March 26, 2010

Some questions that are on my mind as I try and create a more cohesive third exam:

• If we take seriously the claims by the more orthodox religious groups (both Jewish and Christian), how can the same God have mutually exclusive relationships with both the people of Israel and the followers of Christ?
• How can we understand the unity of the Christian Church when there are so many theological differences within it? The same question also applies to the one people of Israel?
• How can Christianity relate to Judaism when we can't even necessarily claim one Christianity or one Judaism?
• How can a Christian theology of Judaism account for the differences within each religion?
• How can it account for the differences between the two religions?
• If there is nothing but difference between Christianity and Judaism, how can there be any conversation? (Presuming, of course, that conversation is based on some shared set of values. The desire to converse, for one.)
• If every single person and every group is different, how can we talk about one humankind (about whom God is presumably concerned)?
• How do we talk about differences and similarities between groups without falling into essentialisms? How can we do it without imposing our own characteristics as the dominant ones, against which the other must be compared? Can we? Should we? (Okay, that last one was more rhetorical.)

I am very intrigued by the conversations about hybridity and interstitiality coming out of particularly Asian/American feminist theology, but also Latina theology, partly for personal reasons (Japanese-German, Canadian-American, Jewish-Lutheran) but also because I appreciate the way they challenge the dominance of purity. There really is no such thing as "pure" in isolation; it is often only used in order to set something against "impure" or "mixed." One of the things that bothers me about the phrase, a "Christian theology of Judaism," is that it seems as if purity is being dragged into the issue, as if Christianity and Judaism are two completely separate, isolated religions. This certainly isn't true when they were formed, and I question how true it is today. The phrase implies that Christianity is in one place, looking over at Judaism in another place. It doesn't seem to give consideration to any overlap between the two or any transformative presence that they might have to each other. While it accounts for the differences between the two, it doesn't account for any similarites. (Oddly enough, the opposite happened in the older models of interreligious dialogue, where similarities were compared at the expense of differences.) So, how can a middle road be discerned between too much emphasis on similiarity and too much emphasis on difference? And how can it be done without subscribing to the now-problematic "Judeo-Christian" model, which obliterates differences under one pseudo-unity?
Here are some of the authors whose work is very interesting to me:

• Daniel Boyarin
• Rita Nakashima Brock
• Jeannine Hill Fletcher
• Wonhee Anne Joh
• Margaret Kamitsuka
• Michelle Gonzalez
• Namsoon Kang
• Nami Kim
• Kwok Pui-lan
• Mayra Rivera
• Ruben Rosario Rodriguez

So what do they have to do with a Christian theology of Judaism? Or with how the God of both the Jews and the Christians can be the same and have different relationships? (Of course, yes, God can do whatever God wants, but if God is a model for our behaviour, we need to know how God does it, so we can do it, too, without having different selves in different relationships, but being the same integral, whole person in all of our multiple relationships.) Or with how Christianity can understand its theological relationship to Judaism?

