A Critique of Borowitz' Postmodern Jewish Theology
Norbert M. Samuelson
Readings of the Readings
8. Borowitz and the Postmodern Renewal of Theology
Peter Ochs
9. 'Im ba'et, eyma —Since You Object, Let Me Put It This Way
Eugene B. Borowitz
Postmodern Theological Renewal: A Meditation
10. "Crossing and Recrossing the Void": A Letter to Gene
Susan Handelman
Bibliography
Index
Index of Biblical and Rabbinic Sources
Related Subjects
Jewish Philosophy
Judaica
Religion
Theology
and in response to Judaism. It also recognizes that, since the dawn of
Christianity, Jewish theologies have often been a response to Christianity
In the past, these mutual influences have been obscured by a rhetoric
of rejection. It is only recently that scholars and theologians have become
aware of the almost symbiotic relationship between the two traditions.
This Jewish theology is offered, moreover, in response to efforts by
courageous Christians who, in the years since the Shoah, have exposed those aspects of their tradition that helped create Western antisemitism and who offered new Christian visions that affirm the rightful place of Jews and Judaism in the cosmic order. Our theological project has been dialogic in form, part of an ongoing history of responses to responses;
in keeping with that theme, we introduce the project here by illustrating
how our editorial group responded and to what we responded, with what
effects.
(I) The book on its own terms: excerpts from the book’s epilogue
a. my goal in lecture one was simply to introduce my model of Christian post-liberalism and apply it to my praise-and-challenge of Yoder’s study of the Jewish Christian schism.
b. In lecture two I offer a somewhat different model of rabbinic Judaism than Yoder offers. I argue that to repair schism is not to seek unity as non-difference, but to honor unity-in-difference. To do this would be to honor the practices of rabbinic scriptural interpretation (midrash) that are displayed in Talmudic literature and not to construct universalized, conceptual models of what rabbinic Judaism “really is.”
c. In Lecture 3, I “sing” of the Sabbath (שבת) as a cosmic and ritual embodiment of unity-in-difference. Out of rabbinic sources, I comment that the days and also daily moments of Shabbat enable the possibility of direct encounter with the divine presence along with those who share relations of unity-in-difference, which I identify with relations of peace.
d. In Lecture 4, I suggest that “Israel-and-Palestine” is an icon at once of failed modern models for pursuing peace and also of the eschatological goal of peace were conducted as a pursuit of unity-in-difference. This is an end time goal but one that can be approached in this world just as Shabbat is both life and the fullness of time and life here and now the presence of God.
A personal note: I sensed that my kind audience at CMU was pleased with the first three lectures but somewhat challenged or even unsettled by the fourth.
(II) Some background to my work in Mennonite belief and practice.
I am a Jewish philosopher who trusts just about anything dear Stanley Hauerwas tells him to do. Because Hauerwas spoke so much to me about John Howard Yoder and pacifism, and because my Charlottesville home is not so far from Eastern Mennonite University, I decided to devote a good number of years to checking out what Yoder's work is all about and what its consequences may be for studies of peace and also of Scripture at EMU. My many visits to EMU were met with warm hospitality and engagement, for which I remain grateful. these visits also led to my engaging a circle of EMU folks in practices of Scriptural Reasoning (SR), including SR events in Dubai (including some EMU participants), and a range of meetings closer to home. Several years of reading Yoder's work were a good test for my interests or not in pacifism. I could see in his work what attracted Hauerwas, which meant a good part of it would attract me. Over time, I found a couple of parts that did not attract me, including his rendering pacifism into a universalizable concept and his tendency to over-drawing or overgeneralizing go scriptural and worldly observations and claims. Pressing Stanley on these concerns, he acknowledged that yes, for him (Stanley H) Pacifism is not a concept but is the fact of what happens as Jesus stands before him: facing Jesus, Stanley cannot license state-sponsored killing; he must honor the presence of peace. But, he added, "if as a Jew you do not face Jesus, then I cannot presume that you are commanded to lay down all arms in all circumstances." I believe I can say that for both Stanley Hauerwas and me, words of Scripture and commentary command, humanly constructed concepts do not. We both study and use philosophy, but we use it as an instrument for clarifying commands not for delivering them in philosophic or conceptual terms.
