Are the Torah and the Gospel mutually exclusive?

Vivificat - from Contemplation to Action ^ | 26 July 2012 | TDJ

[Teófilo]

Brethren: Peace and Good to all of you.

I've been reading lately several works on textual, form, literary, and historical criticism of the Bible, as well as the relationship between both Testaments, and as corollary, the relationship between the Church and the Jewish people. Today I reached the millenary impasse: for the Jews to accept Jesus as their Messiah would entail, in their view, a rejection of the Torah; for us Christians to reconcile with them would entail the rejection of the core of Christianity  - without a necessary conversion to Judaism which they don't see as necessary for "righteous Gentiles" to reach "the world to come". At least in the view of those Jews who still believe in "a world to come."

Testing my diamond

During my investigation, I found a letter to Yemeni Jews by the Jewish medieval sage Moses Maimonides to be upsetting. The quote is as follows:

Ever since the time of Revelation, every despot or slave that has attained to power, be he violent or ignoble, has made it his first aim and his final purpose to destroy our law, and to vitiate our religion, by means of the sword, by violence, or by brute force, such as Amalek, Sisera, Sennacherib, Nebuchadnezzar, Titus, Hadrian, may their bones be ground to dust, and others like them. This is one of the two classes which attempt to foil the Divine will. 

The second class consists of the most intelligent and educated among the nations, such as the Syrians, Persians, and Greeks. These also endeavor to demolish our law and to vitiate it by means of arguments which they invent, and by means of controversies which they institute.... 

After that there arose a new sect which combined the two methods, namely, conquest and controversy, into one, because it believed that this procedure would be more effective in wiping out every trace of the Jewish nation and religion. It, therefore, resolved to lay claim to prophecy and to found a new faith, contrary to our Divine religion, and to contend that it was equally God-given.  

Thereby it hoped to raise doubts and to create confusion, since one is opposed to the other and both supposedly emanate from a Divine source, which would lead to the destruction of both religions. For such is the remarkable plan contrived by a man who is envious and querulous. He will strive to kill his enemy and to save his own life, but when he finds it impossible to attain his objective, he will devise a scheme whereby they both will be slain. 

The first one to have adopted this plan was Jesus the Nazarene, may his bones be ground to dust. He was a Jew because his mother was a Jewess although his father was a Gentile. For in accordance with the principles of our law, a child born of a Jewess and a Gentile, or of a Jewess and a slave, is legitimate. (Yebamot 45a). Jesus is only figuratively termed an illegitimate child. He impelled people to believe that he was a prophet sent by God to clarify perplexities in the Torah, and that he was the Messiah that was predicted by each and every seer. He interpreted the Torah and its precepts in such a fashion as to lead to their total annulment, to the abolition of all its commandments and to the violation of its prohibitions. The sages, of blessed memory, having become aware of his plans before his reputation spread among our people, meted out fitting punishment to him. 

Daniel had already alluded to him when he presaged the downfall of a wicked one and a heretic among the Jews who would endeavor to destroy the Law, claim prophecy for himself, make pretenses to miracles, and allege that he is the Messiah, as it is written, "Also the children of the impudent among thy people shall make bold to claim prophecy, but they shall fall." (Daniel 11:14). [1]

The allegation that Jesus had "a Gentile father" notwithstanding - based on a Talmudic passage alleging that Jesus was the product of a Roman soldier's rape - I took the text of the letter at face value for analysis and asked myself C.S. Lewis' famous questions: Jesus was either evil, a madman, or who he said he was, the Messiah, Son of God. Maimonides, along with post-Second Temple Judaism denied the third option. Therefore, we're left with defining Jesus within an spectrum of possibilities located anywhere between two extremes: he was either crazy as a loon or as evil as the devil.

(You might be asking why I even care to ask that kind of question. Well, because I care about the truth. I tell people I possess a diamond that I want to share with them, but that this diamond is unique because giving it away will not make me any less wealthy, whereas those receiving it may become as wealthy as I am. Ocassionally, I like to step back and test my diamond for its beauty and hardness.)

Ratzinger's reply

As I said before, I asked myself: is the price to pay to reconcile myself with my Jewish brethren fully and in heart and through this reconciliation, reach the "true" knowledge of the God of Israel, my abandonment of the central claims we make about Jesus of Nazareth, namely that he's God incarnate, the new Moses and lawgiver, Son of God and of Man, and Israel's Messiah?

