A Jewish Trinity: Contemporary Christian Theology Through Jewish Eyes by AllanBrill(Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2025), xxiii +232 pp.

In this wonderful book, rabbi, scholar, and comparative theologian Alan Brill—who holds the Cooperman/Ross Endowed Chair for Jewish-Christian Studies at Seton Hall University, clearly shows that Jewish-Christian dialogue is in a new age. As Brill says, “rather than irreconcilable, noncomparable differences we now can explore a variety of relationships, parallel, divergent, and convergent, and we can begin to understand each other” (xvii). Brill's book covers six topics: Trinity, Incarnation, Sin, Salvation, Messianism and Covenant. Brill begins each chapter with classic texts from the patristics and rabbinic materials to medieval figures like Maimonides and Aquinas. He then turns to contemporary theologians which are the true focus of the book. Here, he ranges through the work of a large and influential group of Catholic and Protestant theologians that begins with Barth, Balthasar, Brunner, and moves to Kasper, Rahner, Küng, Moltmann, Kendall Soulen and others. These figures are then put in dialogue with modern Jewish thinkers like Pinchas Lapide, Joseph Soloveitchik, Abraham Isaac Kook, Martin Buber, and Abraham Joshua Heschel as well as contemporary figures like Michael Wsychogrod, Daniel Boyarin, and Jonathan Sacks. The breadth of the review of existent scholarship in Jewish and Christian thought alone makes this book worth reading. Brill's focus on contemporary figures allows him to show how current Christian theology has moved beyond traditional understandings of Judaism that focus on supersessionism, the deicide charge, Jewish legalism and Christian grace—topics that still dominate many popular discussions. Here, the Shoah remains a watershed event where many Christian theologians have acknowledged Christian complicity and passivity in the face of the Nazi instigated Jewish genocide. Another factor is the Vatican II reforms and statements of the World Council of Churches that brought theological and liturgical changes to how Jews and Judaism are perceived by Christians. Finally, there is the considerable scholarship on the early Church and the historical Jesus that shows the Jewish nature of Christianity. On the Jewish side many Jewish thinkers have moved beyond characterizations of Christianity as pagan, polytheistic, or idolatrous and also, in the public statement Dabru Emet: A Jewish Statement on Christians and Christianity (2000), a significant group of Jewish thinkers have declared that Jews and Christians worship the same God. Given these important developments, Brill argues that Jews and Christians, especially at the highest levels of academic discourse, are in a “post-polemical” era in which they read each other's theological texts seriously for their own work and readily share and borrow from each other. This means that, particularly for notions of the nature of God and the difficult issues of the relation of an unknowable transcendent God to the world and humans, solutions and strategies established in one religion can be helpful for another. Especially in the modern age, where Jews and Christians interact in everyday and professional life, are educated in the same curriculum of higher education, and even intermarry, it is high time that they recognize that both Judaism and Christianity have changed and that both Jews and Christians understand their religions not as the medievals did but, as Brill says, “in modern terms” (xv). Now this does not mean that Judaism and Christianity are the same or desire to be the same. Brill is very clear that there are important differences that remain. And although his is a book on thought and theology, Brill reminds us that some of the core differences can be seen in the “fundamental-narratives”(xii), the underlying and repeated stories, that rule the Jewish and Christian religious imaginations. Thus, Judaism is built upon the narrative of the Exodus and Sinai events that culminate in the Monarchy in the land of Israel. Christianity is built upon the story of the birth, life, passion, death and resurrection of Christ. For Christianity, sin sets the drama of salvation through the graced forgiveness of Christ. For Judaism the freedom of the enslaved people of Israel in the Exodus leads to Sinai and the obligations of covenant and mitsvot. These very different stories lead to different understandings of the nature of humans, God, the world, as well as human and divine purpose. At the same time the two religions “came from the same neighborhood” (xix) and shared “a common starting point” (xix) in the ancient Mediterranean world. Furthermore, it cannot be overstated that Jews and Christians share a sacred text, the Hebrew Bible, and, most importantly, the same God. Now this last assertion may not be accepted by all Jews and Christians. However, at the very least, we can say that Jewish and Christian notions of divinity share common problems such as moving from a transcendent, eternal, noncorporeal God to a temporal, immanent, and sensed present God and understanding how the one God can appear in multiple and often contradictory forms. Indeed, it is precisely in sharing their different, often overlapping and creative strategies in dealing with these theological problems that Jews and Christians can come together to talk, argue, agree, disagree, and simply sit together to acknowledge the limitations and frustrations of their respective theological formulations. A fine example of Brill's overall approach in his book is found in the chapter on the Trinity. He begins with a historical overview that starts in Late Antiquity, moves through medieval theology, before passing through Vatican II to the modern formulations of German theologians Karl Rahner and Jürgen Moltmann. The starting point of Late Antiquity is critical to get the theological dialogue going, since Brill shows how recent scholarship on Judaism in antiquity reveals that Jewish theology of that time did not possess a pristine undifferentiated monotheism. Indeed, Brill argues that Jewish theology—from antiquity through the Medieval period—included plural views of God. He suggests that the notion of a pure monotheism in Judaism, while having roots in the theology of Maimonides, really did not become mainstream in the Jewish thought world until the modern period with the influence of the post-Kantian Jewish philosophers who developed the thesis that Jews possessed an “Ethical Monotheism.” Brill states that we must recognize that both Judaism and Christianity asserted a “multilevel monotheism” (6) as a way of approaching the problem of relating a transcendent God to a material world. Here the Jewish strategy is to assert a “spiritual hierarchy” where there are different levels in God's nature and the Christian route is to assert co-equal elements as in the Trinity. Brill then makes use of the discarded, indeed, heretical Christian theological notion of “monarchism” to describe Rabbinic monotheism. In Jewish monarchism there is “a hierarchy of divine parts” with the transcendent “abstract God” at the top and “the shekhinah divine presence or gevurah might or kavod glory” at lower levels of divinity (6). The transcendent God and the shekhinah and are not indwelling together “like the Trinity.” Brill summarizes his view: “The differences between the religions are not one God versus three Gods, rather Jews consider the intra-divine structures … in a hierarchy” (6). Brill argues that another Christian heretical way of understanding the Trinity, i.e., “modalism” (7), could be used to describe Jewish monotheism. Jewish theology is modalistic “where the divine parts are just modes or attributes of the one God” (7). In this view, the one God is seen in his attributes of justice, mercy, and benevolence. Or, alternatively, God appears in his actions of creation, redemption, etc. or in various persons which are lower in the scale of being than the abstract transcendent God. All of this is well and good for a historical discussion of theological similarities and differences in Judaism and Christianity, but where things get really interesting is in the contemporary period. Here, for instance, Brill shows us that Karl Rahner seeks to revive elements of a modalist view of God that were used in Judaism. According to Brill, Rahner argues that “all proceeds from the Father alone and the three subsistings of the Trinity are to be considered as modes of a single God” (11). Where Brill first shows how Christian theological notions of monarchism and modalism can help Jews understand their own theology, later in his chapter on the Trinity he shows us how Jewish theological notions are being used by Christian theologians. This is very notable in the post-Shoah theology of Jürgen Moltmann. He points to the way Moltmann begins his theological reflection with the Shoah. “It is not merely possible to see Golgotha and Auschwitz in a single perspective; it is actually necessary” (14). Hence, the suffering Christ on the cross is the starting point for all Christian theology after the Shoah. Moltmann goes on to present the “coming to be of the divine movement to the world into three movements: indwelling, suffering and kenosis, and glorification, which he specifically correlates with Jewish ideas of the shekhinah, tzimtzum, and tikkun olam” (15). Brill mentions parallels to Moltmann's suffering God in the suffering God of Rabbi Kalonymus Kalman Shapira developed in the Warsaw Ghetto. I have focused on only one chapter in Brill's wonderful book but his further chapters traverse the same pattern beginning in antiquity, moving to medieval figures and culminating in the work of modern and contemporary figures. What is seen in his other chapters are attempts to undermine absolute differences on issues. For example, on incarnation Brill shows how Jacob Neusner focuses on the personal God of the Bible and its many portraits in rabbinic texts to reveal many incarnational aspects of the Jewish God (36). Daniel Boyarin shows that many rabbinic texts assume that God has a body although it is not readily seen. The Jewish theologian, Michael Wyschogrod intensifies notions of chosenness and covenant to the point where he sees an “indwelling of God in the Jewish people” itself (34). Brill also points to the work of Moshe Idel who argues that kabbalistic texts suggest a kind of divine indwelling in figures like Enoch and Elijah. None of these go as far as the Christian doctrine of incarnation, but they do show that the notion is not utterly foreign to Judaism. On the issue of sin, Judaism recognizes that the sin of Adam has important negative implications for human beings and Jews do, after all, live in exile; but this is far from the doctrine of Original Sin as a condition that cannot be overcome without God's atonement in Christ's death. In conclusion, Brill reminds us that even as he seeks to use Christian theological notions to illuminate Jewish theology from antiquity to modernity, Jewish theology works with “free-floating signifiers of Jewish texts rather than fixed creedal statements” (23). For Jews, perhaps, coming out of its tradition of plural midrashic views of scripture, the different theological positions on God can be viewed as “different interpretations” so that Judaism has avoided some of the controversies and schisms over theological doctrine that we see in the Christian tradition. Perhaps, then, the message from Brill's book to Christians is: try to be “more Jewish” not only in using their own theologically plural views of God, but even more importantly, in adopting a plural view of the entire project of theology. In short, try to be less dogmatic and more midrashic! And for Jewish theologians, Brill's message could be, on the one hand, don’t be so uptight about the purity of your monotheism and, on the other hand, stop saying that theology is something only Christians do. Judaism has a very rich theological tradition that could be even more rich, more creative, and more relevant to Jews if you take advantage of some of the creativity and innovations of Christian theologians. At a time of increased tension and conflict between religious communities that has certainly left its mark on Christian and Jewish relations, one might want to ask Brill to temper his enthusiasm about a new era in Jewish-Christian relations. However, as Brill's broad and deep review of major publications by Jewish and Christian thinkers (which, one might add, is also displayed in this journal of Modern Theology) shows, something of a sea-change in Jewish-Christian relations has certainly happened and this flies in the face of any naysayers and critics. Brill's book, A Jewish Trinity: Contemporary Christian Theology Through Jewish Eyes, is itself a testament to the progress that has been made. It is therefore a must have for all university and seminary libraries and a must read for all people interested in Jewish and Christian thought and theology.