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Martin Buber Library
Two Types of Faith: A Study of the Interpretation of Judaism and Christianity
Martin Buber contrasts the faith of Abraham with the faith of St Paul and ponders the possibilities of reconciliation between the two. He offers a sincere and reverent Jewish view of Christ and of the unique and decisive character of His message to Jew and Gentile.
240 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1951
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About the author
Martin Buber
411 books468 followersMartin Buber was an Austrian-born Jewish philosopher best known for his philosophy of dialogue, a religious existentialism centered on the distinction between the I-Thou relationship and the I-It relationship.
Buber came from a family of observant Jews, but broke with Jewish custom to pursue secular studies in philosophy. In 1902, Buber became the editor of the weekly Die Welt, the central organ of the Zionist movement, although he later withdrew from organizational work in Zionism. In 1923 Buber wrote his famous essay on existence, Ich und Du (later translated into English as I and Thou), and in 1925 he began translating the Hebrew Bible into the German language.
In 1930 Buber became an honorary professor at the University of Frankfurt am Main, and resigned in protest from his professorship immediately after Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933. He then founded the Central Office for Jewish Adult Education, which became an increasingly important body as the German government forbade Jews to attend public education. In 1938, Buber left Germany and settled in Jerusalem, in the British Mandate of Palestine, receiving a professorship at Hebrew University and lecturing in anthropology and introductory sociology.
Buber came from a family of observant Jews, but broke with Jewish custom to pursue secular studies in philosophy. In 1902, Buber became the editor of the weekly Die Welt, the central organ of the Zionist movement, although he later withdrew from organizational work in Zionism. In 1923 Buber wrote his famous essay on existence, Ich und Du (later translated into English as I and Thou), and in 1925 he began translating the Hebrew Bible into the German language.
In 1930 Buber became an honorary professor at the University of Frankfurt am Main, and resigned in protest from his professorship immediately after Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933. He then founded the Central Office for Jewish Adult Education, which became an increasingly important body as the German government forbade Jews to attend public education. In 1938, Buber left Germany and settled in Jerusalem, in the British Mandate of Palestine, receiving a professorship at Hebrew University and lecturing in anthropology and introductory sociology.
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June 29, 2024
THE JEWISH THEOLOGIAN’S FASCINATING COMMENTS ON JUDAISM, JESUS, AND CHRISTIANITY
Martin Buber (1878-1965) was an Austrian-born Jewish philosopher and scholar of the Hasidic movement. He taught philosophy from 1938-1951 at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. This book was first published in 1951. [NOTE: page numbers below refer to a 177-page paperback edition.]
He wrote in the Foreword, “The subject with which I am concerned in this book is the twofold meaning of faith. There are two, and in the end only two, types of faith… we can only know faith itself in two basic forms. Both can be understood from the simple data of our life: the one from the fact that I trust someone, without being able to offer sufficient reasons for my trust in him; the other from the fact that, likewise without being able to give a sufficient reason, I acknowledge a thing to be true. In both cases my not being able to give a sufficient reason is not a matter of a defectiveness in my ability to think, but a real peculiarity in my relationship to the one whom I trust or to that which I acknowledge to be true. It is a relationship which by its nature does not rest upon ‘reasons,’ just as it does not grow from such; reasons of course can be urged for it, but they are never sufficient to account for my faith. The ‘Why’ is here always subsequent… it appears…with the signs of having been added…” (Pg. 7)
“The relationship of trust depends upon a state of contact, a contact of my entire being with the one in whom I trust, the relationship of acknowledging depends upon an act of acceptance, an acceptance by my entire being of that which I acknowledge to be true… Faith in the religious sense is one or the other of these two types in the sphere of the unconditioned… So here the two types of faith face each other. In one the man ‘finds himself’ in the relationship of faith, in the other he is ‘converted’ to it…” (Pg. 8-9)
“The first of the two types of faith has its classic example in the early period of the people of Israel, the people of faith… a nation which took its birth as a community of faith; the second in the early period of Christianity that arose in the decay of ancient settled Israel and the nations and faith---communities of the Ancient East as a new formation, from the death of a great son of Israel and the subsequent belief in his resurrection, a new formation which first, in prospect of the approaching End, intended to replace the decaying nations by the Community of God, and afterwards.. to span the new nations by the super-nation of the Church, the true Israel. Israel on the other hand had arisen… from the tribe-forging and nation-forging migrations which were experienced as guided by God…” (Pg. 9-10)
“In the comparison of the two types of faith … I confine myself principally to the primitive and early days of Christianity, and for that almost exclusively to the New Testament records on the one hand, and on the other side in the main to the sayings of the Talmud and the Midrashim, originating from the core of Pharisaism, which was to be sure influenced by Hellenism but which did not surrender to it… It becomes evident that Jesus and central Pharisaism belong essentially to one another, just as early Christianity and Hellenistic Judaism do.” (Pg. 11)
