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Christians and Jews: Competitive Siblings or the Israel of God?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2024
Abstract
Dabru Emet, the important statement by Jewish scholars on the religious significance of Christianity and the Jewish relation to the Church, stimulated an articulate debate among Jews: Jon Levenson fears that the anodyne character of Dabru Emet lacks a conceptually coherent pluralism and commits Jews to positions which alter the fundamental character of Judaism. Does dialogical engagement with another tradition substantially modify the features of a religion? The Christian theologian Paul van Buren outlines three stages in the relationship of the two faiths which seem to lead to radical revision, certainly of Christianity. Van Buren's approach raises the question of the weighting accorded to different ‘moments’ in the dynamic of revelation springing from Israel. If Christianity is ‘reconfigured Judaism’, and the relation to Judaism is at the heart of Christian identity, then the two traditions exercise a conjoined, single mission on behalf of the truth of God. Israel according to the flesh and the community of reconfigured Israel are two communities, focused upon different but inseparable moments in ‘the design of the Lord of the covenant’, which might be designated as ‘the Israel of God’.
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- Copyright © The author 2008. Journal compilation © The Dominican Council/Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
References
1 J. Levenson, ‘How Not to Conduct Jewish-Christian Dialogue,’Commentary (December 2001), 31–37; ‘Jewish-Christian Dialogue: Jon D. Levenson & Critics’, Commentary (April 2002), 8–21. I commend to you his description that ‘in the Torah Israel is a supernaturally graced natural family’, a phrase expresses how Israel matters as a prototype people of significance to all human beings.
2 Op.cit., p.37
3 Op.cit., p.34
4 Ibid.
5 ‘Within the dynamic of the Council concerned throughout with the nature of its mission to Gentile modernity, Nostra Aetate requires of the Church that it re-centre itself in relation to the continuing vocation of Israel as a condition of undertaking its Christ-given mission ad gentes.’ McDade, J., ‘Catholicism and Judaism since Vatican II’, New Blackfriars 88 (2007), 367–84; p.368CrossRefGoogle Scholar
6 Paul van Buren, ‘Torah, Israel, Jesus, Church – Today’ at: http://www.jcrelations.net/articl1/vburen.htm
7 Solomon, Norman, Judaism and World Religion (Macmillan, 1991), p.8CrossRefGoogle Scholar
8 Dunn, J.D.G., ‘Paul: Apostate or Apostle of Israel?’, Zeitschrift für neutestamentliche Wissenschaft 89 (1998), 256–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar; p.271.
9 Wyschogrod, M., Abraham's Promise: Judaism and Jewish-Christian Relations (Eerdmans, 2004), 21–22Google Scholar. In our liturgy, we really should stop using the Jerusalem Bible's replacement of ‘Gentiles’ by ‘pagans’. Gentiles means ‘those of the nations’, and theologically, it means ‘those who are covenanted through Noah’ or simply ‘those imperfectly covenanted’.
10 ‘Even if Israel cannot join Christians in seeing Jesus as the Son of God, it is not altogether impossible for Israel to recognize him as the servant of God who brings the light of his God to the nations. The converse is also true: even if Christians wish that Israel might one day recognize Christ as the Son of God and that the fissure that still divides them might thereby be closed, they ought to acknowledge the decree of God, who has obviously entrusted Israel with a distinctive mission in “the time of the Gentiles”.’ Ratzinger, J., ‘Interreligious Dialogue and Jewish-Christian Relations,’Communio 25 (1998), 29–41Google Scholar; p.37.
11 Van Buren, Op.cit.
12 J.D. Levenson, ‘Chosen Peoples’, Commonweal (November 5, 2004). The exchange with Greenberg continues on January 28, 2005, accessed through FindArticles.