Abraham Heschel and the Phenomenon of Piety by Joseph Harp Britton (review)

Abstract

ABRAHAM HESCHEL AND THE PHENOMENON OF PIETY By Joseph Harp Britton. London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark Theology, 2013. xiv + 308 pp.Abraham Heschel and the Phenomenon of provides a comprehensive analysis of virtually all the writings of Abraham Joshua Heschel, both within the context of Judaism and in relation to Christian and philosophical approaches to ethics and spirituality. Britton first completed this work as a doctoral thesis (in English) at the Institut Catholique in Paris, and the revised book exemplifies the methodological rigor of a European thesis. The revised book is clear, analytically astute, even elegant (if a bit prolix), and generous in acknowledging writings on Heschel from France, Italy, Germany, and of course Israel and North America. I have watched Heschel scholarship develop for over 40 years and Britton omits few if any scholarly responses. Comparing Heschel with leading Christian thinkers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and today, Britton's book defines Heschel's central goal: to foster piety in his readers and to achieve a radical awareness of the divine presence in human life.The book is divided into three parts, each one placing specific works of Heschel into a proper historical and theological context. The author makes his Christian perspective explicit, but his task is comparative, not apologetic: the first priority is to account for the depth and breadth of Heschel's interpretation of classical Judaic sources and second, to explore Heschel's categories in relation to other thinkers, the most prominent being Kant, Husserl, Heidegger, Dilthey, Scheler, Schleiermacher, Shestov, and Levinas. Britton brings in numerous other theologians, most of them Christian, to place Heschel among modern and postmodern approaches, explaining their parallels and differences, and thus demonstrating once and for all Heschel's deserved status as a leading religious philosopher.At the same time, this academic book is itself an act of piety. Britton ratifies Heschel's reliance on living models of piety for his primary data, as Britton's opening sentence attests: For persons engaged in a pastoral ministry, a frequently evoked truism is that when one becomes overwhelmed by the institutional aspects of such a vocation... the quickest way to re-establish a sense of priority and perspective is to make calls upon the faithful (xi).That being said, there is nothing cloying injoseph Britton's discourse. Here, in broad outline, is the book's organization. Part 1, The Nature of Piety, begins with a long quotation from Heschel's germinal essay, An Analysis of Piety (1942), as he traces various definitions, positive and pejorative, through the Bible, classical antiquity, and contemporary usage. Part 2, Eteschel's Intellectual Foundations, elaborates upon suggestions made in Kaplan and Dresner's intellectual and cultural biography of Heschel (Prophetic Witness, 1998). Britton substantiates the preponderant influence of Dilthey on Heschel through his teachers, themselves students of Dilthey, such as Ernst Cassirer, David Koigen, and Martin Buber. Heschel's focus on the human being clearly emerges from the project of a philosophical anthropology of that generation. In that regard, Britton's comparison of Heschel and Heidegger is especially valuable, the most complete to date. (The Kierkegaardian Lev Shestov is a more appropriate parallel to Heschel.) Chapter 3, The Range of Heschel's Theology, develops an amazingly complete survey of the critical literature, marking a new era in Heschel studies.Nor does Britton neglect detailed analyses of important topics. A prime example is chapter 5, Polarity and Piety, that concludes part 2, validating Heschel as a theologian. Britton's interpretation of Heschel's practice and theory of what Rothschild called scissor concepts is perhaps his most valuable conceptual breakthrough. Heschel's radical theology indeed derives from a tension of opposites, provoking opposition from halakhacentered definitions of normative Judaism. …