49 - The Role of Dogma in Judaism

The Role of Dogma in Judaism

By David Novak

"Judaism regulates action more strictly than it does the formulation and expression of thought. Action is the immediate subject of communal norms, whereas thought, although formulated in a common language, is still more in the domain of individual insight. This does not mean that one can affirm or deny anything one chooses and still remain part of the traditional Jewish community."

THE greatest Jewish theologian of this century, to my mind, was the late Franz Rosenzweig who always had the gift of uttering multa in parvu. He once noted that Judaism has dogmas but no dogmatics.¹ What he meant was that although Judaism certainly affirms a number of truths-what one would call official doctrines or dogmas-these affirmations are not ordered in their own independent system which itself has the collective authority of its parts. Of course, various Jewish theologians, usually under the influence of some philosophical system, have tried to construct a dogmatics of Judaism.² But none of these "dogmatics" would be termed a Summa Theologiae Iudaicae or Die Synagogliche Dogmatik in the sense that similar terms have been used in the history of Christian theology. All of these efforts, as impressive as some of them have been, could be essentially characterized as individual schernatizations of traditional Jewish teaching nothing more.³

I

Rosenzweig's remark, which I believe is correct, is a rejection of two other views of the role of dogma and dogmatics in Judaism. On the one

David Novak is the Rabbi of Congregation Darchay Noam in Far Rockaway, New York and Adjunct Professor of Philosophy at Baruch College of the City University of New York. His book, Jewish-Christian Dialogue: A Jewish Justification, is to be published in the fall by Oxford University Press.

¹ Kleinere Schriften (Berlin, 1937), "Das Judenthum hat namlich Dogmen, aber keine Dogmatik," p. 31. See Paul Ricoeur, History and Truth, trans. C. A. Kebeley (Evanston, Ill., 1965), p. 179.

² See M. M. Kellner, Dogma in Medieval Jewish Thought (Oxford, 1986); also, Solomon Schechter, Studies in Judaism (New York, 1896), 1:146ff.

³ These efforts are precisely what Karl Barth termed "systematic theology," in distinction from Kirchliche Dogmatik, viz., "an edifice of thought, constructed on certain fundamental conceptions which are selected in accordance with a certain philosophy by a method which corresponds to these conceptions." Dogmatics in Outline (New York, 1959), p. 5.

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hand, it rejects a view shared by some Orthodox and many secular Jews (ironically enough) that Judaism is only a system of behavior, "revealed legislation" in the famous phrase of the Enlightenment Jewish philosopher, Moses Mendelssohn.⁴ They do differ, nevertheless, on the specific question of how much behavior is necessarily Jewish (the Orthodox insisting on both ritual and ethics; the secularists emphasizing ethics and subordinating ritual to it, if not virtually eliminating it altogether).⁵ My late revered teacher, Abraham Joshua Heschel, dubbed this approach "religious behaviorism," the term being chosen both for its denotation and its pejorative connotation.⁶ On the other hand, Rosenzweig is rejecting a view held by most liberal Jews, namely, that Judaism as a system is to be found in its "teaching" (Lehre) rather than in its law. Indeed, Rosenzweig's essay was written as a critique of "apologetic thinking," specifically as found in Leo Baeck's influential statement of liberal theology, Das Wesen des Judenthums.⁷

Clearly, dogmas are not just propositions but laws, in the sense that they are propositions-to-be-affirmed. Rosenzweig's prime example is the Jewish prayerbook, the Siddur, the liturgical order, whose structure and content are dealt with by Halakhah (Jewish law) with the same meticulous care in dealing with the keeping of the Sabbath or the payment of debts or any other area of human action. Following Rosenzweig, it would seem that the liberal error is to attempt to construct a Jewish dogmatics outside the Law; and the error of the Orthodox and secularist "behaviorists" is to attempt to construct a Jewish dogmatics without dogmas.

One might conclude that Judaism does have a systematic structure or "dogmatics," since the Halakhah is a structure of the commandments and the awareness that the Law requires certain truths to be affirmed as dogmas and their denials be rejected as heresies. This would seem to suggest, therefore, that dogmas are a subset of Halakhah. To be sure, Maimonides did begin his great code of the Law, Mishneh Torah, with a major dogmatic treatise, Hilkhot Yesoday Ha-Torah ("the laws pertaining to the foundations of the Torah"). But even Maimonides' dogmatics never achieved the authoritative force that the more practical aspects of his halakhic magnum opus did. Moreover, none of his halakhic successors resumed or initiated any such grand dogmatic project.