In the middle of these years of conversation and study, I very happily met Michael Cartwright and soon found myself invited to join him in the task of editing and publishing Yoder's, The Jewish-Christian Schism Revisited, which we eventually published in the SCM/Eerdmans series that Hauerwas and I founded and edited: "Radical Traditions." I probably caused a little problem, however. I was fascinated and deeply pleased by Yoder’s effort to counter Christian and also Mennonite traditions of either anti-Judaism or great wariness about postbiblical Judaism, as well as by his effort simply to study and learn about rabbinic Judaism (the source of almost all medieval and modern Judaisms) as part of the commentarial tradition and therefore something to be treasured by Christian readers of the unified Canon. But I also encountered what I considered another expression of Yoder’s conceptualism. He gave himself license to offer broad, conceptualized generalizations about the meaning and force of rabbinic of us praising of us praising pacifism of Jesus and of what became the Free Church and Mennonite Christian pacifism. I decided I could not participate in publishing Yoder’s book in our series unless we added footnote commentaries for readers who might wonder why a scriptural-tradition-based series like Radical Traditions would feature this kind of extra-traditional reading of Jewish scriptural commentary. One goal of our series, after all, was to help promote publications in scripture-based reasoning that the Academy might otherwise fail to publish, judging that such reasoning went against the norms of the modern guilds. I judge that this particular dimension of Yoder’s work was an unintentional conduit for modern conceptualist thinking. Michael and Stanley accepted my conditions, so we published the entirety of Yoder’s essay, but with an introduction and with Michael’s and my commentaries after each chapter: both of us praising the work but also adding our concerns about the tendency I just mentioned. I say that I caused a little problem, because several Mennonite scholars wrote positive reviews of Yoder’s text but with somewhat angry comments that the coeditors would presume to burden the publication with our own thoughts of this kind. I do not regret our effort, because we did indeed enable Yoder’s work to have a broad readership, and because I think that, over time, the concerns we expressed retain their importance.
Some years after the publication, the very kind and deeply thoughtful Harry J. and Chris Huebner hosted an invitation to deliver the Thiessen Lectures at Canadian Mennonite University. This was a distinct honor for me and I was warmed by my hosts’ graciousness.
PS: for helpful responses to my work on Yoder see the 2015 MTS Thesis: Zacharie Klassen, A Jewish Repair for a Free Church Vision: Reforming Restitutionist Hermeneutics With Peter Ochs. Klassen's responses are extended in several discussions within his 2020 PhD Thesis: Zacharie Klassen, Theologies Of Israel And Judaism After Barth.
