Jewish Theology and Process Thought
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Presents essays by Jewish thinkers who have found process thought to be a useful framework for contemporary Jewish thought and a set of conversations between Jewish and Christian thinkers on the appropriateness of process thought for Judaism and Christianity.
Description
This collection constitutes the first extended discussion of the relationship between Judaism and process thought. In the last half century the philosophies of Alfred North Whitehead and Charles Hartshorne have become important sources for contemporary theological reflection. Recently, a number of Jewish thinkers have examined process thought as a potentially valuable resource for postmodern Jewish theology. This book brings together many Jewish thinkers who have pioneered this discussion.
Jewish thinkers who have found process thought to be a useful framework for contemporary Jewish thought discuss issues that are primarily theological, such as God's transcendence and immanence, the problem of evil, the idea of revelation. Also included is a dialogue between Jewish and Christian thinkers on the appropriateness of process thought for their religious traditions. Critical reflection on the continuities and discontinuities between Judaism and the process model is also covered.
Sandra B. Lubarsky is Associate Professor of Religious Studies and Assistant Dean of Graduate Studies at Northern Arizona University. She is the author of Tolerance and Transformation: Jewish Approaches to Religious Pluralism. David Ray Griffin is Professor of Philosophy of Religion and Theology at the School of Theology at Claremont and Claremont Graduate School. In addition to editing the SUNY Press series in Constructive Postmodern Thought, he has published several books with SUNY Press, having authored God and Religion in the Postmodern World: Essays in Postmodern Theology and Evil Revisited: Responses and Reconsiderations, coauthored Primordial Truth and Postmodern Theology; Varieties of Postmodern Theology; and Founders of Constructive Postmodern Philosophy: Peirce, James, Bergson, Whitehead, and Hartshorne; edited The Reenchantment of Science: Postmodern Proposals; Spirituality and Society: Postmodern Visions; Sacred Interconnections: Postmodern Spirituality, Political Economy, and Art; and Physics and the Ultimate Significance of Time: Bohm, Prigogine, and Process Philosophy; and coedited Theology and the University: Essays in Honor of John B. Cobb, Jr. ; and Postmodern Politics for a Planet in Crisis: Policy, Process, and Presidential Vision.
Reviews
"This book represents the first serious and systematic encounter between Judaism and process thought yet offered. The essays are uniformly insightful. Indeed, the essays by persons trained explicitly in process thought are particularly important for introducing this area of theology to Jewish readers, both lay and academic. As Lubarsky indicates in her introduction, this is particularly important because process thought may well make seminal contributions to the development of Jewish thought in the future. This book will be an important and crucial stimulus to that development. " —David Ellenson, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion