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Christology
and Jewish-Christian Dialogue
[Published in a festschrift issue of Encounter (Vol.
63, Nos. 1-2, 2002, pp. 129-136) in honor of Professor Clark Williamson
upon his retirement from Christian Theological Seminary. Used by permission
of Encounter. Posted here 8/26/03.]
It is a pleasure to write an article in this festschrift issue honoring
my friend and colleague of many years, Clark Williamson. We taught systematic
theology together for several years at Christian Theological Seminary,
and I confess that his passionate concentration on Jewish-Christian dialogue
deeply aroused and influenced my awareness of the issues and necessities
of engaging in the dialogue in our Post-Holocaust situation. Without his
insistent arguments, I might well have neglected issues that have profound
implications for how we construe Christian faith. While it has been clear
to many over the years that Clark and I disagree over important matters
in Christian theology, it may have been overlooked that we also agree
on a wide range of Christian concerns. This essay on christology is written
in gratitude for the conversations and writings of Clark and for the persistent
passion of his theologizing in a way that does not forget the Holocaust.
I choose to write on christology because that is an area in which our
strongest theological convictions sometimes collide.
I am under the impression that we are now entering a phase in Jewish-Christian
dialogue in which Christian guilt is no longer the shared premise of the
dialogue. When this premise is given full reign, we often have Christian
theologians eager to diminish distinctive Christian claims and to find
ways in which the common ground between Jew and Christian can be emphasized.
In this situation, the more liberal voices in both traditions can play
out the agreements and neglect the differences. In the course of this
phase of the dialogue, Christian christology often became the scapegoat
for the sins and guilt of the Christian tradition. It was not seldom in
this dialogue that it seemed that Christianity had become a slimmed down
Judaism for Gentiles with a prophetic Jesus and a Christ idea without
the particularities of incarnation.
We are now in a new phase of the discussion, beyond Christian guilt, in
which a resolute honesty on both sides is emerging with a new acceptance
of both the profound continuities and significant differences that obtain
between Jewish traditions and Christian traditions. The recent publication
by Jewish scholars, Christianity in Jewish Terms (1), is a bold
attempt from various Jewish perspectives to characterize Christian faith
and to identify those areas of significant agreement and difference. At
many points in their essays the issues of christology and incarnation
come repeatedly to the fore as a set of beliefs that dramatically differentiate
Judaism and Christianity.
I think they are on target in identifying these issues as the deep markers
distinguishing Christianity and Judaism, and it is important that the
disagreements in christology be discerningly articulated. It is my project
in this brief essay to explore a schematic understanding of christology
and the doctrine of God that acknowledges the differences without: a)
advocating a supersession of Judaism by the church; or b) diminishing
an incarnational christology; or c) lapsing into the glib locution that
‘Judaism is for Jews and Christianity is for Gentiles.’
From the Christian side there is general agreement that all forms of supersessionism
are to be repudiated, but the term ‘supersessionism’ often
gets up and walks around on us. I find there are at least two different
meanings attached to the term ‘supersessionism’(2):
S1 —the belief that since most Jews during the time of Jesus (and
most since) rejected him as Israel’s Messiah, God has rejected Israel
as God’s people, canceled God’s covenant with Israel, and
replaced or superseded Israel with the church, and therefore only those
Jews who accept Jesus as Messiah and Savior will be saved.
S2 —the belief that Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of God’s
work in Israel and that Jesus Christ therefore has salvific import for
the life and destiny of Israel.
I reject S1 as an illegitimate but unfortunate belief of the Christian
church through many centuries. But I am concerned about those Christian
theologians who would also call S2 a supersessionism to be rejected. With
the apostle Paul in Romans chapters 9 through 11, I affirm:
a. that what God has done in Jesus Christ has been done in the history
of Israel, in a Jew, and in fulfillment of God’s intent with Israel
as covenant people and therefore for Israel;
b. that God is faithful in God’s promises, and God has not rejected
Jewish people who have not accepted Jesus as Messiah;
c. that what God has done in Jesus Christ has been done for all God’s
children, Jew and Gentile alike;
d. that a Jewish person is not making a conceptual mistake in believing
that Jesus Christ has salvific meaning for Jews; certainly Paul the Pharisee,
and all the other NT authors who were Jews, thought Jesus was their Savior
and Lord (3);
e. that it is, therefore, not the case that Jesus Christ is for Gentiles
only and Judaism remains theologically untouched by the life and destiny
of Jesus.
Of course, a Christian theologian who denies that Jesus is salvifically
for Jews and important for Judaism has subverted most of the New Testament
and has reduced Jesus to the proportions of an interesting and provocative
social prophet carrying the ‘universals’ of Judaism to the
Gentiles. When I say ‘universals,’ I mean those aspects of
Judaism that can be universally held by ‘reasonable people,’
such as some form of monotheism and a set of social justice principles.