1. He did not fear entering our stories. (On "Who Then Is This?") "And Jonah went to the bottom of the boat and fell asleep" (Jonah 1:5) Reverend Coleman Brown must have feared the storm just as much as the rest of us do; otherwise he would not understand us so well: the storm that brews within our souls as too many societal storms brew around us. But we did not see him fear entering the storm with us. He did not fear entering our stories nor the story of our stories. In the sermon "Who Then Is This?" he preached, "We are each living a story," and "we are in other peoples' stories-and they are in ours": On that day, when evening had come, he said to them, "Let us go across to the other side.' And leaving the crowd, they took him with them, just as he was, in the boat. And other boats were with him. And a great storm of wind arose and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already filling. But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion. (Mark 4:35-41) Coleman preached, Water is ultimately the image of new life. But first it is the image of chaos. The boat is filling, heavy-even like our souls-heavy with water. It's not going to make it, our boat isn't.… We're going to go under overwhelmed by the storm, the storm of cultural forces, overwhelming ideas, friendships that have failed, our family's disintegration, personal suffering; overwhelmed by the heavy waters of lost motivation, we can't bail out our little boat fast enough. We're trying. But we're being overwhelmed. Then, "Evening has come to our civilization in important ways." We have left the previous time-the evening, it appears, of a western socioeconomic order. Our personal evenings may echo the societal evening. But the next time is not yet come. Coleman was not afraid to inhabit with us this
The argument of this essay is that Jenson’s postliberalism recommends and is informed by three-valued (or 3+-valued) patterns of reasoning. The essay urges students of postliberalism to recognize that well-formed models/logics of 3+-valued reasoning are now readily available. To honor Jenson’s teachings is not to eschew philosophic discipline; it is to eschew two-valued models in favor of the 3+-valued disciplines we have introduced in this essay. Contemporary students of theology are nurtured in environments that encourage two-valued patterns of reasoning even among those who hope to follow Jenson’s postliberal example. Such students therefore need to acquire a discipline that would enable them to distinguish their two-valued habits from the 3+-valued habits that would in fact honor Jenson’s teachings. Acquiring such a discipline is hard work, but it is always hard to stand out from the crowd. Postliberalism needs some formally-minded students to step forward and acquire the philosophic/logical training needed to frame 3+-valued models postliberal reasoning. Other students may then lean on such models to help them undertake the hard work ahead.
These are teachings by what I dub the "aftermodern Jewish philosophers. Among the group's most well-known representatives are such thinkers as Hermann Cohen (in his later work), Martin Buber, Franz Rosenzweig, Emil Fackenheim, Emanuel Levinas, to some extent Abraham Heschel and Mordecai Kaplan, and Max Kadushin — the latter little known and not previously collected with the others, but in fact very important to the group's self-definition.
The past decade has also been marked by renewed openings to supersessionism in the “Radical Orthodoxy” movement and by tendencies to anti-Judaism in the new “post-post modern” Christian theologies. (As used here, “supersessionism” refers to the Christian belief that, with the Incarnation of God in Jesus Christ, Israel’s Covenant with God was superseded and replaced by God’s presence in the Church as the Body of Christ: in other words, that God’s love for the Church replaced His love for the people Israel). Outside the boundaries of academic theology, this decade has also seen the re-emergence of nationalist-Christian anti-Judaisms in areas of the former Soviet Union; of strong supersessionism among new conservative Christian movements, both in the United States and in developing nations; and of what might be termed a theo-political anti-Judaism among some Christian critics of the State of Israel.
I write that my first response to these devastating accounts is simply silence.
Then I begin my verbal reply this way: Here is a painful, and painfully necessary, collection of essays by Christian theologians honoring a Christian theologian who is also a Christian victim of terror. The honoree, David Suh, offers a disarmingly matter-of-fact account of a Christian life of redemptive action in the face of terror. His account stimulates some colleagues to write comparable accounts of personal suffering and redemptive resistance. It stimulates others to compose Christian responses on behalf of people victimized by a variety of types of terror: Christians terrorized by Chinese, Japanese, North or also South Korean totalitarian oppression; Christians terrorized by oppressive Christian regimes or institutions; Jews terrorized by Christians and Christians terrorized by Romans; fathers who terrorize their daughters; men who terrorize women; adults who terrorize children. There are social theoretical and theological responses, as well: meetings of religious reasoning and witness, where hope and grace offer words and actions for responding to terror without hiding its darkness behind reasons. And, behind all the accounts and responses there lie, spoken or unspoken, narratives of the Cross, of God incarnate, terrorized and broken in the body of Jesus of Nazareth and then risen as the resurrected Christ.
And then: So, I decided to share with you the unresolved inner dialogue (within my own mind, that is) that remains my Jewish response to these Christian accounts and reflections on terror.
The dialogue begins with a brief reflection on the Shoa, then I consider a Christian narrative of terror, then a Christian narrative of response to terror, then a Jewish reflection on these responses, then what I imagine a Christian theological response to be, then a Jewish theological response, and so on. For different readers, different stages in the dialogue may hold more meaning than others
Peter Ochs (pp. 58-71.)
Discussions of religion science in are often global in their reach. But, in this essay I do not discuss religion and science in a global way. Instead I examined only one sampling from the physical sciences: a study of quantum phenomena within biophysics in particular one written account of one series of experiments on the geometry of π electron clouds in cytoplasm. On the religion side I examined only the practice of rabbinic scriptural interpretation in particular one account of a disagreement between two recent scholars on what we can learn from the midrash on the Song of Songs. I draw analogies between these two studies.
In The Philosophy of the Talmud, Hyam Maccoby introduces an answer that is far more promising than any of these: that, while we may recognize no humanly constructed, universal rationality, the Mishnah, Talmud, and Midrashic collections display indigenous patterns of rationality. This is a rationality that emerges from out of rabbinic argumentation itself, rather than as judged by criteria imported from classical Greece, 19th century Germany, or other, contrasting sources of rational practice. These various rationalities are not merely self-enclosed, however; rabbinic thinking can import patterns of rationality learned from Greece, and vice-versa. Macoby therefore calls his study of rabbinic rationality “the philosophy of the Talmud”: it is philosophy, the way Greek thinking is philosophy, except that its logic and conditions of truth and falsity may differ from those of Greek philosophy.
The order of my argument is this: First, I offer illustrations of what Novak claims about covenants. Second, I illustrate how he arrives at these claims: illustrations of how he reasons from certain questions, assumptions and observations to certain claims. Third, I construct a somewhat technical semiotic model of a set of patterns of reasoning that could be used to measure to what degree the patterns of activity Novak attributes to covenantal relations (or to what I will call “covenanting”) are isomorphic with the patterns of his own covenantal reasoning. Finally, I apply this model to the evidence introduced earlier.
In the essay I review each entry for each of these volumes. In the process, I offer a somewhat long-winded series of analyses of SR’s patterns of reasoning or “logic” (in the Deweyan sense). I lean primarily on Charles Peirce as a resource for formalizing or diagramming these patterns. There is a pragmaticist critique of binary reasoning, followed by an application of pragmatism to “reparative reasoning,” followed by a “scriptural pragmatism’ (as I introduced in the 1998 Peirce, Pragmatism, and the Logic of Scripture). Toward the end of the essay I try to respond to criticisms of SR out of participants in the Radical Orthodoxy of John Milbank and others. I address SR Journal essays by: Jacob Goodson, Isra Yazicioglu, William J. Danaher, Chris Hackett, H. Peter Kang, Walter Brueggeman, Daniel A. Smith, Rebekah Ann Eklund, Jim Fodor, and Samuel Wells.
Essays:
From Phenomenology to Scripture? Paul Ricoeur's Hermeneutical Philosophy of Religion (Mark I. Wallace)
Ricoeur on Religious Selfhood: A Response to Mark Wallace (Glenn Whitehouse)
Enigmatic Authority: Levinas and the Phenomenonal Effacement (Robert Gibbs)
Ritual as First Phenomenology: A Response to Robert Gibbs (William Young III)
(La Salle, Illinois, 1983) may seek to locate Peirce’s « relevance » in the
number of contemporary philosophers influenced by any aspect of his work. I argue, instead, that Peirce is relevant because his central work, pragmatism, relates deeply to matters immediately at hand. Since he is trained in Cartesian- Kantian tradition of epistemology, Peirce's work interests disciples of that tradition. In the end, however, his pragmatism discloses the errant tendency of that tradition : to offer its disciples over-generalized epistemological uncertainty and, therefore, the compensatory need to engage in egocentric foundationalisms. These foundationalisms isolate many contemporary philosophers from « matters immediately at hand ».