I didn't have an immediate answer and therefore I prayed for one. God answered the prayer inmediately. It so happens that someone else had asked that question before. Here's how he put it:

The history of the relationship between Israel and Christendom is drenched with blood and tears. It is a history of mistrust and hostility, but also — thank God — a history marked again and again by attempts at forgiveness, understanding and mutual acceptance. After Auschwitz, the mission of reconciliation and acceptance permits no deferral.

Even if we know that Auschwitz is the gruesome expression of an ideology that not only wanted to destroy Judaism but also hated and sought to eradicate from Christianity its Jewish heritage, the question remains, What could be the reason for so much historical hostility between those who actually must belong together because of their faith in the one God and commitment to his will?

Does this hostility result from something in the very faith of Christians? Is it something in the "essence of Christianity," such that one would have to prescind from Christianity's core, deny Christianity its heart, in order to come to real reconciliation? This is an assumption that some Christian thinkers have in fact made in the last few decades in reaction to the horrors of history. Do confession of Jesus of Nazareth as the Son of the living God and faith in the cross as the redemption of mankind contain an implicit condemnation of the Jews as stubborn and blind, as guilty of the death of the Son of God? Could it be that the core of the faith of Christians themselves compels them to intolerance, even to hostility toward the Jews, and conversely, that the self-esteem of Jews and the defense of their historic dignity and deepest convictions oblige them to demand that Christians abandon the heart of their faith and so require Jews similarly to forsake tolerance? Is the conflict programmed in the heart of religion and only to be overcome through its repudiation?

In this heightened framing of the question, the problem confronting us today reaches far beyond an academic interreligious dialogue into the fundamental decisions of this historic hour. One sees more frequent attempts to mollify the issue by representing Jesus as a Jewish teacher who in principle did not go beyond what was possible in Jewish tradition. His execution is understood to result from the political tensions between Jews and Romans. In point of fact, he was executed by the Roman authority in the way political rebels were punished. His elevation to Son of God is accordingly understood to have occurred after the fact, in a Hellenistic climate; at the same time, in view of the given political circumstances, the blame for the crucifixion is transferred from the Romans to the Jews. As a challenge to exegesis, such interpretations can further an acute listening to the text and perhaps produce something useful. However, they do not speak of the Jesus of the historic sources, but instead construct a new and different Jesus, relegating the historical faith in the Christ of the church to mythology. Christ appears as a product of Greek religiosity and political opportunism in the Roman Empire. One does not do justice to the gravity of the question with such a view; indeed one retreats from it.

Thus the question remains: Can Christian faith, left in its inner power and dignity, not only tolerate Judaism but accept it in its historic mission? Or can it not? Can there be true reconciliation without abandoning the faith, or is reconciliation tied to such abandonment? In reply to this question which concerns us most deeply, I shall not present simply my own views. Rather, I wish to show what the Catechism of the Catholic Church released in 1992 has to say. This work has been published by the magisterium of the Catholic Church as an authentic expression of her faith. In recognition of the significance of Auschwitz and from the mission of the Second Vatican Council, the matter of reconciliation has been inscribed in the catechism as an object of faith. Let us see then how the catechism sounds in relation to our question in terms of its definition of its own mission.

Read the whole essay here.

The man who asked himself the same question and then proceeded to answer it was Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI.

God does answer prayer and comes to the rescue at the precise moment when one is looking down the chasm on the point of vertigo.

A torn, seamless garment

In words repeated by the scholar - and frequent advisor to the US Catholic Bishops - Amy-Jill Levine, I feel a "holy envy" towards Judaism, more so because without Judaism, Christianity would be unintellgible. I study Judaism just before, during, and after the New Testament era with utter seriousness, respect, and many times, admiration.

Yet, my readings have led me to believe that after the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 AD, Judaism resembled - if you allow me the analogy - a seamless garment ripped and torn at the bottom. I think that the Jewish remnant in the Holy Land also saw the discontinuity because, starting with the sucessors of the Pharisees at Jamnia and through the Talmudic age, the Jewish sages applied themselves to "hem" the jagged edges, cut, tie, and add new tzitzits to the torn, seamless garment, sometimes without paying attention to the discontinuities their repairs created.

As a consequence, Judaism became self-contained, unique, standard, and logically impervious to Christian evangelism and apologetics. This is, for the most part, the Talmudists greatest achievement which in turn guaranteed the survival of Jewish identity throughout the centuries.

