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Reviewed by:
  • Approaching God: The Way of Abraham Joshua Heschel
  • John T. Pawlikowski
Approaching God: The Way of Abraham Joshua Heschel, by John C. Merkle. Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 2009. 121 pp. $19.95.

John Merkle is considered one of the foremost Christian interpreters of the thought of Abraham Joshua Heschel. A professor of theology at the College of Saint Benedict and Saint John's University in Minnesota, he likewise is the director of the joint Center on Christian-Jewish relations supported by the University of Saint Thomas in St. Paul and Saint John's University.

Merkle has been a student of Heschel's thought throughout his academic career. In 1985 Merkle authored a major study of Heschel's thought titled The Genesis of Faith: The Depth Theology of Abraham Joshua Heschel. The current [End Page 178] volume is a somewhat abridged version of material from that volume though in revised form. It is written in an engaging popular style with the hope of making Heschel's thought accessible to a less scholarly audience of students and interested lay persons.

The book focuses on three central aspects of Heschel's thought: (1) Why we can affirm the reality and revelation of God; (2) How the human community should respond to the reality of God; and (3) why acceptance of religious diversity is to be seen as a part of God's will. With a few exceptions Merkle merely offers an exposition of Heschel's thinking on these core theological issues without engaging him in a critical discussion. But overall Merkle leaves the impression that he finds Heschel's perspectives in these areas very beneficial for all religious believers and not merely for members of the Jewish community.

Merkle begins this brief volume with a short history of Heschel's educational background. He emphasizes that Heschel had thorough Jewish training at a modern Yiddish academy in Vilna and philosophical training at the University of Berlin, where he completed his doctoral dissertation on prophetic consciousness in 1935, published as Die Prophetie. Merkle's point is that Heschel was able to bring together Jewish religious perspectives with modern philosophical insights in a creative fashion. But Merkle underlines the fact that Heschel's philosophical theology was based far more on human experience than on metaphysical abstraction. He became convinced that in Jewish religious thought God is to be seen as affected by creatures even to the point of sharing in human suffering, rather than as the "unmoved mover," so prominent in Greek-inspired metaphysical theology.

One area of Heschel's thought that in Merkle's view has significant potential for Christian-Jewish dialogue relates to his perspective on the prophets. For Heschel the prophets of Israel show that God has a direct involvement in human suffering and sorrow. He insists that God participates in human history and actually experiences human suffering. For Merkle this perspective may open the door for constructive discussion on divine incarnation between Jews and Christians.

Merkle also gives considerable attention to Heschel's understanding regarding divine-human partnership in caring for creation and bringing about its ultimate redemption. Heschel regards the notion of "divine omnipotence" as a non-Jewish idea that blocks us from grasping the profundity of the human role in redemption. God has accepted a self-imposed limit on divine power in order to insure a role for humanity as integral in creating and redeeming. For Heschel the key to understanding God is grasping God's infinite compassion and unending love rather than divine power and control. [End Page 179]

Chapter Four of the volume is particularly relevant for the interreligious dialogue. Here Merkle discusses Heschel's claim that religious diversity is the authentic will of God. This claim is rooted in Heschel's firm insistence that God is indeed one. Heschel believed that to make religion an end in itself is idolatrous. For him even the most sacred foundational events of a religious tradition cannot be absolutized. The will of God in fact transcends all such revelatory events. Merkle terms this view of Heschel "radical monotheism."

While Heschel affirms religious diversity as part of God's will, he strongly rejects any notion of God as plural...

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