Dvojí způsob víry

Martin Buber (1878-1964) began writing this seventeen-volume essay in Jerusalem, during the difficult period of the 1948 civil war. It was preceded by years of research, lectures, and reflection on the concepts of faith, salvation, and the Messiah in Judaism and Christianity. It aims to explore the differences between the ways in which believers in these denominations relate to God and their implications for the intellectual grasp of the contents of faith and for people's everyday lives. In particular, the author is challenged by Paul's reinterpretation of faith in relation to the traditional conception, especially by the Pharisees, with which the Jesus of the Gospels polemics (but in many places agrees). The first way is a belief that works with objectification ("faith that"). The second is "trust toward," carried by the believer's personal relationship to his living Counterpart. The modes, one of which is closer to the Greek pistis, the other to the Hebrew emunah, are found in both denominations, and at different stages of their historical development one or the other prevails. The prophets and the Jesus of the Gospels, as well as nameless individuals, always stand at a critical point in the middle, crying out for reconsideration and authenticity. At the same time, however, Buber points out that these two types need not be juxtaposed and made into an antithesis, because in their own way they are both necessary and complementary.

Czech edition