How Michael Wyschogrod Taught Me To Eat Like a Jew

[Spengler]

Michael,

Thanks for the background on the Greek fathers, a part of the literature I never have studied. As I indicated, there certainly seem to be important points of convergence between Christian and Jewish thinking, for example in Griffiths' presentation of fallenness.

[Collingwood]

St. Paul (or the standard interpretation of Paul) says that the Law ends up burdening us with sin. This is unrecognizable from the Jewish vantage point. What Paul actually meant, or if he meant the same thing in different passages, is a question outside my competence.

Spengler,

There's a vast, ancient, still lively and diverse literature about what Paul meant in teaching that the Law brought sin, and, through sin, death. It's past my competence, too. But it's too important a question, for Christianity, for Jewish-Christian realtions, and for Western history, simply to give up for want of expert consensus. An understanding of what Paul might have meant that is quite recognisable from the Jewish vantage point seems readily attainable -- and given Paul's background and his constant reference to Tanakh in his Epistles, only such an interpretation seems likely to be valid.

I suggest we take the most sympathetic view of Paul, namely to assume that he got this from Jesus (though James, Peter, and whoever Paul studied under in "Arabia"), and meant essentially the same thing that Jesus meant, albeit wording it in a new way, suited for preaching to Judaising Greeks and Hellenised Jews rather than to relatively unhellenised Jews in Eretz Israel.

Jesus seems to me centrally concerned with growing Jewish despair over the growing difficulty, increasingly the impossibility, of full Torah observance and ritual purity under Imperial Roman rule. He seems to have been concerned to communicate means of observing Torah subjectively, in spirit, in an age when full objective observance was increasingly impossible. He sometimes deliberately violated the letter of the law and disparaged the Temple cult (an old prophetic tradition) as a rhetorical device for making his point. But his underlying goal was to deflect the Jews from the Zealotic attempt to force the Eschaton by suicidal revolt, toward which their despair of complying with Torah was plainly impelling them; his underlying goal was in the best "choose life" tradition. Jesus remarked that no one who has tasted old wine (objective observance) wants the new (merely subjective observance), for the old is better; but to continue insisting on the old was to choose death, not life.

Jews who must live with inability to comply with Torah due to force majeure but who choose to endure and survive as Jews rather than either give up Judaism or self-destruct are not unlikely to reflect, and to be strengthened by the reflection, that full Torah compliance is impossible even for the best of Jews under the best of conditions due to weakness of will, that even the best of Jews in the best of times has ample need of the Day of Atonement. If good Jews in good times fail to comply fully with Torah due to weakness of will, but do not despair, why should any Jew in bad times despair about inability to comply fully due to force majeure? Any objective normative code of conduct raises the "weakness of will" problem, and any objective conditions that impede compliance stimulate reflection on that weakness; that is the philosophical aspect of the problem.

But the historical aspect that occasioned Paul's focus on that philosophical aspect was Zealotry, the notion that Jews collectively, unable due to force majeure to keep the law, should engage in suicidal revolt as a means of forcing God to rescue them with a messianic miracle, precipitating the Eschaton. When Paul said that the Law brings sin, and through sin, death, he seems to me to have been referring to the growing threat of Zealotry, of the sin of suicidal despair at inability to comply with Torah, which, as events proved, menaced not only participating Jews in Eretz Israel but also non-participating and non-sympathising Jews throughout the Empire. To be sure, Paul "talks around" this subject, addressing it indirectly, in only its philosophical, abstract aspect. But in his public preaching, including his Epistles (public documents), it was not prudent to speak more plainly about the growing likelihood of Jewish revolt and about its likely consequences. Imperial Rome was not Speaker's Corner in Hyde Park, and Jews of the era killed one another over religious politics. Paul's meaning must have been quite plain to his audience of Hellenised Jews and Judaising Gentiles, all of whom must have been all too keenly aware of the impending horror. As Jesus seems to have been.

