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On Sacred Attunement , Its Meaning and Consequences: A Meditation on Christian TheologyAuthor(s): Willemien OttenSource: The Journal of Religion, Vol. 93, No. 4 (October 2013), pp. 478-494Published by: The University of Chicago PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/671122 .

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On Sacred Attunement, Its Meaning
and Consequences: A Meditation on Christian Theology*
Willemien Otten/University of Chicago

FROM ATONEMENT TO ATTUNEMENT

Coming from my background in medieval Christianity and thinking abouttheological matters, I am fairly certain that I would not have thought ofSacred Attunement as the most obvious title for a contemporary theologicalproject that aspires to be both innovative and classical. Sacred Atonementwould sooner come to mind. For behind that title one can discern the vasthorizon of Anselm of Canterbury’s great project Why God Became Man ðCurdeus homo, ca. 1098 CEÞ, which still forms the essence of Christian redemp-tion theology, stretching itself out from medieval until present times. Leav-ing the homophonic quality of “attunement” and “atonement” aside for themoment, I find the analogy with Anselm’s medieval project more than agratuitous one. After all, Anselm’s treatise came about as a direct responseto a contemporaneous dispute with Judaism on the question of whether in-carnation was a fitting gesture for God to make given the dignity of the di-vine,1 as Jews were among the most learned critics Anselm faced.2 The si-multaneous closeness of and difference between Christianity and Judaismthat I suggest here will be an underlying theme in my response, which will

© 2013 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.0022-4189/2013/9304-0007$10.00

1 Michael Fishbane, Sacred Attunement: A Jewish Theology ðChicago: University of Chicago Press,2008Þ. On incarnation as a central problem for Jewish-Christian debate, see O. Skarsaune, “IsChristianity Monotheistic? Patristic Perspectives on a Jewish/Christian Debate,” in Studia Patris-tica, vol. 29, ed. E. A. Livingstone ðLeuven: Peeters, 1997Þ, 340–63. Skarsaune holds that the in-carnation rather than Christ’s divinity was the dividing issue between Judaism and Christianity inthe early Church. By contrast, in the scholastic Middle Ages, the Trinity became the joint focusof religious debate for the three Abrahamic religions.

2 See R. W. Southern, Anselm of Canterbury: Portrait in a Landscape ðCambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1991Þ, 198–202.

* The underlying text of this response dates back to a dean’s forum in the Divinity School onFishbane’s book held on February 10, 2010, in which I participated alongside Martin Marty. Ithas since been developed to include Fishbane’s Ethics paper.

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be laced with clues derived mostly from Fishbane’s evocative book but alsofrom his complementary lecture on “Ethics and Sacred Attunement.”

On Sacred Attunement

Instead of trying to overcome religious difference, however, this essaywill try to give a ruminating, quasi-monastic meditation on the meaning of“attunement” placed in deliberate contradistinction to “atonement,” eventhough I am well aware that atonement has its own prestigious antecedentin Jewish history and genealogy, symbolized in the High Holiday of YomKippur. Given the well-established nature of Jewish and Christian identity,one might at first sight even consider atonement an effective category tocapture their ideational proximity, thereby facilitating at the same time whatmay be a useful shift from the particular to the general. Might not the useof atonement be helpful, for example, in bringing out a common focus onsacrifice in both religions, thus foregrounding the binding act needed tobridge the separation between the human and the divine? After all, accord-ing to a commonly received etymology, religio represents the essential actof “binding” by which humankind strives to overcome the alienation thatplagues its relation with the divine.The fraught exegetical history of Genesis 22 serves as a seasoned counter-

factual to the assumption of sacrificial centrality, as it reveals the alarmingpolemical contentiousness to which the adoption of any schematic interpre-tation of scripture can lead. For while in the Hebrew Bible the narrativebinding of Isaac ends with the sacrifice of a ram, we see in the paschal hom-ily of the early Christian author Melito of Sardis ðdied ca. 180 CEÞ the sac-rifice of Jesus Christ becoming associated with and projected on the figureof the nonsacrificed Isaac.3 And whereas Melito may have initially seizedon, and wanted to contribute to the resolving of, an existing exegeticalproblem within rabbinic literature by applying his own creative twist to it,namely, God’s imperfect request to Abraham, the subsequent tradition ofChristian exegesis would prove unable to resist the soteriological superim-position of Christ on the hybridic combination of Isaac and the ram, thusgiving rise to fateful supersessionist readings.The nature of Christ’s sacrifice is also what might seem to lie at the heart

of Anselm’s Why God Became Man, as Anselm’s question seems deeply reso-nant with the Christian sacrificial tradition of divine sonship that Judaismhad long rejected. And yet it does not. For Anselm bends his argument mag-isterially away from sacrifice and punishment, making no reference to Gen-esis 22, and toward satisfaction as his self-enclosed alternative concept ofatonement.4 While sacrifice may well be a key religious term, therefore, the

3 For a very nuanced and contextualized reading of Melito’s homily, see Robert L. Wilken,
“Melito, the Jewish Community in Sardis and the Sacrifice of Isaac,” Theological Studies 37 ð1976Þ:53–69.
4 Contrary to Jasper Hopkins in his essay “God’s Sacrifice of Himself as a Man: Anselm ofCanterbury’s Cur deus homo,” in Human Sacrifice in Jewish and Christian tradition, ed. K. Finster-busch, A. Lange, K. F. Diethard Romheld ðLeiden: Brill, 2007Þ, 230–57, I see Anselm’s theory

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history of its application appears altogether too complex and too ellipticalto have it serve a stable mediating role in contemporary Jewish-Christian

The Journal of Religion

interreligious discussion. And while Fishbane in Sacred Attunement remainsloyal to the notion of covenant,5 a key Torah term that might seem moresuited for Jewish-Christian debate, the fraught history of its Protestant usagebuilding on the antithesis between the covenants of grace and works makesme hesitant to substitute it as representing a broader Christian perspective,even though there have been overtures in that direction after Vatican II.6