THIS IS PART II OF A TWO PART PUBLICATION
Keywords: American pragmatism, Charles Peirce, John Dewey, Augustine, binary reasoning, Cartesianism, habit-change
1. Джон Э. Смит как-то раз, выступая перед студентами в 1970-е гг., заметил, что существует, вероятно, столько же праг-матизмов, сколько философов-прагматистов. Почти все амери-канские прагматисты были противниками отвлеченного фило-софствования и редукционистских методов, практикуемых ака-демической профессурой, однако их представления о том, какой должна быть профессиональная философия, различались, и порой кардинально. Смит был привержен классическому прагматизму (в лице Пирса, Дьюи, Джеймса и Ройса), многообразию которого он был обязан внутренним динамизмом и гибкостью собственных философских воззрений. А вот к творчеству прагматистов с при-ставкой «нео-», отбросивших важнейшие постулаты (key tenets) прагматизма классического, Смит был куда менее благосклонен. Я назову эти постулаты и кратко охарактеризую их, опираясь на исследования Смита и тех современных прагматистов, которые разделяют его классический подход, таких как Ричард Бернстайн, Джон Дили и Дуглас Андерсон. Основополагающие постулаты философского прагматизма, вернее, прагматистского этоса срод-ни тем базовым убеждениям (верованиям), которые Пирс называл «исходными» (original): это не какие-то строго определенные рациональные принципы и эпистемологические правила или он-тологические утверждения, но просто привычки нашего разума, интеллектуальные габитусы, незримо связанные друг с другом и находящиеся в постоянном развитии. Они могут быть представ-лены только эскизно, схвачены и описаны в самых общих чертах, раскрыты per se не напрямую, а через указание на их последствия. Эти последствия включают структуризацию самого прагматизма, образование внутри него различных союзов единомышленников и фракций, а также определенные социальные и интеллектуальные процессы, фиксируемые дискурсивно, устно и письменно: кон-текстуально-специфицируемые высказывания о мире, о других высказываниях и о привычных способах рассуждения и исследо
Definition, attempt to define its terms, and suggest that it belongs to Peirce's emergent semiotics of vagueness. I argue, further, that it marks the transformation of Peirce's synechism. Before the time of his Final Definition, Peirce adopted a theory of continuity as a foundational principle of metaphysics and assumed this principle might be formalized in a mathematics
of continuity. After the Final Definition, Peirce abandoned his
foundationalism in favor of what he called a critical common-sensism. This is the claim that philosophy (and with it, logic) derives its norms from the observation of actual cognitive practices and that continuity is a distinguishing mark of actual as opposed to merely possible or imagined practices.
Keywords: interreligious dialogue; conflict resolution; peace building; Abrahamic religions; scriptural reasoning; international diplomacy.
"Value Predicate Analysis:
How to Diagnose Religion Dimensions of Ongoing Violent Conflicts"
Peter Ochs, Center of Theological Inquiry, Spring 2019 Podcast #9, May 2019 interviewed by Joshua Mauldin.
This is the clearest account I have offered of my research team's 8 yrs of fieldwork on a tool for diagnosing the behavioral tendencies of religious groups in conflict settings. We discuss the implications of this tool ("Value Predicate Analysis" or VPA) for the study of language, values, and religious discourse. It is an ethno-linguistic tool that measures the pragmatics (or force) of a group's value judgments (as displayed in speech or writing by the group's recognized teachers or cultural persuaders). We offer this tool as an alternative to current big data analyses that focus only on the semantics of individual or group language use. When it comes to religious groups that are stakeholders in on-going conflict, our evidence is that semantic studies fail to identify or measure the pragmatic meanings or behavioral implications of group discourse. Religious discourse does not convert so readily into the "meaning" or "sentiment" categories analysts often use. Our years of field testing (in South Asia, the USA, and online) confirm the efficacy of our working model, which distinguishes 9 classes of linguistic signal corresponding to 9 types of probable near future group behavior toward other groups.
My friends tell me that, in this podcast, I explain our VPA approach more clearly than elsewhere! So, look for podcast #9 in https://www.ctinquiry.org/podcast.