These centuries were not not good for the Jewish people as they endured persecution by Christians in East and West which in turn  cemented in the emotions of the Jewish people what they had previously held intellectually: that any claim of Jesus as the unique Jewish Messiah was a non-sequitur, to be rejected a priori at all times, and at all places. For, "how can this man ever be considered as God's supreme intervention when his followers kill, persecute, and often disposses and disenfranchise us." It is a fair question and the answer should encourage in us a deep self-reflection.

Nevertheless, and setting momentarily aside the Jewish people's sorrowful history. as a Catholic Christian I can see that the "ripped garment" missing piece is precisely Jesus of Nazareth, his life, teachings, and redemptive mission. Every fiber, every shape of the missing part fits perfectly to its ripped counterpart to the last thread. That many Jews understood this explain why so many of them accepted Jesus as Messiah - and a crucified one at that - shortly after his reported death. For these Jews - and not all of them were yokels from the boondocks - the Christ-event made sense in the light of Israel's election, the Torah, and the designs of a universal God who wanted to draw every single human being toward himself. If Jesus made sense to these Jews, then there was something to Jesus that can invalidate Maimonides' the harsh evaluation he made of Jesus.

This is so, in my view, because as then Cardinal Ratzinger said, Israel's vocation was oriented toward universality. Judaism after Jesus placed its universal vocation in the back fire, at times because survival was of the essence and other times, well, what's the point? Since God will admit righteous Gentiles into his Kingdom, Jews are free to be themselves while leaving to God the fulfillment of Israel's universal vocation.

Yet, this very vocation uniquely seems to have been fulfilled in a single Israelite, Jesus of Nazareth. Therefore, and based upon then Cardinal Ratzinger's solution, I can conclude that not only there is no mutual exclusivity between the Torah and the Gospel, but that their ultimate intelligibility depends on their mutual dependence. Only in this way Israel's universal vocation can be realized, as the God of Israel is made known to all peoples. This is why so many Jews accepted Jesus as Messiah, this is why Christianity is intelligible in Jewish terms.

Love is the key

Yes, I know that most of my Jewish brethren, conditioned as they are to deny any thought of Jesus as Messiah (and for the reasons we have discussed) will reject my conclusion. Alas, I can't do more.

The rift between Jews and Christians will not be healed in my lifetime, I don't think. However, I do think that the claims of Jesus, as preserved and proclaimed by the Church, make sense even withing the Jewish crucible from which Christianity surged. My faith and my reason are secured, but the problem remains: how do I take the Gospel in an affirmative fashion to my Jewish brethren while preserving both our identities? The only personal solution I can find at the moment is by loving them as Jesus loves them, and as we love ourselves. Once we love with this intensity, the remainder will resolve itself through mutual forgiveness before the God who loves, forgive, and judge us all.
[1] Halkin, Abraham S., ed., and Cohen, Boaz, trans. Moses Maimonides' Epistle to Yemen: The Arabic Original and the Three Hebrew Versions, American Academy for Jewish Research, 1952, pp. iii-iv. as quoted in the Wikipedia.

[Cronos]

well, it starts off bad, but ends nicely with I do think that the claims of Jesus, as preserved and proclaimed by the Church, make sense even within the Jewish crucible from which Christianity surged.

[Cronos]

well, it starts off bad, but ends nicely with I do think that the claims of Jesus, as preserved and proclaimed by the Church, make sense even within the Jewish crucible from which Christianity surged.

[Cronos]

Read the article first before jumping to conclusions. The whole article, not just the title or excerpts.

[Cronos]

Correctly stated. Even taken coldly the “blood libel” cannot be read to be for all Jews — even by the broadest of brushes. It would be for those people who uttered it — and their descendents who could be Jews or Christians or Moslems or even Buddhists or Hindus.

[Cronos]

yhaos — do read the article, the whole article and not just the title or excerpts.

[Cronos]

“You question has the veneer o” —> read the article. It’s got nothing to do with your first post. read the whole article, don’t excerpt.

[Cronos]

Sherman: If Jesus was NOT the Christ, then he was justly condemned for blasphemy by the Jewish courts. He was completely innocent of the charges against him in the Roman court. -- Masterful and logical answer

[Cronos]

well, there are those who believe that the message went to gentiles only to quote “make His people jealous” — I kid you not, that’s been posted on this forum! And not by a Jewish poster!

[Cronos]

why do you say nullify the front 3/4.?

