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Take it to the Bridge: The Arts of Interfaith Peacebuilding

Over the centuries, many Jewish thinkers have embraced a universal approach in which the universalism of the prophets is joined with the philosophic monotheism of the Middle Ages. They accept a universal truth available to all humanity beyond, but not against, revelation. In a universal truth there is no need to refer to Judaism as the single truth; rather all knowledge is grounded in a higher divine knowledge, or a unified sense of rationality, or the natural abilities of the mind and soul. This approach, at times, blurs the line between religion and philosophy or between religion and ethics. However, religiously universalists remain close to the inclusivists in that everything is grounded in the teachings of Judaism.

The Universalist Tradition

Suffering Time: Philosophical, Kabbalistic, and Ḥasidic Reflections on Temporality

Jewish theology is compatible with religious pluralism, based on the paradigm of the Jewish obligation to live in accordance with the commandments of the Torah while accepting the legitimacy of other ways of life in accordance with the paradigm of the universal “seven commandments of the children of Noah.” Jospe here answers two challenges to this thesis, one, voiced by Christian theologians, that pluralism equals relativism, and a second, voiced by the Jewish scholar, Menachem Kellner, that there are no sources for pluralism in Jewish tradition and that pluralism itself makes no sense. In presenting his arguments, Jospe invokes a wide range of ancient, medieval and modern thinkers, probing the theological possibilities for pluralism within Jewish tradition and its boundaries with relativism. In doing so, he argues that one should differentiate between moral relativism, a non-negotiable category, and epistemological relativism, where there is room for compromise.

https://ejournals.bc.edu/index.php/scjr/article/download/1425/1314

Raphael Jospe

Papers

Pluralism Out Of The Sources Of Judaism: Religious Pluralism Without Relativism