For the Sake of Heaven & Earth: The New Encounter Between Judaism & Christianity. By Irving Greenberg

Abstract

Pp. xiv, 274 , Philadelphia , The Jewish Publication Society , 2004 , £14.95, $20.00, €23.50. Irving Greenberg's For the Sake of Heaven & Earth: The New Encounter Between Judaism & Christianity, is written by the distinguished scholar, Jewish leader and Orthodox Rabbi, Irving (Yitz) Greenberg, it is a volume that represents a lifetime's study, reflection and perception on inter Jewish-Christian dialogue-relations. He comments, ‘I hope that … this book will help those who labour to overcome past enmity between the two faiths and thus open the door to cooperation and partnership for the sake of perfecting the world - the original and unfinished mission of both faiths’ (p.xi) - is this not an essentially a sociological as distinct from eschatological perspective? Jewish-Christian relations have long occupied Greenberg; transcending differences within the Jewish community and in what started as a collection of essays from his life's work he investigates what he defines as corresponding covenant communities operating towards the realisation of God's Kingdom. Greenberg's work is in two parts. Part one, entitled ‘Looking Forward’, consists of two new in-depth essays: ‘On the Road to a New Encounter Between Judaism and Christianity: A Personal Journey’ (p.3f) and ‘Covenantal Partners in a Post-modern World’ (p.49f). The first of these essays opens with Greenberg considering the separation of Judaism and the early proto-Church, which leads into Greenberg recounting his own personal journey and his confrontation with the holocaust, further how he saw Christianity's problems as his own, which was the beginning of dialogue on covenant, freedom and pluralism, which led to a rethinking of theology and community: covenantal pluralisms, covenants in partnership. The second of these essays, ‘Covenantal Partners in a Post-modern World’, opens with a consideration of creation, redemption and the good life, which leads into Greenberg's consideration of covenant - the process of Tikun Olam, the Noahide covenant, the covenant with Abraham and Sarah, and the covenantal process in history. Inevitably Greenberg looks at Judaism and Christianity in confrontation: the birth and separation of a new covenant, and the emergence of Rabbinic Judaism and Christianity, resulting in conflict and exile; he then looks at how the two encounter modernity. Greenberg then faces the holocaust: towards a new understanding, Judaism and Christianity in partnership, which concludes with a consideration of how both communities wrestle with God and their differences. Part two, entitled ‘Looking Back’, consists of seven previously published essays/articles, which - arranged chronologically - chart Greenberg's developing understanding and public pronouncements, so to speak, on Judaism and Christianity, inter Jewish-Christian relations: first, ‘The New Encounter of Judaism and Christianity’ (from Barat Review, vol. 3 no. 2, 1967); second, ‘New Revelations and New Patterns’ (from Journal of Ecumenical Studies, vol. 16, no. 2, Spring 1979); third, ‘Toward an Organic Model of the Relationship’ (from Twenty Years of Jewish/Catholic Relations, eds. Eugene Fisher, James Rudin & Marc Tanenbaum, NY: Paulist Press, 1986); fourth, ‘The Respective Roles of the Two Faiths in the Strategy of Redemption’ (from Visions Of The Other: Jewish and Christian Theologians Assess the Dialogue, ed. Eugene J. Fisher, NY: Paulist Press, 1994); fifth, ‘Covenantal Pluralism’ (from, Journal of Ecumenical Studies, vol. 34, no. 3, Summer 1997); sixth, ‘Pluralism and Partnership’ (from Unity without Uniformity: The Challenge of Pluralism, Martin Buber House Publication No. 26, International Council of Christians and Jews, Spring 1999); seventh, ‘Covenants of Redemption’ (from, Christianity in Jewish Terms, eds. Tikva Frymer-Kensky, David Novak, Peter Ochs, David Fox Sandmel and Michael A. Signer, Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2000). The work concludes with a section of essays/responses by James Carroll, David Novak, Michael Novak, Mary C. Boys, and Krister Stendahl. Greenberg's work is a volume of essays representing a lifetime's experience of one rabbi/scholar in attempting reconciliation between Christians and Jews. Greenberg is clearly a religionist, not a theologian or philosopher: his only foray into dogmatics is a brief wrestle with how to dismiss the incarnation and resurrection and thereby to regard Christianity as something of a Schleiermachian pseudo-psychological off-shoot from Judaism (p. 66–67). Methodologically Greenberg concentrates on inter Jewish-Christian relations, conceding no points of doctrine with Christians, so as a volume about religion it essentially works with a post-modernist understanding of the relativity of truth in that it ring-fences on the one hand orthodox Jewish non-Christian doctrine-beliefs and on the other orthodox Christian doctrine-beliefs and refuses to wrestle with these doctrinal differences. This notwithstanding and as a volume charting rapprochement of sorts between Jews and Christians during the second half of the twentieth-century in the West, and representing a life-time's work, this is a valuable compilation.