Lonely Men of Faith

Some Christians regard the thought of Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik as so anti-Christian that Christians should take no interest in it—as, indeed, many of Soloveitchik’s disciples take no interest in Christian thought. This is unfortunate. As Matthew Rose demonstrated recently in these pages (“A Rabbi for Christians,” February 2024), Soloveitchik’s account of halakhic normativity reveals important common ground between Jews and Catholics, who alike attract the charge of “legalism” in opposing the perennial antinomian temptation.

Soloveitchik’s career contains a seeming contradiction. On one hand, Soloveitchik is the man who in 1964, responding to an early draft of the Second Vatican Council’s declaration on non-Christian religions, denied even the possibility of theologically honest Jewish–Christian dialogue in his famous essay “Confrontation.” On the other hand, he is the man who in 1965 delivered the lectures that were to become his most influential essay, “The Lonely Man of Faith.” These lectures were addressed to the faculty and students of a Catholic seminary. So, as Rose points out, Soloveitchik was in fact talking theology with Christians.

In another instance of the contradiction, Soloveitchik’s warnings against the temptation of antinomianism, which has afflicted Christians since Marcion, were made to Christians with whom he was personally in contact. Surely dialogue is not possible with anybody with whom one doesn’t share a common conceptual language (indeed, this is a key argument in “Confrontation”). Jews, too, are tempted by antinomianism, so in warning Christians against the antinomian temptation, Soloveitchik indicated that he took it to be a common problem. He then showed Christians how Jews have dealt with it.

Thus the seeming contradiction of Soloveitchik’s abstract thought and personal practice. But in my view, the practical takes priority over the abstract, since Soloveitchik’s practice defines the context and purpose of his thought. The negations of “Confrontation” are superseded by the affirmations of “The Lonely Man of Faith,” rejection of dialogue is nullified by the practice of dialogue, and the apparent contradiction turns out to be none at all. Further—and though Soloveitchik himself was more influenced by Protestant thinkers such as Karl Barth and Emil Brunner than by Catholic contemporaries—it can be shown that a Catholic like Rose may appropriate Soloveitchik’s conception of halakhic normativity for a specifically Catholic conception of Christian normativity. For Catholics and Jews have similar understandings of the validity of legally structured ritual.

That the lectures that became “The Lonely Man of Faith” resonated with their initial Christian audience accords with my own experience in teaching Soloveitchik’s essay in university courses in modern Jewish thought, courses in which the enrollment has been largely Christian. One reason for this resonance is that the language employed in the essay is biblical—specifically, the language of Genesis, the beginning of what Christians call the Old Testament and Jews call the Torah. Maimonides, Soloveitchik’s foremost Jewish authority, ruled that Jews may study Torah with Christians because, like Jews, they accept the entire Hebrew Bible as the word of God.

Both Jews and Christians must grapple with the dialectical tension between what Soloveitchik called “Adam I” (as in Genesis 1) and “Adam II” (as in Genesis 2). It could be said that Adam I is man as the creature to whom God has granted dominion over nature (Soloveitchik calls him “majestic”), whereas Adam II is man as the creature with whom God is intimately involved in a covenantal relationship. Having this common biblical language enables Jews and Christians to speak together about matters of ultimate concern. Some of my Christian students have felt that Soloveitchik was speaking to them, and in their term papers they have felt that they were speaking back to him.

The Lutheran theologian George Lindbeck once said to me, “Judaism and Christianity share a common vocabulary, but sometimes they have different conceptualities.” And yet sometimes they have the same conceptualities. The tensions between Adam I (man as God’s conquering agent) and Adam II (man as God’s humble servant) are present in both Jewish and Christian religious experience, and Jews and Christians employ similar conceptualities to grapple with such tensions. Soloveitchik calls this grappling a dialectic. In a dialectic, neither pole in the tense relation between the two poles can be overcome by the other in order to resolve the tension conclusively. However, there is no such dialectic between “Confrontation” and “The Lonely Man of Faith”; the former is overcome by the latter.

