A BRIEF RESPONSE:

            Prof. Yaker in bringing to these considerations the rich in-sights of his experience in biblical scholarship, helps to clarify the contribution which hermeneutics can make in facing the challenge of ethnic self-awareness and the conflicts which can follow.

            The intent of my chapter, however, was not to separate ethnicity from religion or traditions from their consequences, but quite the contrary, namely, to see religion as the basis for cultural and ethnic identity and the latter in turn as the specifier of our actions and interactions. That intent is the key to interpreting the meaning of the chapter and linking its premisses with its con-clusions. H.G. Gadamer would call these our pre-judgements and hermeneutics the process of bringing these into alignment with the text in order to be able to interpret its meaning. (My computer does not find the contrary quote cited by Prof. Yaker, namely, that "current injustices are divorced from the traditions that produced them.")

            In truth, it would be naive to hope that religion or anything else could eliminate ethnic conflict. Human evil is the unfortunate Siamese twin of human freedom; to eliminate the first would in prin-ciple kill the second. But this does not preclude a search for the basis of peace and harmony, tracing this to the principles and sources of unity. Such a search leads to the one God, as creator and goal, and to the relation of all thereto, which is to say precisely: to religion.

            Indeed, the root problem of our times as cultures reemerge into prominence after a long period of suppression, is our atrophied ability to appreciate their force and to apply them to the holy pur-pose of the Creator. The limitation of the range of human interests, curtailed to the pragmatic since the "enlightenment" has rendered us insensitive to the level of human freedom at which we shape and are shaped by our culture. The problem of our times is not a denial of cultural freedom and creativity, but blindness thereto.

            In this we lose touch with, or even depreciate the power of the philosophies which have shaped our outlook. But, in matters re-garding our cultural traditions, to forget what has formed them is to slip from being their creator, as means for implementing our life with grace and meaning, to being enslaved thereby. It may be true that relatively few people recognize the name of John Locke, but the Founding Fathers who wrote the basic documents of our modern democratic life -- The Declaration of Independence and The Constitution -- did know his writings and used his ideas as a guiding star in setting the course of our democratic institutions. To forget this or to ignore it in discussions of public policy is to lose sight of where we are headed, why and how.

            This I believe to be a central problem for the role of religion in public life in our day. When reason is considered corrupted rather than merely weakened it is treated as separated and even opposed to biblical faith in human resurrection.

            This engenders two parallel problems: on the one hand, such reason employed in the work of social reconstruction sees itself as secular and set against religion, while, on the other hand, religion in attempting to protect itself from fallen reason slips out of touch with reason’s social inventions for democratic life. As a result, the two cannot engage each other in creative dialogue, but constitute alternate power blocks: the defeat of either of which would be a human disaster. Their unreconciled coexistence is a formula for the mutual impoverishment of all.

            Both faith and reason are essential for out time; we cannot succeed by asserting one at the expense of the other. It is essential to explore how reason has been weakened but not corrupted, how faith can be a key to its redemption and reconstitution, and how such a restored humankind with its diversity of peoples can take up the important challenges of reconciliation, peace and cooperation for the coming millenium.