Reviving Jewish Theology

Metaphysics, Hermeneutics, Ethics

Steven Kepnes (Autor)

Buch | Hardcover

318 Seiten

2025
Cambridge University Press (Verlag)
9781009399708 (ISBN)

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In this study, Steven Kepnes constructs a 'positive' Jewish theology, one that gives expression to God's nature and powers and that opposes 'apophatic' Holocaust and postmodern theologies that deny the ability of language to express God's nature. Drawing from the Pentateuch, Prophets, and Jewish prayer, Kepnes also uses methods from medieval philosophy, analytic philosophy, and hermeneutics. From medieval philosophy and the Bible, Kepnes develops what he calls a 'soft' metaphysics with principles of God and the revealed Torah at its center. Identifying a fundamental contradiction between the transcendent God of philosophy and the personal God of the Bible, he demonstrates how analytic philosophy, Jewish hermeneutics, and Jewish liturgy offer constructive strategies to negotiate this contradiction. Kepnes also argues that Jewish theology can neither remain in the domain of metaphysics nor the nature of God, but must turn toward the practical and ethical. He concludes with a call for a prophetic theological ethics to address the pressing issue of climate change.

Steven Kepnes is Professor of World Religions and Jewish Studies at Colgate University and author of The Future Of Jewish Theology (2013), Jewish Liturgical Reasoning, (2007) and The Text As Thou (1993), and editor of The Cambridge Companion To Jewish Theology (2021).

Part I. Introductions: 1. The immanent frame and the need for Jewish metaphysics; 2. Post-holocaust theology: the passive God and the apotheosis of evil; 3. Radical apophatic Jewish theologies from Boyarin to derrida to Wolfson; Part II. Reviving Jewish Theology: 4. A soft metaphysics for Jewish theology; 5. Two methods for Jewish theology: analytic philosophy and Hermeneutics; Part III. Program For a Positive Jewish Theology: 6. A new natural Jewish theology: probability and the recovery of teleology; 7. Seeing and not-seeing, saying and not saying, 'God': two approaches to the contradiction between the God of absolute being and the personal God; 8. A theological hermeneutics of Jewish liturgy; Part IV. Prophetic Jewish Theological Ethics: 9. Retrieving Cohen and Heschel on prophetic ethics; 10. The climate crisis and prophetic Jewish theology: a Jewish theology of sustainability.

Erscheinungsdatum	25.11.2025
Zusatzinfo	Worked examples or Exercises
Verlagsort	Cambridge
Sprache	englisch
Gewicht	572 g
Themenwelt	Geisteswissenschaften ► Philosophie ► Ethik
Themenwelt	Geisteswissenschaften ► Religion / Theologie ► Judentum
ISBN-13	9781009399708 / 9781009399708
Zustand	Neuware