Christology and Jewish-Christian Dialogue

I. INTRODUCTION

It has been said that Judaism and Christianity share a dirty little secret in common: Jesus was a Jew. Indeed it is a great irony that the Jewish founder of the Christian faith, who should have been "a bridge of reconciliation between Israel and the world of the nations," [1] has instead been a point of division and bitter contention.

Jesus was born a Jew, lived a Jew, and died a Jewish pilgrim to Jerusalem. [2] How is it that a church founded upon the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth should have such a hostile relationship to the people out of whom Jesus came? In the nearly two thousand years since Jesus' earthly ministry, the church and synagogue have gone their separate ways, often belying the fact that the two share a common origin.

II. THE PROBLEM OF HISTORY

Christian polemic against the Jewish people begins in the developing Gospel narratives. From Mark to Matthew to Luke to John is an increasing focus on the culpability of the Jewish people in the crucifixion of Jesus. This is a trend continued in many of the writings of the church fathers, who espoused the supersessionist theology that the Church had superseded Israel as the beneficiary of God's promises and God's blessings.

The earliest Second Testament [3] writings—the Pauline Epistles—contain evidence that even in the very early church Jesus was worshipped, or at least venerated. [4] Although the cultic veneration of Jesus grew out of Jewish monotheism, some have argued that it represented a sudden and significant shift in character from Jewish devotion: "the devotional attention Jews characteristically reserved for God now included the risen Christ." [5] Although Paul's language referring to Jesus as Lord and attributing to him the role of Wisdom stretched Jewish language and categories, it still found its place within the Jewish understanding of God. [6] While this "augmented monotheism" may have arisen out of Jewish interest in, and reverence for, heavenly figures in the Second Temple period, [7] it set the Church on a trajectory, which although following a simple logic, would have profound theological consequences:

(1) Those who followed Jesus experienced God in their lives; in encountering the human being Jesus they also encountered the reality of the one true God, the God whom Jesus addressed as "Father;" (2) In reflecting on their experience, they concluded that through Jesus of Nazareth the one true God had been revealing Godself to them; (3) Thus, the human Jesus was God's self-communication, self-revelation—God's own Word; (4) If God truly is as God reveals God's own self to be, then Jesus is identical with God's eternal self-communication, with God's Word. [8]

The movement along this trajectory from the Road to Damascus to Nicea would ultimately prove disruptive for Jewish-Christian dialogue. Prior to the fourth century C.E., Christians and Jews could be said to be in agreement about the identity and knowable characteristics of God, but differed about Jesus' Messiahship and the extent of his divinity. [9] After the Nicene Creed and the Cappadocian formulation, this was no longer the case and it appeared that Christianity had made a decisive break with its parent faith. [10] It did not help the cause that champions of Nicea, Athanasius and Constantine, held Judaism in very low regard: Athanasius considered it "an offensive, anti-Christian faith" and Constantine detested it. [11] Theological innovation combined with outright hostility among church leaders toward Judaism, contributed to the breakdown in communication between church and synagogue that has only been reestablished in recent years. [12] Over the two millennia that the church and synagogue have been separated, Christian understandings of Jesus Christ have contributed to the infliction of much pain in the Jewish community and various formulations of Christology have led to the mistreatment and persecution of Jews. [13]