However, when well-intentioned Christians try to diminish Jesus in the
interests of defanging a presumably supersessionist Christianity, they
also collide directly with the profound Jewish and Christian belief that
Israel is a people specially elected by God. To affirm the special election
of Israel by God, however, is also what opens the door to affirming that
the God of Israel has become a Jew on behalf of the salvation of the whole
world, including Jews. Only a God who does special and particular acts
in the world, such as specially electing and covenanting with Israel,
is a God who can become a human being. Other gods, of which there are
many in our day including a vague deistic god, do nothing in particular
in the world. Hence, the special election of Israel is a common belief
that Jews and Christians should share.
In order to appreciate the realism of this shared belief, it must be not
seen as emerging from the modern historical study of religion and democratic
theories of pluralism in which a mutual tolerance among religions is appropriately
encouraged. But that sort of discourse and perspective could never of
itself assert the theological belief that the Creator of the world specially
elected and covenanted with Israel. Notice the extraordinary grammatical
difference between saying ‘Israel believed it was elected by the
Creator of the world’ and saying ‘Israel was elected by the
Creator of the world.’ The first utterance can be spoken with complete
personal detachment and neutrality, pretending to be no more than a verifiable
historical belief about Israel’s religion. The latter utterance
can only be authentically spoken with passion and commitment such as one
might find in synagogue or church.
This shared belief in a God who has specially elected and covenanted with
Israel is compelling, and no credible theologian, Jew or Christian, should
allow it to be neglected or omitted from his discourse. And from a Christian
point of view, the particularity of Israel’s election and the particularity
of Jesus Christ are indissolubly bound together. What distinguishes Christian
and Jew theologically is the further Christian belief that the God of
Israel acted uniquely and incarnately in Jesus of Nazareth for the salvation
of the world, including the ultimate salvation of Israel.
It is, however, one of the appalling tragedies of church history that
a crucified Messiah, who was believed to be of the very essence of God
and who preached peace, love of enemies, and nonretaliation, was converted
into a triumphalist Emperor in whose name it became appropriate to kill
and persecute Jews and heretics and all other enemies of the imperial
god. The way of the cross, instead of being the way of the Christian disciple,
became the despised way of weakness in the face of enemies who are bent
on doing harm to one’s family, clan, nation, or religion. When attacked
and in self-defense, it becomes mandated that the followers of the Emperor
Jesus are justified in killing either in return or in anticipation.
The agenda for a full-bodied Christian Post-Holocaust christology is to
recover the crucified Messiah and Son of God as the one who was the definitive
self-revelation of God and of the way in which God’s people are
called to live in the world. There is no reason emerging from the Holocaust
to retreat from the belief that the God of Israel became incarnate in
a Jew for the salvation of the world. But this incarnate God is not one
who is immutably above the fray of life and enmity and is not one who
is impassible in the face of human suffering. Instead, such an incarnate
God, one who is the very essence and actuality of God, is the one who
comes to live in the midst of enmity and suffering, in the midst of oppression
and misery, in the midst of the least of those in human social arrangements,
and he is brutally slain by the powers that think they are ultimately
in control of human life and destiny. The moral/theological character
of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead is the validation that his
life, teaching, ministry, and death are revelatory of the ways of almighty
God who created heaven and earth and elected Israel. The divine reality
that is claimed for Jesus is a reality that can die a human death and
take the sins and evil alienation of the world upon Godself. The sins
of the world include the sins of Jews and Gentiles alike. And, we must
admit, if the God of Israel has done this incarnate act in Jesus Christ,
then that very belief itself begins to transform how we Christians understand
the reality of the God who elected Israel. Herein lie the roots of trinitarian
belief among Christians: a complex and multi-relational divine Life has
crossed the boundaries between Creator and creature to become a creature
and take up the cause of the creature and shape the creature’s destiny.
For Christians to say, then, ‘Jesus is Lord’ is not merely
to say that he is ruler in their hearts, however much that may also be
true. It is boldly to say that Jesus is truly the Lord who reigns over
all human life, history, and destiny. And his Lordship is that of peace,
self-denial, cross-bearing, agapic love, and resurrection from the dead.
Affirming these beliefs is what was at issue at Nicaea and Chalcedon:
Jesus’ life and destiny, his suffering and cross, is the life and
destiny of God and the people of God. And it is appalling how quickly
these huge theological claims got sidetracked, even derailed.
