In this study, Steven Kepnes constructs a 'positive' Jewish theology, one that gives expression to God's nature and powers and that opposes 'apophatic' Holocaust and postmodern theologies that deny the ability of language to express God's nature. Drawing from the Pentateuch, Prophets, and Jewish prayer, Kepnes also uses methods from medieval philosophy, analytic philosophy, and hermeneutics. From medieval philosophy and the Bible, Kepnes develops what he calls a 'soft' metaphysics with principles of God and the revealed Torah at its center. Identifying a fundamental contradiction between the transcendent God of philosophy and the personal God of the Bible, he demonstrates how analytic philosophy, Jewish hermeneutics, and Jewish liturgy offer constructive strategies to negotiate this contradiction. Kepnes also argues that Jewish theology can neither remain in the domain of metaphysics nor the nature of God, but must turn toward the practical and ethical. He concludes with a call for a prophetic theological ethics to address the pressing issue of climate change.
Arvustused
'Steven Kepnes has long been one of the most thoughtful voices in the Jewish theology, and in this masterful book, he brings together a deep wisdom about Jewish thought, a wide-ranging perspective on the history of theology, and an urgent call a new theological discourse, one that can allow us to repair the world.' Laurie Zoloth, Margaret E. Burton Professor of Religion and Ethics, University of Chicago
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Using analytic philosophy, hermeneutics, prayer, and prophetic ethics, this book revives Jewish theology as a 'positive' theology.
Part I. Introductions:
1. The immanent frame and the need for Jewish
metaphysics;
2. Post-holocaust theology: the passive God and the apotheosis
of evil;
3. Radical apophatic Jewish theologies from Boyarin to derrida to
Wolfson; Part II. Reviving Jewish Theology:
4. A soft metaphysics for Jewish
theology;
5. Two methods for Jewish theology: analytic philosophy and
Hermeneutics; Part III. Program For a Positive Jewish Theology:
6. A new
natural Jewish theology: probability and the recovery of teleology;
7. Seeing
and not-seeing, saying and not saying, 'God': two approaches to the
contradiction between the God of absolute being and the personal God;
8. A
theological hermeneutics of Jewish liturgy; Part IV. Prophetic Jewish
Theological Ethics:
9. Retrieving Cohen and Heschel on prophetic ethics;
10.
The climate crisis and prophetic Jewish theology: a Jewish theology of
sustainability.
Steven Kepnes is Professor of World Religions and Jewish Studies at Colgate University and author of The Future Of Jewish Theology (2013), Jewish Liturgical Reasoning, (2007) and The Text As Thou (1993), and editor of The Cambridge Companion To Jewish Theology (2021).
