Jewish and Christian Views of
Messianic Redemption
Disputation and Dialogue

by Rev. Isaac C. Rottenberg

Judaism and Christianity have their disputes. It has always been thus. The gospels portray Jesus engaged in arguments with certain religious leaders of his day. The apostolic letters tell us about disputes between the emerging church and the synagogue. We live with our profound differences to this day.

Where there are real differences between faith communities, disputes are bound to be part of their interaction. Christianity came to be so called because it is a Christ-centered faith involving Messianic claims about Jesus that run counter to the overwhelming view among Jews that a breakthrough of the Messianic age still lies in the future. Hence, christology is a major subject of dispute between Jews and Christians, even though Jesus is viewed much more positively in broad Jewish circles today than was the case only decades ago. In the words of Schalom Ben-Chorin: "The belief of Jesus unites us; the belief in Jesus separates us."

A History of Conflict

What forms has that separation taken? This question leads us straight to the sad history of Christian-Jewish relations. Separation led to estrangement, and estrangement led to enmity. Differences were turned into dichotomies and eventually acts of violence. Both parties have in various ways contributed to these disastrous developments, but the churches bear by far the greatest burden of responsibility for what has happened as a result. Once gentiles constituted the majority of congregational membership, church leaders turned to Hellenistic rather than Hebraic modes of thought. Furthermore, attitudes toward Jews and Judaism became increasingly hostile and, after the church gained the upper hand as an imperial power, it resorted to coercive force. Soon polemics was matched with persecution.

The second century church father Justin Martyr entitled one of his famous treatises, A Dialogue with Trypho. In fact, it read more like a diatribe than a dialogue. By accusing his Jewish opponent of "obstinacy of heart and feebleness of mind," this Christian defender of the faith set the stage for the later stereotype of the obstinate Jew who against all reason refuses to renounce his/her faith and accept baptism. The historian Adolf von Harnack rightly observed that this tract was in reality a "victor’s monologue."

The disputations forced upon the Jewish community in the Middle Ages, designed to prove Jesus’ messiahship to Torah-faithful Jews, did not have even the semblance of a dialogue either. Their true intent was not mutual understanding, but the humiliation of Jews and the deprecation of their faith. These staged events were in effect opportunities for Christians to propagandize under police protection. Woe to any Jew who would dare to protest! For many Jews it became a matter of being baptized or banished, or much worse. All this was done in the name of Jesus whom the church confesses as the Messiah of Israel and Savior of the world.

I shall not rehash this history of horrors which has been so abundantly documented over the past decades by both Jewish and Christian scholars. Instead, I shall focus on some voices in the post-Holocaust era on the issue of disputation and dialogue, with special reference to the churches’ Messianic claims.

The New Dialogue

Dialogue is widely being praised by many Christians and Jews as the great new positive reality in Christian-Jewish relations. In my view, there are good reasons for that. Some Jewish scholars, however, have their doubts, especially about theological dialogues as distinguished from exchanges about socio-cultural and political matters. There are those who feel that dialogues on questions of faith are basically meaningless, if not dangerous. Meaningless because the two faiths have, theologically speaking, little if anything in common–are in fact incompatible–and dangerous because such encounters tend to perpetuate the alleged "myth" of a Judeo-Christian tradition.

I offer a few brief samples for illustrative purposes. Rabbi Jacob Neusner, a highly esteemed scholar and prolific writer, is not impressed with the dialogue thus far. In his 1993 book Telling Tales, he accuses dialogue devotees of engaging in "a form of shadow-boxing," of dealing mostly with "surface matters" while avoiding issues that go to the heart of each other’s beliefs. In his often provocative style he even uses the phrase " a conspiracy of hypocrites."

Neusner offers some proposals on how the dialogue might be moved to a next stage, but unfortunately he sees as the precondition of an honest dialogue the mutual acceptance of the fact that "Judaism and Christianity are entirely different and essentially unrelated religions." Levi Olan made the same point when he wrote in 1972 that "Jesus and the New Testament are wholly outside the Jewish realm," and that "Jews have no more and no less interest in discussing these than they do the founders and scriptures of other faiths." In short, the relationship between Judaism and Christianity is no different than its relationship to Hinduism or Buddhism.

Rabbi Henry Siegman presented that dichotomous perspective in a 1975 Worldview article. He used such phrases as "the ultimate incommensurability of Judaism and Christianity" and the "incompatibility of Sinai and Golgotha" (i.e. observance of Torah versus redemption sola fide through the cross of Christ). He believed that acknowledgment of these "facts" would be a good starting-point for dialogue.

