Presence

Yesterday, Gil posted about a letter from Alan Mittleman on the sorry state of Modern Orthodox Theology. Both Godol Hador and I responded with essentially the same comment, which GH beat me to posting, which is basically, in GH's language:

The reason why MO don't do Theology is blindingly obvious - there's nowhere to go.

The point is, if you already know the answers, you can apply whatever required amount of philosophical gymnastics, but in the end you'll wind up back where you started. By definition an orthodox (ortho meanig old or established, dox meaning belief) theology is not going to answer any new questions, even if you prepend it with modern. If any progress is to be made, at least a few sacred cows will need to be slaughtered.

At some point the discussion seems to have drifted back to the topic of the historical veracity of Genesis and/or the Documentary Hypothesis, the devil's snares that constantly seek to distract us from the real issues at hand. Those issues are more meta-issues, and while they are pertinent and relevant and certainly troublesome, to begin with them is a mistake. One's position regarding such things as the divine nature of the Torah or the historical veracity of any events contained therein are directly informed by one's theology, not the other way around. Consider the origin of these issues: it is from the secular side of the equation, one that views religion and it's value as negligible at best. It makes no sense to use them as a starting point for a modern theology.

When it is said that R. Soloveitchik avoided these issues, it's for these reasons; not because he felt he could not or should not address them. When R. Soloveitchik says the "problems" presented by evolution, etc., never particularly bothered him, it's not because he read R. Avigdor Miller's books when he was a child; it's because he was attempting to construct a system of thought that subsumed the issues presented by modern secular scholarship and rendered them irrelevant. R. Soloveitchik, along with a handful of others, have tried to outline an enhanced Jewish theology (not necessarily an orthodox one) beginning with the traditional sources. Whether or not they were successful is a seperate question, but I think to say that he (or others) avoided the topics is disingenuous.

So where does that leave us? The best approach I can think of is to begin by identifying who is in fact moving things forward. Godol Hador, God bless him, focuses mostly on the retrograde stuff: issues like historical veracity only serve to tear down the existing structure, not build a new one (this is why I don't post much on these subjects; I have done my best, and not completely succeeded, to keep things here positive and forward looking.). The works of Levinas, Berkovitz and Sacks (and to some extent Fackenheim) are good reference points. The work fostered by the Shalem Center/Azure is worthy of note, particularly in how theology and politics intertwine (and let's face it, that's the real deal anyhow...). I'm sure there are others, but those are the ones I'm familiar with.