In contrast to various quasi-universalizing definitions of “atonement,”which are likely to rake up old controversies or create new ones, attunement,by its very word, seems to play to a melody, and in doing so evokes a senseof harmony. Rather than depending on the model of contractual exchangeaccording to a do ut des scheme, which underlies the idea of religious sacri-fice while potentially harnessing that of covenant, given that pacta suntservanda, attunement invites one before all to be receptive.7 It radiates theexpectation that one adopt such an attitude of receptivity not in a submis-sive, but in a participatory way, as one becomes gently nudged to embraceit through the quietly dawning awareness that reciprocity with the divine isin a sense already there, ready not for the taking but for acceptance and ful-fillment without any hint—pace Genesis 22—of forced obedience.8

The task of accepting such reciprocity, meanwhile, requiring a modeof thinking that is as subtle as it is robust, is all the more difficult given that

of atonement, in which the term sacrificium does not appear and offerre only rarely, more in thetradition of gift than of sacrifice. On punishment, see my comment below in n. 10.

5 See Fishbane, Sacred Attunement, esp. 113–20, 150–51, and passim. I admire how Fishbanereshapes and “delegalizes” covenant theology along the lines of his hermeneutical theologyunderstood as a kind of transformational, spiritual discipline. On attempts to reinterpret Prot-estant covenant theology, see n. 6. below.

6 I see the history of covenant or pactum in the Western Christian tradition as so colored byits Reformed background, from John Calvin to Karl Barth, that for that reason alone it seemsunsuited to use as a label covering non-Protestant Christianity as well. I should add that Vati-can II’s constitution Dei verbum, influenced by Catholic scholars involved in patristic and bib-lical ressourcement like Henri de Lubac ðsee n. 26 belowÞ and Jean Danielou, has theologicallybroadened and actualized the use of covenant, influencing also the thought of former PopeBenedict XVI ðcf. J. Ratzinger, Many Religions—One Covenant: Israel, the Church, and the World½San Francisco: Ignatius, 1999�Þ. For a nuanced reading of the important seventeenth chap-ter of the Protestant debate, see W. J. van Asselt, “Theology: an Invitation to Friendship,” Neder-lands Theologisch Tijdschrift 64 ð2010Þ: 1–15.

7 My meditation will not further comment on the Heideggerian overtones of attunement,as Fishbane does not explicitly engage Heidegger. Attunement in Heidegger reflects his no-tion of Befindlichkeit as “Dasein’s capacity to be affected by the world, to find that the entitiesand situations it faces matter to it, and in ways over which it has less than complete control”ðS. Mulhall, Routledge Philosophical GuideBook to Heidegger and Being and Time ½London: Routledge,1996�, 76Þ. Instead I want to move toward a more dialogical sense of attunement in the mea-sured and disciplined way of Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier ð1722Þ, where through the formalalternation of prelude and fugue in all major and minor keys Bach sets up a conversationwhose thrust lies precisely in its being—and remaining—more self-enclosed than intended.

8 Fishbane brings this out by seeing humility and moral awareness as dispositions resultingfrom a re-formed consciousness or attitude following caesural breaks in our everyday attitude;see “Ethics and Sacred Attunement,” in this issue, 422.

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one of the partners in the exchange—and in the more fruitful encounterbetween Judaism and Christianity that I see arising from it—is the divine,


even if we follow Fishbane’s majestic view that the divine can also be rep-resented by the cosmic. In a move flowing from his hermeneutical under-standing of covenant, for Fishbane the divine can even take on the voice ofthe innermost self, as taking seriously the concentrated and intimate formof divine presence qua presentness opens up the self to the encounter withother beings as other selves.As I see it, Fishbane’s concept of “sacred attunement” makes its greatest

contribution to contemporary theological debates in the cultivation of anattitude of receptivity as spiritual exercise, thereby allowing for authenticreciprocity.9 Under his elegant tutelage we are prudently guided away fromthe conceptual impasse that tends to mark atonement, the use of whichseems to have calcified after Anselm into the immobile cornerstone of thegift economy that underlies Western Christianity.10 Subtly but productivelychanging the parameters of what theology can be, the substitution of at-tunement for atonement transforms and widens religion as religio in Fish-bane’s able hands from the politics of soteriological exchange to a harmo-nious play of antiphonal acoustics.

THE ACOUSTICS OF ATTUNEMENT: ON THE NEED FOR ANTIPHONAL DIALOGUE

To illustrate the difficulty of overhauling our style of religious exchange,let me begin with the example of a little riddle that my youngest daugh-ter brought home from school one day. “What,” she asked, “do you thinkis the hardest thing for me to give away?” Knowing my youngest daughtervery well, I immediately came up with a number of very important fashionaccessories that I knew she would be hard-pressed to let go of, but everytime she clearly proved me wrong. “No,” she explained in the end ratherpedantically, “the hardest thing for me to give away is kindness, for it is theone thing most often returned.”Dwelling on the wider meaning of this riddle for a moment, I value Fish-

bane’s Sacred Attunement in a double sense as just such an act of kindnesstoward us, his audience. It is a present to his audience, not merely as a giftbut in the sense that it “keeps the divine present,” bringing it close bothto the company of theologians—Jewish primarily, but Christian ones also—and also to a wider audience outside theology and outside Judaism. More

9 See Fishbane, Sacred Attunement , 1, and “Ethics and Sacred Attunement,” in this issue. Seealso n. 5 above.

10 My statement reflects what I see as a misfortune in the story of Western Christianity,namely, that the subtlety of Anselm’s argument has been missed almost from its inception.Nowhere, for example, does Anselm require Christ to undergo punishment on behalf ofhumanity but his view of satisfaction forms a fitting alternative to punishment ðaut poena autsatisfactioÞ. See J. McIntyre, St. Anselm and His Critics: A Re-interpretation of the “Cur deus homo”ðEdinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1954Þ, 76–114.