Most of the great masters of Halakhah after Maimonides were not dogmaticians or even theologians in the strict sense. They confined their intellectual attention to writing responsa or commentaries. Their occa-

⁴ Jerusalem, trans. A. Arkush (London, 1983), p. 97.

⁵ For a secularist treatment of the primacy of ethics in Jewish teaching (to be distinguished from the liberal assertion of the same point, made on theological grounds), see Ahad Ha'Am, Selected Essays (Philadelphia, 1912), pp. 125ff.

⁶ God in Search of Man (New York, 1955), pp. 320ff.

⁷ Rosenzweig's essay was written in 1923, The final and greatly expanded version of Baeck's work came out in 1922. The original version came out in 1905 as a Jewish response to Adolf von Harnack's Das Wesen des Christenthums. See The Essence of Judaism (London, 1936), esp., pp. 59ff., 261ff.

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sional forays into theology were usually homiletical. This does not mean that theological issues did not interest them or enter into their work of responding and commenting, but they were dealt with more as an accompaniment to the business of the Law than as an independent discipline.⁸ The greatest project of Jewish theology after Maimonides was the Kabbalah, especially the Zohar and the works it inspired. But it was developed for the most part by thinkers who were not distinguished as masters of the Law. And even when masters of the Law were also kabbalistic theologians, they managed to keep the two disciplines separate and distinct.⁹ Furthermore, Kabbalah, like the theological system of Maimonides, never achieved the status of classical, that is, rabbinic, dogma. Indeed, there have been pro- and anti-kabbalists until this very day, both of whom have been considered very much legitimate members of the traditional Jewish community but subordinate to the Law.¹⁰ The same, mutatis mutandis, could be said of pro- and anti-Maimonists.¹¹

Traditionalist Jewish thinkers would regard this as both a correct assessment of Judaism and a good thing about Judaism as well. For it means that Judaism regulates action more strictly than it does the formulation and expression of thought. Action is the immediate subject of communal norms, whereas thought, although formulated in a common language, is still more in the domain of individual insight. This does not mean that one can affirm or deny anything one chooses and still remain part of the traditional Jewish community. But, the limitations are more negative limits (perata) than first principles (archai) in the Aristotelian sense.¹² Thus, for example, Baruch Spinoza, the most famous Jewish heretic in the modern sense of "nonbeliever," was excommunicated by the rabbinical authorities of Amsterdam because his expressed thoughts explicitly denied traditional Jewish practice. This was practically manifested by the fact that Spinoza himself had abandoned that very religious practice to such an extent that he no longer even lived among Jews when he was finally excommunicated. Had Spinoza remained in the Jewish community and been more pious (at least in public), and had he not so directly challenged the dogmas mandated by the Law, the rabbis of Amsterdam could have probably tolerated him as a member of the normative community.¹³

⁸ See Louis Jacobs, Theology in the Responsa (London and Boston, 1975).

⁹ See R. J. Z. Werblowsky, Joseph Karo: Lawyer and Mystic (Philadelphia, 1980), pp. 289ff.

¹⁰ For the anti-mystical views of the founder of modern neo-orthodoxy, see Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, The Nineteen Letters of Ben Uziel (New York, 1942), p. 187.

¹¹ For a contemporary anti-Maimonidean Orthodox theology, see Michael Wyschogrod, The Body of Faith: Judaism As Corporeal Election (New York, 1983), esp. pp. xiv-xv.

¹² Note Aristotle, Metaphysics, 1022al0: "The principle (arche) is a sort of limit (peras), but not every limit is a principle." For the notion that a positive assertion of a dogma about God in Scripture or tradition functions negatively for theology, see Maimonides, Guide of the Perplexed, 1.58; also, Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae 1, q. 3, prol.

¹³ Spinoza's own existential removal from the Jewish community is, no doubt, expressed in his definition of religion as quod viri privati officium est (Tractatus Politicus, 3.10) See Leo Strauss, Spinoza's Critique of Religion (New York, 1965), pp. 164-65.