The hostility over the Jewish-Christian divide was not limited to the Christian side. Most classical Jewish theological teachings express a negative view of Jesus, often referring to him as אותה האיש otoh ha-ish, a derogatory term for "that man." [14] In effect, Jewish thinkers excommunicated Jesus from the Jewish faith as an apostate who subverted Judaism and as a false messiah. [15] The presentation of Jesus in the Talmud is far from flattering and were it to be read by unsuspecting Christians, it would cause great consternation. [16] In fact, it became customary in some later Jewish writings to spell Jesus' name not ישוע Yeshua, but ישו Yeshu, which resembles the Rabbinic abbreviation יש״ו Ysh'u short for Y'makh sh'mo v'zichro 'May his name and memory be blotted out.' [17] Additionally, a response to Christian theology can be glimpsed in other theological and liturgical developments. At the conclusion of the Orthodox Jewish daily morning service is a recitation of Maimonides' Thirteen Principles of Faith, among which are the following affirmations: "I believe with perfect faith that the Creator, blessed be his name, is a Unity, and that there is no unity in any manner like unto his, and that he alone is our God, who was, is, and will be", "I believe with perfect faith that to the Creator, blessed be his name, and to him alone, it is right to pray, and that it is not right to pray to any being besides him," and "I believe with perfect faith that this Law will not be changed, and that there will never be any other law from the Creator, blessed be his name." [18] These affirmations appear to be response to Christian doctrines of the Trinity, the practice of praying to Christ, and Christian antinomianism.

Is this theological impasse permanent? Has the trajectory Christian theology has taken brought us too far from the Jewish faith to make any meaningful dialogue possible? Is there any way to stay true to Christian tradition and teaching and to get beyond the sins of supersessionism and anti-Judaism? Many have concluded that in order to get beyond supersessionism, the church must retreat from its classic christological teaching. [19] Others have steadfastly maintained that the christological claims essential for Christian identity can be maintained while still conquering supersessionism and triumphalism. [20]

The remainder of this paper will explore the various issues of Christology with an eye toward dialogue between the Church and Synagogue, examining possibilities for new, shared understandings between both communities in an effort to overcome the historic sins of Christian anti-Semitism and inter-religious intolerance. Given the long history of Christian anti-Semitism, the hostility with which the Church has treated the Synagogue, and the responses those elicited in the Jewish community, we—Jew and Christian alike—are required to ask along with Dietrich Bonhoeffer, "Who is Jesus Christ for us today?" Can we come to understandings that heal rather than divide?

III. MESSIAH

When Christians utter the words "Jesus Christ" they are uttering more than the name of the founder of their faith. They are making a confession of faith. For Christ, (Greek Χριστος Christos) means 'the anointed one' and is a translation of the Hebrew משיח mashiakh, which we know as "messiah." Thus, the name Jesus Christ is a confession in Jesus as the Messiah. But what does it mean to confess Jesus as Messiah? The title is not without context.

The Jewish history that produced messianic expectations did so out of concrete experiences of suffering and exile. The basic element of the messianic vision remains in a concrete redemption and was never spiritualized away. [21] The salvation of the Messiah is in the here and now, in the fulfillment of the vision of Isaiah 2:4: "nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more." Until peace, justice, and compassion reign, the Kingdom of God is, in the Jewish view, a future reality, yet to come. [22] This is the basis for the Jewish 'no' to the Messiahship of Jesus. As Jürgen Moltmann points out, the Jewish 'no' is not the result of unwillingness or hard-hearted defiance, rather it is because Jews, in Martin Buber's words, "are not able to believe this." [23] Buber, who had a profound respect for Jesus, made the point clearly: "We know more deeply, more truly, that world history has not been turned upside down to its very foundations-that the world is not yet redeemed. We sense its unredeemedness." [24]

Because of this, Jews cannot accept Jesus as the long awaited-for Messiah as Christians proclaim. [25] Honesty requires admitting that the Christian proclamation of Jesus as Messiah rests not only on what Jesus has done-reconciliation between God and humanity through the resurrection—but also on what Jesus will do—establish the kingdom of God on earth. The Christian 'yes' to Jesus Christ is not a finished or complete 'yes'—it is open for the messianic future, an eschatologically anticipatory and provisional 'yes.' [26] Christians and Jews find themselves "partners in waiting" [27] a fact evidenced by the continuing Christian hope voiced in the ancient prayer: 'maranatha' "Come, Lord."