[Cronos]

I doubt you could say “the masses” — more specifically the crowd gathered in front of Pilate. This could have been a specially bought crowd, yes “bought” by Cleophas etc.

[Yaelle]

It doesn’t drive a wedge for me. I don’t consider Maimonides infallible, though he was brilliant and is an important Jew. If Jewish leaders were involved in the decision to kill Jesus I’d like to think Christians wouldn’t hold it against all Jews forever.

For Jews, Jesus did not bring among other things a messianic era. No, because to us he didn’t fulfill the prophecy. It doesn’t mean he is evil or mad. It means we can’t call him a prophet.

Is it OK that Jesus is a prophet or savior to Christians? Yes. Because for Christians it is so. For Christians, praying to or through Jesus is not idolatry. It would be for us Jews. But it is right for Christians.

I a. Not offended nor should any Jew be that you all struggle and think and pray on this difference. We respect struggling with Gd.

It’s a different paradigm. We are commanded to be Jews. We accept that others are not, nor should they be. Others have their own Ways. For them, their religion is the right way. Christianity feels it must convert others. So in your Way you must struggle with Judaism because yours is to be, for you, the Only Way. This is to me the saddest thing about Christianity, though I mean only expression of my honest feeling and no offense at all. I respect your theology even though it isn’t mine.

There is only one Gd. One creator. There are apparently different ways to worship Him. I can accept that. I think that is how Jews feel, or are supposed to feel, about Christian theology.

[Cronos]

though he was brilliant and is an important Jew. If Jewish leaders were involved in the decision to kill Jesus I’d like to think Christians wouldn’t hold it against all Jews forever.

Well, this Christian doesn't hold it against all Jews forever. More to the point, I see all of humanity as being complicit in this killing. Pushing it off on to one group "Jews" or a smaller group "those Jewish leaders then" is pushing off one's own complicity.

Maimonides' comments are his own as an individual.

[Teófilo]

See y’all? This is a good reaction. Thank you.

~Theo

[Teófilo]

“ELS coded”? No idea what that is. Please, explain.

~Theo

[Teófilo]

I can’t say I have any Jewish friends, other than Jesus, his Mom, his earthly Dad, and the first followers who now bask before the Beatific Vision. Jewish acquaintances, yes, but all of them in a professional setting.

Having said that, I will share the Gospel with any Jewish brother or sisters who approach me willing to know more about Jesus, yes I would. Which I would do with anyone regardless of avowed religion, or no religion.

~Theo

[Teófilo]

I won’t say it emphasized difference, but it did start from opposite viewpoints and tried to engage them in a dialogue.

The excerpt from Ratzinger didn’t do justice to his whole essay. You must read it!

~Theo

[Teófilo]

“What other signs or markers for Messiah would the Jews accept?”

I don’t speak for the Jews - heck, no one speak for the Jews, not even other Jews - but for what I know, your question is liable for as many answers as there are individual Jewish opinions.

You see, Maimonides aside, today’s Judaism isn’t a systematic “creedal” faith. It would be fair to say that they are all like Thomas the Apostle was: everything is mere speculation until they meet the Messiah in person and then all empirical doubt will be dispelled for them - and even then, many will question him. :-)

~Theo

[Sherman Logan]

the masses turned on Him also. Remember, they had a chance to grant him the Passover pardon, and the crowd picked the Barrabas instead.

Not so sure this works out that way.

The crowd at the governor's palace was not necessarily a representative sample of the Jewish populace. It would have been extraordinarily foolish of the Jewish leaders to not have as many of their henchmen as possible in this crowd. The remainder would have probably been largely city rif-raf. As in today's city mobs, most "solid citizens" are busy elsewhere with their lives.

And even those who were not predisposed against Jesus might have been easily swept up in the peer pressure of a mob setting rather than making a concious decision to reject Him.

[Sherman Logan]

So in your Way you must struggle with Judaism because yours is to be, for you, the Only Way.

That is inherent in the very root of Christianity.

Christians believe Jesus is the Savior of man. If other groups, such as the Jews, can achieve salvation without His intercession, then this claim is false.

Jesus himself said, "Nobody comes to the Father except through me." No exceptions, even for His relatives.

If you reject that statement, you can still believe He is a great moral teacher, but you can't believe He is the Messiah in any meaningful sense.

Perhaps you can answer a question for me that I have wondered about for quite some time. Many Jews are apparently seriously offended by (what they believe to be) the Christian belief that Jews who don't accept Jesus as their Savior will go to hell. This pops up every so often when some Jewish group gets its panties all wadded up of the Southern Baptists or some other group.