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importantly, in his book Fishbane has made a gift of himself, in the pro-cess lending commanding authority to his authorship, as he goes to great


lengths to develop a Jewish theology that makes the world “God-real,” ashe calls it, by achieving a balance “between justice and righteousness asthe actualization of a modality of God’s truth in reality.”11 It is especially inthis latter, deeper sense that I treasure his book as a present that, like theact of kindness in my daughter’s riddle, has a residual moral quality in thatit simply does not stop inviting one to return it.12 Thus it does not just callfor academic responses but should rather inspire comparable attempts atnew and creative theologizing.In spawning returns of a similar kind, moreover, the gift giving that fol-

lows fromFishbane’s book opens us up to the element of time and the rhythmwith which temporality pulsates religion and theology underneath.13 By hark-ing back to the time of creation, moreover, as a time of openness, accom-modation, and hospitality, permeated by a capacious and expansive senseof divine goodness, Fishbane is aware that time, that which we might indeedcall the time of creation, contains the secret of insight, through the unlock-ing of which divine gift can present itself instantly in the guise of the Giver.In other words, the combined effect of temporality and insight can resultin the bimodal consciousness open to theophany, located right at the inter-section of transcendent immanence and immanent transcendence.14

A major reason why I see Fishbane’s Jewish theology of antiphonal acous-tics not only as a wonderful achievement but also as a timely model to em-ulate is because of the dialogical structure it implies. I am especially mind-ful of how rarely in Christian theology we seem able to reach beyond thescholastic mode of thought developed in the twelfth and codified in thethirteenth centuries CE, whereby the subject matter of theology becamedivided up into various subparts or loci, such as creation, Christology, pneu-matology, redemption and so on. It is a sign of remarkable continuity thatall these loci have survived more or less unscathed the iconoclast tenden-cies and humanist impulses of the Reformation, as a result of which theyare thriving to this very day, with Karl Barth’s Kirchliche Dogmatik as perhaps

11 See “Epilogue,” in Fishbane, Sacred Attunement , 209. The Anselmian quality of this state-ment is striking.

12 In what is perhaps a not unrelated way, this invitation for return, namely, of God’s love,is what constitutes the heart of Abelard’s alternative to Anselm’s ðmisunderstoodÞ satisfactiontheology. While to call Abelard’s theology subjective as opposed to Anselm’s objective theoryseems anachronistic if not inaccurate, it is true that the invitational aspect present in Abelardopens up a new dimension compared to Anselm’s view, which Fishbane’s book actually al-lowed me to frame more clearly. In his “Ethics and Sacred Attunement,” in this issue, 432,Fishbane sees initial subjectivity open up into correlative receptivity and from there into co-responsibility.

13 See Fishbane, “Ethics and Sacred Attunement,” in this issue, 431–32 on “the ethical mo-ment” and micromoments of ethical attunement.

14 See Fishbane, Sacred Attunement, x–xi.

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its most respected and ever inspiring representative. Yet whereas these me-dieval loci initially came about as categories to help scholars organize the


ever expanding corpus of their often only loosely connected exegetical andpatristic findings, once the collection of loci became established as the dom-inant model for doing theology, their function soon grew more abstract andaloof.15 Hence what was originally a serviceable organizational and peda-gogical framework, in short, a theological support structure, became notonly confused with but subsequently mistaken for “sacred doctrine” in areified sense—more Neothomist than Thomistic, so to speak. Rather thanseen as shoring up the teaching practice set in motion by Augustine’s ear-lier use of the term in On Christian Doctrine,16 the unwieldy growth of whosefindings needed containment and repackaging at the beginning of thescholastic era,17 it seems to have been mistaken for the embodiment ofdogma, as if the builder’s scaffolding had became the building.Given the above scenario, it is little wonder that the dialogical relation

of these loci with scripture, which is as imperious and peremptory a sourcefor Christian as for Jewish theology, became severed over time in favor ofa new bond.18 Yet the nature of this bond could not but bemore contrived—an effect exacerbated by the import of Aristotelian terminology—than ear-lier, more integral models, cast aside since then as uncritical, which had ei-ther been minted in the long-standing monastic tradition of artificiality,19

or were deeply rooted in the traditional exegesis of imago dei, with its little

15 Interestingly, E. P. Meijering has argued that Barth wanted to make use of patristic dogma
but did so through novel interpretations built on indirect patristic knowledge which he hadderived largely from secondary literature. One might indeed say, in other words, that Barthcontinued scholastic practice. See E. P. Meijering, Von den Kirchenvatern zu Karl Barth: Dasaltkirchliche Dogma in der “Kirchlichen Dogmatik’ ðLeiden: Brill, 1993Þ.
16 For background on doctrina christiana as Christian teaching or culture, see Peter Brown,Augustine of Hippo: A Biography ðLondon: Faber & Faber, 1967Þ, 259–69. For Augustine’s develop-ing position on the liberal arts as culminating in De doctrina christiana, see K. Pollmann andMarkVessey, eds.,Augustine and the Disciplines: From Cassiciacum to “Confessions” ðOxford:OxfordUniversity Press, 2005Þ.

17 The need for such repackaging is aptly illustrated by Abelard’s Sic et Non, which is a dossierof contradictory patristic texts preceded by guidelines about how to resolve the contradictionsbut without actually resolving them. Hence a teaching context is presupposed, but no actualdoctrine imposed. See on the implicit pedagogy of early scholastic texts my “Religion as Exer-citatio Mentis: A Case for Theology as a Humanist Discipline,” in Z. R. W. M. von Martels andA. MacDonald, eds., Christian Humanism: Essays Offered to Arjo Vanderjagt on the Occasion of his Six-tieth Birthday ðLeiden: Brill, 2009Þ, 59–73.

