All this to say that Fishbane's newest book ranks up there with Heschel and Buber for me. His book might be called a "spirituality of hermeneutics." The title is: Sacred Attunement: A Jewish Theology
. Rarely do erudite scholars venture to explain to us their inner beliefs, but in this book Fishbane does for his children what Solomon did for his. Only Fishbane's approach is to pass on a thoroughly Jewish theology shaped by the inner workings of hermeneutics.
What do you think of the word "attunement" as an image of a life lived before God in this world? What do you think of his concept of Torah kelulah? (Anything like this in the Christian faith?) It is unfair to Fishbane to dip into his book to give you only a taste but blogging through the book would be even more difficult.
A major point of the book is that theology is an act of a human being seeking to be attuned with the Sacred, with God, with the divine. It is done in this world, in embodied forms, and it bears all the marks of the finitude of life on earth. So theology sees in the everydayness of life a fissure or crack and sees God at work -- in this sense Fishbane's ideas here border on Eastern Orthodoxy's sense that all of life is "iconic." We are called to be alert or attuned to this way of seeing life -- and the person who sustains this theological vision of reality is doing theology.
Fishbane sees God's communication and presence with us in three forms and this is the central set of principles for his theology, for this book, and for his spirituality. God speaks in:
Torah kelulah: hard to define; God's ongoing presence, general revelation, and gracious love that we witness in everything if we are "attuned" to it. This is prior to and behind and through and in front of everything else. It is larger than Written Torah. The fullness of Torah Kelulah is unsayable. Behind this idea is the belief that God is always present, effecting his presence and grace and love in everything -- and he means everything. (Perhaps a kind of panentheism but also clearly he has a sense of all of life as "iconic.")
Torah she-bikhtav: the Written Torah. Scripture. But this is crucial: Scripture itself is ongoing record of Israel's "instantiation" of the Torah kelulah. It is the primary, primordial witness to the "unsayable". This is covenant script but it is a record of Israel's momentary glimpses of the Torah kelulah.
Torah she-be'al peh: the Oral Torah. This is the ongoing expression and development of the Written Torah and it, too, is an instantiation of the Torah kelulah in light of the Written Torah.
A theological life, and he means by this what many today would call "spirituality," is the capacity and willingness and surrenderedness in the everyday existence we all live to say "Here I am" to the divine "I will be who I will be." The faithful (emunah) way of living this life is to recognize each of the above: that God's presence is at work in Scripture to shape Israel and in the Oral Torah so that the faithful Jew today can discern how to live.
But all theology attempts to bridge the "all-illimitable divine reality" and the "human task of shaping it into forms of human value" and language. He has long sections on derash as the human attempts to put into words what is ultimately unsayable.
Theology then is what might be called "verbal faith." Why?
Catch this: "If all the world were ink and all our speech quills, and if we were ever able to denote all that we and the entirety of humankind has ever thought and felt about divine reality, could we ever truly express or indicate God?" ... "The arcs of speech are thus always curving toward the mystery of expression ...". And now a stunning (apophatic) conclusion: "As the curve of speech bends toward the transcendent, this truth becomes ever more unsayable" (141).
Add to Del.icio.us
Add to Technorati
Add to Digg
Add to Newsvine
Add to Facebook
Add to StumbleUpon
Subscribe
Bob, but thanks for this.
When I read Fishbane I thought of "intertextuality" with the Christian hymn as sung by Shea in the Billy Graham crusades. I originally mentioned that in my post but then deleted it because I didn't know enough about the origins of that Christian hymn.
But your comment shows that the intertextuality begins in a medieval Jewish author who may have influence Lehman.
A revelation that intertextuality is an ongoing affair.
In EOrthodoxy, a theologian is the one who prays, and prayer is viewed as communion with God.
I have only read "God in Search of Man", but I have dipped a little into "The Prophets". Totally awesome. I fully expect to meet Heschel on the other side of the curtain.
This description made me cry, Scot. Not only for the beauty of it as itself, but also for what it points toward in my life right now.
Dana
In college I read Buber and Heschel. They appealed to where I was spiritually much more than did Niebuhr and Tillich who were very popular reads in the early 1960's. I was so moved that I joined Hillel for a while and was warmly received. This was also the period when I had visited Birmingham, Alabama, staying at my fraternity brother's house. In Birmingham, I saw the horror of segregation for the first time. While there, I visited both white and black churches and white and black schools. This was a transformational period for me.
For me, spirituality has always involved awe, mystery, experiential awareness of the sacred plus the Jesus creed. On the other hand, doctrine has always made me feel cut off from those things. So it's easy why to see why I liked Buber and Heschel. Heschel appealed to be beyond spirituality. My spirituality felt shallow if I wasn't working for social justice, and Herschel modeled that, too. To respond to a question. Theology is verbal faith because, like a map, it attempts to represent something far richer and complex than the map itself. A map does represent a finite describable territory, whereas theology tries to represent something indescribable, ineffable.
Doug
Is it possible that there is a link between the Unsayable and the inner revelation or self disclosure of God featured in the much persecuted so-called Spiritualists of the reformation period?
Something of God is disclosed to person X. Either person X or person Y verbalises or writes of that experience of the Divine. Person Z and perhaps millions of others may read of this disclosure under the label of scripture and interpret it as best they may.
Perhaps the story of the call of the boy Samuel could stand as an example. By his (and Eli's) responses to the disclosure, events which changed the course of human activity and perspectives occurred. However, the essential nocturnal event remembered in the consciousness of young Samuel no doubt carried in it aspects which were never said, or were 'unsayable'.
I'm in sympathy with RJS above. It is when a community homes in on the verbalised version and turns it into something detrimentally doctrinaire - e.g. orthopraxis (right practice) in Judaism in Jesus' community or orthodoxy (right belief or opinion) in Christianity in, say, Luther's time which sets the stage for so much misunderstanding and persecution in the name of religion.
After all, Jesus' belief that his vocation was as Messiah could/must be said to have arisen in his consciousness as from such Divine disclosure, but in scripture only the briefest of notes in the Gospels pointing to that consciousness have to suffice the reader of scripture.
thanks for this, scot.
i'm taking a course on Israelite Religion this semester and this book looks like it might be a valuable resource for me.
Post a Comment
By submitting these comments, I agree to the beliefnet.com terms of service, rules of conduct and privacy policy (the "agreements"). I understand and agree that any content I post is licensed to beliefnet.com and may be used by beliefnet.com in accordance with the agreements.