Three Models of Faith for a Postmodern World: Rambam, Rav Kook and Rav Shagar

20th Century Thinkers - Lacan, Foucault, Baudrillard, Derrida

Rav Shagar, Faith Shattered and Restored, 86

Due to the ensuing disillusionment and other causes, people lost faith in the idea of a cohesive world with a single, comprehensive meaning, a world governed by a clear and consistent set of principles. They also lost faith in the grand narratives, meaning the historical accounts construed largely to justify one side or another, and with this their belief in an exhaustive moral and intellectual harmony upon which one could base one’s life.

Rav Kook, Orot HaKodesh 1:214

It is in no way relevant to speak of God's knowledge encompassing what is not in reality, for since His knowledge encompasses all, He is inherently in the most excellent aspects of reality, and all existents are nothing other than tiny specks in the light of that supernal reality.

Rav Kook, Orot Hakodesh 2:569

There is no doubt to the cultivated person that the highest ideal, which is concealed and secret, is more exalted than its fractional manifestations.

Faith Shattered, 37

This is also true of faith in general. Belief does not necessarily depend on certainty, and its domain of the Real cannot necessarily be brought to bear on our everyday lives. In certain cases, the “maybe” or the belief in the possibility of a thing, is also faith in its fullest sense.

Faith Shattered and Restored, 117

Traditional theological debates that sought absolute, transcendental criteria to determine which belief reigns supreme are meaningless in a postmodern world, but that should not impugn our perseverance in the faith of our fathers. We must see such faith as our home, self-evident and unquestionable, and thus in no need of such tests.

Faith Shattered and Restored, 116

Yet I believe in pluralism, even it if differs from the pluralism of postmodernism: It is a positive pluralism, one of faith. The difference between the pluralism in which I believe and postmodern pluralism springs from the difference between uninspired relativism and a relativism open to inspiration; between a conception of postmodernism as an empty game and one that ascribes significance to it; between ascribing no weight or value to any opinion, including one’s own, and seeing value in each and every opinion.

Where Have All the Theologians Gone?

The Forward

Elliot Cosgrove

June 13, 2007

Name five contemporary Jewish theologians saying something interesting about Jewish belief who had not already published a major work by 1990.

Stumped? So am I.

...The most important reason why theology matters — both then and now — is because while Judaism may be a religion of deed and not creed, a generation that does not invest its energy into the question of Jewish belief is a generation that will find itself without the life-sustaining aquifers necessary to keep it vital.

When kashrut is practiced without a theological matrix in place, it is a form of dietary cliquishness, not a distinguishing and distinctive expression of commandedness. When circumcision is practiced without an understanding of covenant, it is not a sign of a sacrosanct relationship with God, but a primitive if not objectionable rite. If commitment to Israel is framed solely in political terms, the argument for a modern state becomes less and less compelling for American Jews, Israelis and, for that matter, gentiles.

At every critical juncture in Jewish history, Jews have understood that a dynamic theology is the sine qua non to a vital Jewish community. From Mount Sinai to the prophets of the Exile, to Maimonides’s “Guide for the Perplexed,” to Kabbalah, to Hasidism, to mid-20th century North America, theological inquiry has sustained our people. Without it, Judaism becomes a dry, brittle and lifeless artifact.