It is self-evident that this emphasis was to a great extent caused by the preceding outbreak of anti-semitism in Germany and its rationalization on so-called Christian, ideological grounds. In the realm of biblical scholarship there is today increasing cooperation among Christians and Jews; many Christian theologians are aware of what they have learned from men like Rosenzweig, Buber and other Jewish scholars. The question of what is meant by election and the irrevocability of God's love is being asked again in a new way.
The biblically important concept of "covenant" has become more central, and the relationship between the "old" and the "new" covenant is being restudied. In addition, Paul's wrestling with the baffling question of the disobedience of the greater part of his fellow-Jews has come up for consideration. Besides these theological grounds, two historical events in the last thirty years have caused churches to direct their thinking more than before to their relationship to the Jewish people.
In Europe persecution has taken place, greater and more brutal than could have been thought possible in our time, in which some six million Jews were annihilated in the most terrible way, not because of their personal actions or beliefs, but because of the mere fact that they had Jewish grandparents. The churches came to ask themselves whether this was simply the consequence of natural human wickedness or whether it had also another, theological dimension. The second event was the creation of the State of Israel.
This is of tremendous importance for the great majority of Jews; it has meant for them a new feeling of self-assurance and security. But this same event has also brought suffering and injustice to Arab people. We find it impossible to give a unanimous evaluation of its formation and of all the events connected with it, and therefore in this study do not make further mention of it.
We realize, however, especially in view of the changed situation in the Middle East as a result of the war of June , that also the question of the present state of Israel, and of its theological significance, if any, has to be taken up. We believe that God formed the people of Israel.
There are certainly many factors of common history, ethnic background and religion, which can explain its coming into existence, but according to Old Testament faith as a whole, it was God's own will and decision which made this one distinct people with its special place in history. God is the God of the whole earth and of all nations, but he chose this particular people to be the bearer of a particular promise and to act as his covenant-partner and special instrument.
He made himself known specifically to Israel, and showed this people what his will is for men on earth. Bound to him in love and obedience, it was called to live as God wants his people to live. In this way it was to become, as it were, a living revelation to others, in order that they also might come to know, trust, love and obey God.
In dealing with Israel, God had in view the other nations; this was the road by which he came to them. In order words, in his love for Israel his love for mankind was manifested; in its election, Israel, without losing its own particularity, represented the others.
In the Old Testament Israel is shown to be an imperfect instrument; again and again it was untrue to its calling so that it often obscured rather than manifested God's will on earth. But even in its disobedience it was a witness to God, a witness to his judgment, which however terrible was seen as a form of his grace, for in punishment God was seeking to purify his people and to bring them back to himself; a witness also to his faithfulness and love, which did not let his people go, even when they turned away from him.
Through him we see into the very heart of God, in him we see what it really means to say that God is the God of the covenant and loves man to the very end. As be became the man who was the perfect instrument of God's purpose, he took upon himself the vocation of his people. He, as its representative, fulfills Israel's task of obedience. In his resurrection it has become manifest that God's love is stronger than human sin.
In him God has forgiven and wiped out sin and in him created his true covenant-partner. A part of Israel recognized in Jesus as the Christ the full revelation of God. They believed that in him God himself was present, and that in his death and resurrection God acted decisively for the salvation of the world.
Numerically they were perhaps only a very small minority, yet in these "few" God's purpose for the whole of Israel is manifested and confirmed. And together with Israel the Gentiles too were now called to the love and service of God. It cannot be otherwise; for if in Jesus Christ the fullness of time has really come, then the nations also must participate in God's salvation, and the separation of Israel is abolished.
This is what the church is: Israel having come to recognize God in Christ, together with the Gentiles who are engrafted into Israel, so that now Jew and Gentile become one in Christ. It is only in this way that the Church is the continuation of the Israel of the Old Testament, God's chosen people, called upon to testify to his mighty acts for men, and to be his fellow-workers in this world.