Paul, like Jesus's disciples, seems to have anticipated an imminent Eschaton. It seems likely that they thought that the impending Zealot revolt would succeed in precipitating the Eschaton. However, they seem to have thought that that Eschaton would differ from what the Zealots anticipated -- that Jesus, returning as the unveiled messiah to rule in glory, would reward not the Zealots who precipitated the Eschaton, but those who had resisted the temptation to force the Kingdom. In this context, to eschew objective compliance with Torah was the surest way to resist the temptation of Zealotry, of suicidal despair over inability to comply with Torah, and necessary to be saved at the imminent Second Coming.

Given that Rabbinical Judaism, no less than Christianity, is a reaction against Zealotry, and that the Pharisees, by whose survivors Rabbinical Judaism was formed, generally opposed the first Zealot revolt, cannot Paul's meaning be understood in a sense fully comprehensible from a Jewish vantage point? All parties concerned were essentially arguing about how to read Deuteronomy 30: the Zealots insisted on a naive literal interpretation, Christianity offered an explicit ironical revision claiming Authorized discontinuity, and Pharasaic-Rabbinical Judaism offered a similar implicit revision that claimed continuity. The Zealots' naive reading of the Law did bring sin, the sin of despair, and with it, death, not just to themselves but to millions of others; the issue between Rabbinical Judaism and Christianity is merely how to read the Law to ensure that it serves life.

To be sure, Antinomianism has its risks, but so does naive literalism; that is the lesson of the Second Exile. Imitating God is not easy; the one proposition I will maintain with confidence is that none of us has it entirely right. Fortunately, we are not commanded to agree with one another, but rather to love one another.

[Spengler]

Collingwood,

I don't see any reason to attribute to Jesus the idea that Torah observance was impossible under Roman rule. Even when he argued for exceptions ("the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath") he argued within the framework of the Torah, i.e., declaring his authority to make exceptions (just as the Sabbath sacrifices at the Temple were an "exception" to Sabbath restrictions). And of course there is Matthew 5:18 (For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled).

Michael Wyschogrod argues that Paul believed that Gentiles should not bring upon themselves the "curse of the law" from Deut 30, i.e., the consequences that pertain to Jews who fail to observe the law; otherwise Paul went out of his way to observe Temple ritual while in Jerusalem. Wyschogrod's view does not quite satisfy the Christian theologians I work with, but I cannot get them to give me a consistent reading of Paul. It's above my competence, but I have the impression that he said different things on different occasions.

[Michael]

The idea of the purely “natural” man, following right reason, in pursuit of his “natural end,” is a philosophical construct that suppresses the factors that are doing all the work, namely, Revelation and Grace. Its value is merely to show that Judeo-Christian morality commends itself to reason, not that “Natural Law” can function on its own, so to speak.

"Grace" and "Revelation" are precisely that: philosophical constructs.

Well, no.

The claim that God has revealed himself is, primarily, an historical question, which philosophy must accommodate as best it can and the doctrine of grace is part of the content of what is claimed to be a diivine revelation.

The fact of reveation can only be established by inference, not demonstration a priori

[Michael]

Michael,

Thanks for the background on the Greek fathers, a part of the literature I never have studied. As I indicated, there certainly seem to be important points of convergence between Christian and Jewish thinking, for example in Griffiths' presentation of fallenness.

Most Western Christians do not study them either, which is a pity.

Many of them were great theologians, but their real value is as witnesses to the beliefs of the early church - Of the ones I cited, Clement and Irenaeus belong to the second century, Origen to the third, so all before Constantine's Peace of the Church. Athanasius, Basil and Gregory belong to the fourth century. John Damascene belongs to the eight century and is sometimes regarded as the last of the Greek Fathers. They are also quite scattered geographically; most of them were from Alexandria, the intellectual centre of the East, but Irenaeus was from Smyrna and became bishop of Lyons in Gaul and Basil and Gregory were Cappadocians. John Damascene was Syrian.

A consensus between them makes them impressive witnesses to the common faith of the Christian church of their age and, Catholics would argue, to apostolic tradition. When one finds Athanasius and Irenaeus saying the self-same thing, in the self-same words, they may well be repeating apostolic teaching.

