Faith

Jewish thinkers throughout the ages have been as passionate in their concern about the meaning and nature of faith as Christian theologians. This is a lucid and profound examination of Jewish approaches to belief, by a controversial and respected scholar who analyses the nature of God through a critical study of all vital philosophical sources. We are shown the conflicts--and how they are resolved--between rational and traditional views on faith, between instinctive acceptance and a more sophisticated, polemical approach. The views of mediaeval and modern theologians, Christian and Jewish (Kabbalists, religious existentialists, fundamentalists, mystics) are appraised and contrasted in the most open-minded manner. Of special interest, perhaps, is the understanding critique of the Freudian and Marxist opposition to belief in a deity. On a more mundane level, those seeming contradictions in the structure of existence which confound most men, such as the problem of evil, are analyzed in a way that is both practical and heartening. Dr. Jacobs has succeeded in demonstrating, to readers of all faiths, that particular nature of Judaism which is both universalistic and, at the same time, deeply concerned about the individual.