of the argument put forward in this book, contemporary remedies for traditional Christian anti-Judaism and supersessionism are often constructed and prescribed on the basis of underlying assumptions of cultural anti-Judaism and supersessionism. (I will argue that these latter assumptions actually entail less self-critical resistance to the rhetorical and material damages of both Christian and cultural antisemitism.)
And so it happened that I found myself wearing through the soles of my good liberal, progressive, theological shoes. My own feet were starting to smart, and it was becoming clear that I was not, in fact, doing my neighbors—in all their concrete complexity and multiplicity—much good either. I could only continue to think that I was by repressing the question, Which neighbor? How, then, to honor the desire for an ethically viable Christian faith in relation to Jews and Judaism—expressing a commitment of both love and justice toward the neighbor (and the neighbor’s neighbor)—that was able to move beyond the ethically problematic self-contradictions of simply leaving room for and in response to the religious other? The surprising possibility I stumbled upon and attempt to communicate in this book: one honors that ethical desire by questioning it, by questioning the very desire, together with its assumptions, for an ethically viable Christian faith. That is, by revisiting the assumption that the ethical is the measure of faith—the distinctively modern assumption that, in relation to faith, the ethical is the highest.
Finally, then, a few words regarding the last mile, as it were, of the journey I have been recounting here.
It is worth noting the grammatical ordering of the key formulas I employ in the book—“risking proclamation, respecting difference,” and “appeal and contestation” (I borrow the latter from Alphonso Lingis). The ordering: appeal “first,” contestation “second.” Inasmuch as my own theological thinking has again, more recently, been impacted by Barth, I now understand this grammatical ordering to be not merely incidental, but to resonate with a critical theological logic. To anticipate the unfolding of the argument in the later chapters, it is as appeal to what I will call the “particular-elsewhere” of Jesus Christ that Christian witness finds itself in contestation with the indigenous self-understanding and self-definition of its various neighbors, Jewish and otherwise (as well as with its own indigenous self-understanding). This ordering, according to my argument, should not be reversible. The Church should not contest the neighbor for contestation’s sake, or because it believes, according to its own lights, that this is the proper ethical course of action. Following Barth, I believe that this latter assumption of reversibility inevitably and paradoxically devolves into its own ethically problematic form of imperialistic discourse. I argue that the only ethical action (contestation) that does not so devolve is the ethical action that is a necessary consequence of the response of faith (appeal) to divine action and promise.
As I have said, I attempt to signify this same irreversible theological logic with the formula, “risking proclamation, respecting difference.” Again, while I now understand the irreversibility of this phrasing to express the theological position, and its ethical possibilities, for which I am arguing, the reader may be interested to know that the title of my dissertation was precisely the reverse of this formula: “respecting difference, risking proclamation.” This phrasing (like the reverse of “appeal and contestation”) seems to suggest that it is for the sake of respecting difference—i.e., of being appropriately ethical (taken as such and in its own right)—that the Church should engage in the risks of proclamation. It was only in revising the dissertation for publication, which involved me in renewed and ultimately deeper engagement with both Barth and Kierkegaard, that I realized its argument still moved wholly within the key assumption of the “modern ethical desire” that it was attempting to question and critique; the assumption that the ethical is the highest in relation to religious faith. Consequently, my so-called postmodern reading of Barth—bringing out the resonance of his theology with postmodern all-stars such as Derrida and Levinas—remained, in fact, thoroughly modern (as does, I am more and more convinced, much of what passes for postmodern theology today).
The dawning of this realization with respect to my dissertation required that my initial plans for revision be changed to a thorough, substantive re-working of my position and of the text’s argument for it. Needless to say, it has been a long last mile. And while there are many imperfections and oversights that still remain in the book you are holding, I am content enough with the clarity and attempted fairness of the argument to submit it to your good judgment and await the inevitable surprises and discoveries of continuing, engaged, and critical conversation.
Chris Boesel
acknowledgments
I would like to thank my Deans and co-workers at Drew Theological School and Graduate Division of Religion for creating a culture of affirmation and support for the rigors of theological thought, discussion, and research. I owe a special debt to Drew colleagues, Morris Davis, Melanie and Eric Johnson-DeBaufre, and Catherine Keller, as well as Ted Smith at Vanderbilt, for reading and commenting on various chapters throughout the writing process. My very good friends and fellow pilgrims, Brett Larson, Kyle Halverson, and Russell Rathbun, also provided valuable feedback on the argument and its presentation, as did two of my nieces, Lauren and Kelli Boesel, bright young minds with promising futures. I received significant help from research assistants Sang Min Han, Troy Mack, and especially Dhawn Martin; Brandee Mimitzraiem helped me sharpen the argument while doing the lion’s share of work in preparing the manuscript for publication, help and work for which I am immensely grateful and without which the book would never have found its way to the publisher. All limitations and oversights that remain in the published text are, of course, my own responsibility.
part i
An Introduction: The Problem and Its Context
“The ethical expression for what Abraham did is that he was willing to murder Isaac.”
—Johannes de Silentio (Kierkegaard)
“Is Judea, then, the Teutons’ Fatherland?”
—Hegel
chapter 1
Is the Good News of Jesus Christ Bad News for the Jewish Neighbor?
The Problem: Christian Faith and the “Murder of Jews”
In this book I take up the central question of theological work struggling to come to terms with the history of Jewish suffering within Christendom and the West more generally. Is the Christian proclamation of Jesus Christ as Good News for the world essentially bad news for Jews? In his groundbreaking confrontation with the theological significance of the Holocaust, Jewish theologian Richard Rubenstein directs a pointed question to the Church. When the overwhelming moral failure and, to a significant extent, culpability of the Church with respect to the Holocaust is honestly confronted and placed within the context of the long history of Jewish suffering within Christendom, are we not driven to ask if there is “something in the logic of Christian theology that, when pushed to a metaphysical extreme, justifies, if it does not incite to, the murder of Jews”?1 Does not the evidence of history suggest that a seed of violence toward Jews is planted so deeply within the soil of Christian theology and faith that they inherently entail a breach of ethical responsibility to Jews?
Hard sayings. And they have not gone unheeded. A growing number of Christian theologians have taken Rubenstein’s words to heart and, in varying ways, have made his question their own. In his effort to come to terms with the significance of Auschwitz for the Church and its theology, Johann Baptist Metz asks if Jewish suffering at the hands of the Church is an “unavoidable consequence” of traditional Christian theology.2 In a similar effort to fathom the sources of Christian “fratricide” of the Jewish “elder brother,” Rosemary Radford Ruether puts forward her own form of the question: “Is it possible to say ‘Jesus is Messiah’ without, implicitly or explicitly, saying at the same time ‘and the Jews be damned?’”3
Not