18 For a fuller statement of my position on scholasticism, see my “Medieval Scholasticism:Past, Present and Future,” Dutch Review of Church History 81 ð2001Þ: 275–89, as well as “Scho-lasticism and the Problem of Intellectual Reform,” in Scholasticism Reformed: Essays in Honourof Willem van Asselt, ed.M.Wisse, M. Sarot, andW.Otten ðLeiden: Brill, 2010Þ, 55–73.

19 I mean “artificial” here in the sense that Burcht Pranger speaks about medieval monasti-cism as “artificial,” that is, allowing for an intense passion for the divine that cannot be ac-commodated by the weak structures of society. See his essay “The Artifice of Eternity” inTheArtificiality of Christianity: Essays on the Poetics of Monasticism ðStanford, CA: Stanford UniversityPress, 2003Þ, 17–38.

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known, surprising appreciation for the cultivation of human technologicaldevelopment.20 As a consequence it appears as if the mere fact that Chris-


tian theology possesses such inherited categories forces it to promulgatetheir attendant truth—the more so the more it wants to see tradition in anonrelativistic way. But the truth these loci proclaim is no longer just in sup-port of scriptural exegesis, freeing it up to speak its own message as it were,but on behalf of it.If we add to this the interesting development by which early modern sci-

ence emancipated itself at least in part by adjudicating the truth-claims oftheological disputants over the veracity of exegetical statements, the dis-tance between theology and scripture grows ever wider, and the potentiallyliberating force of theology becomes ever more curtailed. Coinciding withthe transition frompremodern religion as focused on ritual and inner virtueto modern religion as comprising a notional assent to a set of propositionaltruth claims,21 this development further enhanced the intrinsic scholasticleanings of European theological learning. What we find ourselves left withis a theological discussion that, despite repeated requests and attempts tochange and update, is hampered by a stilted set of parameters whose histori-cal legacy is as immobile as its contemporary relevance has grown question-able. What better argument for imparting the need for antiphonal dialogueis there than this mounting set of intellectual developments muffling anybreakthrough of fresh theological voice?

Attunement and Scriptural Dialogue

While the kind of systematic summa building that arose from the ever morerigid intellectual condensation of what in scholasticism began as pedagogi-cal practice has been rightly criticized by postmodernity, with the retrievalof negative theology serving both as a valuable instrument to deconstructidolatry and a remedial tool to help it return to doxology, the basic hold ofthis enlightened scholastic model still lingers.22 As long as the discussionon the meaning of various individual loci continues,23 the antecedent issueof their organic relationship with scripture is likely not to be foregrounded,

20 See Thomas Carlson, “Religion and the Time of Creation: Placing “theHuman” in Techno-scientific and Theological Context,” in Religion Beyond a Concept, ed. Hent de Vries ðNew York:
Fordham University Press, 2009Þ, 826–41. Carlson pays specific attention to Gregory of Nyssaand John Scottus Eriugena.
21 On this transition, see Peter Harrison, “Miracles, Early Modern Science, and Rational Reli-gion,” ChurchHistory 75 ð2006Þ: 493–510.

22 R. W. Southern sees a continued influence of the program of the medieval schools fromthe eleventh and twelfth centuries even through the twentieth century. See his Scholastic Human-ism and the Unification of Europe ðOxford: Blackwell, 1995Þ, 1–13.

23 A good case in point is the position of Calvin’s famous locus on double predestination.Found far into the third book of the Divine Institutes ðIII.21Þ, Calvin meant it to be a consol-ing doctrine and warned readers away from curiosity.

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as the intellectual problem of theology’s antiquated framework is too easilypushed aside.


The need for an open hermeneutical horizon becomes ever more urgentif one factors in that, on the one hand, historical-critical exegesis—even ifdriven by the best of intentions—seems to remove scriptural interpretationmore and more from its theological roots, while the precritical exegesisof the church fathers, on the other hand, enjoying newfound popularity,appears often marshaled for the purpose of serving a kind of nostalgicallyconservative theology. In both cases the kind of scriptural exegesis we findis incompatible with the risk-taking character of attunement that Fishbaneadvocates, even if he too appears weary of the religious reductionism foundin modernity. But he is to be commended for displaying an outlook that isfundamentally forward rather than nostalgic.On the point of scriptural dialogue, Fishbane’s chapters on PaRDeS as

ways to achieve what he calls “the state of living with God-mindedness” arevery helpful in pointing the way toward a more organic intellectual engage-ment, one that bridges the distance between scripture and theology whileleaving ample room for hermeneutics, that is, the hermeneutics of ðscrip-turalÞ attunement. It is no accident in this context that the acronym PaRDeSstands for the integrity of paradise. For the term paradise not only evokes asense of repristination, representing a fullness of the senses that precedesand integrates their fragmentation, not unlike how the melody in the mindof the composer anticipates the transcription of the musical score, but italso connotes the fullness of cosmic nature—that other realm where besidesdetailed scientific exploration there is equal need for hermeneutical sensi-tivity.As I gleaned from Fishbane’s book, the fourfold interpretation of PaRDeS

consisting of peshat ðplain or contextual meaningÞ, derash ðtheological andlegal reformulationsÞ, remez ðallusions that may reveal moral allegoriesÞ, andsod ðthe mystical dimensions of scripture, but inseparable from the cos-mic truths of divine beingÞ serves as the kind of acoustics that I mentionedearlier. Not only does it allow for the antiphonal alternation of receptivityand reciprocity in the relation with the divine that Fishbane calls covenantaltheology—but how different from its Protestant use—but through it we alsogain better insight in the so-called torah kelulah, the “Torah of All-in-All,”a term with a kabbalistic forebear that he introduces to indicate what pre-cedes both the Written and the Oral Torah, that is, the infinite enfoldmentof all that could ever be in our world.24 We should acquire such insight,moreover, in a way that allows us to make full use of our senses: the ear, theeye, and especially the breath, indicative as the latter is of both humanity’screated state and the possibility of intimacy with the divine.