March 23, 2010

A model of Christian-Jewish relationship that has sometimes been put forward is that of a child-parent relationship, where Christianity has emerged from Judaism as its child. This has come to be rejected as first being historically inaccurate - Judaism today is not what Judaism post-Temple was, nor did Christianity emerge from it. Rather, there was parallel development of two religions that are now contemporary Christianity and contemporary Judaism, from a common proto-Judaism (ie. Second Temple Judaism). This model has also been criticized as leading to supersessionism, where the grown child now replaces the adult who has died, Christianity taking up the crown that Judaism has let fall.
However, this understanding of the child-adult relationship seems laden with partriarchal interpretation; it seems to resemble most a son-father relationship, where the son is meant to replace the father in his dotage. But if the relationship of child-adult is construed in a more feminist light, as one of daughter-mother, maybe this image can be retrieved. Daughters have never been construed as replacing their mothers, rather they live in a mutually beneficial relationship. Additionally, the daughter-mother relationship allows for a dynamism and growth, both in the relationship, which changes over time, but also in their individuality. Daughter changs as she grows from child to adult to mother herself, and Mother changes as she grows from young mother to mother of an adult child to grandmother. (Okay, so grandmother might not work in this analogy). But regardless, it implies that each person in the relationship continues to grow. Finally, when you consider Anne Joh's model of Christology and maternality, where there is a jeong stickiness in the relationship, such that the Self and the Other are intimately connected but not overrunning or replacing one another, perhaps this model might work for Christianity and Judaism.
Would it be too radical to suggest that Christianity has emerged out of Judaism, albeit in such a way that both Christianity and Judaism continue(d) to develop over time? That Christianity owes its birth (but not its current existence) to Judaism, and as such is forever in debt not only to what Judaism once was but to what it has also become? Can we see the relationship as one where both Judaism and Christianity continue to maintain a relationship without sacrificing what makes each unique? The relationship is one of mutuality, and more than voluntary mutuality, but less than necessary mutuality. That is, they could (and do) exist apart from one another, just as mothers and daughters live separate lives, sometimes estranged ones at that, but never completely separate, because simply the fact of the daughter's birth from the mother means that they will always be somehow connected.
I don't think that this model would necessarily contradict the historical testimony that Christianity and contemporary Judaism developed in parallel rather than in sequence. Mothers continue to develop even after the birth of their children, and even think of themselves as different people from who they were when they gave birth. Certainly it would allow for the historical continuity of Judaism from Second Temple (and prior) to today, a continuity that still poses theological problems for Christian theologies of Judaism.
(But I'm not entirely sure what this has to do with my special comps, unless it can somehow be incorporated into a theology of difference.)

March 22, 2010 - Second Thought for the Day

The topic of the unity of Christ in the larger field of Christology was a preoccupation for the early Church Fathers. They were trying to understand the nature of Christ, bringing together (or separating out) the human factor and the divine factor. Doctrinally, this came to a head in the councils of Nicea and Chalcedon, but as the centuries passed, this focus on the mechanism of incarnation dispersed. It did not reappear with any real force until the discussions beginning in the 19th century of the historicity of Jesus Christ. Then, it was framed as an issue of the universality and the particularity of Christ, and as the kerygmatic (proclaimed) Christ versus the historical Jesus. While not explicitly stated as an issue of incarnation, the question of the degree to which Christ was a historical figure was a restatement of the old argument of the degree to which he was human. In emphasizing the ahistoricity of Christ, the contemporary Christ of proclamation, the divinity and universality of Christ was elevated. The correlative sacrifice was the historical Jesus, as the particularly embedded Jew of Palestine. The connections here to the development of an anti-Jewish theology are obvious: the more universal/divine Jesus Christ becomes, the less human/particular/Jewish he becomes.
Oddly, the turn to the subject in the 20th century, and the emphasis on a Christology from below and the historical existence of Christ did not emphasize his Jewish context until after the Holocaust (and even then not completely). However, moving into the 21st century, Christological exploration that seeks to recontextualize Jesus sometimes acknowledges his Jewishness, while simultaneously replacing that Jewishness with something else: Jesus as Asian, Jesus as Oppressed Minority, Jesus as Woman, Jesus as Transvestite. While all of these Christologies rightfully challenge the previous 20 centuries' worth of images of Jesus as a reflection of the dominant, majority Christian (ie. male, and usually white), their relocation of Jesus dehistoricizes him and risks dispensing with his Jewishness. Again.
So how can a Christology hold onto a contextual Jesus, who is universal and divine in his relation to all human situations, while at the same time recognizing his particular uniqueness as a human Jew? This is where we turn to ideas of interstiality, multiplicity, hybridity (although not a dualistic hybridity that sets itself up in opposition to "purity"), and diversity, where unity is not cast aside, but neither does it uphold uniformity. In these new attempts to deconstruct and reconstruct the incarnation (although they do not describe themselves as such), it might be possible to understand how Jesus can be both/and: divine/human, universal/particular, Jewish/Asian/African/Indigenous, male/female/transexual, etc.
So who might be the central figure around which to set these two now-related parts? Jurgen Moltmann has been suggested, and he is certainly a post-Holocaust theologian, attempting to incorporate the horrors of the Jewish genocide into his theology. His famous passage equates the crucifixion with the death camps, borrowing Elie Wiesel's story of God hanging on the gallows to draw a new image of the suffering God dying on the cross. But some have accused Moltmann of appropriating, rather than borrowing, Wiesel's material and using the Holocaust as a contextual tool for structuring his own theology, rather than allowing it to really influence his understanding of Christ. He has also been criticized by feminists for creating a theology of suffering that can be used to glorify suffering.
I wonder if going in a different direction might be useful here. I am thinking more of someone like David Tracy. To begin with, his acknowledgement that language is problematic, divisive rather than unifying because of the plurality of meanings within words, and that history is ambiguous, always interpreted (with bias) by those in the present, offer a way to question the doctrinal certainties of the earlier Christological controversies. Second, his emphasis on the hermeneutical task of all theologians, and their subservience to the religious classic is appropriate for framing the dialogue between Jews and Christians who do, indeed, share a classic, with wildly differing hermeneutical procedures and goals. And thirdly, his idea of similarity-in-difference, where things may be similar but are never identical, may offer a tool for a theology of difference that still attempts to hold things together. His use of analogy relies on difference, as well as the possibility of what may be possible, and could work here. As far as I know, he doesn't address issues of incarnation, but he could. Plus, this born-Protestant could use a Catholic.