He continues, “By the ‘Christian’ type of faith therefore is meant here a principle which was joined in the early history of Christianity with the genuine Jewish one; but it must be borne in mind… that in the teaching of Jesus himself… the genuine Jewish principle is manifest. When later on Christians desired to return to the pure teaching of Jesus there often sprang up… unconscious colloquy with genuine Judaism.” (Pg. 12)
He acknowledges, “For nearly fifty years the New Testament has been a main concern in my studies… From my youth onwards I have found in Jesus my great brother. That Christianity has regarded and does regard him as God and Saviour has always appeared to me a fact of the highest importance which, for his sake and my own, I must endeavor to understand… My own fraternally open relationship to him has grown ever stronger and clearer, and today I see him more strongly and clearly then every before. 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.” (Pg. 12-13)
He notes, “In particular I have to thank… four Christian theologians… I am obliged to Rudolf Bultmann for fundamental instruction in the field of New Testament exegesis… I thank Albert Schweitzer for that which gave me to know immediately through his person and his life, the openness towards the world and through this the peculiar nearness to Israel… I still treasure in my heart… the hours of a walk we took together … the day when we… opened the session of a philosophical society in Frankfurt… I retain a thankful memory of Rudolf Otto for his profound understanding of the divine majesty in the Hebrew Bible and for a series of richly realistic insights … I give thanks to the spirit of Leonard Ragaz for a friendship in which his genuine friendship towards Israel was expressed.” (Pg. 13-15)
He explains, “The Jewish position may be summarized in the sentence: fulfillment of the divine commandment is valid when it takes place in conformity with the full capacity of the person and from the whole intention of faith. If we want to give a parallel formulation to Jesus’ demand that is transcending it, the sentence may run like this: fulfillment of the divine commandment is valid if it takes place in conformity with the full intention of the revelation and from the whole intention of faith---in which however the conception of the intention of faith receives an eschatological character.” (Pg. 56)
He points out, “The Torah addresses the constant nature of man and summons him to the elevation granted to him to the highest realization of his relationship to God which is possible to him as a mortal being; Jesus on the other hand, as represented by Matthew, means to summon the elect in the catastrophe of humanity to come as near to God as is made possible to it only in the catastrophe.” (Pg. 61) He adds, “The attitude of the Sermon on the Mount to the Torah accordingly appears to be the opposite to that of the Pharisees; in reality it is only the sublimation of a Pharisaic doctrine from a definite and fundamental point of view, the character of which can again be made clear by comparison.” (Pg. 63)
He comments on Jesus’ statements about loving one’s enemies, and loving one’s neighbor: “the Old Testament commandment of love … does not admit of the interpretation that one ought to hate the enemy… [Jesus] nowhere indicates here that he has non-Jews in mind… But the interpretation quoted in the text which was apparently a popular saying, that one was free to hate the enemy, misunderstood not merely the wording of the commandment to love; it stood also in contradiction to the express commandments of the Torah (Ex 23:4, ff) to bring help to one’s ‘enemy’… Nevertheless amongst the people appeal may have been made… to certain expressions on the part of the Pharisees.” (Pg. 72-73)
He observes, “It has become evident that Jesus, as he speaks in the Sermon on the Mount, considers the Torah capable of fulfillment, not merely in accordance with its wording, but in the original intention of its revelation. The first he has in common with Pharisaic Judaism, in the second he meets it in certain points again and again… Paul on the contrary… contests the fact that the Torah is capable of fulfillment at all; that he in this contradicts the teaching of Jesus also either did not enter his consciousness, or, as appears likely to me, it is connected in a manner… with his resolve or his constraint not to know Christ any more ‘after the flesh,’ and this would mean that what Jesus taught was admissible for the time during which he lived but not necessarily so for the quite different time after his crucifixion and resurrection.” (Pg. 79-80)
He states, “I see in all this an important testimony to the salvation which has come to the Gentiles through faith in Christ: they have found a God Who did not fail in times when their world collapsed, and further, One Who in times when they found themselves sunk under guilt granted atonement. This is something much greater than what an ancestral god or son of the gods would have been able to do for this late age. And something akin to that testimony resounds to us from the cries and groans of earlier generations to Christ. Only one must not miss hearing the other thing when listening to their fervor and piety.” (Pg. 132-133)
He suggests, “The crisis of our time is also the crisis of the two types of faith, Emunah [an innate perception of truth that transcends reason] and Pistis [faith]. The origin of the Jewish Emunah is in the history of a nation, that of Christian Pistis in that of individuals… Emunah is the state of ‘persevering… of man in an invisible guidance … in a hidden but self-revealing guidance; but the personal Emunah of every individual remains embodied in that of the nation… Christiani Pistis was born outside the historical experiences of nations… in the souls of individuals, to whom the challenge came to believe that a man crucified in Jerusalem was their savior…the individuals as individuals, not the nations, became Christian, that is, subject to Christ.” (Pg. 170-173)
This is a fascinating and very stimulating book, that will be of great interest to those studying Jewish and/or Christian theology, as well as interfaith dialogue and comparative religions.
