God as Multiple Covenanter: Toward a Jewish Theology of Abrahamic Partnerships

Abstract

God as Multiple Covenanter: Toward a Jewish Theology of Abrahamic Partnerships Yehezkel Landau Is pluralistic monotheism an oxymoron? This essay is an exercise in practical theology. It is a reflection stimulated by years of involvement in Jewish–Christian–Muslim relations. At Hartford Seminary and elsewhere, that matrix of relationships among “Abrahamic” siblings continues to be my primary theological laboratory. As a believing and practicing Jew, I have been challenged to reconcile my adherence to the Sinai Covenant, forged between God and the Children of Israel millennia ago, with my experience of holiness as embodied in the faith commitments of Christians and Muslims. Some theological questions, with very practical ramifications, have emerged in the course of my interreligious work: Could the One God, the Lord of Nature and History, the Creator of all that is Who is proclaimed as the God of Israel throughout the Hebrew Bible, have chosen to covenant with non‐Jewish faith communities, as well—not to “elect” them as substitutes or supplanters, but as spiritual equals and allies? And if so, how would a multiplicity of covenants enhance the prospects for the “messianic” transformation of history that our various traditions anticipate? At the level of basic belief, can monotheism be pluralistic, or is that an oxymoron—that is, if God is One, how can different understandings of that Oneness be valid? Must one shun the criterion of “truth” or “error” in assessing different theological claims in order to promote reconciliation among religious communities? Or, alternatively, can one retain the notion of “truth” but reconceptualize it—for example, transform it from a doctrinal assertion about God to a lived expression of devotional authenticity? Martin Jaffee has argued cogently that in all the monotheistic traditions, an inherent symbolic structure has precluded mutual validation and acceptance. In fact, he claims, the underlying tendency is toward rivalry and antagonism, given that Jews, Christians, and Muslims all see themselves as the chosen recipients of revelation and hence the carriers of a Divine mandate until the end of time, when their theology will be vindicated. Is there an alternative conception of covenantal chosenness that is not exclusivist and competitive? God's oneness and pluriform creation At the outset, before consulting the works of other contemporary Jewish theologians, I wish to outline my own understanding of how the Oneness behind and within Creation takes multiple forms. I start with the declaration that opens the Bible: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” Genesis 1:1 could have said, “In the beginning God created the cosmos” or “…all there is.” But it does not. Moreover, this initial statement does not conform to the detailed description that follows, since the heavens and the earth were created in stages, not simultaneously. Therefore, the verse must be a summary or essentialist statement, an overarching assertion meant to teach us something about the structure of creation. What I learn from Genesis 1:1 is that relationship is the key dimension within the cosmos, built into it by the Creator. The binary complementarity of “heavens” and “earth” is followed by other dualities: day and night, upper and lower waters, earth and seas, and finally male and female human beings. In each case, the distinction is a creative polarity, not a dichotomy, and no hierarchy of superiority and inferiority is implied. After all these distinctions or separations are brought into being, God creates and consecrates the Sabbath, the capstone (in the temporal dimension) of the whole enterprise of Creation and the first entity to be made holy (Gen. 2:3). As a religious Jew, I understand the Sabbath to be the vessel in time for the reconciliation of separated entities (even parents and teenage children!). Observance of Shabbat is meant to transcend the either–or dichotomies of life and, in doing so, presage the messianic age to come, when all distinctions—including the separation of Israel from the other nations—will be eradicated. As part of that redeemed reality, all of Humanity, together with everything else in Creation, will be one just as God is One. In the meantime, our lives are lived in unredeemed time—Sunday through Friday—with all of the divisions that we experience. The...