Jewish Theology and Process Thought

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.

• Introduction to SUNY Series in Constructive Postmodern ThoughtDavid Ray Griffin IntroductionSandra B. Lubarsky PART I: JEWISH THEOLOGY AND PROCESS THOUGHT 1. The Prophetic Faith in a Secular AgeLevi A. Olan 2. A Process Theory of Torah and MitzvotSol Tanenzapf 3. Judaism and Process Thought: Between Naturalism and SupernaturalismSandra B. Lubarsky 4. Judaism and Process Theology: Parallel Concerns and Challenging TensionsWilliam E. Kaufman 5. The "Essence" of Judaism: A Process-Relational CritiqueLori Krafte-Jacobs 6. Would an All-Powerful God Be Worthy of Worship?Harold S. Kushner PART II: JEWISH-CHRISTIAN DIALOGUE ON PROCESS THOUGHT 7. Process Theodicy, Christology, and the Imitatio DeiDavid Ray Griffin 8. Theodicy in Jewish Philosophy and David Griffin's Process TheologyNorbert M. Samuelson 9. The Concept of God after Auschwitz: A Jewish VoiceHans Jonas 10. Hans Jonas as Process TheologianJohn B. Cobb, Jr. 11. Reversing the Reversal: Convenant and Election in Jewish and Process ThoughtClark M. Williamson 12. In the Presence of Mystery: Process Theology and Interfaith RelationsAnson Laytner 13. Rabbinic Text Process TheologyPeter W. Ochs 14. The Organic Relation Between Natural and Text Process TheologiesJohn B. Cobb, Jr. 15. Biblical Hermeneutics and Process ThoughtWilliam A. Beardslee 16. Living Torah: A Response to William BeardsleeNahum Ward 17. Hylotheism: A Theology of Pure ProcessAlvin J. Reines 18. Modern and Postmodern Liberal Theology: A Response to Alvin ReinesDavid Ray Griffin Notes on Contributors Index

"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