Martin Buber (1878-1965) was an Austrian-born Jewish philosopher and scholar of the Hasidic movement. He taught philosophy from 1938-1951 at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. This book was first published in 1951. [NOTE: page numbers below refer to a 177-page paperback edition.]
He wrote in the Foreword, “The subject with which I am concerned in this book is the twofold meaning of faith. There are two, and in the end only two, types of faith… we can only know faith itself in two basic forms. Both can be understood from the simple data of our life: the one from the fact that I trust someone, without being able to offer sufficient reasons for my trust in him; the other from the fact that, likewise without being able to give a sufficient reason, I acknowledge a thing to be true. In both cases my not being able to give a sufficient reason is not a matter of a defectiveness in my ability to think, but a real peculiarity in my relationship to the one whom I trust or to that which I acknowledge to be true. It is a relationship which by its nature does not rest upon ‘reasons,’ just as it does not grow from such; reasons of course can be urged for it, but they are never sufficient to account for my faith. The ‘Why’ is here always subsequent… it appears…with the signs of having been added…” (Pg. 7)
“The relationship of trust depends upon a state of contact, a contact of my entire being with the one in whom I trust, the relationship of acknowledging depends upon an act of acceptance, an acceptance by my entire being of that which I acknowledge to be true… Faith in the religious sense is one or the other of these two types in the sphere of the unconditioned… So here the two types of faith face each other. In one the man ‘finds himself’ in the relationship of faith, in the other he is ‘converted’ to it…” (Pg. 8-9)
“The first of the two types of faith has its classic example in the early period of the people of Israel, the people of faith… a nation which took its birth as a community of faith; the second in the early period of Christianity that arose in the decay of ancient settled Israel and the nations and faith---communities of the Ancient East as a new formation, from the death of a great son of Israel and the subsequent belief in his resurrection, a new formation which first, in prospect of the approaching End, intended to replace the decaying nations by the Community of God, and afterwards.. to span the new nations by the super-nation of the Church, the true Israel. Israel on the other hand had arisen… from the tribe-forging and nation-forging migrations which were experienced as guided by God…” (Pg. 9-10)
“In the comparison of the two types of faith … I confine myself principally to the primitive and early days of Christianity, and for that almost exclusively to the New Testament records on the one hand, and on the other side in the main to the sayings of the Talmud and the Midrashim, originating from the core of Pharisaism, which was to be sure influenced by Hellenism but which did not surrender to it… It becomes evident that Jesus and central Pharisaism belong essentially to one another, just as early Christianity and Hellenistic Judaism do.” (Pg. 11)
He continues, “By the ‘Christian’ type of faith therefore is meant here a principle which was joined in the early history of Christianity with the genuine Jewish one; but it must be borne in mind… that in the teaching of Jesus himself… the genuine Jewish principle is manifest. When later on Christians desired to return to the pure teaching of Jesus there often sprang up… unconscious colloquy with genuine Judaism.” (Pg. 12)
He acknowledges, “For nearly fifty years the New Testament has been a main concern in my studies… From my youth onwards I have found in Jesus my great brother. That Christianity has regarded and does regard him as God and Saviour has always appeared to me a fact of the highest importance which, for his sake and my own, I must endeavor to understand… My own fraternally open relationship to him has grown ever stronger and clearer, and today I see him more strongly and clearly then every before. 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.” (Pg. 12-13)
He notes, “In particular I have to thank… four Christian theologians… I am obliged to Rudolf Bultmann for fundamental instruction in the field of New Testament exegesis… I thank Albert Schweitzer for that which gave me to know immediately through his person and his life, the openness towards the world and through this the peculiar nearness to Israel… I still treasure in my heart… the hours of a walk we took together … the day when we… opened the session of a philosophical society in Frankfurt… I retain a thankful memory of Rudolf Otto for his profound understanding of the divine majesty in the Hebrew Bible and for a series of richly realistic insights … I give thanks to the spirit of Leonard Ragaz for a friendship in which his genuine friendship towards Israel was expressed.” (Pg. 13-15)