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The emphasis on action over thought is one that finds instant sympathy in the modern world in which even traditionalist theologians must speak and write. It seems to be consistent with democratic notions about freedom of opinion. It also finds similar sympathy with those desiring the political climate most conducive to a philosophically receptive culture, a desire going back to the archetypal philosopher, Socrates. It will be recalled that Socrates was willing to accept communal authority in the practical realm while at the same time insisting upon freedom in the theoretical realm.¹⁴

The question before us is not how Judaism formulates dogmas. The dogmas mandated by the Halakhah-such as the transcendence of God, divine creativity, providence, judgment, human freedom of choice, the election of Israel, the revelation of the Torah, and the eschatology of the advent of the Messiah and the resurrection of the dead and the world-to-come-all have already been formulated in the classical rabbinic sources and canonized in the traditional liturgy. That they require continued explication and that this explication has wide latitude, few would deny. But there does not seem to be room for any genuine innovation here in traditional Judaism. At this level, radical innovation would fundamentally sever the traditio of the Tradition.¹⁵

The real question is how the authoritative structure of the Halakhah can be correlated with theological speculation. And they are indeed correlated, if for no other reason than that we are commanded by the Torah to love the Lord God with all our powers: practical, emotional, and intellectual.¹⁶ Furthermore, this is demonstrated by the fact that in the formative rabbinic period, the greatest masters of the Law were also great masters of theological speculation, Aggadah, and that each pursuit informed the other on many key issues.¹⁷

At the present time, there appear to be three correlations of Halakhah and theology in the traditionalist Jewish world, a world defined by acceptance of the full authority of the Law, irrespective of political groupings in Jewry. Let us briefly outline the first two, stipulate why they seem inadequate, and then explicate more fully the third correlation.

II

The first correlation is that of undoubtedly the most influential traditionalist theologian today, Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik. In his

¹⁴ See Apology, 29D and Crito, 54C. For the rejection of this political freedom in Plato's political philosophy, see Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, 5th ed. rev. (Princeton, 1966), 1:86ff.

¹⁵ For a fundamental reinterpretation of the rabbinic dogma of the resurrection of the dead, see Maimonides, Mishneh Torah: Hilkhot Teshubah, 3.6. Cf. Mishnah: Sanhedrin 10. I and Babylonian Talmud (hereafter "B."): Sanhedrin 90b.

¹⁶ In Hellenistic Jewish tradition, be-khol m'odekha ("with all your might"-Deut. 6:5) is sometimes seen as dianoia (LXX according to Codex Vaticanus; see Philo, De Opficio Mundi, 60. 146; Mark 12:30 and parallels). In rabbinic tradition, amor Dei intellectualis is included in the heart. See Mishnah: Berakhot 9.5 and B. Berakhot 5a.

¹⁷ See David Novak, Law and Theology in Judaism, vol. I (New York, 1974).

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seminal 1944 essay, Halakhic Man (only recently translated from the original Hebrew into English), Soloveitchik posits a thesis in which Halakhah is Jewish theology when properly understood as an unified system.¹⁸ For Soloveitchik, Halakhah is what God reveals as the true structure of the world sub specie aeternitatis. The theoretical task is to grasp the intelligibility inherent in this eternal view of the world, in the sense of pure mathematics. The practical task is to direct this intelligibility to the problems of the world at hand, in the sense of applied mathematics. Soloveitchik's great appeal to many thoughtful traditionalist Jews is largely the result of the clarity and consistency of his basic thesis, the philosophical sophistication he seems to employ, and the fruitful hermeneutic it has given him in explicating many classical Jewish texts in his long career as a most compelling teacher. The Achilles heel of this approach, however, is history. Not only is it ahistorical in the sense that many premodern theologies were ahistorical or " prehistorical," it is antihistorical. As such, it can be seriously faulted both by internal and external criteria.

In terms of internal criteria, namely, Halakhah itself, the facts show a decidedly nonmathematical type of system, far more akin to one of precedent, like English Common Law, than the legal systems of the Roman codes, which strove to be deductively constructed more geometrico.¹⁹ In other words, the recognition of historical development is one which Halakhah itself makes; it is not the imposition of modern critical scholars, although external conditions certainly made the explication of the historicity of Judaism a more pressing need.²⁰

In terms of external criteria, one must theologize within a wider cultural context if one is to speak to Jews who have been exposed to it and who inevitably speak its language. Soloveitchik clearly recognizes his extensive use of neo-Kantian philosophy, especially its philosophy of science and mathematics. And it is worth noting that those Orthodox Jews who have rejected all contact with non-Jewish thought as heresy breeding have rejected Soloveitchik with particular vehemence.²¹

If one acknowledges the wider cultural context in which one theologizes, one cannot select one part of it and reject others without giving theology a decidedly arbitrary cast. Soloveitchik, who has indeed dismissed (disingenuously, I believe) attempts to deal with Halakhah and the rest of Judaism historically, seems to be, on the one hand, adopting a modern language (taken in the Wittgensteinian sense of a

¹⁸ Eng. trans. L. Kaplan (Philadelphia, 1983). See pp. 55ff.

¹⁹ It is interesting to note that one of the greatest medieval halakhists, Nahmanides, whom Soloveitchik himself often quotes, cautions that "everyone who studies our Talmud knows that in this type of wisdom there is no clear proof as in geometric calculations." Quoted in I. Twersky, Introduction to the Code of Maimonides (Mishneh Torah) (New Haven, 1980), p. 168, n. 204.

²⁰ See David-Novak, Halakhah in a Theological Dimension (Chico, Calif., 1985).

²¹ See D. Singer and M. Sokol, "Joseph Soloveitchik: Lonely Man of Faith," Modern Judaism 2 (October, 1982) 3, p. 228.

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"language game") and, on the other hand, arbitrarily eliminating some of its most basic vocabulary and conceptuality. Such elimination a priori is a very different procedure from theologically critical reworking and appropriating material from the external culture.²² All of this creates a major credibility problem for Soloveitchik's theology.²³

The same antihistorical tendency, although here it is more implicit, characterizes the approach of Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz, one of the most committed kabbalists today (as distinguished from historians of Kabbalah like the late Gershom Scholem). Steinsaltz, best known as a modern commentator on the Talmud, has also presented a modern restatement of kabbalistic theology, The Thirteen Petalled Rose.²⁴ In this work, he has attempted to reformulate the basic kabbalistic doctrine that the Torah is an elaborate and systematic corpus symbolicum of the divine life itself, even in those passages where the Torah seems to be concerned with rather mundane matters.²⁵ In other words, whereas for Soloveitchik theology is Halakhah, for Steinsaltz Halakhah is theology, if essentially conceived of as Gotteslehre (namely, theo-logy in its original sense). Like Soloveitchik, Steinsaltz skillfully uses the language of modern science and mathematics, in his case the language of atomic physics. Needless to say, history qua development and change a posteriori cannot play any role in this theology-and it does not. Along these lines, I do not think it at all accidental that when the modern Jewish historical approach known as die Wissenschaft des Judenthums was being formulated and applied in the nineteenth century, its most vehement opponents were the Hasidic masters of Eastern Europe, whose theology was so heavily kabbalistic.²⁶

There seems little doubt that no Jewish theology can eliminate the component of historical development and still speak in any modern language. Nevertheless, without some limitation of the role of historical descriptiveness in Jewish discourse, it would seem that all we have left is historicism, whose inherent relativism is deadly for theology (and for the Law). It is deadly because theology must deal with truths-to-be affirmed.²⁷ If history is concerned with truth wie es eigentlich gewesen (or, better, wie es eigentlich geworden),²⁸ theology is concerned with truth as normative, or as we might say continuing the German nomenclature,

²² See Paul Tillich, Theology of Culture (Oxford, 1959), pp. 40ff.

²³ See "Lonely Man of Faith," Tradition 7 (Summer, 1965) 2, p. 9.

²⁴ Trans. Y. Hanegbi (New York, 1980), esp., pp. 87ff.

²⁵ See Gershorn Scholem, On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism (New York, 1969), pp. 32ff.

²⁶See R. Mahler, Hasidism and the Jewish Enlightenment (Philadelphia, 1985), pp.47-53.

²⁷See W. F. Albright, From the Stone Age to Christianity, 2nd ed. (Garden City, N.Y., 1957), pp. 82ff. See Y. H. Yerushalmi, Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory (Seattle, 1982), pp. 87ff, for a reflection on the inadequacy of historicism for Jewish existence by a leading contemporary Jewish historian.

²⁸ The implicit imperative in the gerund form is used in the sense that Thomas Aquinas used it in defining the first principle of practical reason as bonum est faciendum (Summa Theologiae, 1-2, q. 94, a. 2).

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clature, wie es eigentlich sein soll. In other words, theology must in some way speak with some conviction about the word of God. That normative affirmation itself presupposes finitude in the sense that a finite number of truths are to be affirmed and all other competing affirmations are to be denied as false.²⁹ Since theology is normative not just empirical, its choice of affirmations is not tentative in the sense of being refutable by as yet unknown data. This does not mean that theological statements are not correctable. Theologians are not prophets.³⁰ Correctability is based on reinterpretation, not experimentation.

History, conversely, when striving to approximate what is believed to be the certitude of the natural sciences by becoming a "social science," seems to presuppose infinity. There seems to be an infinite number of possible historical data on the horizon. As such, all historical affirmations are only tentative empirical descriptions, subject to immediate revision based on any new data not yet known or not yet properly considered. When a historical approach to theology is adopted, we seem to have the following scenario. A theologian says, "Judaism affirms w," whereupon a historian counters, "but at time x, y affirmed z (z being the opposite of w)." The historian's counterpoint seems to entail the assumption that the only authoritative statements in theology must be statable in the universal propositions of deductive logic, that is, "all a is b." Of course, one is precluded from making any such statement because it can only be proposed a priori and historians (pace Spengler, Toynbee, et al.) can only speak a posteriori. Following this view, theology is impossible because one cannot even speak of "Judaism" as a coherent essence but only of "Judaisms."

This type of historicist reasoning strove to approximate the certitude of the natural sciences and assumed that its criterion of truth is verifiability.³¹ In this view of science, propositions depict empirically accessible reality either correctly or incorrectly. It is the empiricist reworking of the old medieval formula, veritas est adequaetio intellectus ad rem.³² An experiment is supposed to prove, that is, demonstrate, whether any such scientific depiction is correct or incorrect. It is correct if it covers all the data; it is incorrect if it does not. Logically, if not chronologically, the theory always generalizes from the data; thus verifiability and inductive reasoning are two sides of the same intellectual coin. The data include the theory and can instantly destroy it in the same way the infinite includes the finite and obliterates it in Hegelian

²⁹ See Martin Heidegger, Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics (Bloomington and London, 1962), p. 223.

³⁰ For the difference between rabbinic and prophetic authority, see Maimonides, Mishneh Torah: Hilkhot Mamrim, 1.3.

³¹ For the failure of the historicist attempt to approximate natural science, see Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue (Notre Dame, 1981), pp. 83ff.

³² See Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 2.1, 2.12. Cf. Martin Heidegger, "On the Essence of Truth," in Heidegger: Basic Writings, ed. D. Krell (New York, 1977), pp.118-122.

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Aufhebung.³³ It is, thus, understandable why this view of truth, best known as logical positivism, could not tolerate metaphysics, ethics, or theology because the truth they purport to express is clearly not verifiable in this narrowly empiricist sense. Like all positivisms, this one, too, claimed to be employing Ockham's razor. It is one thing when that razor cuts off redundant cultural bulk; it is quite another when it severs the cultural jugular vein leaving us to bleed a nihilistic death.³⁴

III

When one looks at the work of Karl Popper in the philosophy of science, it becomes apparent, as he himself has not tired of emphasizing in always polemically charged writings, that this view of truth is greatly flawed. It simply is not what the scientific community does in its work, work which it must be admitted (however grudgingly by theologians and all other non-scientists) is the most impressive intellectual achievement of the modern world. As Popper has convincingly pointed out, the criterion of scientific truth is not verifiability but falsifiability. The difference is crucial.