March 22, 2010 - Thought for the Day

The relationship of Christianity to Judaism is similar to that which Rita Nakashima Brock describes in her article on Interstitial Integrity regarding the relationship between Asian Pacific Americans to both America and Asia. Christianity is like the immigrant trying to find a home, realizing that it has left the land of Judaism, but is now trying to find a way to honour its roots. It is no longer Jewish, but it can never leave Judaism behind. Nevertheless, when it tries to return to Judaism to start a conversation, it finds that the community it finds now is not the same as the community it left. Immigrants who leave their "home country" and return later, find that it, and they, have changed, and not in the same ways. They have problems integrating into their left-behind culture, sometimes in painful ways. But the interstitial nature of their relationship with their home community accounts for both the past incarnation (as it were) of the community that they left, along with its current incarnation. This kind of understanding can allow Christianity to take account of previous, historical formations of Judaism, as well as contemporary Judaism. (Of course, the danger is that this type of immigrant understanding of Christianity's roots can too easily support a "ways that parted" model. But this isn't a necessity - it doesn't have to look that way.)
Clearly, I need to develop this more clearly before it can form any part of an exam. But there is an idea here.

March 19, 2010

"The foundation of Jewish or Christian identity cannot derive from the enterprise of thought but must derive from the encounter with the alterity of God who speaks to believing Jews and Christian in Scripture."

"The most difficult oustanding issues between Judaism and Christianity are the dinivity of Jesus, the Incarnation, the Trinity, three terms which are not quite synonymous but all of which assert that Jesus was not only a human being but also God. ... A human being who is also God loses all Jewish legitimacy from the outset. No sharper break with Jewish theological sensibility can be imagined."

"My claim is the Christian teaching of the incarnation of God in Jesus is the intensification of the teaching of the indwelling of God in Israel by concentrating that dwelling in one Jew rather than leaving it diffused in the people of Jesus as a whole."

Michael Wyschogrod, Abraham's Promise: Judaism and Jewish-Christian Relations
Edited by R. Kendall Soulen, Eerdmans, pp. 165, 166, 178

Wyschogrod argues that the Incarnation, and its different interpretations in Judaism and Christianity, is the sticking point for Jewish-Christian dialogue, and, one might extrapolate, for a Christian theology of Judaism. So a theology of Judaism that takes seriously the concerns of Judaism regarding Christianity must address incarnation theology (Christology for the Christians.) Nevertheless, it must do this without wantonly sacrificing its own history, tradition, or history. Too low of a Christology, in which there is no divinity present in Jesus (or in which the divinity present is identical to that present in every other human), such as van Buren proposes, may logically fit with a Jewish understanding of incarnation, but isn't really idenitifiable (or acceptable by most Christian denominations) as Christology at all. Part of the difficulty with a Christian theology of Judaism is recognizing that there is no one Christianity - the Christian denominations exist in ecumenical relationships, and jeopardizing those relationships for the sake of "the Jewish-Christian relationship" is problematic. It is still my suspicion that previous approaches to the Incarnation are dead ends, and that investigations into Christology will ultimately prove that there is no talking point there for Christians and Jews. Nevertheless, it must be thoroughly examined. So, then, the first exam will have to do with the doctrine of Incarnation. And although I had earlier suggested that this exam should focus on methodology and not content, that doesn't quite work. The content should be examined, along with Jewish theologies of incarnation (Wyschogrod is helpful in this regard), while the third exam should contain the methodology point.

So, the third exam, then would be the development of a methodology that allows for differences in incarnation theology (and differences as radically different as those contained within Christianity and between Christianity and Judaism). Although identity politics is not the goal of this exam, the ways in which theology uses the methods of identity formation, through hybridity, interstiality, the language of mestizaje, etc. offer a structure for understanding how it is that several different (or even opposing) ideas can be held together. It is true that this can also be seen in the doctrinal developments on the two natures of Christ, but those developments deal with only two differences: divine and human, and tend to be restricted to only binary considerations. Although current hybridity theology still tends to be limited to a hybrid of only two, it is not my impression that this is a methodological imposition. Although theologies of difference tend to rely a lot on the theologies of the Other, which results in a binary juxtaposition of Self/Other, I think they could be expanded. (Of course, the theology of the Trinity is an attempt to break beyond binarism, and Peter Hodgson and Kendall Soulen seem to be exploring this avenue, but at the heart of the Trinity is a doctrine of Incarnation, so working with the Trinity would be joining the race after it had already started. Plus, noooooooooo!!!!!!!!!)

So who is to be the major figure in the second part of the exam? One option is to pick someone who is working on the questions in the first exam but is from the 20th century. Unfortunately, none of those people, van Buren, Pawlikowski, Soulen (to a degree, although he doesn't deal with Christology), don't have a large enough body of work to study, and even fewer secondary resources on their material. The second option is to pick someone from the third exam, or someone who could be used as a lens for the third exam. However, the same problem exists. A third option is to pick someone who doesn't fall into either of those two areas, but who has a large body of work from the 20th century that would ultimately fit into a dissertation - someone who could be critiqued and whose work it would be good to know in detail. But who? Who?

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Just a note - not a real blog entry. If I were to do Christology as my first exam, it would be important to consider Jewish theological thinkers' understanding of the Christian doctrine of Incarnation. Although this might stray from the methodology focus, it would be vital for understanding the Christian content. And to be honest, there is no way to create a Christian theology of Judaism that has any integrity, if Jewish thinkers on this topic are not considered.