Others have used stronger language. Eliezer Berkovits, in a famous 1966 essay in the journal Judaism stated quite bluntly that "Judaism is Judaism because it rejects Christianity, and Christianity is Christianity because it rejects Judaism." Thus the sin of the youthful church is visited upon us. Christians so disastrously defined themselves in opposition to Judaism, causing the enmity which now makes it seem desirable to some that we accept that judgment as the norm.

During the 1980s, Gershon Mamlak emerged as a passionate advocate of the dichotomous position. Assigning Christianity to the "syncretistic orbit of Hellas," he saw the uniqueness of Judaism to lie precisely in where it differed from Christianity which he describes as a totally other-worldly faith. For us, he argues, the law embodies a covenant partnership with the God of Israel for the sake of the mending of creation, while they have abandoned the law and have chosen the way of an unworldly Gnostic-type spirituality. His wrath was directed in particular at the "Jesus-a-true-Jew" school (See Midstream, August/September, 1986 and May, 1987).

A renowned Jerusalem scholar and expert on early Christian source, David Flusser is one of the prime representatives of that "school." Despite the fundamental differences between Christianity and Judaism, he has not been reluctant to describe them as "really one faith" nor to enter into dialogues about Jewish and Christian understandings of Messianic redemption. A number of scholars in the United States have pursued a similar path. Within the scope of this article, I can only give a few brief examples.

Some fifteen years ago, Rabbi Irving Greenberg wrote an essay entitled, "The Relationship of Judaism and Christianity: Toward a New Organic Model" (see the Winter 1984 issue of Quarterly Review), a clear attempt not to move to consensus on core beliefs but to a more balanced view of each other’s position. Greenberg posed the following question: "Is it possible for Judaism to have a more affirmative model of Christianity, one that appreciates Christian spiritual life in all its manifest power?" In other words, this author, an orthodox Jew, sought to enter into dialogue about some of the central faith-claims of Christianity.

This courageous and creative attempt to move beyond dichotomy to a deeper dialogical relationship unfortunately did not receive the response it so richly deserved. Professor Greenberg tells me that some of his orthodox compatriots reacted with bitter attacks while there were few serious discussions about his proposal by Christian dialogue partners.

As to the Messianic question, Greenberg reflected on how Jews might better understand the reaction of the early Jewish followers of Jesus to his ministry and then his disastrous death. How did they come to confess him as Messiah? For the author’s arguments I must refer the reader to the Quarterly Review article. Let me just mention his discussion about a "failed messiah" who, as distinguished from a "false messiah," can still advance the cause of redemption. "In the Messiah ben Joseph," he writes, "you have a messiah who comes and fails, indeed is put to death, but this messiah paves the way for the final redemption." The same may be said of Jesus.

More recently, Michael Kogan, also writing from a conservative Jewish perspective, has made similar proposals in two noteworthy articles entitled "Toward Total Dialogue" and "Toward a Jewish Theology of Christianity" (for more extensive discussions by Kogan and myself on the issues involved, see the Journal of Ecumenical Studies, Fall, 1989; Winter, 1992; Spring, 1993; Winter, 1995 and Spring, 1996). Can’t we move, asks Kogan, from mutual respect to mutual influence and eventually even to mutual enlightenment? He sees Christianity as basically a "Jewish outreach into the world," one which has spread the message about the God of Israel to the nations. As to key Christian doctrines (viz. incarnation, vicarious sacrifice and the resurrection) Kogan renders a more positive Jewish evaluation of such core Christian beliefs than has usually been the case.

Jesus, while not accepted as Messiah, is–in line with Martin Buber’s thought–portrayed as one of the greatest among the sons of Israel. It would be helpful, Kogan feels, if Christians were to drop the designation "Messiah" for Jesus. Since that is not a realistic expectation, however, Christians might at least make it clear "that we are defining it in an internal and spiritualized way unknown to Judaism." In effect, that would constitute an admission that Mamlak and others have been right all along in describing Christianity as a Gnostic-type spirituality.

The "Realized Eschatology" Issue

Gnosticism did indeed become a severe threat to Christian orthodoxy. It took a fierce intellectual struggle to resist its seductive powers to replace the notion of an historical revelation with a spiritualistic immanentism. In the end, biblical faith in creation, the incarnation and the resurrection of the body won out, even though the church has succumbed time and time again to an unworldly spiritualization of the faith.