There, if anywhere, one might expect to find just that convergence between Jewish and Christian thinking you refer to.

[rhapsody]

The idea of the purely “natural” man, following right reason, in pursuit of his “natural end,” is a philosophical construct that suppresses the factors that are doing all the work, namely, Revelation and Grace. Its value is merely to show that Judeo-Christian morality commends itself to reason, not that “Natural Law” can function on its own, so to speak.

"Grace" and "Revelation" are precisely that: philosophical constructs.

Well, no.

The claim that God has revealed himself is, primarily, an historical question, which philosophy must accommodate as best it can and the doctrine of grace is part of the content of what is claimed to be a diivine revelation.

The fact of reveation can only be established by inference, not demonstration a priori

Seems to me you are just juggling with definitions here.

[Michael]

Seems to me you are just juggling with definitions here.

Traditionally, philosophy proceeds, either by deduction from self-evident propositions or immediate experience - indeed, one of the criticisms directed against traditional metaphysics is that all its premises are assumed and all its conclusions abstract - or by the critical examination of concepts.

Theology, as the science of revelation, takes as its subject-matter, contingent facts of history and its methods are, necessarily, different. ("Contingent," from a human perspective, that is)

I should add that what is usually referred to as "Natural Theology," which does not base itself on a supposed revelation, is, properly, a branch of metaphysics.

The proponents of Natural Law explicitly claim to base their science on unaided human reason. Now, what I believe they are doing, in most cases, is rather like a schoolboy, who has been told the answers to the questions in a maths exam and then has to produce the reasoning that supports those answers. Of course, this is not to say that the reasons they do come up with are invalid, that's as may be; just as a lawyer may come up with sound arguments in favour of the position he has been hired to support. Nor do most of them believe that it is an adequate guide to living, or that we can fulfil its precepts by our unsupported efforts, even if it were. It is in that sense that I called it a philosophical construct, abstract and hypothetical.

To say that God gave the Decalogue to Moses, true or false, is a different kind of proposition, just as "Any two sides of a triangle are together greater than the third" is a different kind of proposition to "Julius Caesar was assassinated on the Ides of March."

[rhapsody]

Traditionally, philosophy proceeds, either by deduction from self-evident propositions or immediate experience - indeed, one of the criticisms directed against traditional metaphysics is that all its premises are assumed and all its conclusions abstract - or by the critical examination of concepts.

Theology, as the science of revelation, takes as its subject-matter, contingent facts of history and its methods are, necessarily, different. ("Contingent," from a human perspective, that is)

I should add that what is usually referred to as "Natural Theology," which does not base itself on a supposed revelation, is, properly, a branch of metaphysics.

Can see that. Theology has opinions, ideas, evaluates and conditions reality in a different way than other brands of philosophy. The reason I maybe 'lump' everything in the basket of philosophy is because it is, as far as we know, the same neurophysiological engine doing the work: conceptual thought in the frontal lobes. The contents of thought may differ, the grammar is very similar. Maybe it is possible to read poetry in French, a manual of some kitchen gear in English while yelling at your spouse in Spanish but solo-rant in Russian when drunk: these utterences are all philosophy too! (To curse in German when you hit your thumb with a hammer may have a different grammar altogether though) But most of it is variations on themes that are blueprinted in the grammar that makes up the brain. So when theologians claim they are doing Almighty Different Things compared with some ranting Philosophers, to me they are merely comparing shadows.

The proponents of Natural Law explicitly claim to base their science on unaided human reason. Now, what I believe they are doing, in most cases, is rather like a schoolboy, who has been told the answers to the questions in a maths exam and then has to produce the reasoning that supports those answers. Of course, this is not to say that the reasons they do come up with are invalid, that's as may be; just as a lawyer may come up with sound arguments in favour of the position he has been hired to support. Nor do most of them believe that it is an adequate guide to living, or that we can fulfil its precepts by our unsupported efforts, even if it were. It is in that sense that I called it a philosophical construct, abstract and hypothetical.