24 See Fishbane, Sacred Attunement, 61, 219.

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Based on the fourfold nature of scriptural interpretation embraced byFishbane, a medievalist like myself is obviously tempted to compare PaRDeS


to the fourfold interpretation of scripture that was current in the MiddleAges. As its Latin summary goes,

Littera gesta docet, quid credas allegoria,Moralis quid agat, quo tendas anagogia.25

And while this is a rich area of comparison that certainly deserves to be fur-ther explored, for my present argument it is not the right comparison tomake, because, while medieval theology was heavily impacted by the rise ofscholasticism, the fate of the fourfold sense of scripture, standing apart fromthis development, was a different one. Having escaped the scholastic grasp,this exegeticalmodel represents a wide-ranging andflexible approach—moretheologizing than theological perhaps—animated by a dynamic tension be-tween letter and spirit ðor between history and allegoryÞ that never allowsitself to be fully domesticated by narrow theological categories. Exemplify-ing thus a more integrated worldview, it captures the sense of an era whoseparadigm nevertheless crumbled and vanished at the rise of modernity. Asa result, any endeavor to retrieve and apply it to our postscriptural age car-ries with it the burden of fighting a lost cause.26 Unburdened by any restor-ative agenda, on my reading Fishbane does not seek a new cultural de-coding of scripture but is interested instead, rightly in my view, in findinga more wholesale interpenetration of the scriptural and the real or cosmicthat is particularly relevant to the modern, secular era and its problems.In line with the foregoing arguments, I want to focus here on how close

attention to and prudent comparative use of Fishbane’s categories mighthelp us to erect a different classification in Christian theology. I am partic-ularly interested in a classification in which the mystical dimension ðas insodÞ is not erased from the systematic canvas but fully integrated with it ina dialogical sense, as a result of which scriptural overtones can begin to lightup systematic works, turning them into the biblical palimpsest that everygood theology should aspire to be.As an example of where I see Fishbane’s theological project as potentially

very helpful for the Christian tradition, I want to hark back again to medie-val practice, but in a somewhat different fashion, by dwelling for a moment

25 “The letter teaches God’s deeds, allegory what to believe, morality how to act, and ana-
gogy for what to strive.” On this rhyme, see W. Otten, “The Power of the Bible in the MiddleAges,” in The International Bible Commentary: A Catholic and Ecumenical Commentary for the Twenty-First Century, ed. W. R. Farmer ðCollegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1988Þ, 48–52.
26 It is interesting that Henri de Lubac, who wrote the definitive study on the fourfold senseof scripture ðExegese medievale: Les quatre sens de l’ecriture ½Paris: Aubier-Montaigne, 1959–65�Þ alsocaptured that other waning medieval cultural ideal, that is, of the church as the sacramentalbody of Christ; cf. Corpus mysticum: l’Eucharistie et l’Eglise au Moyen Age; Etude historique ðParis:Aubier-Montaigne, 1944Þ.

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on the notion of Jacob’s ladder. Resonating with Fishbane’s description ofit as “the cultivation of a multiform spiritual awareness in the midst of life,


connecting the inner heart with the heights of heaven,”27 we are remindedof the prominent use of Jacob’s ladder in the Rule of St. Benedict, whichheld sway for much of the medieval era. Serving as the Rule’s principal orga-nizational image, Jacob’s ladder depicts the Benedictine monks as angelsgoing up toward heaven. Yet the image of the ladder does not just symbolizean unqualified upward drive, as through the notion of the rungs of the lad-der Benedict focuses the reader’s attention on the twelve steps of humility.In the continued practice of these the monk evidently desires to make prog-ress but she will also regularly face setbacks. As an image of ascent under-girded by practice conceived in terms of trial and error, climbing the laddercomes to represent a hermeneutical as much as an ascetic effort, to the ex-tent that it has in-built moments of reflexivity and self-scrutiny.28 Overtakenby the scholastic model, their deep biblical moorings notwithstanding, suchmonastic images as Jacob’s ladder and their attendant practices became ex-cluded over time from the modern Christian theological enterprise. Sincethey do not depend on any competitive reading of scripture, however, theymay reemerge as more valuable today, allowing the Jewish and Christian exe-getical tradition to reinforce each other in a desire to make exegesis reso-nate once again with spiritual impulse. Comparative projects guided by Fish-bane’s sense of a theological attunement to human existence marked bynatality can go far in helping us tobring such images back. In this specific case,their prudent use invites us to open up the closed and forgotten tradition ofmonasticism in a new, refreshing, and more practicable way.

ATTUNEMENT AND CONFESSION: AUGUSTINE, LUSTIGER, PASCAL

Nearing the end of my response, I want to treat two more themes in rela-tion to Fishbane’s book and subsequent essay on the ethics of attunement.In both cases, which to some extent mirror each other, I will analyze howFishbane’s contribution can enrich the teaching of theology, not least—even if not exclusively—that of Christian theology.My first theme has to do with the neglected language of confession and

its suitability for a theology of attunement. If the scholastic, propositionallanguage is indeed no longer adequate for purposes of a comprehensivecontemporary theology, the language of confession might seem an obviousalternative, even if its particularity lends it, alongside personal character,a certain vulnerability as well. Not surprisingly perhaps, Fishbane’s invo-cation of natality, a concept presented here through Jean Wahl but coined

27 Sacred Attunement, 35.28 On Jacob’s ladder and the twelve steps of humility, see The Rule of St. Benedict, in Western

Asceticism, ed. and trans. O. Chadwick ðPhiladelphia: Westminster Press, 1978Þ, chap. 7.

