Toward a Jewish Theology: Methods, Problems, and Possibilities (review)

Book Reviews 145 Toward a Jewish Theology: Methods, Problems, and Possibilities, by Byron 1. Sherwin. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 1991. 192 pp. $89.95. In this collection of ten essays, written mostly between 1982 and 1991, Byron Sherwin ofthe Spenus Institute ofJewish Studies offers both the novice and professional theologian a rich, well researched, and challenging series of theological investigations. The topics he addresses range from the nature ofJewish theology and the criteria for its validity to thematic discUssions of the relationship between love and law in Judaism, the fear of God and awe of God, theodicy (the best brief discussion of this issue I have seen in some time), the Flood story and how it should be understood today, how the Holocaust is read and misread by contemporary Jews, the theological underpinnings of Jewish ethics, the religious significance of the human body and its activities, and finally, Jewish eschatology. His style is alternately expository and polemical-largely on behalf of the Jewish mystical tradition, but it never fails to be erudite, illuminating, and suggestive. He begins by reminding his readers that Judaism is not only a way of living, but also a way of thinking. Both are the .legitimate province of Jewish theology. Theology, in turn, undertakes to establish authentic parameters for thinking about both, articulating them coherently, keeping the tradition contemporaneous with the experience of the faith community , and securing acceptance for them within the community. These criteria are well chosen and clearly delineated, but they will strike many as incomplete if they imply a restriction on theology's relevance only to those within the faith community. At its best, theology speaks not only to the choir or even the congregation, but to all thoughtful members of one's community and even to others beyond it, as Heschel's work amply demonstrates. He goes on to argue that theology should be seen as an art form rather than a science precisely because artistry and theology make meaning, value, and human transformation their principal aims as opposed to objectivity, description, and systematization. In this he rightly links theology with its ancient roots in poetry and poetics. Still, his pronounced lack of sympathy for philosophical theology, systematization, and the scientific study ofJudaism in historical terms is sometimes carried too far. Thus, for example, he goes to an extreme in proposing "that if most of Jewish philosophical literature were discarded, it would have had little substantial impact on the development ofJewish religious thought" (p. 30, n. 43). But one can hardly say this and at the same time praise Jewish 146 SHOFAR Winter 1997 Vol. 15, No. 2 ethical literature for its inclusionary "incorporation of sources of wisdom imported from other traditions into the process of moral decision" (p. 123). More to the point, the times clearly call for retrieving sources that speak to a diverse community, not jettisoning them. Occasionally, Sherwin's critique of rationalism also perpetuates old misunderstandings, as in the claim that when rationalistic theologians define evil as privation, they are saying that evil is nonexistent or unreal (pp. 72, 85). This is simply fallacious. Failure to develop properly or to measure up to a norm is quite real, even if such failures presuppose a lack or deficiency as the cause of the harmful consequences produced. Evil as privation is no more unreal than poverty, darkness, or cold is unreal. Sherwin is more plausible and imaginative in his proposal that a contemporary understanding of the Flood story would reject the· idea of humanity's virtual annihilation as moraUyoutrageous, whatever humanity's faults..His counter-explanation is that such destruction represents not merited punishment but the rage of an artist disappointed by his failures as a creator (pp. 82-84). In contrast to the static perfection of the God of the philosophers, the Biblical God makes mistakes and tries to rectify them. Rectification, however, consists in destroying the flawed creation even though its destruction may be sinful and require atonement. The lesson to be learned from the narrative is that not even God can create without destroying. The two activities are part of the same process. The appeal of this interpretation, surely, is its plausibility in human terms...