He explains, “The Jewish position may be summarized in the sentence: fulfillment of the divine commandment is valid when it takes place in conformity with the full capacity of the person and from the whole intention of faith. If we want to give a parallel formulation to Jesus’ demand that is transcending it, the sentence may run like this: fulfillment of the divine commandment is valid if it takes place in conformity with the full intention of the revelation and from the whole intention of faith---in which however the conception of the intention of faith receives an eschatological character.” (Pg. 56)
He points out, “The Torah addresses the constant nature of man and summons him to the elevation granted to him to the highest realization of his relationship to God which is possible to him as a mortal being; Jesus on the other hand, as represented by Matthew, means to summon the elect in the catastrophe of humanity to come as near to God as is made possible to it only in the catastrophe.” (Pg. 61) He adds, “The attitude of the Sermon on the Mount to the Torah accordingly appears to be the opposite to that of the Pharisees; in reality it is only the sublimation of a Pharisaic doctrine from a definite and fundamental point of view, the character of which can again be made clear by comparison.” (Pg. 63)
He comments on Jesus’ statements about loving one’s enemies, and loving one’s neighbor: “the Old Testament commandment of love … does not admit of the interpretation that one ought to hate the enemy… [Jesus] nowhere indicates here that he has non-Jews in mind… But the interpretation quoted in the text which was apparently a popular saying, that one was free to hate the enemy, misunderstood not merely the wording of the commandment to love; it stood also in contradiction to the express commandments of the Torah (Ex 23:4, ff) to bring help to one’s ‘enemy’… Nevertheless amongst the people appeal may have been made… to certain expressions on the part of the Pharisees.” (Pg. 72-73)
He observes, “It has become evident that Jesus, as he speaks in the Sermon on the Mount, considers the Torah capable of fulfillment, not merely in accordance with its wording, but in the original intention of its revelation. The first he has in common with Pharisaic Judaism, in the second he meets it in certain points again and again… Paul on the contrary… contests the fact that the Torah is capable of fulfillment at all; that he in this contradicts the teaching of Jesus also either did not enter his consciousness, or, as appears likely to me, it is connected in a manner… with his resolve or his constraint not to know Christ any more ‘after the flesh,’ and this would mean that what Jesus taught was admissible for the time during which he lived but not necessarily so for the quite different time after his crucifixion and resurrection.” (Pg. 79-80)
He states, “I see in all this an important testimony to the salvation which has come to the Gentiles through faith in Christ: they have found a God Who did not fail in times when their world collapsed, and further, One Who in times when they found themselves sunk under guilt granted atonement. This is something much greater than what an ancestral god or son of the gods would have been able to do for this late age. And something akin to that testimony resounds to us from the cries and groans of earlier generations to Christ. Only one must not miss hearing the other thing when listening to their fervor and piety.” (Pg. 132-133)
He suggests, “The crisis of our time is also the crisis of the two types of faith, Emunah [an innate perception of truth that transcends reason] and Pistis [faith]. The origin of the Jewish Emunah is in the history of a nation, that of Christian Pistis in that of individuals… Emunah is the state of ‘persevering… of man in an invisible guidance … in a hidden but self-revealing guidance; but the personal Emunah of every individual remains embodied in that of the nation… Christiani Pistis was born outside the historical experiences of nations… in the souls of individuals, to whom the challenge came to believe that a man crucified in Jerusalem was their savior…the individuals as individuals, not the nations, became Christian, that is, subject to Christ.” (Pg. 170-173)
This is a fascinating and very stimulating book, that will be of great interest to those studying Jewish and/or Christian theology, as well as interfaith dialogue and comparative religions.
March 11, 2025
I think this book was fine. I think I was bothered by Buber, a famous philosopher and classic author amongst Jewish readers, being so interested by Jesus. It especially irked me seeing him say savior (capitalized) and christ (capitalized), saying "I have found in Jesus my great brother." I suppose that he points out the main flaws (which he just calls differences) that I have with Christianity, that being that Paul seemed to change the meaning of what Jesus said, especially changing the Sermon on the Mount where he said the Law was not to be done away with. This was just confusing for me to read, not really knowing where Buber fell on these issues, with him giving a "both sides" perspective. I will have to ponder this one more and perhaps revisit it.
November 14, 2021
Fascinating comparison of Jewish and Christian faith.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews