Buber's 'Holy Insecurity'

...From the Christian point of view, Buber is a baffling figure...

...In his view, the Old Testament represents the promise and, of course, the New Testament represents the fulfillment...

...Thus, for a Catholic to ask, "Why are you not one of us...

...Moreover, a Roman Catholic must produce a counter history to answer Buber's interpretation of the history of Israel's Messianism...

...Buber concluded that address by noting that although pre-Messianically the destinies of Christians and Jews are divided by a gulf that no human power can bridge, "Whenever we both, Christian and Jew, care more for God himself than for our images of God, we are united in the feeling that our Father's house is differently constructed than our human models take it to be...

...is not a breach of taste but a compliment to the seriousness of both Buber's own discourse and the way in which the Catholic views the issue of salvation...

...For all the surface similarity in the way that von Balthasar and Buber handle the materials relevant to a discussion o...

...The dogmatic character of [Buber's] affirmation," he writes, "is apparent from the scandal aroused by the unconditional bond linking an impossible prophetic mission to an earthly sacramental sign: the land...

...Von Balthasar asks why Buber, who understands so much about the character of true religion and of Messianism, is so resolutely futuristic that he fails to see that Messianism involves "the historical structure of truth whose two poles are the promise and the fulfillment...

...there has been an almost irresistible temptation for other Catholics to follow suit...

...In responding to the Jewish philosopher's affirmations-such as his passionate belief that Israel's Messianic mission is to lead mankind to genuine humanity by establishing a nation grounded in justice and true community-he compliments him by asserting that in Buber one finds a "rock-like foundation" of dogma...

...To him the Messianic figure, or the Messianic age, is ultimately the mechanical rabbit that man must pursue in his never ending quest of the good society...

...Von Balthasar is primarily attuned to the declamatory note in Buber's religious pronouncements...

...He does not proclaim infallible dogmas, but witnesses to his faith in fear and trembling...

...Nevertheless, this study, subtitled "A Dialogue Between Israel and the Church," is really no dialogue at all...

...Buber, on the other hand, has made this discovery, and his thought is existential...

...Von Balthasar speaks from the rock of dogma, buttressed by rational argument...

...For all his effort to enter sympathetically into Buber's frame of reference, therefore, von Balthasar remains utterly incapable of understanding the "holy insecurity" that permeates Buber's thought...

...The author's argument in defense of his polarity of promise and fulfillment is intricate and subtly reasoned...

...In the effort to show that Christianity, rather than religious Zionism, is the logical culmination of Buber's own Messianic outlook, he tries to be both fair and sympathetic...

...He does not appear able to comprehend, much less to accept, the spirit of Buber's address to a group of Protestant ministers engaged in a mission for the conversion of the Jews...

...Yet while declamatory, Buber is not dogmatic: His affirmations are made with a vivid sense of their precarious character...

...In effect, Hans Urs von Balthasar (a Roman Catholic scholar whom Karl Barth has credited with being one of the most perceptive interpreters of his thought) now addresses this question to Martin Buber, the Jewish existentialist...

...Reviewed by MALCOLM L. DIAMOND Assistant Professor, Department of Religion, Princeton University Ever since Fran?§ois Mauriac caught an existentialist in the Roman Catholic net by asking, "Come Marcel, why are you not one of us...

...For Buber Messianic history has not been consummated by the appearance of Jesus, but rather receives its principal impetus from a futuristic orientation...

...He has not made what Iris Murdoch has called "the tragic discovery that rational men can have different 'natures' and see the world with a radical difference...

...Messianism, they occupy different worlds...

...His philosophy of I and Thou has found wider acceptance in Christian than in Jewish circles and on numerous occasions he has expressed great admiration for Jesus (e.g., "I am more than ever certain that a great place belongs to him in Israel's history of faith and that this place cannot be described by any of the usual categories...

...Having imperialistically enrolled Buber into the ranks of the dogmatists, von Balthasar would then take him one step further: to the affirmation of the true dogma that Jesus of Nazareth is the Christ...