Some Christians regard the thought of Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik as so anti-Christian that Christians should take no interest in it—as, indeed, many of Soloveitchik’s disciples take no interest in Christian thought. This is unfortunate. As Matthew Rose demonstrated recently in these pages (“A Rabbi for Christians,” February 2024), Soloveitchik’s account of halakhic normativity reveals important common ground between Jews and Catholics, who alike attract the charge of “legalism” in opposing the perennial antinomian temptation.
Soloveitchik’s career contains a seeming contradiction. On one hand, Soloveitchik is the man who in 1964, responding to an early draft of the Second Vatican Council’s declaration on non-Christian religions, denied even the possibility of theologically honest Jewish–Christian dialogue in his famous essay “Confrontation.” On the other hand, he is the man who in 1965 delivered the lectures that were to become his most influential essay, “The Lonely Man of Faith.” These lectures were addressed to the faculty and students of a Catholic seminary. So, as Rose points out, Soloveitchik was in fact talking theology with Christians.