I find this very odd. Quite a few Christians who believe differently from me on various aspects believe that I will therefore go to hell. This doesn't bother me at all, since their belief will presumably not affect God's judgment in any way.

Either they are right, and I'm in for eternity in the toaster, or they're wrong and I'm not. Either way, why should I (or the Jews I mentioned) care one way or another what some random idiot believes?

Obviously such belief can for fanatics lead to regrettable actions in the real world. But I think it has been quite some time (if ever) that the US has experienced a pogrom. Some Jews seem to expect the appearance around the corner at any moment of a mob of Cossacks.

[Teófilo]

Well, concerning the eternal validity of the Old Testament, we Catholics teach and believe that:

121 The Old Testament is an indispensable part of Sacred Scripture. Its books are divinely inspired and retain a permanent value,92 for the Old Covenant has never been revoked.

122 Indeed, "the economy of the Old Testament was deliberately SO oriented that it should prepare for and declare in prophecy the coming of Christ, redeemer of all men."93 "Even though they contain matters imperfect and provisional,94 The books of the Old Testament bear witness to the whole divine pedagogy of God's saving love: these writings "are a storehouse of sublime teaching on God and of sound wisdom on human life, as well as a wonderful treasury of prayers; in them, too, the mystery of our salvation is present in a hidden way."95

123 Christians venerate the Old Testament as true Word of God. the Church has always vigorously opposed the idea of rejecting the Old Testament under the pretext that the New has rendered it void (Marcionism).

Regarding the validity of the Jewish law, we teach and believe that:

1961 God, our Creator and Redeemer, chose Israel for himself to be his people and revealed his Law to them, thus preparing for the coming of Christ. the Law of Moses expresses many truths naturally accessible to reason. These are stated and authenticated within the covenant of salvation.

1962 The Old Law is the first stage of revealed Law. Its moral prescriptions are summed up in the Ten Commandments. the precepts of the Decalogue lay the foundations for the vocation of man fashioned in the image of God; they prohibit what is contrary to the love of God and neighbor and prescribe what is essential to it. the Decalogue is a light offered to the conscience of every man to make God's call and ways known to him and to protect him against evil:

God wrote on the tables of the Law what men did not read in their hearts.13

1963 According to Christian tradition, the Law is holy, spiritual, and good,14 yet still imperfect. Like a tutor15 it shows what must be done, but does not of itself give the strength, the grace of the Spirit, to fulfill it. Because of sin, which it cannot remove, it remains a law of bondage.

According to St. Paul, its special function is to denounce and disclose sin, which constitutes a "law of concupiscence" in the human heart.16 However, the Law remains the first stage on the way to the kingdom. It prepares and disposes the chosen people and each Christian for conversion and faith in the Savior God. It provides a teaching which endures for ever, like the Word of God.

1964 The Old Law is a preparation for the Gospel. "The Law is a pedagogy and a prophecy of things to come."17 It prophesies and presages the work of liberation from sin which will be fulfilled in Christ: it provides the New Testament with images, "types," and symbols for expressing the life according to the Spirit. Finally, the Law is completed by the teaching of the sapiential books and the prophets which set its course toward the New Covenant and the Kingdom of heaven.

There were . . . under the regimen of the Old Covenant, people who possessed the charity and grace of the Holy Spirit and longed above all for the spiritual and eternal promises by which they were associated with the New Law. Conversely, there exist carnal men under the New Covenant still distanced from the perfection of the New Law: the fear of punishment and certain temporal promises have been necessary, even under the New Covenant, to incite them to virtuous works. In any case, even though the Old Law prescribed charity, it did not give the Holy Spirit, through whom "God's charity has been poured into our hearts."18

I think that the core of the debate related to the identity of Israel within the People of God. Are there two People of God, Israel and the Church? Or only one? If one - and this is what we believe - can Jews exist as Jews in the People of God, or not?

Throughout history, the answer - from both sides - has been a resounding "no." But after the Holocaust, we on the Christian side are wondering if we blundered by insisting that supersessionism meant the suppression and absorption of Jewish identity into Gentile Christianity. Of course, the Holocaust has led most Jews to insist more than ever on their separate uniqueness and election.

That's where the debate stands and I don't mean to solve it here, except to insist upon the Christian vocation of Love.

~Theo