Comparative Theology, Comparative Wisdom, and Covenantal Logic

Abstract

Rashkover explores the encounter between Frank Clooney’s approach to comparative theology and Barth’s confessional theology with an eye to their implications for Jewish-Christian relations. Building on her work in Freedom and Law: A Jewish-Christian Apologetics, she offers appreciation for Barth’s confessional approach, which in theory permits the possibility of revelatory encounter beyond the Christian community because of God’s freedom coupled with the lawful limit of that freedom. However, she argues, Barth’s critical theology needs a “covenantal repair,” a theological supplement that pays closer attention to the positive role of sanctification through the community’s living apprehension of the Word in time. This “repair” is needed not only for Christians, but for Christian-Jewish comparative exchange, so that both communities can describe how a claim about God’s revelation makes sense in divine-human conversation. She finds resources for this repair in the work of Robert Jenson, with its analysis of the “covenantal character of the Word.” She concludes that this covenantal logic of scripture “renders both Judaism and Christianity viable participants in the adventure of Clooney’s comparative learning.”