Christ himself is the ground and substance of this continuity. This is underlined by the preservation of the Old Testament in the Church as an integral part of her worship and tradition. The existence of Christians of Jewish descent provides a visible manifestation of that same continuity, though many Christians are hardly aware of this.
The presence of such members in a Church which in the course of time has become composed predominantly of Gentiles, witnesses to the trustworthiness of God's promises, and should serve to remind the Church of her origin in Israel. We are not advocating separate congregations for them. History has shown the twofold danger which lies in this: the danger of discriminating despite all intention to the contrary, and the danger that such separate congregations tend to evolve sectarian traits.
But more important than these considerations is that in Christ the dividing wall has been broken down and Jew and Gentile are to form one new man; thus any separation in the church has been made impossible.
However, without detracting in any way from what has just been said, we should remember that there is room for all kinds of people and cultures in the church. This implies that Jews who become Christians are not simply required to abandon their Jewish traditions and ways of thinking; in certain circumstances it may therefore be right to form special groups which are composed mainly of Jewish Christians.
The fact that by far the greater part of Israel did not recognize God in Jesus Christ posed a burning question for Paul, not primarily because of the crucifixion, but because even after Christ's resurrection they still rejected him.
The existence of Jews today who do not accept him puts the same question to us, because in this respect the situation today is basically the same as it was in Paul's time. We are convinced that the Jewish people still have a significance of their own for the Church. It is not merely that by God's grace they have preserved in their faith truths and insights into his revelation which we have tended to forget; But also it seems to us that by their very existence in spite of all attempt to destroy them, they make it manifest that God has not abandoned them.
In this way they are a living and visible sign of God's faithfulness to men, an indication that he also upholds those who do not find it possible to recognize him in his Son. While we see their continuing existence as pointing to God's love and mercy, we explicitly reject any thought of considering their suffering during the ages as a proof of any special guilt. Why, in God's purpose, they have suffered in that way, we as outsiders do not know.
What we do know, however, is the guilt of Christians who have all too often stood on the side of the persecutors instead of the persecuted. Conscious of this guilt we find it impossible to speak in a generalizing way of Christian obedience over against Jewish disobedience. It is true that we believe that Jesus Christ is the truth and the way for every man, and that for everyone faith in him is salvation. But we also know that it is only by grace that we have come to accept him and that even in our acceptance we are still in many ways disobedient.
We have therefore no reason to pride ourselves over against others. For Christians as well as Jews can live only by the forgiveness of sin, and by God's mercy. We believe that in the future also God in faithfulness will not abandon the Jewish people, but that his promise and calling will ultimately prevail so as to bring them to their salvation. This is to us an assurance that we are allowed to hope for the salvation of all who do not yet recognize Christ.
So long as the Jews do not worship with the Church the one God and Father of Jesus Christ, they are to us a perpetual reminder that God' s purpose and promise are not yet realized in their fullness, that we have still much to hope for the world, looking for the time when the Kingdom of God will become plainly and gloriously manifest.
All this we can say together. However, this considerable agreement, for which we are grateful indeed, should not conceal the fact that when the question is raised of the theological identity of Israel with the Jewish people of today we find ourselves divided. This division is due not only to the differences in the interpretation of the biblical evidence, but also in the weight which is given to various passages.
We might characterize our differences, rather schematically, as follows:. Some are convinced that, despite the elements of continuity that admittedly exist between present-day Jews and Israel, to speak of the continued election of the Jewish people alongside the Church is inadmissible.
It is the Church alone, they say, that is, theologically speaking, the continuation of Israel as the people of God, to which now all nations belong. Election and vocation are solely in Christ, and are to be grasped in faith. To speak otherwise is to deny that the one people of God, the Church, is the body of Christ which cannot be broken.
In Christ it is made manifest that God's love and his promises apply to all men. The Christian hope for the Jews is the same as it is for all men: that they may come to the knowledge of the truth, Jesus Christ our Lord.
This does not imply any denial of the distinctive and significant witness to Christ which the Jews still bear. For their continued separate existence is the direct result of the dual role which Israel as God's elect people has played: through them salvation has come to the world, and they represented at the crucial time of human history man's rejection of God's salvation offered in Christ.
