David Novak Quotes
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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.
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Roots can live without branches, although truncated; branches cannot live without roots.
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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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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.
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Theological reflection takes place within history, but the history within which it takes place is an ongoing, open-ended process.
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Proselytizing is only wrong if coercive or deceptive. Coercion, whether violent or not, is immoral, just as deception is immoral.
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A fully positive relationship between Christians and Jews is one that would elide all differences.
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Historically, Jews only accept converts rather than actively seeking them.
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The right to privacy has both positive and negative connotations for those who consider themselves part of the natural law tradition.
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The one and only time I met Pope Benedict XVI was when he was Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger.
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Theology always has moral implications, and morality is always undergirded by theology.
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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.
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Each person is responsible only for his or her own sins. Even the Christian doctrine of 'original sin' does not mean that humans are punished for the sin of the first human pair but, rather, that humans seem inevitably to copy the sin of the first human pair.
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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.