I think Theology and Natural Law all start with the same basic premises and are informed by same sense experiences. Natural Law philosophy tries to maintain a coherent set of sense observations plus the conceptual added values attached to them that we call properties. For instance, starting witrh the visual experience of seeing a tree (brain areas in the back of the brain), followed by the conceptual tagging of the experience with the verbal "it is a tree" (frontal lobes), followed by adding the "a tree that has a/b/c/d/...........zillions of properties we attach to these objects of experience (in many different areas). A theologian can in principle easily follow this same natural track side by side the philosopher, but he allows himself the liberty to see in any or part of that total experiential track, "the hand of God" (or his Devilish counter part) for reasons that can stand on their own in isolation; as if 'picked randomly out of the blue'. A religious statement of faith can be that only everything that is green has been touched by the hand of God. All the other colors signify impurities added by Satan. One could make EM wavelengths an empirical measure of that purity or impurity. These ideas are by nature [pun intended] discontinuous with "the natural track". By losing the natural connection, they become 'super'-natural, or meta-physical if that word tastes better. It is what allows for their status.

It could be that the need to disconnect from the natural track and create a meta-physics, is still part of the natural functioning of the brain: creating oversight via meta-maps. Sort of a zoom-out mechanism. Problem is that we can only see that far into space and into the future: there is a horizon, a limit to our most 'super'-natural zoomed out or fish-eyed view on reality. Maybe the type of classical Theology you refer to does not accept that limit, and jumps off the cliffs beyond the beyondest. Personally I have little confidence in these lemmings who run en mass over the edge into the beyonder and then come back claiming that "something has been revealed" to them.

To say that God gave the Decalogue to Moses, true or false, is a different kind of proposition, just as "Any two sides of a triangle are together greater than the third" is a different kind of proposition to "Julius Caesar was assassinated on the Ides of March."

With only three little jumps, there is this internal experiment. Think of yourself as a parliament with the following representatives:

Thinker - he is the verbal talker, his tool is conceptual thought. No surprise: a very high forehead.
Smeller - he just smells things... No surprise: a very big nose
Listener - he only listens... No surprise: two big ears
Tactilist - he only knows of touch..surfaces. No surprise: a lot of skin

Many more parliamentarians thinkable of course. But they are really comprising us. For the experiemnt though those 4 are more than enough.

Assignment: to explain to each other how it is what they do. Thinker must explain to Smeller for instance how it is to think, what a thought is like. After that, Smeller must do same and explain to Thinker what smelling is like..to really make Thinker know what it is. Or imagine it maybe, at best.

Here you will notice the incompatibilty of really different neurological grammars.

It could be, that a Theologian also needs his own seat in that Parliament. But when he is doing his thing communicating it in the experiential spectrum, there is little chance the others will have any clue as to what he is "talking" about, for the exact same reasons that the others are not able to communicate their thing either. However, the classical Theologian chose the tool of Thinker to express himself. This was a big mistake. It would be like Listener putting two big noses on the side of his head and try use the language of smell to explain what it is like to hear Bach music.

[Spengler]

Here's a way to think about the problem of deficiency in nature:

Epistemology tells us that we cannot prove logically all that intuition presents to us as true, that we have an observer effect that limits our capacity to understand subatomic particles, and that the perceived physical base of reality at the subatomic level is inchoate. We know that there are different orders of infinity but we do not know how big they are (cardinality) or in what order they come (ordinality); that is the implication of independence of the Continuum Hypothesis. Therefore we cannot tell whether there is a perfect and coherent universe which we cannot fully perceive, or whether the universe itself is imperfect (subject to inconsistencies). Deficient creation is a theological presumption that assumes the ontology is parallel to the epistemology. Unheimlich, oder?

[rhapsody]

I just threw a dice: creation is perfect!

