Some Intellectual-Historical Observations on Artson's "Ba-derekh"

In "Ba-derekh: On the Way—A Presentation of Process Theology," Rabbi Artson adds his intelligent and learned voice to a chorus of Jewish theologians before him who have attempted to employ the insights of Process Thought to create a mature and compelling faith for contemporary Jews. While a large range of Jewish thinkers, from Milton Steinberg and Levi Olan to William Kaufman and Harold Kushner, have certainly been informed by and written on Process Thought,¹ the Artson essay is part of a more comprehensive effort on his part to advance their works and construct a broad systematic statement of Jewish theology informed and shaped by the insights contained in Process Thought.² His project is an ambitious one and worthy of extensive and full commentary. I will confine myself in this essay to several observations regarding the Jewish intellectual-historical framework for his work, in the knowledge that these observations are part of a fuller, ongoing conversation regarding his thought.

Artson begins his essay by finding fault with the influence that classical Greek philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle have had upon our Western understandings of religion. As he states, "the philosophical overlay of ancient Greece and medieval Europe" has distorted "the rich, burnished grain of Bible, Rabbinics, and Kabbalah," making it nigh impossible for many modern Jews to "savor the actual patterns of the living wood of [Judaism], the eitz ḥayim, and appreciate Judaism for what it was intended [to be] and truly is" (Artson, p. 4 above).

In this statement against the influence that Greek philosophical thought has had upon Judaism, Artson has echoed elements of the critique that Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch hurled against Maimonides and the influence of Greco-Arabic philosophy upon Judaism in his Nineteen Letters. In Hirsch's account, Maimonides was guilty of adulterating Judaism because he explicated the masoret in terms and ideas taken from Greco-Arabic philosophical thought. Hirsch believed that it was self-defeating to explain Judaism in forms external to the Tradition itself, and he wrote that Maimonides failed "because he sought to reconcile Judaism with the difficulties which confronted it from without instead of developing it creatively from within. He entered into Judaism from without, bringing with him opinions of whose truth he had convinced himself from extraneous sources."³

While Artson shares elements of Hirsch's dislike for Maimonides and the influence of classical philosophy upon Jewish religious belief, he just as surely demurs from the position Hirsch adopted when complaining that Maimonides (in his Guide and in his other philosophical writings) approached Judaism "from without instead of developing it creatively from within." Rather, Artson's work indicates that he fully appreciates the stance Chancellor Gerson Cohen articulated so brilliantly in his 1966 address, "The Blessing of Assimilation in Jewish Life," to the graduating class of Hebrew College in Boston. As Cohen observed so tellingly,

To a considerable degree, the Jews survived as a vital group and as a pulsating culture because they changed their names, their language, their clothing and with them some of their patterns of thought and expression. . . . I would therefore speak of a healthy appropriation of new forms and ideas for the sake of growth and enrichment. Assimilation properly channeled and exploited can become a kind of blessing, for assimilation bears within it a seminal power which serves as a challenge and goad to renewed creativity.⁴

In his "Ba-derekh," Artson willingly adopts the insights and substance provided by Christian Process Theologians such as John Cobb and David Ray Griffin, and he applies their framework and thought to the classical sources of Judaism so as to "re-orient" our community and our thinkers through the richness and depth provided by their insights while building upon the "basic inner core" of Jewish religious teachings. In so doing, he constructs his own approach to Jewish religious thought today. Artson does this because he observes that the tradition of classical medieval religious philosophy posits an axiomatic view that defines God as "omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent." He then points out quite forthrightly that such a view of...