If you'd like a more technical study of VPA, see “Value Predicate Analysis: A Language-Based Tool for Diagnosing Behavioral Tendencies of Religious or Value-Based Groups in Regions of Conflict,” in Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion (2019) 58.1, 93-113.
The issue includes three full articles, by David Ford, Elliot Wolfson, and Dr. Israr Ahmad, followed by 13 briefer response essays of which this is one.
Religions: A Scholarly Journal, Volume 2012, Issue 2, Dec 2012,
In 2002, The new Journal of Scriptural Reasoning held a symposium on "the rules of scriptural reasoning," for which this was the lead essay. The essay presented my first reflections on the implications of SR and TR. In the founding years of SR, we felt that modern thinking, both academic and seminary based, promoted binaries that no longer served their purposes. We hoped that a practice of scriptural study across borders would promote non-binary practices of reasoning that might remind us, in both academy and seminary, what non-binary reasoning looked like, so that we might relearn how to employ non-binary as well as binary practices. We and our students and colleagues or coreligionists might then have a better chance to choose freely which mode of practice was most appropriate to which setting. According to the essay, SR and TR introduce practices for generating new modes of reasoning for academy or seminary. Such reasonings contribute well to reparative inquiries.
Here is the abstract for the original essay:
"Deep calls to deep at the thunder of thy cataracts; all thy waves and thy billows have gone over me" (Ps. P2:7) As first developed in 1992, Scriptural Reasoning (SR) names a method for studying scriptures across the borders of any tradition. 12 Our prototype was a study of Abrahamic scriptures: the Tanakh, the New Testament, and the Qur'an studied side-by-side, so that students, adherents and observers of any one scriptural canon would feel welcomed to read and comment on verses of the other canons as well. 3 One of our goals was to find better methods for teaching religions through the study of scripture and for teaching scripture in a way that was enriched by both academic and traditional forms of commentary. Another goal was to find methods for peaceful encounter across religious traditions. 4 I often hear the term "Scriptural Reasoning" applied to this broader program. I use the term in both senses. "Formational SR" refers to the original practice, which remains a prototype and the single most effective exercise for introducing folks to the mindset presupposed by all the other forms and applications of SR. Formational SR. The elements of our original practice are quite simple. There is, prototypically, a table with 3-8 chairs placed around it. On the table are three small sets of verses, one from each of the three Abrahamic canons of scripture: the Tanakh (the Hebrew bible), the New Testament, and the Qur'an. The verses appear in translation so that all the participants can read them. Participants discuss the plain sense of different scriptural verses as if they shared equal facility in reading those words. They gradually turn to discussing what seems most challenging or surprising in those verses.
Developments in Christian Thought: Audiobook
Interviews with David Ford and Peter Ochs: Part II ( P Ochs)
On The Scriptural Reasoning Movement: its origins, methods, purpose, effects.
SR best serves the academy as discipline of reasoning. Reasoning is disciplined, in part, by logic, and the best logic of SR, to date, is a relational (or non-binary) semiotics. Resources for this semiotics may be found in Augustine’s Stoic-and-Trinitarian logic of scripture, Reid’s logic of common sense, Charles Peirce’s logic of pragmatism, Barthes’ semiologies of text-reading, Qur’anic studies of the signs of God (ayat), rabbinic studies of interpretation (midrash) and in recent Chinese theories of comparative literature and comparative religion.i
The MA engages students with the complex challenges of building peace in the twenty-first century, training them to analyze and assess violent conflict with particular attention to the diverse roles played by religious actors. Hosted by UVA's distinguished faculties in religious studies and politics, and featuring scholars from across the university, the multidisciplinary program facilitates advanced research in peace studies, politics, religion, foreign affairs and global studies, and prepares students for work in foreign service, peacemaking, second-track diplomacy, global development, community organizing, and/or religious leadership. MA students conduct coursework, practicums, and original analyses of contemporary cases of religion-related conflict. The curriculum draws resources from UVA's Research Initiative in Religion, Politics, and Conflict. The MA concentration aims to shape a new generation of leaders in the theory and practice of conflict studies and peacebuilding attuned to key dimensions of religion. The M.A. requires successful completion of 30 credit hours, including 24 credit hours of coursework (8 courses), 2 practicum credit hours, a 1 credit hour Proseminar, and 3 credit hours of preparation for a capstone project. Each student completes a capstone project in the final semester of study, presenting independent research that makes an original contribution to the study of religion-related violent conflict.
