Let Israel’s Pride Fill the Cosmos: A Reformation Correction of Christian Suspicion of Jewish Particularity

Summary This essay is an attempt to exorcise Christian supersessionism. It argues that finding a positive Christian assessment of Jews has been so difficult that the difficulty indicates a basic flaw in the presuppositions behind recent scholarship. Supersessionism has crept into Pauline scholarship, which claims to have overcome old systematic theological concepts, rather blatantly in the New Perspective on Paul and mildly in even the otherwise excellent work of John Barclay. Recent systematic attempts to evaluate Jewishness positively, while technically not supersessionist, overcome Christian supersessionism at the expense of telling Jews how to be Jews. Furthermore, post-supersessionary systematic theology shares many of supersessionism’s presuppositions, including its suspicion of particularity and ethnicity in favor of universalizing concepts. This essay argues that a return to the much-maligned law-gospel distinction of the Reformation offers a path to celebrating Israel’s ethnicity, particularity, and exclusive election by God. Pauline scholarship and post-supersessionary systematic theology both assume that the Torah alone is exclusively for Jews, while the good news of Jesus is inclusive and universal. In contrast this essay argues that the gospel also belongs particularly to the Jews. Though it also blesses particular gentiles, they will remain eternally blessed foreigners.

Introduction

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the European project. Almost half a century ago, European nations began exploring the idea of a single currency: the Euro—the single currency shared by nineteen European nations. However, in giving up their national currencies, Eurozone members lost important policy levers. This basic flaw creates acute difficulties as countries that share the currency diverge from each other. Moreover, it is on the nature of the single currency that once member economies begin to diverge from each other, the common interest rate will cause the divergence to increase. Thus, although they described the project in grand terms, Europeans set about creating an “incomplete monetary union,” one that had a common monetary policy but lacked the fiscal safeguards to dampen booms and recessions. Within this incomplete structure, conflicts on the conduct of monetary and fiscal policy were bound to rise.

Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights – ethically evaluated

This article considers the ethical difficulties presented by the United Nations “Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights”. Initially, the Biblical principles regarding entering into covenant are elucidated. Next, the United Nations’ role in initiating global covenants is investigated in terms of what this body premises its mandate on. To follow is this particular covenant, presented as a case study. The weakness in the United Nations’ approach to treaties and covenants is that the bedrock on which such covenants is being established is notably and necessarily absent. This means that terminology, phrases and application ipso facto are determined on the basis of human presuppositions, rather than on the metaphysically implanted principles of God. Herein lies the basic flaw to what appears on the surface to be a noble approach. In a global setting, with many different worldviews elbowing for room, harmonised application of generically applauded concepts is difficult. The moment a generic concept such as “freedom” needs to be handled, it becomes value-laden. The question is then by whose values this concept is going to be handled. Usually, when consensus cannot be reached, majority will rule. This means that the very sovereignty of member states, supposedly safeguarded in the covenant, is being eroded. For Christians, majority rule is not an acceptable modus operandi. The Christian would support the principled approach to ethical issues. However, where the ethical basis is not articulated, the plethora of opinions (collective or individual) is left to act by. This creates a difficult political environment, for which a solution is hard to find. Yet, the Christian must continue to strive to honour his Lord by striving to be “light and salt” in this political scene.

POPPER'S EXPERIMENT, COPENHAGEN INTERPRETATION AND NONLOCALITY

A thought experiment, proposed by Karl Popper, which has been experimentally realized recently, is critically examined. A basic flaw in Popper's argument which has also been prevailing in subsequent debates, is pointed out. It is shown that Popper's experiment can be understood easily within the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics. An alternate experiment, based on discrete variables, is proposed, which constitutes Popper's test in a clearer way. It refutes the argument of absence of nonlocality in quantum mechanics.

