Rosenzweig on the essence of Judaism/Christianity

The context of the following statements is Rosenzweig's critique (yet round-about affirmation) of Mendelssohn's translation of the tetragrammaton as "Das ewige Wesen." As a Christian, I appreciate the way in which he draws the Trinity into the orbit of the Biblical understanding of God, critiquing Maimonides' "Aristotelianism" in the process. I think he is right to say that the essence of Christianity - in its better moments - is at one with both Judaism and Scripture. At the same time, I'm not sure how it is that he can still (implicitly, at least, if I read him right) maintain the validity of the idea that God is יָחִיד, which is more than saying that he is אֶחַד. How is the "pagan/Aristotelian" concept of unitarianism (as Rosenzweig calls it!) still a necessary pre-condition - albeit a limited one - for affirming that the Creator is also the historical Redeemer? Rosenzweig actually says that this formulation was against the impulse do Jewish tradition. What other ways does Judaism provide of conceiving God's transcendence and immanence? In a course with Rabbi Dan Cohen-Sherbok I learnt that Jewish mysticism always stood in tension - even outright conflict - with the philosophical strand in Judaism. Does the doctrine of the sephirot, do a better job of conceiving this? Can it be reconciled with Maimonides' unitariansism? And, as far as questions of "Jewishness" are concerned, when does one cross the boundary thus find oneself outside the fold? 

Mendelssohn hat also die Entscheidung falsch getroffen, beeinflußt durch den Vorgang Calvins und einflußempfänglich geworden durch den rationalistisch-klassizistischen Geist des von Jugend auf verehrten, doch eben hier wie so oft aristotelisch beeinflußten Maimonides gegen den sicheren Instinkt der jüdischen Tradition verbündete. ... Der biblische "Monotheismus" besteht ja nicht in der Erkenntnis einer Einheit des göttlichen Wesens; wäre er das, so ermangelte er jeder Besonderheit: es gibt kein "Heidentum", das nicht ... seinen "Polytheismus" ... in der Einheit eines "Religiösen" überhaupt ... zusammenfaßte. Sondern das Eigetümliche des biblischen Gottesglaubes besteht darin, daß er diese "heidnische" Einheit - mit dem Kusari zu reden: den Gott des Aristoteles - zwar voraussetzt, aber diesen Gott in seinem Einssein mit dem persönlichst und unmittelbarst erfahren - wieder mit dem Kusari gesprochen: dem Gott Abrahams - erkennt. Die "heidnische Einheit" ist dabei nicht etwa nebensächlich; ein teilgebliebener Gott (etwa ein Gruppengott), der beanspruchte, "der Ganze" zu sein, wäre ein Götze und unfähig, in die Ineinssetzung mit dem "Gott Abrahams" einzugehen ... ; aber ihre, sozusagen, monotheistische Pointe erhält jene heidnische Einheit erst durch diese jüdische Ineinssetzung des fernen mit dem nahen, des "ganzen" mit dem "eigenen" Gott. Diese Ineinssetzung erst ist das "Wesen des Judentums" und durch das trinitarische Dogma, wie sehr auch gebrochen und in Gefahr des Rückfalls in die vor- und außerjüdische Spaltung, auch das Wesen des Christentums (den Ernst und die Aktualität deser Gefahr zeigen in der Gegenwart wieder Barth und Gogarten). Und diese Ineinssetzung ist der Offenbarungskern der Bibel und das, was sie zur jüdischen Bibel macht; der Unterscheid der jüdischen Bibel vom "Alten Testament" liegt darin, daß vom Neuen Testament aus allzu leicht der Gtt des "Alten" dem "Vater Jesu Christi" gegenüber weider gewissermaßen auf den "Gott des Aristoteles" reduziert wird. Und eben diese Ineinssetzung ist es, die mit ihrer aus dem ICH BIN DA-Ruf vom brennenden Dorn hervorschlagenden Glut in den Gottesnamen die ganze Bibel in eins schmiedet, indem sie überall die Gleichung des Gottes der Schöpfung mit dem mir, dir, jedem Gegenwärtigen vollzieht, - diese Gleichung, deren Feuer am heißesten brennt an den Stellen, wo der Gottesname und das Wort für Gott aufeinander prallen, wie in den Paradieskapiteln der Genesis oder in dem Einheitsruf des "Hör, Jisrael", überhaupt den Stellen, wo Mendelssohn "der Ewige" nicht genügt und er duch "das ewige Wesen" das Bezogenwerden auf die Namensoffenbarung des Exodus in seiner Weise ganz sicherzustellen sucht."