The MA engages students with the complex challenges of building peace in the twenty-first century, training them to analyze and assess violent conflict with particular attention to the diverse roles played by religious actors. Hosted by UVA’s distinguished faculties in religious studies and politics, and featuring scholars from across the university, the multi-disciplinary program facilitates advanced research in peace studies, politics, religion, foreign affairs and global studies, and prepares students for work in foreign service, peacemaking, second-track diplomacy, global development, community organizing, and/or religious leadership.
Students may inquire into studies in any other language area and religious tradition taught by UVA faculty. WRWL students also share in an introductory course and a monthly proseminar/discussion provided exclusively for participants in this program. Students are instructed by members of the UVA faculty in Religious Studies and in English, Middle East Languages, Spanish, French, and German.
Program Overview
SIP fosters interdisciplinary studies of religious practice, textual study, history, theology, and interpretation among students of the scriptural religions. SIP draws its methods from out of the comparative study of Jewish, Christian, and Muslim practices of scriptural study and interpretation, but it also extends these methods to the study of other scripturally centered traditions. The primary goal of SIP is to examine the Bible, the Qur'an, and other scriptures as literatures that generate communities of religious practice: practices of study, of interpretation and reflection, of ritual, and of social life. All these practices are examined in their own terms as well as in their relations to the scriptural literatures. The Area of SIP supports three specific programs of study:
Scripture, Interpretation and Practice
This program explores the phenomena of scriptural study, textual interpretation, and religious practice in all three of the Abrahamic traditions, as well as in other scripturally centered traditions. While specializing in one scriptural tradition and in one family of study practices, each student explores all of the study practices within SIP and at least three scriptural traditions.
The Study of Judaism
This program examines Judaism as expressed through its textual tradition, its ritual practices and its modern thought. The study of Judaism is approached through three overarching rubrics: Textuality, which focuses on the study of foundational texts in both their historical context and as received and re-interpreted by later generations of Jews; Practice, which entails the study of the rituals, observances, and social practices of Judaism; and Modern Thought, which examines the encounter between Judaism and Western, as well as non-Western, philosophical sources.
Islamic Scripture, Interpretation, and Practice
In this program, graduate students with a concentration in Islam investigate the dominant modes of scriptural reasoning prevalent among Muslims. They study the Qur'anic tradition on four levels: Encounter with the Qur'an, Encounter with the Tradition (the Sunnah), Encounter with modern Muslim responses to the classical heritage, and Encounter with recent "postmodern" or "postliberal" approaches to scriptural reasoning among all three of the Abrahamic traditions.
https://www.ctinquiry.org/research
https://www.ctinquiry.org/blog/2020/10/13/diagnosing-religious-group-conflict-5f9ae
© 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
This monograph presents Religious-Values Negotiation (RVN) as a roadmap for negotiating with religious stakeholders. Religious values are an understudied and undertheorized aspect of negotiation. This paper speaks to the values-based challenges present when negotiating with religious stakeholders. The authors propose that military negotiators deepen their awareness of religious values in developing and executing their negotiation strategies. The study is a precursor of work on religious stakeholder negotiation. The limits of Interest-Based Negotiation (IBN) as a model for negotiating with religious stakeholders are also discussed. Procedures for negotiating with religious stakeholders are presented, and recommendations for including RVN into Professional Military Education are made.
