Faith as Immunity to History?

Abstract

Reading Barth in conversation with three different post-Holocaust Jewish theologians on the question of God’s relationship to history, Boesel comes to a new appreciation for the diversity within the Jewish tradition itself. This leads him to pose the important question “If one is to rethink Christian faith and theology in response to engagement with the Jewish ‘other,’ which Jewish ‘other’?” He challenges all theologians engaged in comparative work to consider whether a predisposition to seek common ground restricts which “others” we engage. He goes on to reconsider his original critical reading of Barth, recognizing that Barth’s own theology “appears to move with an inter-religious freedom that can be appropriated as responsive to the diversity of intra-Jewish difference itself” because of its own emphasis on the radical judgment of God that stands over every human religious claim. Boesel ends by acknowledging the problem of supersessionism that continues to haunt Barth’s theology.