On Mon, 14 Jul 1997, Andrew Gow wrote:

student recently asked in class (History of
> Christianity) how Jews could possibly believe that they would be saved,
> given that "it says in the Bible that only those who believe in Jesus will
> be saved". When supercession of the Hebrew Bible by the NT defines
> Christianity, this will always be the attitude. But this student does not
> believe that Jews are inherently evil, subhuman, or stink, or slaughter
> Christian babies. There is a crucial difference between her anti-Judaism and
> medieval "Jew-hatred".

I think you are moving too fast here.  The theological position of the
early Church (Luke 24, Rom. 9-11) was not supercession but fulfillment
(unless by supercession you mean supercession of the "Old Testament" as 
"stand-alone," self-sufficient revelation of Yahweh's saving action in
history).  Your student's comment reflects a distortion (common though it
may be in some circles) of the main Christian tradition on the relation of
the testaments.  As far as I know, official Catholic teaching, whether
medieval or modern, never pronounced a doctrine of the supercession of the
Old Testament or of an abrogation of God's covenant with Israel.

The issue for Paul in Rom. 9-11 is what happens to unbelieving Jews.
Those who do not believe in Christ as God incarnate are lost (though
"belief in Christ" even for him can be inchoate--Rom. 1, natural
revelation--he is not at odds with Vatican II's statement on non-Christian
religions but he does not develop it to the degree that Vatican II and a
host of theologians between him and Vatican II do).  Paul himself and most
Christians of his day were Jews who believed in Christ as the Messiah.
Deliberately and stubbornly unbelieving Jews, like deliberately and
stubbornly unbelieving Greeks and Romans, are lost.  Those whose lack of
belief results solely from ignorance about Christ may be saved
through genuine faith as befits their "lights" (Rom. 1).

This is the theological position of the Christian tradition.  I know it
does not correspond to practice or popular prejudices throughout history,
including the Middle Ages.  I have stated it here because by employing the
term "supercession" Andrew Gow (perhaps unintentionally) moved the
discussion to a theological plane.

The theology that lies behind the student's comment is, by patristic and
medieval and modern Catholic standards, flawed.  Some Fundamentalist
Protestants and strict Calvinists take it as a theological principle that
all who do not specifically and explicitly believe in Christ
are damned; a Saint Socrates is an impossibility. (Even
some Fundamentalist Protestants will however admit the Jewish believers in
Yahweh who lived before the revelation of Christ will be saved by virtue
of their faith according to their "lights," i.e., prior to Christ.)  But
this position was unknown, as far as I know, in medieval theology.  (But
what about all the polemic against the Muslim "infidels," one might ask.
That polemic presumed knowledge of Christian claims for Christ as God
incarnate and an explicit rejection of those claims.  Much the same
applied to unbelieving Jews in the Middle Ages--still speaking
theologically here--living in Christendom, they could hardly be ignorant
of Christian claims, thus were rejecting them willfully.  But their
rejection is the same as the rejection by "rebellious" Saxons in the 8th
century or by any Christian living in mortal sin.)

The main point Andrew Gow is making is a valuable one and one I accept:
blanket condemnation of "Jews" must have had something other than strictly
theological/religious animus behind it.  I take issue only when he
introduces the idea of "supercession" to help explain part of the entire
mixture of racial, cultural, ethnic conflict and cites a contemporary
student as an illustration.  The student, though clearly speaking from her
own strong religious and theological convictions, and clearly a Christian,
is not speaking out of an accurate knowledge of Christian theology but out
of a distortion, though a distortion that is all too common.  Abusus non
tollit usus.

I raise this point, minor though it might seem, because a lot of ink has
been spilt trying to insist that Christianity theologically _must_ be
anti-Judaic.  I simply do not see this anywhere in the tradition or formal
theologizing.  Some theologians, including some fathers of the Church and
medieval theologians may have taught the supercession of the Old Testament
and the abrogation of God's covenant with Israel.  But I know of no
instance where it is part of formal, conciliar, official teaching.  That
doesn't mean that it never functioned as a license for persecution of
Jewish people.  But when it did, it was an abuse and distortion of
official teaching.  The tragedy is that such distortion has been so
frequent and widespread.  But even that distortion was not the sole cause
of persecution of Jewish people during the Middle Ages and it certainly
cannot be made even the primary cause of modern persecution.  As a number
of list members have pointed out, a lot of other cultural elements are
involved.

(Of course, what one means by "anti-Judaic" will differ.  If one rejects
out of hand the possibility that Christianity could be a fulfillment of
Judaism, with Jesus as Messiah, then Christian believers in Jesus as
Messiah will necessarily be anti-Judaic.  But the concept of "Messiah" is
fully Jewish--the issue is whether this particular person was or was not
the Messiah, not that a Messiah might conceivably, indeed probably,
introduce a new, "fuller" understanding of Judaism.  Only if, as in
rabbinnic Judaism--post-Jesus-of-Nazareth--one draws boundaries around the
possibilities of "fulfillment of Judaism by the Messiah" such that the
sort of "innovations" that came with the Christian putative "fulfillment"
are seen as a betrayal rather than fulfillment, only then would
Christianity necessarily be anti-Judaic.  This debate was going on during
the first century and it was heated.  But it was a debate whose conclusion
was not set in concrete.)


Recent popes' _mea culpas_ on behalf of the
Catholic Church make this distinction: all too often the Church's teaching
on the relationship between the two covenants has been distorted and used
to justify sin against Jews.  But it is a distortion of the plain message
of the New Testament itself.

In recent years, some have argued that some
passages of the New Testament damn all Jews, notably, John 8:44.  This
rests on a doubtful exegetical move by which scholars postulate the
insertion by a later editor of a transition in the middle of the chapter
(vs. 31, I believe).  If one accepts this as an interpolation, the rest of
the chapter can be read as aimed at all Jews, labeling them children of
the Devil; if one takes the chapter in its entirety as one piece, then the
latter part can be read as applying only to those who initially believed
in Jesus as Messiah but then doubted him--Christians who do the same thing
would be equally damned, unless they repent, for to apostasize is worse
than, out of ignorance, never to believe.

Dennis Martin





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