[Michael]

Rhapsody

Your example of the parliament inevitably recalls Pierce’s famous example

Suppose two men, one deaf, the other blind. One hears a man declare he means to kill another, hears the report of the pistol, and hears the victim cry; the other sees the murder done. Their sensations are affected in the highest degree with their individual peculiarities. The first information that their sensations will give them, their first inferences, will be more nearly alike, but still different; the one having, for example, the idea of a man shouting, the other of a man with a threatening aspect; but their final conclusions, the thought the remotest from sense, will be identical and free from the one-sidedness of their idiosyncrasies.

That said, I still feel you underestimate the differences between the methods of the theologian and the philosopher. Whenever we are dealing with concrete life and events, our conclusions are largely dictated by a host of considerations that it would take too much time to put forward severally and explicitly and of which we may be only vaguely conscious ourselves. We say, for instance, that a certain event is sufficiently proved by its being recorded by such-and-such an author of accurate information and good credit. But, if we ask ourselves how we know that the text to which we appeal was really written by the author in question, that he was accurately informed and that his candour and impartiality may be safely assumed – These are questions that cannot be answered without balancing very difficult considerations, one against another. That is why a flair for the correct estimation of historical evidence (for which no general rules can be given), is one of the requisites of a really great theologian. Hypatius of Ephesus’s discrediting of the authenticity of the works of Pseudo-Dionysius at the famous debate with the Monophysites before the Emperor Justinian in 532 is an excellent early example. In more modern times, the defence by Denzinger and Hefele in the 19th century of the authenticity of the seven genuine letters of Ignatius and their repudiation of the six spurious ones, is considered masterly, by patristic scholars and classicists alike.

[rhapsody]

Michael,

It could be I simply lack the source-sense from which the good parliamentarian-theologian draws his inspiration. Indeed, there are too many possibilities for all of us, we can only look through the glass darkly.

As for theologians and historians working their way differently through given data, at least the good news seems to me that competing theories are always good for truth finding.

[total issues]

You are all forgetting that all scientific “laws” are provisional, and just working models. They can be replaced at any time by completely different models which fit the data better (Kuhnian paradigm shifts). That is unsettling to the human brain, which likes archetypal stories which are eternal truths, a major factor in the bizarre persistence of religious stories, or worse still turning the science of the moment into dogma.

As for the apparently strange fact that the universe can be described suprisingly well in the form of mathematical natural law, there is too much mystery made of this. It is a by product of the weak anthropic principle : the universe is as it is because we are here to describe it, and therefore it is friendly to life. Why this is so is another matter, and neither science nor religious dogma provides a satisfactory explanation. If there were no regular physical relationships (which, therefore, can be described mathematically) the universe would be chaotic and thus inimical to life.

To curse in German when you hit your thumb with a hammer may have a different grammar altogether though

The past participle “gefickt” has to go at the end of your outburst, which somewhat limits the cathartic effect. No wonder Germans feel the occasional need to invade Poland, or when that is no longer feasible, to drive at 200 kph on the autobahn… or else use “verfickte” as an adjective.

[Spengler]

Total Issues,

Kuhn's point can be overstated. We no longer teach Ptolemy, but we do teach Euclid, even though we know Euclid describes a special case among possible geometries (this special case incorporates virtually all our quotidian experience). A thornier issue is the matter of things we shall never know because we cannot possibly know them, either because our mind is deficient (Kant) or because creation is deficient, or both. That is why the problem of the independence of Continuum Hypothesis is such a stickler.

[total issues]

Total Issues,

Kuhn's point can be overstated. We no longer teach Ptolemy, but we do teach Euclid, even though we know Euclid describes a special case among possible geometries (this special case incorporates virtually all our quotidian experience). A thornier issue is the matter of things we shall never know because we cannot possibly know them, either because our mind is deficient (Kant) or because creation is deficient, or both. That is why the problem of the independence of Continuum Hypothesis is such a stickler.

We still teach Newtonian mechanics, although we no longer hold a Newtonian world view, because it is very nearly right and the equations are simple. The point I was making is not to confuse models with eternal verities.

As for the Continuum hypothesis, that merely shows that our puny brains should not mess with infinity. The universe is probably finite anyway, and "very large" is not the same as infinite, even if we treat it as such in limiting equations.