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Hospitality and the Power of Divine Attraction: A Jewish Commentary on the Anglican Setting of Scriptural Reasoning

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 September 2013

Peter Ochs
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Abstract

The emergence of Scriptural Reasoning (SR) as a movement and a society of scholars was made possible by the hospitality, influence and cohort of two Anglican theologians, the late Revd Daniel Hardy and Professor David Ford. In this essay, I offer a Jewish commentary on several Anglican theological dispositions that might contribute to this hospitality: among them are ‘found theology’ (as I label it), responsiveness to the powers of divine attraction, concern to repair obstructions to the healing work of the Spirit, and attentiveness to Scripture as host and source of reparative reasoning. While the primary subject of the essay is a species of Christian theology, the method of the essay emerges from a recent approach to Jewish philosophy we call ‘textual reasoning’ (TR), one of the antecedents of SR. In the style of TR, I encounter theology as a ‘disposition’, or mode of practice, displayed in particular in practices of reading and interpreting Scripture and of responding to the call of Scripture in societal action. The essay is structured as a series of brief accounts of Anglican theological dispositions, each one followed by a Jewish ‘commentary’, culminating in a sample of Anglican-Jewish dialogue as it might be overheard within a session of scriptural reasoning.

Keywords

Scriptural ReasoningpostliberalismAnglican theologyJewish philosophytextual reasoningdivine attractionhospitalitysupersessionismAbrahamic dialogue
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Anglican Studies , Volume 11 , Issue 2 , November 2013 , pp. 179 - 198
Copyright
Copyright © The Journal of Anglican Studies Trust 2013 

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Footnotes

1.

Peter Ochs is Bronfman Professor of Modern Judaic Studies, University of Virginia, USA.

References

2. Daniel W. Hardy, with Deborah Hardy Ford, Ochs, PeterFord, David F., Wording a Radiance: Parting Conversations on God and the Church (London: SCM Press, 2010).Google Scholar

3. Hardy, Wording a Radiance, p. 36.Google Scholar

4. Hardy writes, ‘The movement of attraction is identified by Coleridge by using a term known in some philosophical circles, chiefly those of modern pragmatism, as “abduction.” Logically, this is often seen as the postulating of a possible explanation, a “third” form of reasoning beyond – but Resourcing—induction and deduction. Here, in Coleridge, an ancestor of modern pragmatism, however, we find that abduction is “the being drawn toward the true center” of all, the Logos and the Spirit.’ Cited in Daniel W. Hardy, ‘Harmony and Mutual Implication in the Opus Maximus’, in Jeffrey W. Barbeau (ed.), Coleridge's Assertion of Religion: Essays on the Opus Maximus (Leuven: Peeters, 2006), pp. 33–52 (52). This account of Hardy's is cited in David Ford, ‘Daniel Hardy and Scriptural Reasoning: Reflections on his Understanding of Coleridge's Opus Maximus’, paper delivered for the Cambridge University Inter-faith Programme as part of the conference, ‘The Fruitfulness of Dan Hardy's Thought for Scriptural Reasoning’ (5–6 June 2008).Google Scholar

5. ‘When I come and say the God of your fathers has sent me (Exod. 3.13) Moses thereupon desired to be enlightened with regard to his future course, afraid that they might ask him, “What is His name?”… R Abba b. Mammel said: God said to Moses, “You want to know My name? Well, I am called according to My work … When I am judging created beings, I am called elohim (God) … When I suspend judgment for someone's sins, I am called el shaddai (Almighty God) … and when I am merciful towards my world, I am called yod-he-vov-he, which refers to the Attribute of Mercy, as it is said in Exod. 34.6: The Lord, the Lord, God, merciful and gracious. Thus, ehyeh asher ehyeh in virtue of my deeds.”’ Exodus Rabbah, Exod. 3.13, in Midrash Rabbah Vol. 3 (trans. S.M. Lehrman; London: The Soncino Press, 1961).Google Scholar

6. Ford, David F. and Hardy, Daniel W., Living in Praise: Worshipping and Knowing God (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2nd rev. edn, 2005).Google Scholar

