"I think you're worth disagreeing with and I think it's worth pursuing that disagreement for [the] good of both of us."

IN MY NAIVETE I hadn't expected to find Abraham Joshua Heschel as tough to understand as I'd anticipated.  I didn't expect him to be easy, he's proving a lot harder than I expected.  

His language is not the problem, his reasoning and thinking aren't the problem, the problem for me is that in looking for background to understanding him better I find, once again, that the Jewish tradition he was based in is nothing like standardized or uniform or easy for a person not familiar with it to get a hold on.  It is like a concentrated attempt to get hold of other very complex fields of thought.   So my series is going to be more of a learning expedition for me than some of my other attempts to do this.  I don't want to dishonor him by getting him wrong.  Reading and listening to different scholars and Rabbis from different branches of Judaism and even within those branches is rather daunting.  A lot of what I'm listening to this week are the Jews for Judaism lectures and videos, which are everything from very enlightening to, for a Christian, quite offensive.  Not that I mind the offense because I don't think faith that isn't deeply challenged and tested can be very reliable.  And Christianity, like Judaism and Islam and Buddhism etc. should be subjected to the points of view of non-believers.  I think what that group does, to encourage Jews to remain Jews and even for some people to convert is good.  I wouldn't want to live in a world without Jews or Muslims or Buddhists or believers in any number of religions who encourage good will and equality.   I agree with A. J. Heschel that God wants there to be religious pluralism or it would not happen that there is diversity among People of good will.   

I can take it. 

The lecture by Rowan Williams I linked to earlier in the week has two relevant sections, one was during the lecture itself, the other an answer to a question.  I've transcribed them (imperfectly, no doubt) but they are relevant not only to the kind of inter-religious engagement that is inevitable when someone who isn't a member of a religious tradition respectfully pays attention to what someone from that tradition says but, also, within religious traditions and within denominations.  A lot of what I find difficult and confusing in the background reading and listening I'm doing to understand Heschel is as true for reading from other Christian traditions and, certainly, within the Catholic tradition I am most familiar with.  If some of what I wrote about the long and hidden history of the Latin mass seemed odd to you, well, a lot of the claims of those, especially the young-uns among the Latin mass cult seems pretty weird to me, too.

So, do you not want everybody to be Christian, somebody will ask.  And when faced with a question like that I will confess to total inarticulacy.  Do I want every human being to know and love Jesus Christ as the incarnation of the everlasting word of the One who Jesus called Abba, Father.  Yes. Would I like everybody to become members of the Church? [at this point Rowan Williams made a face and the audience laughed] Well, I'm prepared to spend some time reflecting on what that might mean and also reflecting on the fact that I don't have any model in my mind which would express what it could mean for all human beings to know and love Jesus as the incarnation of the Eternal Word.  I don't know that yet and I need not know that yet.  I know that the Church in its true form, which is a very question begging phrase but bear with me, the Church in its true form is the community of who have been overwhelmed by the gift of God in Jesus Christ and therefore have been overwhelmed by the gift of God in one another. And the crystalizing of that in the events of Baptism and the Eucharist is what the Church is fundamentally about.  And how is that going to become a reality for those whose apprehension or perception of Jesus comes from such a different place that I can't begin to understand it.  I don't know and I need not know. 

As I'm coming to understand ever more, not only do I not need to understand all of this but that no one does and the entire body of human beings who think about this won't understand it anymore than they will have a comprehensive knowledge of the material universe, the pretenses of so many scientistic, atheist-materialist cosmologists notwithstanding.  We are not equipped as individuals and, so, as a species to have a comprehensive comprehension of even the most observable and crude aspects of reality and we'd all do a lot better if we'd all admit that. 

Questioner: Thank you very much and my question has to do in relation to acceptance.  What role does acceptance play in this interfaith dialogue, in terms of, for instance, in acceptance of each other's understanding of divine revelation.  So, for us Christians Jesus Christ is the Word made flesh, the Word incarnate. But for the Muslim he's just a mere prophet. How does acceptance of each other's understanding of revelation play a role in this conversation.

Rowan Williams: Thank you. Yes, a difficult question really and and a very practical one in context of dialogue.

There are moments in some Christian-Muslim dialogues I've been involved in where a Muslim will say, "Why can't you accept the Koran as the definitive revelation of God because all that you want to say about Jesus is there," at which point I have to say, well, actually, no it isn't and we can't take a short cut there.  And the reason that I can't say that the Koran is the definitive Word of God is precisely that it sees the history of revelation after Jesus.  Which I can't make sense of.   But let's see how we've learned this, let's see how these claims work and, again, what kinds of habits they produce and the conversation can go on and the enrichment can go on.  But for the foreseeable future the Muslim and I are going to disagree about this.  There's no two ways about it.  And part of the joy and the challenge a good dialogue is the capacity to say those things clearly and unambiguously while retaining the openness the eagerness that I talked about to say, the way in which you have received what there is of God in the Koran clearly has a transformative effect which speaks to me, which enriches me.  I hope the same works the other way 'round.  I'm always very fascinated by those Muslims . . . um, mostly not from mainstream Sunni tradition, who will say at times, "You know, there's something about what what we want to say about Jesus which is not quite catered to by the plain words of the Koran, although we don't want to be Christians, we want to explore exactly some of those unexpected depths in the narrative of Jesus which open up for us here."  So I think acceptance is an interesting word here because it certainly doesn't mean a readiness to say, "Oh well, that's fine. That's what I mean, let's not bother."  Real acceptance, again, I think, is to take the other seriously enough to say, "I think you're worth disagreeing with and I think it's worth pursuing that disagreement for [the] good of both of us."

I've got a commitment to do some physical labor this afternoon so I'm going to leave it at that.