F. Rosenzweig, "'Der Ewige.' Mendelssohn und der Gottesnahme," in Reinhold and Annemarie Mayer, eds. Zweistromland: Kleinere Schriften zu Glauben und Denken (Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff Publischers, 1984), 109-110.

A Christian response to an image by Elie Wiesel?

I don't mean response in the sense of a thought out intellectual argument (though that would be nice), but in the the psychological sense of, "What do you think, see, feel, etc. when you read the quote I am about to post below?" It's a gut reaction kind of thing. I'm only asking for a gut reaction (though secretly I want a profound theological answer), because I think the subject matter of this quote is so utterly profound that anyone who presumes to be able to have grasped it is making a bold claim indeed. There are some things, it seems to me, that will remain a mystery and maybe ought to. Even though all of us are just yearning to know the answer. I am - so if there really is a thought out intellectual response to this then please let me know. I would really like to know.

Here's Wiesel's quote, which I garnered from John's list of holocaust survivor quotes. I've not read Wiesel before, but eruptions from the soul such such as these point to a man who is worth it.

Wiesel (located in the photo above) describes one of the worst days of his life in Buchenwald concentration camp. It was the hanging of a young boy. Read the details in the second quote from top here. The quote concludes with the following:

His tongue was still read, his eyes were not yet glazed. Behind me, I heard the same man asking: 'Where is God now?' and I heard a voice within me answer him: 'Where is He? Here He is--He is hanging here on this gallows . . . '

On the basis of his comments in the quotes mentioned, Wiesel would seem to be an atheist (he eloquently describes his death of God experience in the first quote here, though see the comments to this thread which refute this). But should a statement like this lead one to think so? That's the crazy thing ... when I first read this my gut reaction was, "Oh, he's a Christian." Of course, I soon readjusted my interpretative lens and figured out that he meant something else. God did die, in some sense, on that noose.

But that that is exactly what Christians believe, isn't it? The King of Glory, the Creator of the Universe ... hung on an instrument of death and torture, died, and went to Hell.

This event meant something profound for Wiesel; as far as I understand, he's spent much of his life trying to process it. As for me, I'm still trying to figure it out, though in my own, odd, Christian way. This is one moment where I realize that true theology is always faith seeking understanding. I believe it, but I don't understand it (and I oddly find it comforting at the same time).

Do you? Please explain.

[p.s. J.K. Gayle has linked to an interesting article on Wiesel by Time Magazine: "Author, Teacher Witness"].

[p.p.s. here are some other relevant quotes, Lenten ones in German]

God: literal and metaphorical

Time is short, so I've not been posting much lately. I do intend to start a thread on the regula fidei and the concept of truth in the early church. Till then, a beautiful quote from the seventeenth-century Anglican priest John Donne:

My God, my God, Thou art a direct God, may I not say a literall God, a God that wouldest bee understood literally, and according to the plaine sense of all that thou saiest? But thou art also (Lord I intend it to thy glory ....) thou art a figurative, a metaphoricall God too: A God in whose words there is such a height of figures, such voyages, such peregrinations to fetch remote and precious metaphors, such extensions ... such Curtaines of Allegories ... O, what words but thine, can express the inexpressible texture, and composition of thy Word.

Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, XIX Expostulation