March 14, 2010

In searching for angles on a Christian theology of difference that accounts for how God can hold two seemingly opposing things at the same time (universality and particularity), Dan has suggested looking at Christology, insofar as it posits how Jesus can be both divine and human at the same time (seeming opposites). At first, this seems like old hat - this path has been trod before, and the conclusion has always arrived at a dead end. Nobody has come with up a Christology that is able to account for the particularity of the Jews and the universality of Christ’s salvation. At least, nobody has done it in an entirely satisfactory way. So, either there is no satisfactory answer, or it is yet to be discovered. Believing that the answer lies in the first - no answer possible, I have followed B. Zen’s hypothesis that maybe there is no answer because the questions are wrong, and am seeking a different question. So, Dan’s suggestion that Christology be considered has seemed like the wrong way to go.
However, what if Christology is used as a model for a theology of difference? That is, Christology itself, and discussions of divine v. human cannot resolve Christian-Jewish tension in and of itself, but the model for such internal theology can. The way in which the Church has negotiated the boundaries between divine and human in the one person of Christ can serve as a model for the ways in which the Church can negotiate the boundaries between the universal/particular tensions in the peoples of God.
This brings me down a new path, separate from election, although not completely. Perhaps what is needed is a study of Christology, and how the divine-human in Christ is understood, but looking at it specifically through the eyes of Jewish election. That is, the history of Incarnational Christology, as Pawlikwoski puts it, that takes account of the Jewish nature of the human component of that incarnation. This would be the first part of the Special Comps. (Or is this straying again? If this is a methodological piece, than Jewish election is not really part of that methodology; it is part of the content.) The third part, then, would be a contemporary theology of difference that may or may not look at Christology, but certainly considers feminism, relationality, hybridity, interstitiality, etc. in an attempt to apply the model of Christology to the theology of difference. The first task, then, becomes methodological.
This appeals to me on several levels. The first is that Christology is one of those “pure” theological disciplines, that leads to general competency in this area and increases one’s knowledge for teaching theology. The second is that I still feel like the question of who Jesus is has importance for what it is that happens in/through him. Third, this seems useful and interests me not only because of its implications for a Christian theology of Judaism, but also because of its “purely” Christian application. But again, it must be remembered that methodology is the goal here, not the content itself. Otherwise, the field becomes too big again.
So - theologies of election, or methodology of Christology?

March 11, 2010

A theology of difference must not erase differences, as Paul would seek to do in Galatians (neither male nor female, Jew nor Greek), as this erasure homogenizes and offers a totality of uniformity. Rather, a theology of difference must incorporate and take into account differences, not to make them the same, but to make them equal (insofar as such a thing is even possible when you are talking about different things).

March 4, 2010

As Bruce Marshall laid it out so simply in his presentation last night, the theological problem that Christianity has with Judaism comes from two premises that appear to be contradictory. The first: God wills that the saving mission of Christ is universal. The second: God wills that Israel, God’s chosen and covenanted people, be made up of (practicing) Jews. The question then becomes how can God will to opposite things? How can God will that all be united to Christ and that Jews do not become Christians? One answer, often proposed by inclusivists, is that Jews are Rahner’s famous anonymous Christians, and that one day, they will realize their error and see Christ as the Messiah. However, this eschatological view simply pushes the problem further down the road. It does not address how God can incorporate two seemingly opposing viewpoints. What is at stake, even more generalized than Marshall’s question, is that of how God can be both universal and particular. These two appear to be contradictory.
It would appear that there are three paths to achieving an answer. The first is to say that one of these premises is wrong. But as Marshall makes clear, the one that is likely to be proven wrong is not the one that promises God’s covenant with Israel is eternal. As van Buren demonstrates in his work, it is also clear that declaring the first premise wrong, ie. That Christ’s mission is not universal (because he is not really the Christ) leads to such a low Christology as to make one question whether or not it is even Christian. (It can’t be recognized by the Catholic Church, so as lovely as it might seem, it rejects ecumenism in favour of the Jews, and pits the one Church against the eternal Covenant with Israel, thus recreating the problem of universality versus particularity.) The second path is to say that this is all a mystery. This is a cop-out.
The third path, which Marshall did not raise, is to develop a theology of difference that accounts for how God can hold more than one reality at the same time. A theology of difference would address the issue that God holds both/and, not either/or, the universal together with the particular. But where can one find such a theology? Current theologies of hybridity, although relating to identity formation (and distracting for that reason), might offer some insight, as they seek to cross the boundary between one identity and another, sometimes contradictory one. It is this hybridity or trans- or interstitial theological inquiry that can help us to understand how God incorporates difference and opposites.
Identity formation, and its accompanying theology of the Other, is thus a sub-path of the larger theology of difference. It does not answer the problem of a Christian theology of Judaism, because it is a sociological, psychological, and historical problem, not a theological one. However, it does offer some hints as to how a theology of difference, insofar as people or groups are comprised of several identities, might work. Thus, relationality is also an important element here, although not the only element, nor the core one. If one considers the problem as the constellation of Ursa Major, it is one of the important stars, but not the Pole Star. It is important not to get distracted in walking down the path of identity formation.
Examining the history of Christian theologies of the election of Israel are important, not because they demonstrate how Christian identity was formed (which they do, as Boyarin shows us in Border Lines), but because they demonstrate how Christians have historically considered the issue of universal Christology versus the particular election of the chosen people of Israel. It may be just as easy to review a history of Christology, but that so often leaves out the question of Israel’s place (or treats them negatively). The history of the theology of Israel implicitly speaks to Christology and its universal application, and so is the better piece.