Scientific theories are not verifiable in the sense of direct correspondence to data per se. This means that a scientific model is not a generalization, not even a generalization by anticipation. It is, rather, an intellectual construct (hence, mathematically conceived) a priori, which attempts to solve a problem or group of problems facing the community of scientific discourse. Naturally, the model must pertain to the data that are involved in the particular discursive problem at hand. The model would be inadequate as a solution to the problem at hand if it could not do as much as constitute the data in its conceptuality. And, if the very data so constituted by the model a priori turn out to contradict what the model necessarily asserts, then the model has been thereby falsified.³⁵ Verifiability presupposes an infinite range of data on the horizon, whereas falsifiability presupposes a finite, temporally bound, selected range of data at hand. And that finitude is due to the necessarily selective nature of any range of human discourse within time. It can only effectively handle those questions which bother it.³⁶ This discursive, social element is the crucial mediating factor here between the model proposed by the individual scientist and the data he or she is attempting to explain. Finally, since logical positivism and historicism are linked by their common reliance on the verifiability theory of truth, Popper rejected the latter with the same vehemence that he rejected the former

³³ See Phenomenology of Spirit (Oxford, 1977), pp. 100-102.

³⁴ See Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History (Chicago, 1953), pp. ff.

³⁵ Popper Selections, ed. D. Miller (Princeton, 1985), esp., pp. 133ff. See, also W. V. Quine, From A Logical Point of View, 2nd rev. ed. (New York, 1961), pp. 37ff.

³⁶ Popper writes that "science starts from problems and not from observations" (ibid., p. 179).

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(actually with more, since he saw historicism at the heart of a number of modern political evils).³⁷ "

Following Popper's lead, Thomas Kuhn has shown how the change in basic scientific orientations ("paradigms" as he calls them) is less due to external empirical factors than to internal discursive factors.³⁸ Thus, there is now a three point relation between the scientist, the community of scientific discourse, and the data at hand. For positivists and idealists, conversely, there is only a two point relation. For positivists, the mind of the thinker essentially follows the infinite external world; for idealists, the external world is projected from the infinite mind of the thinker.³⁹ And both have a marked tendency to see the world of social discourse as being essentially epiphenomenal. Furthermore, if history aspires to the intelligence of the natural sciences, and if the current philosophical estimation of the natural sciences now recognizes their true context to be in purposive (that is, problem-solving) human discourse, then history becomes more of an appreciation of still developing human discourse, in Michael Polanyi's sense of being "personal knowledge."⁴⁰

It would seem that Dilthey's uniquely nineteenth century demarcation between the methods of Naturwissenschaften and Geisteswissenschaften is no longer valid. Therefore, history and even the natural sciences are now closer to what theology has always been, namely, the study of the discourse of a particular living community in the present, moving into the future, and appropriating as much of its past as the problematics of this movement require. They are distinguished more by their respective subject matters and less by their respective methodologies. All of them have a normative thrust, although theology's normative thrust is much more explicit. And it is this more explicitly normative thrust which enables theology to include history in its project in a way that history cannot include theology per se, that is, constructive theology as opposed to historical theology (the latter being essentially a historical not a theological enterprise in essence).

IV

Theology's agenda is one which deals with the problems the community of faith faces here and now, problems with which it must adequately deal, if not actually overcome, if it is to maintain both its authority and its credibility in the modern world. If the community's intellectual leaders shirk from their responsibilities here and now, the people will be forced to seek other authority to deal with these inescapable problems. In this sense, history is needed for precedents (and the critical study of history broadens and deepens the range of these precedents), but the

³⁷ See ibid., pp. 289ff.

³⁸ See his The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago, 1962), esp., p. 108; see also, Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (New York, 1967), pp. 5, 11, 99.

³⁹ See Popper, op. cit., pp. 135ff.

⁴⁰ See his The Study of Man (Chicago, 1958), pp. 78ff.

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function of judgment, which can only be that of present authority, is itself not historical per se. It is not simply the consequent of past antecedents. Rather, it includes the past ("prehending" it in Whitehead's sense), an inclusion not just subjectively eclectic, but one bound by objective canons. History is thus included in the theological circle in much the same way as the material cause (hyle) is included in the final cause (telos) in Aristotelian philosophy.⁴¹

It is important to comprehend, moreover, that the recognition of the essential finitude involved in this process of making temporally conditioned normative judgments is itself an issue of faith. It saves theology from arrogant triumphalism, from the oftimes blasphemous impression that its voice is God's last word. When theology does that, attempting to permanently subsume the transcendent within its own immanent utterances, it thereby denies its own doctrines of redemption. If the final word is to be God's, then all human utterances must be tentative before the final redemption is with us. As a famous rabbinic dictum puts it:

Rabbi Tarfon said that the time is short, the work far greater, the workers incompetent, the reward is much, and the master of the house presses us on.... It is not for you to complete the work, but you are not permitted to desist from it either.⁴²

