The distinctive way that Barth theologically inhabits the problem of traditional Christian faith, then, can be aptly characterized as evangelical—evangelical, that is, in the broad, ecumenical sense of the word: because God has acted in a particular, historical way on the world’s behalf, there is good news to be told and so witness to be given. And it is this distinctively (albeit broadly) evangelical character of Barth’s fundamental theological assumptions regarding the nature of Christian faith (and the character of its speech) that I believe constitutes the possibility, theological and ethical, of distinguishing the interpretive imperialism of the particular-elsewhere from the sectarian-particular.
Consequently, given Barth’s representational function in my argument, as both problem and possible remedy, I will be using the descriptive, “evangelical,” rather than the more general and ambiguous, “traditional,” in referring to the problem of Christian faith for the Jewish neighbor, and for all neighbors. This will allow greater clarity as to the precise theological issues and ethical risks at stake. And given that I take the evangelical character of Barth’s theology to constitute its possibility of representing not only the problem of Christian faith, but the problem as remedy, my employment of the term also affords the more general opportunity to contribute in a small way to the recovery and rehabilitation of its rich, albeit always risky, theological and ethical resources. In the context of the United States, at any rate, the term has fallen on hard times, having been severely restricted and reified in meaning. And in current public discourse it is identified with a particular conservative, nationalist political activism that, as we shall see, can only be descried as idolatry by a truly evangelical faith as resourced and employed by a theologian like Barth.
There are also several reasons for using Ruether. I believe she represents the most compelling contemporary efforts to radically remedy the interpretive imperialism of traditional—that is, evangelical—Christian faith represented by Barth. Her historical analysis of the roots of Christian antisemitism and supersessionism is powerful and thoroughgoing, and rightly traces those roots to the heart of the biblical witness itself. As with Barth, the theological and ethical issues at stake are cast in stark relief. But also as with Barth, her analysis and remedy exemplifies certain fundamental assumptions that open the possibility of a complication.
I read Ruether, against the grain of her own statements, as seeking to remedy the interpretive imperialism of Christian faith by reference to a perspective above (or below, e.g., Tillich’s “depth dimension”) the difference between traditional Christian confessions and Jewish religious self-understanding, indeed, above all particular religious self-understanding. Her theological remedy thereby assumes the governance of particular religious discourse by an ethical-philosophical determination of what is appropriately universal and comprehensive, a determination made and legislated from outside any and every particular religious tradition—i.e., from the universal-elsewhere. As such, it may constitute an interpretive imperialism of its own in relation to the Jewish neighbor.
This problematic complication is made explicit in the title of the book central to my reading: Faith and Fratricide. If it can be shown that Ruether’s analysis of and remedy for Christian faith is funded by certain modern assumptions that take Abraham to be the source of its imperialistic violence, then the unintended implication of Ruether’s title would seem to be that the imperialism of Christian faith is fratricidal (a brother-killer) because the father of Christian faith is filicidal (a child- or offspring-killer); the brother and the child are one and the same: Isaac, the seed of Abraham and the “elder brother” of Christianity. Again, it appears difficult for Ruether’s remedy to avoid the assumption that Christian faith is dangerous for the Jewish neighbor to the extent that it is formed in the likeness of the Jewish patriarch.
Layout of Chapters
Chapter 2 fills out the introductory background to the argument. Its gives concrete content to the contours of the modern context that I am arguing determines much of the contemporary analyses of and remedies for the interpretive imperialism of Christian faith in relation to the Jewish neighbor. I give a reading of Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling as evidence of the extent to which the three inter-related dimensions constitutive of these analyses and remedies—the nature of imperialistic discourse, the relation of faith to the ethical, and the relation of particularity to universality—are rooted in fundamental assumptions with regard to Christian faith and to “religion” more generally that are constitutive of the context of modernity. I hope to show how this modern context determines (and undermines) contemporary analyses of the particular problem of Christian faith and the Jewish neighbor precisely to the extent to which the context itself emerges as a consequence of—and so as determined by—this very problem in its irreducible particularity.
In Parts II and III, my presentation of Barth and Ruether as theological exemplars follows the most common contours of the contemporary discourse about the apparent violent logic of Christian faith toward the Jewish neighbor. Barth represents the traditional problem, and Ruether the diagnosis and remedy.
Chapters 3 and 4 give a reading of the particular ways in which Barth’s pivotal theological assumptions constitute an understanding of Christian faith that, borrowing a phrase from Merold Westphal, takes Abraham as a model.28 Chapter 3 zeros in on the various dimensions of Abrahamic interpretive imperialism entailed in Barth’s assertion that Christian theology listen only to the “One Voice” of God’s revelation in and election of the one Jew, Jesus Christ, over against all voices of human self-understanding and self-definition. We take a moment there to wonder at the fact that Barth actually seems to think this is good news, indeed, the best news, and for all. Chapter 4 traces out the ways in which the very affirmation of Abraham in Barth’s understanding of Jesus Christ as Good News for all determines his interpretation and representation of Jews and Judaism in a certain imperialistic fashion, with troubling echoes of traditional anti-Judaism and supersessionism. While it will become clear how Barth can be taken (mistakenly, I will eventually argue) as a paradigm of the sectarian-particular in relation to the Jewish neighbor, the ground will be laid for an understanding of his theological assumptions as constituting a form of interpretive imperialism distinguishable from the sectarian-particular: the interpretive imperialism of the particular-elsewhere.
Chapter 5 turns to Ruether’s critique of the theological assumptions key to Barth’s understanding of Christian faith, especially with regard to the doctrinal cluster of revelation, election, and Christology, and how it determines Christian understanding of Jews and Judaism as imperialistic discourse. I show how, doctrinally, her remedy for the sake of the Jewish neighbor disassembles this doctrinal cluster. She eliminates election from the theological lexicon, revisioning revelation as indigenous symbolic expression and Christology in terms of paradigm and prolepsis. Philosophically, this disassembling constitutes a realignment of the particularity of Christian faith in what is assumed to be a more appropriate—that is, relativized—relation to the universal. Ultimately, I argue that Ruether’s remedy is governed by the assumption that the Good News of Jesus Christ can only be good if it is not, in fact, news. In chapter 6 I tease out what I suggest are certain modern assumptions grounding her work, and show how these assumptions entail a (albeit, less obvious) dynamic of interpretive imperialism—the interpretive imperialism of the universal-elsewhere. This interpretive imperialism would