The Rabbi, the Pope, and C.S. Lewis

No, this is not a joke! I recently finished reading Pope Benedict XVI's book Jesus of Nazareth. It is an excellent book and I recommend it highly. The most fascinating part for me was the pope's discussion of a book by Rabbi Jacob Neusner, A Rabbi Talks with Jesus. In that book Neusner seeks to explain why, if he had lived in Israel in the time of Jesus, he would not have been one of Jesus' followers. Neusner argues that Jesus is not just another rabbi attempting to reform Judaism and reinterpret the Torah, but is rather rejecting the Torah and its commandments, and attempting to take its place as the center of the Jewish faith. As a Jew loyal to the Torah, Neusner cannot accept Jesus or anyone else who seeks to replace the Torah. Still, Neusner is respectful toward Jesus and even says that he honors him and wishes him well.

Clearly, Benedict was impressed by Neusner's openness to rational engagement with and respect for Jesus. The pope makes the point that Neusner has understood that the Gospel of Matthew (on which Neusner bases his portrayal of Jesus) identifies Jesus with God, and it is only because Jesus saw himself as God that he can make the claims he does about Jewish law. In Benedict's view, Neusner has seen what many modern New Testament scholars and Christian theologians do not see--that interpreting Jesus as a liberal rabbi continuous with the tradition of Judaism rather than a disruption is untenable and even insulting to Jews who reject Jesus.

After reading the pope's book (I don't have Neusner's book yet but will order it soon) I read an interesting critique of Neusner by Rabbi Meir Soloveichik in the January 2008 issue of First Things. Soloveichik faults Neusner for his claim to honor Jesus and wish him well. According to Soloveichik, since Neusner acknowledges that Jesus claimed to be God, he cannot escape C.S. Lewis' famous trilemma from Mere Christianity: a man claiming to be the Son of God must either be the Son of God or a lunatic or the devil. Having rejected the first option, Neusner is stuck honoring and befriending either a madman or Satan, an absurd stance.

But is that right? I must confess (this might be considered heresy around here) I've never been convinced by Lewis' argument. Why is it absurd to respect someone who claims to be divine? Most of the pagan Roman emperors claimed divinity and were worshipped. Many of them, to be sure, were lunatics. But I still admire and respect Marcus Aurelius, who for all his many faults was a serious philosopher with many interesting things to say. If that's acceptable, why can't Neusner or any one else who denies the divinity of Christ nevertheless respect and honor him? So I'm with Neusner and Benedict on this point rather than Soloveichik and Lewis.

A final point: this intellectual encounter between Neusner, Benedict, and Soloveichik is the best interfaith dialogue I have found. Such dialogue tends usually to be burdened by a preordained relativism that prevents genuine debate. Happily that was not the case here.

I'm Back!

Some of you knew that I was on sabbatical last semester. One of the things that I have to do now that my sabbatical is over is to write a report of what I accomplished. But since Berry College was amazingly generous in giving me time off at full pay for about eight months, I think that it's not enough just to file a report to the administration. I should also let Berry students know what I did, since their tuition money paid for a good deal of my sabbatical.

I did three things during the semester. One of them, my trip to Greece, was the topic of a previous post. It was a great experience, one from which I learned a lot and which I look forward to doing again soon (maybe with some Berry students!)

The other two activities were:

1. Working on a book on Stoic logic. This has become my scholarly obsession the last few years and I needed the time off to make the progress that the book demanded. The ancient Stoics had a highly sophisticated system of logic, one which anticipated in many respects modern symbolic logic. Unfortunately very little of their writings survive, so people like me have to piece together and reconstruct their beliefs from the remaining fragments. My method was to start with those fragments and then to use the tools of modern logic to see what kind of logical system the Stoics would have produced if they were living today and knew of all the advances in logic since the nineteenth century. I made some interesting discoveries, in particular, that the Stoic system of modal logic (the logic of necessity and possibility) is in certain very interesting ways very different from standard modern modal logics. The details are a bit too complex to discuss here but I will be glad to talk about them to anyone who is interested (or you can just wait for the book to come out!).

2. I attended a class for the first time since grad school! I had the great privilege of being a part of Dr. Ron Taylor's Real Analysis class. It was such a pleasure to be a student instead of a professor for a change. And I learned so much not only about mathematics (one of my long-standing passions) but also about teaching. I got many ideas about good teaching from watching Ron, and I am grateful both to him and to my fellow students for putting up with me for the semester. If I had the time, I'd be taking another class this semester too.