We Have Reason to Believe , in which he argued that religious Jews needed to revise their traditional theology in light of the more assured conclusions of historical criticism of the Bible, in cluding the idea that the Torah is a composite work and not, as the premodern tradition had taught, entirely the work of Moses. An immensely learned man, Rabbi Jacobs had been slated for the principalship of Jews College, Britain s seminary for Modern Orthodox clergy. We Have Reason to Believe and tells the story of the controversy it provoked. It also provides a critical survey of the spectrum of contemporary options for committed Jews as well as a few sketchy, disconnected discussions of traditional theological notions from Jacobs own position. As Jacobs points out, a notion of the Torah as composite and to a small degree post-Mosaic can be found, ironically, in a few premodern authorities revered by the same Orthodox Jews who revile his position.
Supernaturalism redeems liberalism from banality and crude historicism.
Relative to the Orthodox position, this magnifies the human role and replaces revelation with inspiration and providence. What is unclear is whether he regards this as an unfortunate and logically unnecessary consequence of his theology, or as an intrinsic aspect of liberal supernaturalism. If the latter, then his position is farther from Orthodoxy than he may recognize, for it fails to support even a non-fundamentalist orthopraxy, thus breaking sharply with its premodern analogues. If Jacobs is right that psychologically, liberal supernaturalism tends to produce a lessened degree of observance, it must be stressed that logically, nothing in the historical-critical study of the Bible and other authoritative Jewish books requires the individualism and the romantic subjectivism of Jacobs theology. Having cut the ground out from under traditional concepts of halakhic obligation, Jacobs is at pains to offer the modern Jew a reason to choose the traditional observances after all.