David Novak Quotes
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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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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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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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Historically, Jews only accept converts rather than actively seeking them.
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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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A fully positive relationship between Christians and Jews is one that would elide all differences.
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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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Roots can live without branches, although truncated; branches cannot live without roots.
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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.
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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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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.
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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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Many of us, both Jews and Christians, want the public square to be pluralistic, which is neither partisan nor naked.
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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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Jewish status is defined by the divine election of Israel and his descendants. One does not become a Jew by one's own volition.