March 3, 2010

According to Zygmunt Bauman, who cites the term from elsewhere, allosemitism – that is, the Jew as other – is at the root of both philosemitism and antisemitism. He describes as the objectification of the Jew, either for the purposes of elevating Jews or suppressing them, all while in comparison to another group – either us, Christians, Europeans. This tendency to objectify the Other in order to form one’s own identity can be discussed in the works of Levinas, who identifies the process by which the Self attempts to totalize the Other in both relating to it and in defining itself. Because the Other is required to form self-identity, any variation in the Other, either through a change from one thing to another or through the presence of multiple Others within the one Other group, is suppressed. The Self cannot tolerate the ambiguities present in the Other.
Nevertheless, there are ambiguities in both the Other and in the Self. This can be seen most clearly in relational theology, where the Other and the Self are fluid in their essence and in their relationships. Thus, a web of interactions is necessary for describing the relationship(s) rather than just a single line from Self –> Other and vice versa.
For Christianity, the Other who is most often used in identity formation and whose change and variation appears the least tolerated is Judaism.
John Pawlikowksi, though not dealing with identity formation of Christianity per se, identifies the problem of Christology as that which makes Christianity unique, but that which, at the same time, has caused the most problems in relationship with Judaism. That is, the issue of Christ has often been framed as an identificatory factor in such a way that Judaism is used to contrast with the formation of Christ, and thus of Christianity. The challenge for Pawlikowski is to create a Christology that remains unique, thus buttressing the existence of Christianity as a world religion, without demeaning Judaism in any way, or proposing that Judaism is wrong, misled, or has rejected Christ to its peril.
So how does this fit with allosemitism? A Christology that seeks to relate to Judaism often reifies Judaism, or treats it as a static Other that does not change. A proper christological theology of Israel (and what exactly that means is up for debate) must understand the status of the chosen people of Israel as a fluid and relational one. Israel is not only the historic community prior to Jesus, it is also the ongoing Jewish community that exists in the 21st century. Israel is not simply those observant Jews who live in the nation of Israel, it is also those diasporic secular, humanist Jews who do not ascribe a religious component to their self-identity. Therefore, a Christian theology of Judaism, or Israel, must move away from allosemitism in all its forms, but finds itself challenged to do such a thing.
The first question that is faced, then, is not how Christianity might construct a theology of Judaism as Other (which it is, or there is no difference between Christianity and Judaism and we might as well be one religion) but whether Christianity can theologically conceive of an intimate Other in any form at all. How can the Self form an identity when the Other is not fixed? How does the Self incorporate the Other into its own identity formation, particularly when that Other is a group? How does the Self as a group form its own identity when its own members are at odds and variant with one another? The train of thought proceeds backwards, from a non-supersessionist/anti-jewish/anti-semitic Christian theology to a non-allosemitic theology to one that does not totalize the Other in either construction or definition.