IV. SON OF MAN

The Son of Man is an end-times figure belonging to Jewish apocalyptic and may or may not have originated with the hopes for a Davidic Messiah. [28] The Son of Man is seen most clearly in the Book of Daniel and in the Apocryphal Book of I Enoch. [29] In later tradition, hopes for the Messiah and the Son of Man fused into a single expectation. [30]

They were certainly linked in Christian understandings of Jesus from the very beginning. The term "Son of Man" occurs 85 times in the Second Testament, 82 of which are in the Gospels. It is Jesus' most used self-identification and is linked in the Gospels with the concept of Messiah:

But he was silent and did not answer. Again the high priest asked him, "Are you the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed One?" Jesus said, "I am; and 'you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of the Power,' and 'coming with the clouds of heaven.'" (Mark 14:61-2)

Here the figure of the Son of Man of Jesus' self-confession is very much like the apocalyptic figure from Daniel and I Enoch.

For Jürgen Moltmann, the Christological figures of Messiah and Son of Man are united in the coming of the Word, along with the figures of priest and prophet. [31] This is a necessary linking of Christology with eschatology. Israel's particular hope for restoration is thus linked with the restoration of the entire cosmos at the coming of the Son of Man. The link in eschatology between hope for the messiah and the expectation of the Son of Man "corresponds to the link between the creation of mankind and Israel's particular history of the promise." [32] There is a necessary balance in linking the particular hope of Israel with the universal hope of the whole world. Focusing on the Son of Man apocalyptic would be a universalizing and "disastrous dissolution" of Israel, while transforming the universal expectation of the Son of Man into Israel's messianic expectation would put an "excessive and destructive strain" on Israel. [33] Both are required to satisfy the hope of Israel and the Nations and to bring about the "coming of God himself." [34] Thus in one figure is united the immanent and the universal.

Is Jesus this figure? For Christians it is a matter of faith since, were the Eschaton to have arrived, it would be a settled question. We Christians affirm that Jesus of Nazareth is Son of Man because we have faith that he is the Messiah, and the two individuals are inextricably linked. For Jews, who have not come to the same conclusion about Jesus' Messiahship, the determination as to whether Jesus is Son of Man is at best an open question that cannot be answered in the course of ordinary history.

V. SON OF GOD

"The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God." So begins the Gospel account according to St. Mark. [35] From the earliest years of the Christian movement, Jesus has been proclaimed not only as Christ/Messiah, but as the Son of God. The term "Son of God" occurs no less than 39 times in the Second Testament. As was the case with the term "Messiah" it is not a term without context.

In Israel's understanding, the one anointed with God's Spirit is also called 'Son of God.' [36] Similarly, Israel sees itself as God's son: "When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son." (Hosea 11:1) The term as used in the First Testament does not imply any metaphysical identity, but rather a special relationship and intimacy. [37] It is this understanding that continues in Jewish thought, such that Israeli Professor Pinchas Lapide can believe that Jesus was one of several "sons of God" as in the Hebrew tradition, but continues: "an 'only begotten Son of God' I do not know." [38]

However long its pedigree in Judaism, relational Christology is not at the heart of Christian doctrine. [39] When Christians confess that Jesus is the Son of God they are confessing something very much more. Jesus is the Incarnate Word of God, through whom "All things came into being... and without him not one thing came into being." (John 1:3) Christian belief confesses faith in a Triune God: Father, Son, and Spirit, a God who is known to us as love in community. It is the love among the Father Son and Spirit that speaks to the very nature of God.

