INTRODUCING THE WORK OF PETER OCHS

Peter Ochs’ work offers a rehabilitation of the wisdom tradition celebrated by rabbinic Judaism. While Jewish philosophy, long occupied by the particular names and categories of the given order, has neglected the deepest insights of the rabbinic appreciation of wisdom, Ochs’ work recovers wisdom as a metaphysically imaginative and pragmatically effective exercise of reasoning. The four articles offered in this symposium on the work of Peter Ochs by David Lamberth, James K. A. Smith, Nicholas Adams and Leora Batnitzky, together with Peter Ochs’ response and Steven Kepnes’ conclusion, offer a striking illustration of the reach and depth of Ochs’ recovery of wisdom. This reach extends but is not limited to a ‘new thinking’ and agenda for philosophical theology applied to its specific areas of concern, including the relationship between philosophy and theology, the nature of religious studies, and the practice of Scriptural Reasoning.