Yet from the Bible one could not read off either faith as we in fact encounter them. Nor could one predict the contents of the Bible from either faith. And, conversely, there are central features in the New Testament that do not appear in the creeds. It is not that the Bible and the creeds contradict each other, simply that they have different emphases. Similarly in Judaism, central features such as dietary or purity laws are by no means absent from the Hebrew Bible, but they have nothing like the prominence there that they enjoy in Judaism today.
Nevertheless, both faiths find it hard to believe that the Bible does not in some way have a point-by-point correspondence with their religion. The Hebrew Bible consists of a collection of the highly variegated national literature of ancient Israel, written and compiled, probably, between the eighth and second centuries BCE.
There is no way that such a collection could be identical with Judaism as a worldwide religion that has flourished and developed throughout subsequent centuries, and is still developing today.
The New Testament is a first- and second-century CE compendium of writings from an originally Jewish, but later predominantly Gentile, sect in the eastern Mediterranean—one that evolved into one of the most successful faiths in the world.
Christians, like Jews, have always held steadfastly to their Scriptures; yet, especially through contact with philosophy, they have developed ideas that would have surprised the New Testament writers.
The Bible stands at the beginning of two traditions of faith, without being identical with either as they now are. Contact us at letters time. The hand of a man reading the Bible. By John Barton. Several Jews have in the course of years, claimed to be the Messiah - sent by God to inaugurate God's kingdom on earth. But the association of Messiah with terms like Son of Man and Son of God, which developed a profusion of meanings, soon led to exalted claims for Jesus that few Jews felt able to follow.
Even within the New Testament this is so; by the time of the full-blown Trinitarianism of the 4th century creeds this gap was unbridgeably wide. Jesus was put to death by the Romans on the charge that he claimed to be the Messiah. Jesus made it clear to Peter that he regarded himself as the Messiah Mark as he did to the High Priest Mark Some Jews accepted Jesus as Messiah, believing that he would redeem them from the bitter yoke of Rome and bring the messianic age.
When Jesus rode into Jerusalem he was acclaimed, "blessed is the Kingdom that comes, the kingdom of our father David" Mark Other Jews rejected the claim. The charge against Jesus on the cross and his mockery as 'King of the Jews', his execution between two villains, the appearance of the royal messianic motifs - these all suggest that Pilate faced a man charged with sedition.
Jesus was not crucified because he denied his Jewishness, abandoned the Scriptures, or disowned his people. He remained a Jew, Jesus of Nazareth, the Jew from Galilee and was executed for political rather than religious reasons. To claim to be the Messiah, if it was an offence against Judaism at all, was certainly not as the Gospels contend an offence against Jewish law for which Jesus could have been put to death.
The Gospels say that Jesus' claim to be the Messiah was blasphemy, but in Jewish law, blasphemy was to curse God using God's sacred name. Jesus did nothing of the sort. For Jews, history has shown that Jesus was not the long-awaited Messiah, for Jews were not delivered from the yoke of Roman bondage and the Golden Age did not come.
However, some Jews have suggested that Jesus was following in the footsteps of the biblical prophets cf. Mark , Matt And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your might.
The second is this: You shall love your neighbour as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these. Every Jew will recognise in Jesus' answer the Shema, a Jewish declaration of faith, which is recited at every Jewish service, day and night.
The famous command of Lev. It was in his attitude towards the Torah that Jesus seems to have departed from the Judaism of his time. In their teaching, the rabbis would state, "thus says the Torah. Mark He dared to base his teachings on "I say to you" and it was this daring which brought him into conflict with contemporary Judaism.
It is highly improbable that Jesus told his followers to ignore the Torah; rather, he emphasized that "the kingdom of God is within you" Luke i. This was a courageous message; one which made some Jews unbounded in their devotion to him and others to regard him as a heretic.
Geza Vermes and Ed Sanders are two scholars who in recent years have drawn wide attention among Christians to Jesus' Jewish origins, though Christians earlier in the 20th century R.
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