The Call of Abraham: Essays on the Election of Israel in Honor of Jon D. Levenson

Chapter 14: Election and Affection

309 c H a P T e r 1 4 R election and affection On God’s Sovereignty and Human Action l e o r a b a t n i t z k y In his reading of the apostle Paul, John Calvin accuses Jews and Judaism of putting both too much and too little stock in their status as God’s elect: In the epistle to the romans, where he [Paul] . . . says, “They are not all Israel which are” born “of Israel”: because though all were blessed by hereditary right, yet the succession did not pass to all alike. This controversy originated in the pride and vain-glorying of the Jewish people, who claiming for themselves the title of the Church, would make the faith of the gospel to depend on their decision. Just as in the present day, the Papists with this false pretext would substitute themselves in the place of God. Paul, though he admits the posterity of abraham to be holy in consequence of the covenant, yet contends that 310 Leora Batnitzky most of them are strangers to it; and that not only because they degenerate ,from legitimate children becoming spurious ones; but because the pre-eminence and sovereignty belong to God’s special election, which is the sole foundation of the validity of their adoption.1 Calvin suggests that the people of Israel’s understanding of her election by God is at once too maximalist and too minimalist—too maximalist because Israel is not elect simply by inheritance and too minimalist because works, and the law more generally, does not and cannot affect God’s call to his elect: “The very terms election and purpose, certainly exclude from this subject all the causes frequently invented by men, independently of God’s secret counsel.”2 The purpose of this paper is not to make any comprehensive statement about Calvin’s view of Jews, Judaism, or even election. rather, in what follows, I use Calvin’s comments about what he contends is a false Jewish view of election as a jumping-off point for considering what might be a Jewish view of the implications of election for affecting God. I would like to suggest that Calvin is right, if not in his evaluation , then certainly in his characterization that important strands of Jewish theology are described by a tension between election and affection . Indeed, a Jewish theological commitment to the election of Israel may heighten the notion that it is possible to affect God, while relinquishing the commitment to election may diminish it. From a philosophical or systematic theological point of view, this position might seem inherently problematic. after all, in an important sense, Calvin is correct that there is a tension between the idea of election and the possibility of affecting God. To take the biblical idea of the election of Israel seriously means to recognize God’s sovereignty. God chooses whomever God has decided to choose. If God’s choice is absolute, human behavior cannot affect God because then the will of God would stand in some relation to human will. Consequently some may argue that what matters above all else in considering the meaning of divine election is the recognition of God’s absolute will, in relation to which there is no human analogy. but as Calvin himself recognized, any biblical theology must be exactly that: biblical. The God of the bible (of the old and New Testa- election and affection 311 ments) is not restricted by the demands of systematic philosophy or theology. Jewish theological reflection may have the advantage here, despite its historical paucity as compared to the Christian tradition. as Jon levenson has remarked, “because Judaism lacks an overwhelming motivation to deny the pluriform character of the hebrew bible in behalf of a uniform reading—such as the christological reading—Jewish exegesis evidences a certain breadth and a certain relaxed posture.”3 Indeed , I will argue in what follows that it is by reason of this posture that levenson’s work offers unique insight into a biblically informed, Jewish conception of election. a number of twentieth-century Jewish theologians including martin buber, Franz rosenzweig, abraham Joshua heschel, and michael wyschogrod have returned to the hebrew bible in order to articulate what they believe to be more authentic Jewish theologies, that is, theologies unconstrained by the need for systematic dictates external to the biblical text; some of these thinkers...