As strange as these ideas are for most Jews (and a fair number of Christians!) they are not wholly alien to Jewish understandings of God. Jews, like Christians, believe in the God of Israel, who "created the universe through His word." [40] The Biblical narratives also tell us that at Creation, the ruach Elohim 'spirit/breath of God' was oscillating over the face of the waters. (Gen. 1:2) This is compatible with Moltmann's formulation that God creative activity represents a unity of breath ( ruach) and voice ( davar): "all are called to life through God's Spirit and Word." [41] This unity is in turn reflected in Hebrew Scripture: "By the word of the LORD the heavens were made, and all their host by the breath of his mouth." (Ps. 33:6). That God creates all life by God's Word and animates all life by God's Spirit is not a concept alien to Judaism, nor is the understanding that the Word and Spirit are of God in God's self. In the words of one Jewish theologian: "The Jewish concept of God's being author of the divine speech is analogous in Trinitarian theology to the Father's begetting his divine Son." [42]

Likewise, the concept of a God who suffers with his creation is well attested in Judaism. Nowhere is this more clearly seen than in Exodus 3:7: "Then the LORD said, "I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters. Indeed, I know their suffering." In Hebrew, the verb yada 'to know' implies more than intellectual cognition. It implies knowledge by experience. [43] God does not coldly and rationally understand human suffering—God experiences it and suffers with afflicted humanity. This knowledge works both ways. We can only know God by encountering and experiencing God, [44] but at the same time, the 'experience of God' does not only point toward our experience, but also God's experience of us. [45]

This is tied directly to the affirmation that God is love. On account of God's Divine Presence, God renounces his impassability and becomes able to suffer because he is willing to love. [46] There is little a Jew could find to argue with in this theology.

No, rather the biggest problem with the Christian affirmation of the Trinity is not that God is Father, Son, and Spirit, nor is it that God suffers with God's people. The biggest problem is that the Son of God, the Eternal Word of God, should become incarnate in the human person of Jesus of Nazareth.

VI. INCARNATION

Michael Wyschogrod, a noted Jewish scholar, has observed that the doctrine of the Incarnation is "undoubtedly the most difficult in the dialogue between Judaism and Christianity." [47] Indeed, Jews who are willing to grant that God is Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer will draw the line at the notion that God could become "enfleshed" in a particular human being. But is Incarnation so wholly opposite from the God of the Hebrew Bible?

Taken to its logical extreme, the very opposite of an incarnate God—an entirely spiritual, non-corporeal God, a God without spatial location-is also inimical to the God of Biblical faith. As Wyschogrod notes,

Once we understand that this is the kind of God who is the extreme opposite of the incarnated God, we must draw the conclusion that this extreme opposite of the incarnated God is also not the God of the Hebrew Bible. The God of the Hebrew Bible does have spatial location. He walks in the Garden of Eden. He has a dwelling place in the world. The whole history of the tabernacle and of the temple in Jerusalem is a history of a concept of a home fore God in the world, a dwelling place for God. [48]

How else can we make sense of the understanding preserved in a statement like "In this house, and in Jerusalem, which I have chosen out of all the tribes of Israel, I will put my name forever" (2 Kings. 21:7)? Indeed, the understanding of the Shekhinah is that the Divine Presence is God himself, present at a particular place and at a particular time. [49] Further, the God of Biblical faith walks "in the garden in the cool of the day" (Gen. 3:8), appears to Abraham and eats with him (Gen. 18:1), wrestles with Jacob (Gen. 32:24, 30), and appears to Moses (Ex. 24:9-11). [50] The idea of God taking human form is not alien to Jewish faith, although it is by no means as central to such faith as it is in the Christian context. [51]

God had, as part of Israel's election, chosen to dwell in Israel. In a very real sense, God was already incarnate in the people Israel. As a Jew, Jesus would be part of the very people in whom God had decided to dwell. [52] The Church has traditionally concentrated "all of the incarnation of God into the people of Israel in one Jew, Jesus of Nazareth." [53] The problem from the Jewish standpoint has been that the church has accurately stated that the church has "known that its physical bond with God is through a Jew and that the killing of that Jew constituted a central event in the relation between God and humanity." [54] What is not true, Wyschogrod points out, is the "severing of this Jew from his people." [55] That the world might come to experience the God of Israel through the Jew Jesus of Nazareth is not troublesome; the idea of a Jesus outside of his Jewish context is.