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by Hannah Arendt, invites one to dwell on confession from an Augustin-ian perspective.29 Yet the question arises, what should modern confession


look like, when approached from an interreligious awareness and evalu-ated for its enrichment of theological understanding?The epitaph authored by Cardinal Lustiger and found affixed to a pillar

in Notre Dame Cathedral, Paris, since his funeral there on August 10, 2007,presents us with an interesting case of autobiographical confession mixedwith an ecclesiastically sanctioned profession of the faith:

Je suis ne juif.J’ai recu le nomde mon grand-pere paternel, Aron.Devenu chretienPar la foi et le bapteme,Je suis demeure juifcomme le demeuraient les Apotres.J’ai pour saints patronsAron le Grand Pretre,Saint Jean l’Apotre,Sainte Marie pleine de grace.Nomme 139e archeveque de ParisPar Sa Saintete le pape Jean-Paul II,J’ai ete intronise dans cette cathedraleLe 27 fevrier 1981,Puis j’y ai exerce tout mon ministere.Passants, priez pour moi.

Aron Jean-Marie cardinal Lustiger, Archeveque de Paris30

Born Jewish, Lustiger first links his received Jewish name of Aron with
that of John the Baptist andMary as Christian saints, after which he connectshis name givers collectively with Pope Jean-Paul II, who authorized his roleand mission as the 139th archbishop of Paris. Inserting himself thereby inthe line of apostolic succession, he goes on to list the date not of his con-version but of his apostolic manifestation-cum -episcopal enthronement ðin-troniseÞ in the cathedral of Notre Dame on February 27, 1981.31 While this re-markable text thus seamlessly integrates Cardinal Lustiger’s Jewish rootswith his profession of the Christian religion, toward the end there is a sud-den shift of perspective. For the cardinal ends his epitaph not with a prayeror blessing but with a request addressed to the countless pilgrims who visitNotre Dame. While he thus extends his sense of ministry into the future,
29 On natality in Arendt and its roots in Augustine’s City of God 12.20 ðinitium ut esset, creatusest homo, ante quem nemo fuitÞ, see Hannah Arendt, Love and Saint Augustine ð1929; Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1996Þ, 146–48.
30 For this text and its context, see Henri Tincq, Jean-Marie Lustiger: Le cardinal propheteðParis: Bernard Grasset, 2012Þ, 155–58.

31 There is a way in which for Lustiger his ordination as priest seems to carry less weight, andhis true calling as Jew and Christian is rather that of being of apostolic and episcopal lineage.

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he does so movingly by vacating his ministerial place and joining the ranksof those who are ministered to.


In its posthumous turn to the anonymity of the viator, Lustiger’s textboth resonates and contrasts with that of an earlier French confession,that of Pascal’s so-called memorial dated to November 23, 1654,32 famouslyfound sown into his coat only upon his death.

Feu.« Dieu d’Abraham, Dieu d’Isaac, Dieu de Jacob » ðEx. 3:6Þnon des philosophes et des savants.Certitude. Certitude. Sentiment. Joie. Paix.
Dieu de Jesus-Christ.Deum meum et Deum vestrum. ð John 20:17Þ« Ton Dieu sera mon Dieu. » ðRuth 1:16Þ. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Jesus-Christ.Jesus-Christ.Je m’en suis separe; je l’ai fui, renonce, crucifie.Que je n’en sois jamais separe.Il ne se conserve que par les voies enseignees dans l’Evangile.Renonciation totale et douce.Soumission totale a Jesus-Christ et a mon directeur.Eternellement en joie pour un jour d’exercice sur la terre.Non obliviscar sermones tuos. Amen. ð John 17:3Þ
Whereas for Pascal the radical intimacy of conversion resulted
in a testi-monial that he wanted to keep present only to himself and hidden fromothers until his death, for Cardinal Lustiger the event of his death promptedthe need for an epitaph that funneled personal faith into ecclesial visibility.But just as the hiddenness of Pascal’s confession does not preclude a possi-ble public dimension,33 so the formulaic nature of Lustiger’s epitaph doesnot thereby erase the private journey underlying it.Confession comes in different guises, but, couched as it is in language, it
always wants to be read and interpreted—the more so, the more it pre-supposes and builds on tradition. Thus it is often the absence as much asthe presence that needs to be looked for in what are after all scripted texts.For Cardinal Lustiger, intriguingly, the presence of Christ remains implicitin his adoption of his Christian identity, which suggests that he considersChrist—like the apostles but unlike the Pope—as much a Jewish as a Chris-tian figure, while for Pascal his embrace of Jesus Christ and the gospel istraced back directly to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, which allowshim to distinguish the biblical God of confession from that of the scholars

32 See “Le Memorial,” in Pascal, Pensees, ed. Ch.-M. des Granges ðParis: Garnier Freres, 1964Þ,71–72. For the English text of the Memorial, see Pascal: Pensees, trans. A. J. Krailsheimer, rev. ed.
London: Penguin, 1995Þ, 285–86. Pascal calls the year 1654 “l’an de grace.”33 He apparently made a copy for a close friend.
ð

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and philosophers. In both authors, however different, their modern Chris-tian confession has direct roots in Judaism and the Hebrew Bible, and that


represents an advance to be treasured compared to earlier eras, includingthe Middle Ages.Of course both these confessions are different from Augustine’s, mark-

edly succinct as they are in comparison to that monumental and expansivetext. But their brevity neither lessens their impact nor sets them fundamen-tally apart, inasmuch as their voices carry onwards a project that Augus-tine first put on the map, namely, that of animating his own human wordswith the reality of the Incarnate Word.34 Whether such human words needto be the sanctified and solidified words of the tradition, or even be in ac-cordance with it, is a question that is ultimately subordinate to the attemptitself to make human language be carried onward, rather than weighteddown, by the divine,35 to whom it wants to address itself.Commenting on Augustine’s use of the psalms in the Confessions, Jean-