"Jesus is Lord" became the central confession of the post-resurrection church and that belief had not only internal-personalistic implications, but political ones as well, as the early martyrs who refused to worship the emperor all too soon found out. The church proclaimed a triumphant message of redemption. Jesus was proclaimed as the Christ, the One promised in the message of Israel’s prophets. In his coming, his ministry, his cross and resurrection, the God of Israel had acted decisively on behalf of a world gone astray. The gospel of salvation in Christ was seen as being of world-historical, even cosmic significance. The apostles, with Holy Scripture in hand (which for them meant "Moses and the prophets") went out into the Greco-Roman world claiming nations and cultures for Christ the Lord.

Our Jewish brothers and sisters have two basic responses to this message. First, the Christ of the church is not the Messiah of Jewish expectation, and the best evidence of that is that the world has so obviously not been redeemed. The Jewish people did not gain political sovereignty and an era of world peace was not inaugurated. So, how can Christians claim that there is a presence of the Kingdom of God in the here and now? Secondly, the triumphant gospel of the church was turned into an ecclesiastical triumphalism and supersessionism that has brought untold suffering to the Jewish people. How can they be expected to receive the church’s message as a redemptive faith? Instead, the Jewish people have come to see Christian Messianic claims as a threat to their very survival.

These Jewish responses and concerns need to be taken very seriously by Christian believers. Sinful Christian triumphalism has frequently obscured rather than promoted the triumphant message of the gospel. Ecclesiastical hegemony has all too often been used as a power tool to oppress others. The church has at times made claims that conveyed the idea that it represented the Kingdom of God on earth in all its glory, thus losing the eschatological perspective of the Bible and with it the life lived in faith, hope and love. As already noted, the Jewish people became the prime, although certainly not the only, victims of these distorted versions of biblical faith.

Profound shock has filled the souls of many Christians who have studied this history of horrors. Scholars have struggled to find ways to revise the manner in which we witness to the Jewish people, or even to reconstruct basic doctrines of the church. Again, proposed solutions can here only be presented in very summary fashion. The following examples are mostly for illustrative purposes.

Some Christian scholars (e.g. the late Paul van Buren and Clark Williamson) have recommended that Christians do indeed avoid the designation "Messiah" when referring to Jesus. It just seems inappropriate to take such a central concept in Judaism and endow it with an entirely new meaning. For others, the very confession "Jesus is Lord" contains anti-Judaic implications of a replacement theology and therefore should be abandoned. Rosemary Radford Ruether has come up with the catchy phrase that "anti-Judaism is the left hand of christology." And the late Roy Eckardt, in equally provocative fashion, posed this question: "How can the resurrection of Jesus be proclaimed as a special act of God without the Christian triumphalism that paved the way to Belzec and Sobibor?" (Reclaiming the Jesus of History: Christology Today, 1992, p. 211). For him, Jesus was indeed a failed Messiah who came very close to being a false Messiah.

The basic problem for these theologians and for those who share their views is the claim of the presence of redemption in the here and now. In order to minimize the emphasis on such a presence of salvation, the term "prolepsis" has gained popularity in certain circles. Jesus is the Christ/Messiah "in an anticipatory way" (Gregory Baum). Jesus was a Jew who died hoping for the coming of the Kingdom, not the Messiah who inaugurated the promised new age. Hence we are dealing with an "unfulfilled messianism" (Ruether). Thus, these scholars believe, the futuristic dimension of biblical faith is preserved, while the unredeemed nature of the present is fully recognized and Christian triumphalism is avoided. To say it differently, any notion of a "realized eschatology" must be rejected.

Fulfillment and Consummation

There is no denying the fact that the "New Testament" message has a fait accompli dimension to it. What needed to happen has happened. The divine law was fulfilled in holy love and righteousness. Atonement has been accomplished. Indeed, "God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself" (2 Corinthians 5:19). The gospel now is good news about "fulfillment," a concept that runs through the "New Testament" in a variety of contexts. It is used in connection with the law, time, the church, etc. (See the essay "Torah and Kerygma" on my web site http://members.aol.com/revicr).

The idea of fulfillment is so problematic to a number of theologians that they simply want to get rid of it. According to Rosemary Radford Ruether, the use of this category is in effect a "historicizing of the eschatological," i.e., making illegitimate claims about the here and now as if the divinely promised future is already fully present. This has led some scholars, like Father John Pawlikowski, to declare that we ought to abandon once and for all the idea that fulfilled history exists anywhere. As I have argued in various writings over the years, the problem here lies in the fact that the "New Testament" notion of the fulfillment of history is confused with the consummation of history in the Kingdom of God. There is a dynamic relationship between the two, but they are not the same, certainly not in the "New Testament."

