Sarx

The Jewish Chronicle presents an interesting essay by Nathan Jeffay on the idea of “Judeo-Christian”. It is introduced in the context of the Vatican’s recent revision of the prayer for the Jews but it goes quite a bit further.

Skip to the fourth paragraph and go from there.

The fact is that the desire to convert the Jews is basic to Christianity, and it is only the Church’s efforts to reach out to the Jews in recent years to make up for centuries of persecution that has somehow convinced us otherwise. The fact is that the desire to convert the Jews is basic to Christianity, and it is only the Church’s efforts to reach out to the Jews in recent years to make up for centuries of persecution that has somehow convinced us otherwise. That, and that fact the Jews, en masse, have come to accept in recent decades to a fiction called the “shared Judeo-Christian heritage”.

(Props to DovBear.)

There were two quotes in the Jaffay Article that surprised me: one from Karl Barth and one from The Preaching of Peter. I looked up the context for them.

In Church Dogmatics Barth says,

The existence of the Synagogue side by side with the Church is an ontological impossibility, a wound, a gaping hole in the body of Christ, something which is quite intolerable. For what does the Church have which the Synagogue does not also have, and long before it - especially Jesus Christ Himself, who is of the Jews, who is the Jewish Messiah, and only as such the Lord of the Church? The decisive question in not what the Jewish Synagogue can be without Him but what the Church is as long as it confronts an alien and hostile Israel. “Jewish missions” is not the right word for the call to remove the b reach, a call which must go out unceasingly from the Church to these brethren who do not yet know their unity with it - a unity which does not have to be established but is aready there ontologically - who will not accept what they already are, and what they were long before us poor Gentiles.

Finding this quote was easy, because google books pulled it up.

But as St Clement of Alexandria cites the the Preaching of Peter (favourably) quoting

So then do ye, learning in a holy and righteous sort that which we deliver unto you, observe it, worshipping God through Christ in a new way. For we have found in the Scriptures, how the Lord saith: Behold, I make with you a new covenant, not as the covenant with your fathers in mount Horeb. He hath made a new one with us: for the ways of the Greeks and Jews are old, but we are they that worship him in a new way in a third generation, even Christians.

And, at least in the document available to me online, I couldn’t find the quote as cited… (and I’m quite fascinated with the idea of “third generation”).

I did find it, eventually, in the “Fathers of the 2nd Century” - although the words are slightly different (from Translation or Purpose, I know not):

So that do ye also, learning holily and righteously what we deliver to you; keep them, worshipping God in a new way, by Christ.” For we find in the Scriptures, as the Lord says: “Behold, I make with you a new covenant, not as I made with your fathers in Mount Horeb.” He made a new covenant with us; for what belonged to the Greeks and Jews is old. But we, who worship Him in a new way, in the third form, are Christians. For clearly, as I think, he showed that the one and only God was known by the Greeks in a Gentile way, by the Jews Judaically, and in a new and spiritual way by us.

Clement of Alexandria, The Stromata, or Miscellanies Book VI, Chapter V.

It is as I said to 2 weeks ago to Chris Jones in reply to his comment:

This is the main problem: the existence of those who use the same Biblical text and yet come to a different conclusion seems to be the Christian’s not-so-secret shame. In psychological terms, the Church treats Jews like the shadow. The liturgy as it was and as it stands now says nothing about joy in our shared heritage and a lot about fear that, really, Christianity is wrong.

Traditional Christians (Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox or otherwise) can not affirm Jews save by allowing for Christians to be mistaken.

Nathan, at least, has a masters in Christian theology from Cambridge. He would not fall prey to something quite common among many modern Jews: not being aware of the Anti-Jewish assumptions in Christianity. Such first-person knowledge provides “a much needed warning against putting our faith in the ’shared Judeo-Christian heritage’.”

This is not a rejection, on my part, of the more-liberal idea that Jews, Christians and Muslims all worship the same God. But it’s not just a case of style. Nathan says, “…it leads to generations of Jews failing to appreciate their religion’s uniqueness from Christianity, and getting the impression it is little more than Christianity minus Jesus and plus a plethora of restrictions.”

Of equal importance, it leads to generations of Christians failing to appreciate their religion’s radical departure from her Jewish roots, and getting the impression the Church is exactly Judaism plus Jesus and bacon cheese burgers. This is, I think, the more-dangerous assumption. As it leaves Christians writing prayers for the conversion of Jews in ways they don’t pray about heathens, Muslims or Buddhists.