Francois Lyotard touches on that work’s remarkable antiphonal quality tomark the problem of reunion with the divine that lies at the root of everyconfession: “Antiphons, confessions, responsorials as much as psalms: thefissure runs between waiting and anxiety, a most shallow furrow that is ir-reparable for ages, before the soul’s reunion with itself in death before God.Until then, the uncertainty that is faith must be woven, one must knot to-gether the two strands that God’s incision in the tessitura of the soul hadundone: the soul still belongs to the self, it already belongs to God.”36 It isfor the purpose of describing the tessitura of the soul that I see the lan-guage of confession as enormously useful. For, through the proclamatoryforce by which it asserts itself, confession is able to unleash the decon-structive power needed to break through the mask of scholastic theology,clearing whatever space needed for the original pedagogy behind it to comeout of hiding. Building on the kataphatic as well as the apophatic impulsesin the tradition, confession can bring a valuable corrective to contempoarytheological discourse that converges on and augments its original Augus-tinian function of laying before the creator both praise ðconfessio laudisÞ andsin ðconfessio peccatiÞ. Protecting us against the idolatry of what one might

34 For an analysis of the effect of incarnation on Augustine’s teaching in De doctrina chris-tiana, see Mark Jordan’s chapter “His Word, His Body,” in V. Burrus, M. D. Jordan, and
K. McKendrick, Seducing Augustine: Bodies, Desires, Confessions ðNew York: Fordham UniversityPress, 2010Þ, 33–61, at 35. Of course Augustine is not above reproach in terms of his viewsof Judaism, even though Paula Fredriksen sees him as the architect of a more positive Christiantheological position on historical Judaism. See P. Fredriksen, Augustine and the Jews: A Chris-tian Defense of Jews and Judaism ðNew York: Doubleday, 2008Þ.
35 On Augustine’s analogy between movement following weight like desire following love,see Jean-LucMarion, “Resting, Moving, Loving: TheAccess to the Self according to Saint Augus-tine,” Journal of Religion 91 ð2011Þ: 24–42, esp. 34–39.

36 See Jean-Francois Lyotard, The Confession of Augustine, trans. by R. Beardsworth ðStanford,CA: Stanford University PressÞ, 86.

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call theological scientification, furthermore, through confession the authen-ticity of selfhood that lies at the very heart of attunement can be made pro-


ductive not only by creating awareness of the bimodal consciousness behindtheology but also, in doing so, by leading us onward to the transcendenceof transcendence.37

ATTUNEMENT TO THE COSMIC GOD

In addition to the language of the self, the language of nature and crea-tion is of enormous importance for contemporary Christian theology, andFishbane’s book has the potential to function as a similar, if not perhapsgreater, corrective in this area. Here I would like to come back especially tohis unique reflections on torah kelulah, as a traditional Jewish concept thathe both retrieves and recalibrates for contemporary usage and that, in partbecause of this dynamic combination, I hold to be among the book’s mostpowerful concepts to provoke continued reflection.As Fishbane makes clear, in addition to theWritten Torah ðtorah she-bikhtavÞ

and the Oral Torah ðtorah she-be’al pehÞ, there is the torah kelulah whose im-portance is primordial, inasmuch as the Torah of All-in-All denotes abso-lute reality and comprises the totality of existence, sealing it with the kiss ofdivine presence.38 As he goes on to say, these modalities of Torah should notbe seen in opposition to each other, but neither should the Oral and WrittenTorah, on account of their codified status, suppress the importance of theprimordial torah kelulah, which Fishbane calls “God’s illimitable investitureof Being.” Or, as he states further on, “Thus the torah kelulah precededSinai ðit being an expression of the utmost divine primordialityÞ; and itpulses throughout Being as a whole.” At the same time, however, Fishbaneis keen not to sever ties between the different modalities of Torah. He doesso by anchoring torah kelulah firmly into his larger framework of depictingJewish theology as a hermeneutical theology, the ultimate aim of which hedescribes as “becoming ever attuned to the alphabet of creation, for thesake of serving God’s creative happenings.”39

I cannot help but draw inspiration from this key expression of torahkelulah, the use of which I hope his book will promote in Jewish theologymore widely, to help us bring creation, as another phased-out interlocu-tor, back to the table of theological discourse. In this context two pointsare of special interest to me. The first is that of nature as book, whichcorresponds with the alphabet of creation, while the second—admittedlyperhaps at one further remove—touches on the question of pantheism. Iwill offer brief reflections on each of these points.

37 See Fishbane, Sacred Attunement, xi.38 Ibid., 158, 61.39
Ibid., 62, 64.
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The idea of nature as book has always struck me as particularly valuablefor various reasons, as has the trope of nature’s parallelism with scripture.40


A major advantage is that such tropes bring out the polyinterpretability ofthe religion employing it. Fishbane explores it obviously in a Jewish con-text but its impact is no less powerful in the context of Christianity. Giventhe periodic recurrence of creationism, furthermore, it is good to see cre-ation analyzed as fundamentally open to the presence of the divine, not inan apologetic way employing the quasi-scientific model of effects relatingto cause, but in ways that allow for structural interconnections that are farricher and allow for divine presence and hermeneutical effort in more vig-orously mediated ways. Fishbane’s expression of “the alphabet of creation”strikes me as deeply meaningful in this respect, inasmuch as it starts fromthe elements, the letters, rather than from any imposed and predeterminedidea of nature as something safely ensconced and unalterably preservedbetween two covers.In sum, torah kelulah makes the aspect of divine infinity in creation tan-

gible, thereby adding to the meaning and importance of it for Jewish the-ology—but in fact for all theology—as a theology that is intrinsically her-meneutical. Closer to Augustine’s insightful division into signs and thingsmeant to open up reality, it would seem, and more concrete than Bona-venture’s metonymical use of nature and scripture as two divinely authoredbooks aiding the self’s interiorization,41 creation comes to us as a worldready to be explored for Fishbane, to whose rhythm we must become at-tuned in an experiential process that allows us to explore science freelywithout thereby sacrificing the values of the divine from ðwritten and oralÞscripture. More promising still, Fishbane leaves open the possibility of see-ing creation as a conduit through which we can apprehend those same val-ues. After all, if torah kelulah is primordial, so also is creation.But is there not a risk, one may ask, to giving creation or nature via the

role of torah kelulah such a prominent position in communicating divinerevelation? Since Christianity does not have a concept comparable to torahkelulah, the problem with foregrounding creation is that any such move isquickly perceived in terms of a rivalry with scripture. Admittedly, this is morethe case in the post-Reformation period than before, as premodern Chris-tianity had a greater respect for the revelatory qualities of nature includinga sense of trust that it would bring out reverence for divine authorship in

