Two types of faith;

Buber outlines here the difference between two kinds of faith the emunah of the Jews, and the pistis of the Christians. In doing so he also writes sympathetically about Jesus who he sees in some way as part of the spiritual history of Israel. For Buber the Jews faith is communal and centers on their persistence in history in continuing their communal religious life. He sees Christianity as having a different kind of faith one which focuses on individuals, and the individual salvation. In his concluding chapter he suggests that in the future each might take a bit more of the character of the other( not in doctrine) but in the Jewish faith becoming more pistis and the Christians moving more toward a communal faith. In the introduction to the work Buber thanks great Christian scholars with whom he was in dialogue, Rudolf Bultmann, Schweitzer, and Rudolf Otto. Clearly he was living and working toward Jewish- Christian dialogue as extension of his belief in the importance of meeting and making relationships with others in which the full humanity of both parties could be lived and expressed.