The External Rights of Cohabiting Couples in Israel

One of the outstanding products of civil-secular law in Israel is the institution of cohabitation. In Israeli law, the term “cohabiting couples” is used to refer to couples who conduct marriage-like relationships, but who, from a legal point of view, are not given the legal status of married couples. In Israel there is a trend toward narrowing the legal gap between cohabiting couples and married couples, and broadening the conditions that confer the status of cohabite. In present-day Israeli legal discourse, support for these trends is seen as a secular, liberal and progressive stance, while opposition to them is viewed as religious, moralistic and conservative.This study aimed at enriching the public legal debate on cohabiting couples from a civil liberal point of view. In order to accomplish this task, I wish to re-examine the laws relating to cohabitation, in intention to break the conventional modes of thinking, and examine the laws dealing with cohabitation from an all-encompassing civil viewpoint, one which does not focus specifically on the unique Israeli context. Only after the more general discussion will we consider the position of Israeli law and consider the possibility of applying the general discussion to the specific Israeli context, keeping in mind the role of cohabitation in Israel as an alternative to the religious marriage. Previous projects I have conducted dealt specifically with the internal relationships including the mutual obligations between cohabitants. In this project, I wish to continue probing the Israeli family law situation but this time I wish to broaden the discussion by examining the external rights of cohabiting couples.The discussion will expose the basic flaw in the Israeli context which makes the implementation of a fundamental civil structure difficult in terms of Israeli law. I shall explain why this flaw has a more serious impact in the context of “external rights” than in the context of internal commitment issues. Therefore beyond making proposals for specific amendments in relation to existing cohabitation laws, I shall clarify why it is necessary to develop additional alternatives to marriage which can also provide an alternative to cohabitation.

The Ayatollah in the Cathedral

"The Ayatollah in the Cathedral," to borrow the term coined by ThomasKuhn, is a book that opens the gateway to paradigmatic tranformations in thetheory of international relations and the art of effectively handling foreignaffairs. Dr. Kennedy was one of the 50 hostages who went through the 444days' ordeal in Iran. He gives a detailed account of the events witnessed andexperienced by him as a hostage.The traumatic psychological impact of being a hostage in a revolution isnot easy for others fully to understand as outsiders; still the reader is able tosee that there were many occasions when Dr. Kennedy, as a hostage, thoughtthat his death was imminent.A mediocre author would easily have made his story of captivity a "bestseller' by capitalizing on hatred and by saying what the domestic opinionmakers in the United States want to hear. Instead, Dr. Kennedy defies thiscommon heritage of American scholarship on the Middle East. In this book,he emerges as a serious thinker with an outstanding ability to analyze the factswith scientific objectivity. What makes this book a remarkable multidisciplinarymasterpiece is Mr. Kennedy's professionally skillful and scientificanalysis of the process and factors that shape U. S. foreign policy at theState Department; the weaknesses of U. S. foreign policy in the Middle East;the causes of the U. S. failure to understand the Third World in general and theMuslim world in particular; and an alternative to U. S. foreign policy makingthat would ensure mutual respect and trust not only in the Middle East but inthe Third World in general, thereby restoring the effectiveness of the UnitedStates as a world leader.This book is unique and pivotal in the area of international relationsbecause Dr. Kennedy attempts to provide an alternative approach for U. S.foreign policy. This approach would enable policymakers to protect U. S. interestswhile at the same time winning mutual trust in the Muslim world; goalswhich, under present policy, seem to be mutually exclusive.The basic flaw in American foreign policy making, as pointed out by Dr.Kennedy, is that "our analyses of over-seas problems are too often based onabstraction - what the problem should be rather than what really is. We indulgeourselves in the luxury of seeing what we want to see and denying whatwe do not want to see." (p. 196). Elaborating on the dangers of this approachto foreign policy, he says: "The problem is not professional but cultural. And ...

Corrigendum: Convergence theorems for intermediate problems

Professor R. D. Brown has brought to our attention an error in our Theorem 4.2. This would, in turn, invalidate Theorem 3.6 which depends on Theorem 4.2. The basic flaw is that the alignment hypothesis of Proposition 4.1 is not satisfied by the product space projections, Qn. Interestingly, such product space constructions are a common computational device in applications of the T*T method, but apparently seldom satisfy the alignment hypothesis of Proposition 4.1. We wish here to correct these theorems, and comment on the resulting implications for Example 6.1. In independent and as yet unpublished work, Professor Brown has obtained further new results on convergence of the method of intermediate problems.