40 See W. Otten, “Nature and Scripture: Demise of a Medieval Analogy,” Harvard Theologi-
cal Review 88 ð1995Þ: 257–84. For an attempt to use this trope as embedded in a narrative aboutthe history of science, see Peter Harrison, The Fall of Man and the Foundations of Science ðCam-bridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007Þ.
41 For an analysis of Bonaventure’s thought as hierarchy interiorized, see D. Turner, TheDarkness of God: Negativity in Christian Mysticism ðCambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995Þ,102–34.

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ways that were not by definition antithetical to scriptural authority.42 Inter-estingly, where there were risks associated with the reading of nature in


early Christianity, it was due more to the perception of an Origenist apo-catastasis—and thus an undermining of the uniqueness of Christianity’s sal-vation history—than a fear of nature as such.It is as a result of the perceived rivalry not just with scripture, however,

but with piety and devotion more generally that modern charges of pan-theism are often brought, arising not only from the impression that natureis itself deified but also, and perhaps even more, from a fear that its en-during ties with the divine could become permanently severed.43 In otherwords, it seems that in modern Christian theology the problem is not oneof accepting creation as a source of authority per se but of doing so outsidean assumed matrix of revelatory sources. The problem with such a matrixis not that it privileges scripture but that it isolates it, and by extension the-ology, by blocking off other access roads to revelation.44 On my readingof Fishbane, the precious gift that torah kelulah offers us is a valuable anti-dote to any narrowing of scripture’s irradiation, as it widens instead thescope of scripture itself. As such, it can inspire Christian theology to findvaluable ways to open up more and other conduits of revelation. Here onemight think not only of the created world but also of the so-called conditionhumaine, the increasingly expansive world of moral, psychological, and so-cial experience.

CONCLUSION: ATTUNEMENT AND COMPORTMENT

In Fishbane’s book a delightful eye for the aesthetic and the practicaloffsets whatever might seem metaphysical and abstract about the conceptof attunement. In his subsequent essay, “Ethics and Sacred Attunement,”Fishbane masterfully draws ethics inside the ambit of attunement, not asan addendum, but by reading attunement such that ethics has a natural

42 See P. Bright, “Nature and Scripture: The Two Witnesses to the Creator,” in Nature and
Scripture in the Abrahamic Religions, vol. 1, ed. J. M. van der Meer and Scot Mandelbrote ðLeiden:Brill, 2008Þ, 85–114. See also n. 40 above.
43 An interesting example is the way in which Schleiermacher was perceived as Spinozist asa result of his Speeches on Religion, necessitating him to nuance his views on nature. To his credit,or at least to his courage in standing up to such charges, hemaintained even in theGlaubenslehrethat the highest stage of religious consciousness is the recognition of the universe as unity inmultiplicity; see Julia A. Lamm, The Living God: Schleiermacher’s Theological Appropriation of SpinozaðUniversity Park: Pennsylviana StateUniversity Press, 1994Þ, 95–126, at 99–101. See also AndrewC.Dole, Schleiermacher on Religion and the Natural Order ðOxford: Oxford University Press, 2010Þ.

44 Thus, in his second Gifford lecture in 2009, Alastair McGrath, taking note of Barth’scritique and adopting the response of T. F. Torrance, sees natural theology as having a placewithin the ambit of revealed theology. He develops this position further in A Fine-Tuned Uni-verse: The Quest for God in Science and Theology ðLouisville, KY: Westminster University Press,2010Þ, 18–20.

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place in it. The essay elaborates and complements the book’s descriptionswith particular insistence on the dimension of daily comportment in at-


tunement.What I find especially meaningful in this regard, and leads me here to

bring up a last monastic reminiscence, is the way Fishbane displays a deepawareness that “evil occurs along a hermeneutic spectrum.” Evil and mo-rality, in other words, are not bracketed off as belonging in a separate do-main of action, but manifest themselves in the details of ordinary read-ing, living, and self-cultivation. Neglect of one’s hermeneutic responsibility,therefore, inevitably guides one down a slippery slope whereby humility—a prerequisite for attunement—becomes not just overlooked but falls bythe wayside. Rather than seeing habit, whether depicted as giving in to var-ious forms of self-indulgence or ossified into religious rite and ritual, as amatter of spirituality only, Fishbane points out how it provokes social dis-ease by blinding the eye to the needs of others,45 thereby eliminating theboundaries between spirituality and morality, seeing them as linked, andhence, profoundly malleable—that is, hermeneutic domains.This brings us back a final time to the idea of PaRDeS, now not as rep-

resenting a constructed cascade of scriptural meanings but as representingan internalized moral template. As far as Christian theology goes, the ele-ment of reading scripture as a moral exercise has been criticized in mo-dernity, and largely been replaced by a historical-critical analysis. Yet there isa way in which scripture is a deeply meaningful moral source and needs tobe read as such. Whether that should be done in terms of spiritual disci-pline, forming a kind of extra-mural monastic exercise that touches on thetradition of “innerweltliche Askese,” or as part of a new program of moral edu-cation, is subordinate to the fact that it will bring to Christian theologysomething of the torah kelulah, a revision of Augustine’s De doctrina christi-ana, namely, of scripture as a living and primordially dialogical source inconstantneed of being interpreted in service of the telos of communal well-being. All of this once again makes clear why it is right to choose attune-ment over atonement as the fullest principle for a bona fide contemporarytheology.

45 Fishbane, “Ethics and Sacred Attunement,” in this issue, 433.

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