Periodical Reviews -- By: Jefferson P. Webster

Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 169:674 (Apr 2012)
Article: Periodical Reviews
Author: Jefferson P. Webster


Periodical Reviews

By The Faculty and Library Staff of Dallas Theological Seminary

Jefferson P. Webster

Editor

“Loving the Law,” R. R. Reno, First Things (January 2012): 33-38.

In this essay, Reno, editor of First Things, reflects on what he learned from Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik about appropriate attitudes toward the laws and commands of God. “Christianity,” Reno writes, “has long been susceptible to antinomian temptations. . . . These antinomian temptations need to be resisted, especially today when an antinomian spirit predominates in our culture at large” (p. 33). Yet Christianity also “provides many reasons to resist the antinomian temptation” (ibid.). Reno encourages Christians “to turn to Jewish thinkers, for they can help us formulate pronomian antidotes to our antinomian diseases” (p. 34).

In order to set a context for the solution, to establish the problem the rabbi helped him understand and solve, Reno demonstrates how Paul has been read as antinomian, “a rejection of all forms of law,” from the Gnostics, through medievalists and the Reformation, to Bultmann and Tillich, and postmodern cultural theory (ibid.). He concludes, “Our general beliefs and convictions may be orthodox. However, as men and women of our times, our metaphysical dreams, which are imbued with antinomian assumptions, frequently are not. We often ignore or soften the plain testimony of Scripture, the clear and central role of the commandments and law in the history of Christianity. . . making us antinomian by default. What Christians need today, therefore, may not be counterarguments—or at least not only counterarguments—but instead counter-dreams” (p. 35).

As an example of such a counter-dream, Reno engages with Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik, Halakhic Man (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1984). From the rabbi, Reno writes, “I have come to see that, as a religious impulse, antinomianism is not motivated by a desire to transgress. Instead, its rejection of laws and norms flows from a metaphysical dream of purity, a dream that releases us from immanence and transcendence” (p. 37). He continues, “Left to its own devices, St. Augustine’s restless heart seeks to resolve the antithetic contrast between transcendence and immanence, the infinite and the finite, the eternal and the temporal, by choosing a singular path. We will not subdue our finite lives and bring them under the sway of God’s commandments. Instead, we seek to fly to the infinite . . . the upshot is a neglect or even disparagement of commandments, for they serve as nails that fasten transcendence to immanence” (ibid.).

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