Hence, the need today in the church is not a diminished christology but
a robust christology that is faithful and truthful about the reality of
Jesus and the God of Israel. Such a christology will give no justification
for the coercion of anyone in Jesus’ name, for it cannot endorse
coercion or violence. Such a christology could never be used to warrant
persecution, harm, and violent treatment of any human being, for it stands
for the dignity of all human life before God and God’s suffering
solidarity with human life.
If this Jesus is Lord of life and human history and destiny, then a Christian
would be irresponsible if she did not affirm that this Jesus is also salvifically
for Jews. From this christological perspective, whether any contemporary
Jews accept Jesus or not, Jesus is for Jews of all times and places. To
say this Jewish Jesus is only for Gentiles is to deny that Jesus is Lord
of history. It is to deny that Jesus is of the very essence and actuality
of God and is the incarnate work of God on behalf of a rebellious and
sinful humanity.
There are, then, some significant differences between Jewish theology
and Christian theology. It cannot be true that the God of Israel both
did act incarnately in Jesus of Nazareth and did not so act. It cannot
be true that the God of Israel both acted for the salvation of the world
in Jesus Christ and did not so act.
But Christians need to remember as well as that it cannot be true that
God in Christ both prohibits violence, retaliation, and killing among
humans and sanctions violence and killing on select occasions when some
of God’s sinful children deserve to die. It cannot be true that
Christ is both Emperor like Caesar, ruling by fear behind armies and fortresses,
and the slain Lamb of God, the crucified Messiah dying at the hands of
the sins of the world. It cannot be true that killing and violence are
ever justified by appeal to the name of Jesus.
Do Jews have a right to exist as Jews now that the Messiah has come? Of
course. Is a Jew making a conceptual mistake to believe that Jesus is
the Messiah? In the times of the apostolic church, when the New Testament
was being written by Jews who thought Jesus was Lord and Savior, they
could never have thought they were making a conceptual mistake. So we
have in New Testament times many Jews believing salvific things about
Jesus. Yet it may well be that today a Jew by birth would cease being
Jew, in the eyes of some, were he to become a Christian. But these are
matters so complex for Jews themselves that I will say no more. My point
is simply that the earliest followers of Jesus were Jews who did not think
they were betraying Israel in believing Jesus to be Israel’s Messiah.
(4)
While Christians must continue to be vigilant in their discourses and
practices about Israel and Jews, they are not expected to be endlessly
guilty for the Holocaust. The Holocaust is a horrible marker in human
history as to the extent and ferocity of human sin, of the human inclination
for scapegoating, for retaliating, for revenge, for hatred, and for a
demonic will to power over others. The history of the church contributed
to these inclinations as they came to expression toward Jews over centuries
of contempt and persecution. The most enduring way in which the church
can prevent such inclinations from finding habitation in the church’s
discourses and practices is for the church to be truly and profoundly
christological. If Jesus is God incarnate and lived, taught, and died
without violent resistance at the hands of the powerful in the world,
then his Lordship commands that Christians live in the same way: the way
of agapic love and peace. It is a narrow way not often taken. Jews have
no reason to fear these Christians, though they might be annoyed at the
Christian’s insistent confession that Jesus the Jew is the incarnate
Lord of history.
I hope, therefore, that I have shown a way in which a genuinely New Testament,
Nicene, and Chalcedonian christology might be reclaimed by Christians
without fearing they are giving comfort to those who would condemn or
eradicate Jews and Judaism. I would also hope that I have shown how those
sincere and honest Christians who are valiantly trying to construct a
Post-Holocaust theology by evacuating Nicene christology and theology
can now desist from those enervating efforts.
Finally, while I have not been able to develop it in the limits of this
essay, I think the sort of christology I have outlined is so deeply grounded
in the free grace and love of God that it leads directly to the eschatological
hope that the triune God, who lived amongst humans, was crucified, and
rose from the dead, will ultimately gather all—Jew and Gentile alike—into
God’s own eternal Life. It is inconceivable that the God who became
incarnate in a Jew would have any other future with Jews than that of
Ultimate Companionship and Redemption.
(1) Christianity in Jewish Terms, edited by Tikva
Frymer-Kensky, David Novak, Peter Ochs, David Fox Sandmel, and Michael
A. Singer (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 2000).
(2) Most of the following and much else in this essay is developed further
in my forthcoming two-volume text, A Grammar of Christian Faith: Systematic
Explorations in Christian Life and Doctrine, to be published by Rowman
& Littlefield Publishers.
(3) See Gal 2.19-20.
(4) Of course, there are significant differences in what later Jews and
later Christians mean by ‘Messiah.’ These differences are
explored further in my A Grammar of Christian Faith and in my
earlier article, “Jewish and Christian Theology on Election, Covenant,
Messiah, and the Future,” in The Church and the Jewish People,
ed. Clark M. Williamson (St. Louis: Christian Board of Publication, 1994),
51-58.
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