First, anti-Judaism. As we will see, the modern West’s attempt in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to render Christianity both rationally and ethically viable for modernity made no bones about the fact that the source of the problem, in their view, was Abraham, as the patriarchal font of Jewish religious “genius.” It would appear difficult for our contemporary remedies of Christian faith to avoid the same conclusion: what is dangerous (to Jews!) about a traditional Christian faith and theology is that it is too Jewish. Indeed, much contemporary theological discourse today on the imperialistic dangers of religious faith in general appears not to feel this is a conclusion that needs avoiding. One often hears “Abrahamic faith” described as inherently violent toward the neighbor. Remedying Christian faith of its violence toward the Jewish neighbor would then seem to require—as Hegel, Kant, and company believed to be the case—purging it of this violent, foreign, and imposed Abrahamic element. Ironically, then, contemporary remedies of the violent logic of Christian faith in relation to Jews and Judaism may entail a kind of anti-Judaism—a “teaching of contempt”—of their own, a targeting of Jewish religious instinct as a threat to true faith, and to the faithful of all religions.
The second shade of shadow: supersessionism. It would seem that, given the above, the Jews have received, from the hands of the Church, the brunt of a violence born into the world from their own Abrahamic heritage. Consequently, the attempt to make Christian faith safe for Jews would seem to be unable to avoid, on some fundamental level, being an attempt to save Jews from themselves, from their own malevolent (according to these assumptions) heritage. It would seem to require a purging of Jewish religious and theological identity itself of its own violent inheritance, an inheritance that it has bequeathed to the world to catastrophic effect. And this requirement appears to be legislated from . . . where, exactly? From the high ground (from “on High”?) of the ethical; from a free-standing ground beyond the proprietary claims of each and every particular religious or theological lineage; from an impartial, unobstructed, commanding vantage point from whence one (whom, exactly? The Philosopher? The Ethicist? The Professor of Religious Studies? A compelling abstraction, e.g., Rubenstein’s “human solidarity”?) watches pastorally, and when necessary, chastisingly over all particular, concrete, historical religious identities, ensuring that they behave themselves and do not impinge dangerously upon their neighbors, which is to say, shepherding them into proper self-understanding.22 In other words, contemporary remedies for making Christian faith safe for Jews may prove not to be grounded in the self-understanding and self-legislation of Jewish identity in its un-subsumable particularity, as advertised by Littell. Rather, the universal ground of the ethical supersedes the particularity of Jewish religious self-understanding (as well as Christian self-understanding, and Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu . . .) in its administration as the final authority and judge of Jewish religious identity, meaning, value. Again, the conclusion is difficult to avoid. Ceasing to see Jewish neighbors through the lens of Christian faith by seeing them, instead, through the lens of ethical responsibility may nevertheless be to continue to see them through a supersessionistic lens of interpretive imperialism.
Or so I shall endeavor to demonstrate. And in so demonstrating, I hope to provide a warrant for giving alternative, albeit alternatively problematic, theological assumptions a second look—the very theological assumptions that entangle Christian faith in the logic of interpretive imperialism in relation to the Jewish neighbor in the first place. Thus, the critical question that gives rise to these alternative and alternatively problematic theological assumptions, and that perhaps requires the conversation to remain open as to their viability: What is to be done if God chooses, unaccountably—in excess of the activity of creating and sustaining the cosmos—to involve Herself23 inappropriately in the particular; and not just the particular in general, e.g., “the flesh of history,”24 but the particular particularity of the Jewish flesh of Abraham? What assumptions would be required doctrinally (in relation to revelation, election, and Christology, for example), in response to such problematic divine decision and activity? While considering this question and its requisite theological assumptions does not allow in any way a disentangling of Christian faith from interpretive imperialism as such (either in relation to the Jewish neighbor or the neighbor in general), it may allow a distinguishing between and disentangling of one form of Christian interpretive imperialism from another. And if certain postmodern analyses of the logic of imperialistic discourse have anything to tell us, than distinguishing between different kinds of interpretive imperialism may be—ethically—the best we can do. What is and is not possible theologically—or, more accurately, possible for God—may be another question. As is no doubt evident at this point, the relation between the theological (having to do with the God-relation of faith) and the ethical (having to do with the neighbor-relation between fellow creatures)—the necessity of distinguishing them and the impossibility of separating them—lies at the heart of the argument.
The Context as Consequence of the Problem
In taking up Rubenstein’s and Ruether’s question, then—the question of an essential breach of ethical responsibility to the Jewish neighbor embedded deep in the fabric of Christian faith—I am wagering on the possibility of a different answer. I am wagering on an alternative possibility for reformation in response to self-examination and confession. I am wagering on the possibility that avoiding the risk of offending the Jewish neighbor may be to foreclose on the possibility of responsibility to the Jewish neighbor. In more biblical language, I am wagering on the possibility that the nature of Christian proclamation as offense to both Jew and Greek might be the key to its most rigorous ethical possibility in relation to Jews (and Greeks).
I ground this wager in two arenas of complexity not fully accounted for by my contemporary interlocutors. The first arena of complexity is that of the (deeper) modern and (wider) postmodern and postcolonial contexts within which this question is asked, a complexity the main features of which I have just sketched out. The central problem of the book, then, is not simply the question of the interpretive imperialism of Christian faith in relation to the Jewish neighbor, but how this question is related to the interpretive imperialism of Christian faith generally speaking, and the categories with which it is analyzed. But note the counter-intuitive logic of my argument. I relate the particular problem of Christian faith for the Jewish neighbor to the deeper and wider contexts of modern and postmodern discourse (about interpretive imperialism, for example), not in order to simply set it within a broader context whose categories then allow the problem to be properly understood, as if it were a particular instance of a general phenomenon. This is what I understand to be the critical error of contemporary remedies. It is an error due to an inadequate understanding of contextual complexity. That is, it is due to a lack of explicit awareness of the extent to which contemporary analyses and remedies of this particular problem are funded by deeper and wider assumptions that ultimately undermine their good ethical intentions. The necessary alternative is to make clear the extent to which the contexts for our analyses of and remedies for the particular problem of Christian faith in relation to the Jewish neighbor are actually a consequence of—are produced by—that particular problem. For example, the context of the modern West cannot properly be understood apart from the problematic particularity of Abraham. And what is the understanding made possible when this problematic particularity is taken into account? There is always an interpretive imperialism in relation to the Jewish neighbor.
The second arena of complexity is that of a traditional understanding of Christian faith itself (or, “orthodox” understanding—meaning fidelity to the early ecumenical creeds—or “creedal,” then; or “confessional,” or “kerygmatic”; I will eventually settle on “evangelical,” with very specific qualifications), as it is determined by the problematic particularity of Abraham, and so as constituting an interpretive imperialism deemed to be the very cause of all the trouble in the first place. The complexity I am wagering on here is not one that, under appropriately sophisticated and rigorous analysis, gives way to a heretofore undiscovered possibility of overcoming the interpretive imperialism of Christian faith in relation to the Jewish