The problems facing the Jewish religious community are twofold: practical and theoretical. Practical questions, which are the more evident issues of Halakhah, are more specific in that they entail matters which require immediate judgment and which affect a larger number of the members of the community. An example of such a practical problem today would be how to determine the point of death of a brain diminished patient attached to a respirator and other life-sustaining (or death-prolonging) equipment. Past precedents can be invoked, but authoritative judgment in the present must do a great deal more than simply deduce conclusions from them. Modern medical technology has literally thrown too many new factors into the situation at hand. Hence, for traditionalist Jews, these questions have opened up a whole new area for halakhic judgment.⁴³ These judgments show Halakhah to be a developing yet orderly process.⁴⁴

Theoretical questions, on the other hand, are more general and less evident in the lives of most of the members of the faith community. They call for a broader dialectical effort on the part of theologians, requiring them to show how aspects of various non-Jewish philosophies, ideologies, and theologies are compatible with traditional doctrine, and to show how others are not, either partially or totally, especially when they explicitly or even implicitly deny the legitimacy of Judaism. That denial can either

⁴¹ See Aristotle, Physics, 195al5ff.; Metaphysics, 983a25-30. Cf. A. N. Whitehead, Process and Reality (New York, 1929), pp. 66, 259-260; also, H. G. Gadamer, Truth and Method (New York, 1982), pp. 274ff.

⁴² Mishnah: Avot 2.18-19.

⁴³ See David Novak, Law and Theology in Judaism, vol. 2 (New York, 1976), pp. 98ff.

⁴⁴ See Novak, Halakhah in a Theological Dimension, chaps. 1, 7.

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be by means of outright condemnation or the relegation of Judaism to the status of an historical relic. In this latter dialectical function, theology must show how these external points of view are inadequate in terms of their own claims and criteria of meaning and truth, over and above showing how they do not understand Judaism at all. In other words, it must employ the method of philosophical dialectic, going back to Socrates. For example, one could show how Freud's theory of human sexuality is compatible with Judaism, even illuminating many traditional discussions about human sexuality. As for Freud's atheism, however, it would have to be shown, among other things, that it is not necessarily entailed by Freud's psychology.⁴⁵ If theology shirks from this dialectical responsibility, it leaves the faithful with a two-truth epistemology with all its absurdities.

Looking at the practical perspective as one pole and the theoretical perspective as the other pole, one might characterize Judaism as containing a field of normativity delimited by these two poles. The practical pole is Halakhah; the theoretical pole, theology. How they are related in dealing with the Jewish problematic can be best seen by looking to the most important classical source of Jewish normativity, the Babylonian Talmud.⁴⁶

V

In the Babylonian Talmud, much more often than not, issues of concern are presented in the form of a dispute between the ancient authorities. The subject matter of the particular dispute will determine the type of methodological question to be asked. If one begins with a situation where two different practices are being advocated, then the question to be raised is the difference in theory (be-my qa-mipalgay).⁴⁷ Conversely, if one begins with a situation where two different theories are being advocated, then the question to be raised is the practical difference (my baynyyhu).⁴⁸

In many practical cases, the answer to the question about theoretical distinctions is to offer a juridical principle, which itself is not theological. Nevertheless, although such juridical principles might not be immediately theological, they can be seen as leading to a broader theological principle in their background. Along these lines, Maimonides (to the mind of many, the greatest halakhist and theologian in the history of Judaism) defined talmud as a method (rather than its more usual denotation as a specific literature) to understand the immediately practical and ultimately theoretical meaning of revelation and tradition. For him, it is "to understand and discern the end of something from its

⁴⁵ See M. Ostow, Judaism and Psychoanalysis (New York, 1982), pp. 20ff.

⁴⁶ For the centrality of the Babylonian Talmud in Jewish law and theology, see B. Sanhedrin 24a and Tos., s.v. "belulah."

⁴⁷ See, e.g., B. Kiddushin 47a-b.

⁴⁸ See, e.g., B. Baba Metzia l5b- 16a.

