Three Replies: on Revelation, Natural Law and Jewish Autonomy in Theology1
Three Replies: On Revelation, Natural Law and Jewish Autonomy in Theology1 Yoram Hazony The Herzl Institute, Jerusalem Abstract: I address three key questions in Jewish theology that have come up in readers’ criticism of my book The Philosophy of Hebrew Scripture: (i) How should we think about God’s revelation to man if, as I have proposed, the sharp distinction between divine revelation and human reason is alien to the Hebrew Bible and classical rabbinic sources? (ii) Is the biblical Law of Moses intended to be a description of natural law, suggesting the path to life and the good for all nations? And (iii) what should be the role of the Jewish theologian, given the overwhelming prevalence of Christian conceptions of God and Scripture in contemporary theological discourse. I am grateful to Christina Brinks, Randal Rauser, Samuel Lebens and Jessica Wilson for devoting so much careful thought to my book The Philosophy of Hebrew Scripture in their respective essays in the Journal of Analytic Theology last year.2 These papers raise many important issues. In this essay, I will focus on three questions that I see as key for contemporary philosophy and theology, leaving other pertinent aspects of their papers for another time. I. Hebrew Scripture Without the Revelation-Reason Dichotomy In The Philosophy of Hebrew Scripture, I propose that our ability to recognize the intended teachings, and even the subject matter, of the ancient Jewish works collected in the biblical corpus has been severely damaged by the prevalence of the analytic distinction between “works of human reason” and “works of revelation.”3 Historically, the distinction between reason and revelation has played an especially 1 I would like to thank readers who commented on this paper, in whole or in part, offering useful suggestions and criticism: Joshua Berman, Lenn Goodman, Yael Hazony, Dru Johnson, Joseph Isaac Lifshitz, Alan Mittleman, Robert Nicholson, David Novak, Randal Rauser, Michael Rea, Moshe Shoshan, Gil Student, and Joshua Weinstein.
[Show full text]