7. Paradiso Canto 27. Or in another translation: What I saw seemed to me to be a smile the universe had smiled; my rapture had entered by way of hearing and of sight. (27.006) Dante Alligheri, Paradiso Canto 27 (trans. Mandelbaum and Longfellow; New York: Classic Books, 2009).Google Scholar

8. See Deborah Ford, ‘A Portrait of my Father’, in Hardy, Wording a Radiance, pp. 1–23 (19).Google Scholar

9. Ford, David F., Christian Wisdom: Desiring God and Learning in Love (London: Cambridge University Press, 2007), p. 160.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10. Paraphrasing Ben Quash, ‘Theology on the Road to Damascus’, in ‘Spreading Rumours of Wisdom: Essays in Honour of David Ford,” special issue of Journal of Scriptural Reasoning 7.1 (2008), http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/journals/ssr/issues/volume7/number1/ssr07_01_e01.htmlGoogle Scholar

11. Comment from Ochs, Peter, Another Reformation: Postliberal Christianity and the Jews (Grand Rapids: Baker Publishing, 2011), p. 260.Google Scholar

12. Hardy, Daniel W., Finding the Church: The Dynamic Truth of Anglicanism (London: SCM Press, 2000), pp. 243–244.Google Scholar

13. Paraphrasing Hardy, Finding the Church, p. 244. Cited in Ochs, Another Reformation, p. 260.Google Scholar

14. Ford, Christian Wisdom, p. 16.Google Scholar

15. Ford, Christian Wisdom, p. 22. Ford's account of discernment, from the cry to a kind of un-knowing to a knowing in relationship, corresponds to Charles Peirce's account of abduction, as the initial, conjectural yet really possible stage of perceptual, scientific and also theological or religious knowing. It also corresponds to a dimension of Hardy's account. (But, as noted above in n. 4, Hardy also identifies ways in which his Coleridgean account of abduction differs from Peirce's account).Google Scholar

16. Ford, Christian Wisdom, p. 3.Google Scholar

17. Ochs, Another Reformation, p. 261.Google Scholar

18. For Nicholas Adams, this refers to the pragmatic or reparative thrust of scriptural or related kinds of reasoning. See Nicholas Adams, ‘Reparative Reasoning’, in Modern Theology 24.3 (2008), pp. 447–57. For a recent account, see Jacob Goodson, ‘What Is Reparative Reasoning? Jürgen Habermas’ Philosophy, Practical Reasoning, and Theological Hermeneutics’, in Journal of Scriptural Reasoning 10.1 (2011), http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/journals/ssr/issues/volume10/number2/ssr10_02_e06.htmlGoogle Scholar

19. Ochs, Another Reformation, p. 261, paraphrasing Ford, Christian Wisdom, p. 35.Google Scholar

20. See ‘Obstructions in the Anglican Communion’, in Ochs, Another Reformation, p. 184.Google Scholar

21. The main thesis of Ochs, Another Reformation, is that, in the process of refinding Scripture as ground for theological reasoning, Christian postliberal theologians in both North America and the United Kingdom also refind the enduring covenant of Israel. With the people Israel, these theologians also refind rabbinic Judaism as dialogue partner.Google Scholar

22. As stated in Paul Murray's introduction to the Joint Second International Receptive Ecumenism Conference at Durham University, ‘Receptive Ecumenism takes equally seriously the reality of the contemporary ecumenical moment – wherein the hope for structural unification in the short-medium term now appears unrealistic – and the abiding need for the Christian churches to walk the way of conversion towards more visible structural and sacramental unity’. The two papers we delivered were David F. Ford, ‘Scriptural Reasoning and Receptive Ecumenism’ and Peter Ochs, ‘Scriptural Reasoning “AS” Receptive Ecumenism’. For an anthology of writings from the First International Reception Ecumenism Conference, see Paul D. Murray (ed.), Receptive Ecumenism and the Call to Catholic Learning (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).Google Scholar

23. Daniel W. Hardy, ‘Receptive Ecumenism: Learning by Engagement’, in Receptive Ecumenism, pp. 428–41 (433–34).Google Scholar

24. See above, n. 18, on ‘reparative reasoning’.Google Scholar