Is it realistic to expect Jews to come to an understanding of incarnation, even in this limited fashion? Perhaps, perhaps not. Perhaps the best that can be hoped for is for Jews to embrace the possibility of the truth of Christian claims-for the sake of the gentile nations. This is done out of a recognition that if God is the author of the Christian faith as well as the Jewish, the question must be asked: "Would God act in such a way as to bring the nations to know God by means of fraudulent claims?" [56] A re-evaluation of the truth of Christian claims need not alter the faith and practice of Judaism, but can allow the Jewish community to see in Christianity God's purposes and perhaps even God's miraculous action.

VII. COMMON GROUND

Moltmann notes that "at the centre of all Jewish-Christian dialogue is the inexorable messianic question: 'Are you he who is to come, or shall we look for another?' The messianic hope leads us to Jesus, but it also hinders Jews from seeing Jesus as the expected messiah who has already come." [57] In this Moltmann identifies the tension between the Christian 'yes' and the Jewish 'no.' He gives great deference to Buber's assertion that Jews are incapable of believing in Jesus as the Messiah because the brokenness of the world testifies as to its unredeemed character. Moltmann beautifully resolves this tension by stating that "Anyone who confesses Jesus as 'the Christ of God' is recognizing the Christ-in-his-becoming, the Christ in the way, the Christ in the movement of God's eschatological history; and that person enters upon this way of Christ in the discipleship of Jesus." [58]

Jesus is, in the tension between the Jewish 'no' and Christian 'yes', a saving figure for each for the sake of the other. As Israel's Messiah, Jesus becomes the savior of the gentiles. In Jesus, the nations experience all of Israel's salvation history. In an indirect way, in Jesus, Israel encounters the savior of the nations, the one who brings the peoples of the earth to the knowledge of the God of Israel. [59] With this understanding, Israel, while still maintaining its Jewish 'no' can begin to look at Christianity as the praeparatio messianica of the nations and recognize in it its own hope for the messiah now brought to the nations. [60] This does require that Christianity renew and reexamine its theology of Israel that Israel will be able to have this view of Christianity. [61]

I would like to examine an additional possibility. For centuries, the Servant Songs of the Book of Isaiah have informed Christian understandings of Jesus Christ. [62] In these prophetic passages we find a description of the Servant of God, who suffers redemptively for the people:

Surely he has borne our infirmities and carried our diseases;
yet we accounted him stricken, struck down by God, and afflicted.
But he was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his bruises we are healed.
All we like sheep have gone astray; we have all turned to our own way,
and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all. (Isaiah 53:4-6)

These passages have come to be so identified with Jesus that even outside the Christian community, these verses suggest the carpenter of Nazareth. [63] Indeed, it is difficult for most people to read these verses and not hear strains of Händel's Messiah playing in the background.

But Biblical scholarship and liberal Christians have long acknowledged that the subject of Isaiah's prophecy is not an individual, rather Israel. [64] Here is the ancient debate in miniature: is God's chosen Israel or Jesus (and through him, the Church)? This question, however, is a false dichotomy. It is like asking, "Is God's presence in Jerusalem or in the Temple?" The answer is: yes, both!

As Michael Wyschogrod notes, Christianity is "the gathering of peoples around the people of Israel." [65] Through the person of the Jew Jesus, the nations come to know Israel and Israel's God. St. Paul would agree. When Paul states that the mission to the nations is "until the full number of the Gentiles has come in" (Rom. 11.25) we might very well ask, "Come in where?" The only logical answer is into the covenant that God has established with Israel. Thus, Israel is the locus of the blessing.

