R. Kendall Soulen's Response R. Kendall Soulen, Assistant Professor of Systematic Theology at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C., and author of The God of Israel and Christian Theology (Fortress Press, Minneapolis, 1996), takes up round three of the conversation. My thanks to the Institute for Christian-Jewish Studies for making available the rich exchange between Paul van Buren and Jon Levenson. I want to continue the conversation by probing Levenson's image of Christianity and rabbinic Judaism as sibling rivals, engaged in a mutually exclusive contest for the status of the Father's beloved son. While the image is illuminating, in one respect it may suggest a greater degree of symmetry between Christianity and Judaism than actually exists. Unlike, say, Jacob and Esau, who though rivals are more or less equally apart of one another's stories, Christianity is constituted by the story of biblical Israel in a way that has no counterpart in Judaism's relation to Jesus or the church. Judaism, in this sense, is more soveriegn in its self-understanding than grasping Christianity. Jews can tell their story without reference to Christians; not so Christians without reference to Jews. But if Judaism is more sovereign, Christianity is more encompassing, that is, it tells a story that purports to embrace theother within its horizon. This asymmetry, it seems, is the peculiar burden and irritation of the relation between Christians and Jews. Israel is offended and (all too often) endangered by a community that invades its space both theologically and otherwise; the church is exasperated and incomprehending in the presence of a community that it purports to encompass but cannot in fact contain. In its unique mix of irritants, the relation of Christianity and Judaism sometimes seems more redolent of Tolstoy's unhappy families, each unhappy in its own way, than of the rich, reiterative dynamics of the Bible's sibling rivals. In my view, the genius of Levenson's book is its silent suggestion that Christianity andJudaism understand themselves more--not less--in light of the sibling rivalries that the Bible portrays. Levenson points out that in the Bible, estranged brothers can at long last be reconciled. This is possible not because the beloved son ultimately relinquishes his unique status, an egalitarian but very unbiblical solution. Rather, the chosen one through his humiliation and exhaltation secures blessing for the unchosen as well. Clearly, reconciliation between Jews and Christians on terms such as these cannot be made a reality by good will and good deeds alone: the Father himself will have to have a hand in it. But what Christians and Jews can do is inhabit their Father's world so as to more clearly exhibit future reconciliation, if not as a guaranteed outcome, at least as an intelligible possibility. What this might mean from a Jewish perspective is for Jews toconsider. As for Christians, it surely means giving renewed attention to a vital distinction to which Jon Levenson draws our attention, and which is not in any case wholly foreign to Christian thought, namely, the distinction between being the bearer of God's election, and being touched by its blessing and promise. R. Kendall Soulen Associate Professor, Systematic Theology Wesley Theological Seminary Miroslav Volf's response, Philip A. Cunningham's response