The Jews considered themselves chosen. How can we respect, even share this belief?

Hegel maybe considered

the claim historically born out. Maybe we could accept that too. Perhaps even other groups consider themselves
chosen, e.g. certain Australian tribes (mentioned in A. Randrup, q.v., internet) believe their particular ancestors
created the world. The faith claims of around half the world include such an exclusivist approach or at least a
claim to privilege. A rejection of intolerance needs to tolerate, even affirm that. Is it possible? Hegel seems to
attempt it.
Jewish writings (I should sat Hebrew or Israelite, Judaea was just one tribe, though it came to see itself as the
"right" or orthodox one) humbly stress their insignificance apart from this selection, which gives the River
Jordan and its prophet Elijah (or was it Elisha?) healing powers beyond the "great" rivers of the conqueror's
(Naaman) land.
One can think that this sense of uniqueness comes from the rejection, the intellectual seeing-through, of idolatry.
Their God, they came to see, if God, is as such infinite. "The gods of the heathen are nought." There could not be
two or more infinite gods. They would not have gone on to abstract this quality from their God or idealise it in
itself, like Plato maybe. It is just their God who in earlier tradition "saved" them, who has this quality. Therefore
they are as a people important in this transcendent way.
This idea is carried through into Christian theology, as it has to be if this "fulfils" the Law. "I am the way". "No
man comes to the Father but through me" and we have started to interpret this "invisibly", talking first of
"invincible ignorance" and later using less insulting but still more mysterious schemes to show, in Hannah
Arendt's words, writing of John XXIII, that Jesus is for everybody. Not very encouraging for those who have
built their lives and wisdom on teachers they feel bound to consider at least as central.
Here a perspective of absolute idealism offers us a short way through this tangle. Such idealism will also accept
the Kantian thesis of a kingdom of ends, implicit in Christian ethics anyhow one might think (and therefore itself
calling for absolute idealism where souls have been capable of it). As I think Hegel especially brings out though,
one cannot be an end without being THE END. All things are yours, St. Paul had said, at the same time as he saw
as necessary that God "shall be all in all". One can't have the all without being it. You are "in" one another. "I in
them and they in me." There Jesus, who is represented as speaker, equates himself with each other reciprocally.
"Because one died for all, therefore all died", says Paul, mysteriously enough I grant. It is through Jesus that this
IDEA comes into the world, uniquely or not.
We need a man who is "all things to all men". "Learn of me, for I am meek and humble of heart." Regarding
uniqueness, he says "Other sheep I have which are not of this fold" (probably the evangelist's perhaps finite
interpretation still, if taken at face-value, yet might we not ALL say that?) Aquinas allows that God might
incarnate severally, only saying that each "Christ" would be the same (divine) person. It is often asked today if
God could have "appeared" on other planets also. The answer, also of most orthodox, is that we do not know. So
he could. But if on other planets, why not on this one. The difference is merely contingent.
As for "appearing". Historically, the Docetist heresy, first century, taught that in Christ God only appeared, i.e. he
was not truly man. But for idealism we are all appearances and we misperceive ourselves dualistically, speaking
of a "soul-thing" (as does the relevant theology). If everyone (and what is a "one"?) is such an appearance, then
a) it is no heresy, b) it is that much easier to envisage plural or even general incarnation(s). "This also is thou,
neither is this thou." This is the watchword both of mysticism and of absolute idealism. It means that dogmatic
formulations are open. We need to talk and if it is possible to seem right or think one is right, about tolerance say,
then not only is it possible to be right but right is somewhere (or everywhere) actualised. Talk of paradigms,
voluntarism and the creative nature of all texts helps here. Or, as Jesus put it, don't believe what I say but believe
in me "for the very works' sake", look at what I do.
The disciples, Galilean fishermen, wer bound to interpet Jesus in their categories, "This is he", just as they
reacted to his death, supremely, in their categories. "It was not possible that death could hold him." Surely not. If
I leave open the literalness of the resurrection accounts I do not refuse a sense in which I believe them. I do not
have to say, with Goethe in one place, those scoundrels stole the body away, or that Jesus survived and went to
Pakistan. Schillebeeckx even claims, and maybe not only he, I don't know, that for one group of disciples the
corporeal resurrection was a distasteful comedown in Christian conception, and that this is the true explanation
of the lost ending of St.Mark, i.e. it was not lost and the injunction, "Why seek ye the living among the dead?",
stands. So I wish, if you like, to "save" orthodoxy through all the styles and standards of human thinking down
the ages (the programme of "the development of doctrine", whose author declared that "orthodoxy stands or falls
with the mystical interpretation of scripture"). As for scripture, inspiration on one theory means no more than
acceptance by the community of the text in question, which seems a bit circular I agree.
On the question of Revelation, finally, Hegel opened my mind a good deal. This concept too has to be
"thematised", as they say. It was always close to that of Manifestation or "Epiphany". The revealed is the
manifest. The categories of natural versus supernatural, epitomised in miracle, obscure this. What is revealed is
what we see. Those experiences of "joy" Lewis focussed on. They are all "transfiguration" of the everyday, and
do not need to be reduced to a call to tread the way to a future bliss. Such bliss is not so much not yet, which
would make it temporal, as hidden from us, as was the glory intrinsic to Jesus in the tradition. Such glory is
revealed, McTaggart argues, to every man or woman who falls in love, for a season at least. The incarnate "one"
is reflected in the eyes of the transfigured Beatrice (for her poet-lover). Yet she is not easily recognised as who
she was. "Look well. We are, we are indeed Beatrice." "Is this the face…" The condition is continued by the
strange old man in the forest of Fangorn, if you maybe know the reference.
A lot of the limitations and intolerances of orthodoxy revolve around views as to the opportunesness or
permissibility of utterances in a given time or place. The guardians of orthodoxy, "servants of the servants of
God", take a lot upon themselves here, as they seem to feel they have to. Who are these guardians? Why should
we have them? Well, let us not a priori reject all need for them in guarding our inner freedom. The centre is
everywhere and that's a topic for another day maybe.