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" Cultural synthesis is how a compromise between various opinions is worked out. But truth does not change, and truth is not arrived at by some sort of compromise. "
David Novak
Change
Out
Truth Is
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" The slogan 'Never Again!' that emerged after the Holocaust implies that the Holocaust has a universal moral meaning, which, if properly learned, can provide at least a theoretical prophylactic against its repetition against anyone. "
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" The theological contacts between Jews and Christians during much of the premodern period are best characterized as disputations. Even when not engaged in face-to-face argumentation, Jews and Christians spoke about each other in essentially disputational terms. "
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" Jewish status is defined by the divine election of Israel and his descendants. One does not become a Jew by one's own volition. "
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" A religious commitment coupled with theological awareness gives Jews a much better way to answer the claims made upon us by missionaries representing other religions than do the rather weak political and cultural arguments of the secularists. "
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" The common moral praxis of Jews and Christians is most definitely theologically informed by the doctrine we share in common: The human person, male and female, is created in the image of God. "
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God
" At the political level, most Jews and most Catholics have accepted the liberal idea of religious freedom. "
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Level
Most
Political
" Proselytizing is only wrong if coercive or deceptive. Coercion, whether violent or not, is immoral, just as deception is immoral. "
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Only
Deception
Just
" In deciding among theological views, one should be something of a consequentialist: the choice of one theological position over another should be, if not actually determined, at least heavily conditioned by the fact that it implies a better ethical outcome than the alternatives. "
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Better
Ethical
Fact
" Even when God chose Israel, he did not create the people of Israel as he created its human members, as natural beings. Instead, God formed the people of Israel from individual human beings already living in the natural world, calling them into a new historical identity. "
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God
World
People
" Perhaps the main stumbling block to a better, and more fruitful, theological relationship with Judaism and the Jewish people has been the tendency of many Christian theologians to see the Christ event as the end of history. "
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History
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Relationship
" For those who have envisioned the State of Israel to be a democracy, which although primarily a Jewish polity for Jews is one in which non-Jews can become citizens and enjoy equal civil rights with the Jewish majority, the question of natural law is the question of human rights. "
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Democracy
Human Rights
Enjoy
" Unlike the issue of messiahhood, which arose when Jews and Christians were members of the same religio-political community and spoke the same conceptual language, the issues of the incarnation and the Trinity divide people who are no longer members of the same community and who no longer speak the same language. "
David Novak
Language
Community
Speak
" The Holocaust, taken by itself, is a black hole. To look at it directly is to be swallowed up by it. "
David Novak
Holocaust
Up
Taken
" Christianity and Judaism are united above all in their common affirmation and implementation of the moral teaching of the Hebrew Bible, or 'Old Testament,' and the traditions of interpretation of that teaching. "
David Novak
Affirmation
Bible
Judaism
" Christians and Jews alike are the new exiles of the contemporary world, struggling with how to sing the Lord's song in a strange land. "
David Novak
Strange
World
Land
" It seems unavoidable that history will always link the reestablishment of the State of Israel with the tragedy of the Holocaust. "
David Novak
History
Holocaust
Always
" As a practicing Jew, I have studied with Christian teachers whom I respect for who they are and what they are, including their positive concern with Jews and Judaism. "
David Novak
Respect
Christian
Teachers
" Jews have long experience with Christians who have tried to help us in putting our Judaism behind us. "
David Novak
Experience
Behind
Help
" During the Middle Ages, Jews were members of a semi-independent polity within a larger polity. "
David Novak
Within
Members
Middle
" Roots can live without branches, although truncated; branches cannot live without roots. "
David Novak
Cannot
Without
Roots
" To be a Jew, essentially and not just accidentally, is to regard the Jewish people as one's sole primal community. Election by the unique God requires total and unconditional loyalty to one people. "
David Novak
People
Unique
Loyalty
" It has always been inevitable that, living as a small minority among a Christian majority, some Jews would convert to Christianity. "
David Novak
Small
Been
Christian
" The shortcoming of purely political discourse between Christians and Jews arises from the fact that it is largely built upon the perception of a common enemy. "
David Novak
Political
Enemy
Perception
" Many of us, both Jews and Christians, want the public square to be pluralistic, which is neither partisan nor naked. "
David Novak
Partisan
Naked
Square
" Modernity has been largely shaped for Jews by three momentous experiences: the acquisition of citizenship by individual Jews in secular nation-states, the destruction of one-third of Jewry in the Holocaust, and the founding of the State of Israel. "
David Novak
Holocaust
Citizenship
Three
" Theological reflection takes place within history, but the history within which it takes place is an ongoing, open-ended process. "
David Novak
Place
History
Process
" Jews have not only become equal citizens in Western democracies, they have become leading citizens. And, of course, the reestablishment of the State of Israel has given Jews a political presence in the world they have not had since biblical times. "
David Novak
Political
Only
Become
" A fully positive relationship between Christians and Jews is one that would elide all differences. "
David Novak
Positive
Relationship
Differences
" We Jews who willingly and happily confirm our covenantal status and its attendant rights and duties must take the question of mission seriously: either to accept it or reject it knowingly and with conviction. "
David Novak
Seriously
Accept
Mission
" It was in the early 1960s that my late revered teacher, Professor Abraham Joshua Heschel, became the first major Jewish theologian in America to enter into dialogue with Christian theologians on a high theological level. "
David Novak
America
Teacher
Late