This takes us back to the Servant Songs. As Moltmann notes, the identity of the 'Servant of God' is left open, perhaps deliberately in the Isaiah text, requiring us to ask the question continually. [66] I would like to propose that both Israel and Jesus are the Suffering Servant, that Jesus is, in addition to other Christological titles, the personification of Israel to the world. Jewish thinkers have long recognized the redemptive pattern of Israel's suffering in the life of Jesus. Marc Chagall's painting, "The White Crucifixion" superimposes the icon of the crucified Christ, loins wrapped in a blue and white tallith , or prayer shawl, over a background of images of pogroms, burning synagogues and fleeing Jews, emphasizing the parallels between the experiences of Jesus and of his people Israel. [67]

In Jesus, then, the nations experience Israel, and in so doing come to know the faith of Israel and the love of the Father toward his Son. Through Christ, the nations are brought into the faith of Israel, into covenant relationship with Israel's God.

VIII. CONCLUSION

It is possible for Christians and Jews to be in dialogue without betraying the fundamental tenets of their respective faiths. For Jews the confession that God is One is not simply custom or tradition, it is essential for the very self-identity of the people Israel. It is that which distinguished them from among the nations, and which has served as a great gift to the human family. Likewise, whatever the historical processes that yielded it, Christian understandings of the Triune God are not something that can be discarded for the sake of ecumenical and inter-religious dialogue. The confession of the Triune God comes directly out of Christian experience to respond to the need to comprehend the testimony of the history of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. The history of Jesus the Son cannot be grasped except as part of the history of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. [68] Further, for the Christian, the doctrine of the Trinity carries with it not simply doctrinal consequences, but ethical and social as well, as Christians contemplate the significance of God's passion and indwelling with humanity. [69]

It is possible for Christians and Jews to be in more than simply dialogue, but in actual partnership for the Kingdom of God. To do this, movement must be made on both sides, but not so far as to invalidate the fundamentals of each community's faith.

For its part, the Church must continue to affirm the ongoing covenantal relationship between God and Israel. The Church must put behind it the evils of supersessionism and all the attendant horrors it brings, and affirm with St. Paul that "the gifts and calling of God are irrevocable." The Church must come to understand that such an assertion does not undermine the Church's own claim to uniqueness—that God is capable of accomplishing his purposes in a variety of ways simultaneously. And most importantly, the Church must continue to affirm Jesus of Nazareth not only as Son of God and Son of Man, but as a pious and faithful Son of Israel. We can no longer afford to allow the Jewishness of Jesus to be our "dirty little secret." As Sherwin writes: "It is time for Christians to accept Jesus as a Jew." [70]

For its part, once the Church has made it clear that Judaism's continued existence is not a contradiction to the Christian message, the Synagogue can begin to acknowledge that Christianity may be a part of God's divine plan for the redemption of the world. [71] Indeed, it has long been noted in Jewish thinking that far from being an idolatrous religion, Christianity has helped to fulfill Malachi's prophetic words "For from the rising of the sun to its setting my name is great among the nations." (Mal. 1:11) [72] And this necessitates that as Christianity is coming to acceptance of Jesus' Jewishness, Judaism must follow by reclaiming Jesus as a "legitimate and honored member of the Jewish people—as a brother." [73]

As to the person of Jesus, Judaism might even acknowledge that God was present in this person in some special way, as he is in the people Israel. Just as God was present in all the land of Israel, but specially so in the Temple and in the Holy of Holies, so too, might God be 'incarnate' in Israel, and especially so in Jesus of Nazareth, through whom the nations are evangelized to the God of Israel. This is not to say that Jews and Christians will conceive of God's presence in Jesus in the same manner—Christian Trinitarianism and Jewish Monotheism will be in dialogue for a long time in the exploration of this issue.

But if both communities can see themselves as part of the broader community of faith, with Jesus as God's chosen bridge between Jew and Gentile, then perhaps both communities can be about the work of the Kingdom together, witnessing to all of creation. And in doing the work of the Kingdom, we—Jew and Christian—can await the fulfillment of that Kingdom and the coming of our long awaited Messiah, as "partners in waiting," together.

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