In fact, I would claim that there is an element of "realized eschatology" in the "New Testament" message, but that rather than representing a historicizing of the eschatological, this aspect of the gospel has a strongly futuristic content about it. In other words, in Jesus Christ the future of God’s Kingdom has broken into our history and through the Holy Spirit the power of the reign of God is operative in the here and now, not only in human hearts but in the history of the world. That is what the "New Testament" concept of fulfillment is all about. It is about a fait accompli that is not a finit. Fulfillment is a historical-eschatological dynamic. That divine promises are fulfilled before the end of time as we know it never means the end of it, not in the "Old Testament" nor in the "New Testament." It is all part of covenant history where the divine establishment of a "new covenant," rather than meaning the abolition of the existing covenant, is in fact a confirmation of God’s faithfulness as the divine plan of redemption unfolds. Fulfilled promises open up history to new futures and new expectations.

When the "New Testament" proclaims that in faith people receive a taste of the powers of the age to come (Hebrews 6:5), that–I would say–is a form of "realized eschatology." We are not talking about something ethereal that can be spiritualized out of concrete historical reality. Quite the contrary: These powers become embodied in a renewal of life, in healings, in good deeds, in just laws, etc. Furthermore, through the presence of the powers of the Kingdom to come expectation and hope are intensified. Fulfillment does not mean that we have taken hold of the new heaven and the new earth, but rather that we have become "partakers of the promise with the people of Israel" (Ephesians 3:6). Thus we become partners in hope, and coworkers with the Lord of the universe. That is precisely why the "New Testament" refers to "the Holy Spirit of promise" (Ephesians 1:13). To be saved and become a born-again Christian in the "New Testament" sense means to undergo a rebirth to hope (1 Peter 1:3; Romans 8:24). It also means that one "strains forward to what lies ahead" (Philippians 3:13) in active service to the Kingdom of God.

Key concepts in the "New Testament" understanding of the presence of redemption in the here and now are "foretaste," "first fruits," "signs," and the idea of a first installment of an inheritance to come. These terms suggest a certain eschatological reservation. The gifts of God are glorious, but they pale in comparison with the glory of the full redemption of the earth when "God will be all in all" (1 Corinthians 15:28). That indeed will be the consummation of history.

I realize that the "New Testament" use of the word pleroma and its various derivatives can be confusing. I can understand how as wise and diligent a student of both Jewish and Christian sources as Michael Wyschogrod concludes that Christians hold the view of a "completed history." In that case the life of faith would no longer mean a straining forward to what lies ahead.

I agree with Clemens Thoma that "[in] the last analysis neither in Judaism nor in Christianity is it a question of the messiah but of the Kingdom of God" (A Christian Theology of Judaism, 1980, p. 135). Yes, the life and ministry, the death and resurrection of Jesus are central and decisive in the Christian understanding of the divine plan of redemption. Therefore, the differences between Judaism and Christianity main have all too often been obscured by the atrocities committed by Christians against the Jewish people.

Thus, as Martin Buber wrote years ago, we came to face each other across "a gulf which no human power can bridge." Yet, we still have some important things in common, namely a book and an expectation. So, the gulf "does not prevent the common watch for a unity to come to us from God…" (See Disputation and Dialogue, ed. F. E. Talmage, 1975, p. 282). Christian expectation finds its confirmation not only in the great acts of God recorded in the "Old Testament," but above all in the "Christ-event," the "Pentecost event" and the presence of the power of the Kingdom in the present age.

In the meantime, the watchword is waiting. Not, as was already pointed out, a waiting in passive resignation; but waiting while "hastening the coming of the day of God" (2 Peter 3:12). It is to be hoped that through continued dialogue we will discover new and common ways of serving the cause of divine Shalom in the world. It will require more than colloquia in comfortable surroundings. It really demands what Rabbi Irving Greenberg has called a new "worldliness in holiness" or what might be called "biblical this-worldliness" on the part of both Christians and Jews, a wonderful way of describing our common need for divine and sanctifying grace.

Rev. Isaac Rottenberg is a retired general official of the Reformed Chruches in America. He has written extensively on theology and is a frequent contributor to various theological journals, often focusing on issues vital to the developing Jewish/Christian dialogue. His wide range of relationships with scholars and leaders in Judaism and in mainline Christian denominations makes his insights informative, provocative, and well balanced. Isaac and his wife Malwuina live in Denver, Colorado.

Judaism-Christianity-Paganism:
Biblical Revelation and the Terrestrial Realities
by Isaac C. Rottenberg

This collection of essays is offered to Internet users as a contribution to the contemporary dialogue on the relationship between Judaism and Christianity and its relevance to the ongoing debate about the interaction between religion and culture.

For a review, turn to http://members.aol.com/revicr

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