Can Christians today see the supreme beauty of the law?” asks Rose. Here he invokes Paul’s treatment of “the Law,” which is “the Torah” (nomos being the Greek translation of torah used by Paul). But what did Paul affirm about “the Law”?

Like the Pharisee he was (educated by Rabban Gamaliel the Elder), Paul affirmed that the Law consists of commandments (mitsvot), given in the Mosaic Torah and explicated in rabbinic tradition (what we might call the Jewish magisterium). Further, though all commandments are considered to be from God, some commandments involve the God–man relationship, whereas others involve interhuman relationships. The commandments involving the God–man relationship consist of loving God by such practices as Sabbath observance, Passover celebration, and regular worship. (These commandments are called mitsvot ma`asiyot, or “positive commanded acts.”) And the commandments involving interhuman relationships consist of the various ways in which one is to love one’s neighbor as oneself.

Thomas Aquinas, relying heavily on Maimonides’s discussions of biblical commandments, called the commandments involving the God–man relationship “ceremonial precepts” and those involving interhuman relationships “judicial precepts.” As for Paul’s famous disparagement of “the Law,” on closer examination we find only his view that observance of the commandments (from which he did not advocate Jews should desist) does not guarantee salvation. Indeed, this is a point that some rabbis, including Soloveitchik, have themselves taught. Observance of the commandments must be based on faith. It is not to be a substitute for faith. By stressing Paul’s fight against “lawlessness,” Rose rightly argues against those we might call libertarian Christians (whether Protestant or Catholic). They are the Christians who would have Christians transcend normativity altogether.

What does “the Law” mean for Christians? Where do Christians differ from Jews, and where do they agree with Jews?

Concerning the moral commandments, most Christians would agree that in general they apply to all mankind, as the Talmud says: “If they had not been written [in the Torah], reason would have required us to write them down.” Thus Thomas Aquinas regarded the Mosaic Torah as the best embodiment of natural law. Indeed, natural law is the common site for the cooperation of Jews and Christians on almost all moral and political issues. Soloveitchik saw this as a desideratum.

Concerning the ceremonial precepts, Christians part company with Jews. But different Christians do so in different ways. Most Protestants accept the perpetuity of the basic moral precepts, but they regard the ceremonial precepts as having been totally transcended, no longer needed by Christians who have been justified by their faith in Jesus Christ. For Catholics, by contrast, the ceremonial precepts have not been transcended but transposed into the sacraments. The positive commanded acts of the Jews celebrate in one way or another the Exodus from Egypt; the sacramental acts of Catholics celebrate the birth, ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

When the early Church viewed the Christian sacraments as superseding the Jewish positive commandments, they were building on a Pharisaic opinion that when the Messiah comes, the ceremonies the Jews (and perhaps all redeemed mankind) practice will be primarily celebrations of the significant events in the life of the Messiah. According to this opinion, the difference between Christians and Jews is that Christians hold that the Messiah has already come, whereas Jews hold that the Messiah has not yet come.

The fact that Catholics have transposed the positive commandments of the Torah into the Church’s sacraments has led Catholics to structure their sacraments by means of canon law, in ways often analogous to the ways Jews have structured the commandments halakhically. As one who deals with questions of Jewish practice, I have had fascinating conversations with Catholic theologians regarding the analogies between our separate practices—that is, their similar structure—while recognizing that our practices themselves are substantially incommensurate.

This parallelism might explain the fact that both Jews and Catholics have often been accused of distorting faith by “legalism” or “ritualism.” Often these charges are made against Catholics like Rose and Jews like me by antinomians in our respective communities. It is thus valid and valuable for Catholics to consider the teachings of Soloveitchik when affirming Christian normativity, as Rose has done so ably.

David Novak is J. Richard and Dorothy Shiff Professor Emeritus of Religion, Philosophy, and Jewish Studies at the University of Toronto.

Image by Jan Voerman, public domain. Image cropped.