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beginning and to infer one thing from another... to compare one thing to another and it includes those subjects called pardes."⁴⁹

Pardes, a vague rabbinic term, which probably originally meant something like theosophy, for Maimonides includes ma'aseh beresheet (speculation about divine creation of the universe) and ma'aseh merqabah (speculation about the vision recorded in Ezekiel, chapter one, connoting metaphysics).⁵⁰ It indicates Maimonides' reworking of basic rabbinic terms along the lines of Aristotelian/neo-Platonic philosophy. Thus, we see how legal reasoning does lead to the ontological concerns of theology, if examined deeply enough.

In utilizing the work of Popper and Kuhn in the philosophy of science (similar to Maimonides' critical and selective use of the work of Plato, Aristotle, Ibn Sina, and Alfarabi) for purposes of Jewish theology, I propose that although Halakhah cannot verify every or even most theological statements in that these statements are often far more than rationales for specific commandments (ta'amay ha-mitzvot), it can falsify them. By this I mean that a theology, in order to be adequate let alone sufficient for Judaism, cannot fail to properly constitute a priori an aspect of Judaism as persistent and indispensable as Halakhah. It cannot do so any more than a scientific hypothesis can dismiss a priori or inadequately constitute data which have been persistent in the discourse of their own scientific community, the community to whom they are to primarily address, and still claim to be speaking the same language.

An a priori dismissal of this kind can be done in one of three ways. (1) It can act as if the data never existed. In our case, that would be tantamount to absurdly asserting that Judaism has no law and never did have one. (2) It can refer to the data in such a way so as to destroy their essence. That was epitomized by the remark of the liberal Jewish thinker, Mordecai Kaplan, about the law having "a vote but not a veto."⁵¹ However, since Halakhah is operative law, and operative law by definition has authority, that is, a veto, this is tantamount to saying that Jewish law is not law. In other words, this approach violates the very phenomenological integrity of the law. (3) Finally, a priori dismissal can be by means of abrogation and making a new law to replace the old law. This is what the church did when it changed the traditional Jewish practice of conversion, as recorded in Acts 15. This was both a practical decision and a theoretical judgment, the latter being a radical reconception of what the election of the people of God is to be.

When this happens, the field of Jewish normativity has in truth been broken. The realm of common Jewish discourse is rent asunder. And, although we see this most immediately at the practical end of the field,

⁴⁹ Mishneh Torah: Hilkhot Talmud Torah, 1.11-12.

⁵⁰ See Mishneh Torah: Hilkhot Yesoday Ha-Torah, 4.13 and Guide of the Perplexed, 1, intro. Cf. B. Hagigah 14b.

⁵¹ Not So Random Thoughts (New York, 1966), p. 263. For the fuller expression of his anti-traditionalist views of the Law, see Judaism as a Civilization (New York, 1934), pp. 424-25;469-70.

61 - The Role of Dogma in Judaism

its ramifications extend to the farthest reaches of the theoretical end of the field. The Jewish-Christian schism, which we have all inherited, it seems to me, can only be understood within this twofold perspective. Without it, the schism seems either too abstract viewed from the practical side alone, or too mundane when viewed from the theoretical side alone.

The schism did not occur because Judaism affirmed the Law and Christianity denied it, but, rather, because Christianity put forth its own new law as part of its new covenant. And, understanding dogma as a subset of Halakhah rather than as a set of independent propositions directly descriptive of an immediately experienced external reality (even if metaphysical rather than physical), would seem to be almost as true about Christianity as it is about Judaism, if one follows the argument recently put forth by George Lindbeck in his widely discussed book, The Nature of Doctrine. Is not Lindbeck asserting that Christian doctrine is necessarily correlated with Christian Halakhah? He writes:

I shall briefly compare regulative and propositional approaches and suggest that the former has advantages, not only because it can give a more plausible account than can the alternatives, of the permanence of doctrine amid historical change, but also for the traditional and yet modern sounding reason that makes church doctrines more effectively normative by relating them more closely to praxis.⁵²

Judaism has norms and these norms have a structure called Halakhah, it is never to be less than it. Thus, if a speculative theological statement either directly denies an halakhically constituted dogma of Judaism, or undergirds a rejection or distortion of Halakhah in part or wholly, then it has been thereby falsified. Hence, regarding any theology, one might say that Halakhah is a necessary but not the sufficient condition for its validity in traditional Judaism.

⁵²The Nature of Doctrine (Philadelphia, 1984), p. 91. See also pp. 17-18, 74.