There is an opening now for a new form of dialogue with Christianity, because the shock of the Shoah has stimulated a remarkable change in the past three decades in Christian theologies of Judaism. More than ever before leading Christian theologians and Church bodies declare that God’s covenant with Israel is unbroken and that Judaism remains a vital religion in the world, not only a sister religion to Christianity but also, we might say, a mother religion. More than ever before in modern times, Christian scholars are returning to what they recognize to be their own theological roots. There is therefore a remarkable opening now for us Jewish theologians to see what would happen if we examine the meaning of Christian belief in our own terms, in Jewish terms, without – at least for a moment – fearing Christian oppression or also fearing the loss of our own Jewish identity
I will argue that, if contemporary Jewish philosophic-theology is limited to the terms of Aristotelian ontology, then there will be three unfortunate consequences for Jewish philosophy in the future. The first, the most serious, is that Jewish philosophy will simply be wholly out of touch with the most recent developments in logic, epistemology, and hermeneutics, and will remain a form of antiquarianism. The second unfortunate consequence is that Jewish philosophy will therefore miss its calling not only to lead the recovery of Jewish theology after the Shoah, but also to help lead the Western philosophy and ethics after the demise of the modern secular paradigms. The third unfortunate consequence is that Jewish philosophy will continue the medieval-modern tendency to misrepresent and under-appreciate the logic and hermeneutics of Talmudic Judaism. The fourth unfortunate consequence is that Jewish thinkers will be continue to misinterpret Christian theological. categories as well, forcing them out of their biblical context and into the reductive categories of Christian as well as Jewish scholasticism. This last consequence is, of course, the immediate topic of our discussion today, but I want to make clear that the rereading I recommend of Christian theology is offered, ultimately, on behalf of much more than Christian-Jewish relations. It belongs to the renewal of Judaism itself as well as the placement of Jewish renewal in the center of post-modern reformations of Western thinking more broadly.
We begin in section I by tracing the genealogy of Ochs’ thought to two philosophical traditions that correct modern philosophy by appealing to the rationality implicit in practice. From German and American Jewish philosophers, Ochs learned to respond to modern challenges to the intelligibility of Jewish life by seeking the rationality implicit in Jewish practices. In the American pragmatist Charles Peirce, Ochs found a method of appealing to the logic of scientific practice to correct modern philosophy itself.
In section II, we sketch the common-sensist and scriptural dimensions of Ochs’ pragmatism. In response to the Cartesian anxiety that plagues modern thought, Ochs appeals to the deep wisdom of common sense—vague but indubitable rational commitments implicit in our everyday practices and ordinary language. But in light of the recurring crises of Jewish history that threaten the intelligibility of Jewish life and practice, Ochs also recognizes occasions when common sense may fail and ordinary methods of pragmatic repair prove inadequate. Ochs’ scriptural pragmatism describes how, through scripture, God’s Word can heal communities in crisis, trans- forming their common sense and renewing their language.
If practice is the locus of rationality, then a philosophical theory’s full meaning can only be determined, and its validity tested, with reference to its practical fruits. .... Through the practices of Textual Reasoning and Scriptural Reasoning, modern readers are habituated in a distinctively scriptural wisdom governed by a pragmatic logic.
Tübingen, 24.02.2023
The University of Tübingen’s Faculty of Protestant Theology has an- nounced that this year’s Dr. Leopold Lucas Prize will go to Peter Ochs, a professor of Modern Judaic Studies. The faculty thus pays tribute to his services to the dialogue between Judaism, Christianity and Islam: Ochs has significantly contributed to the development and dissemination of the Scriptural Reasoning method, which pursues the goal of reconciliation between followers of Christianity, Judaism and Islam via joint reading and discussion of the respective holy scriptures - thereby motivating them to act together. The interpretation of the holy scriptures through dialogue promotes understanding and acceptance of the respective religious traditions. For Ochs, this mutual understanding is the basis of interreligious reconciliation.
This is Ochs' oral presentation, which he must now expand to a longer essay publication. Comments are welcome on behalf of this longer writing.