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Chosenness in Christian Tradition
Gregory Baum

Before discussing the meaning of "chosenness" or "divine election" in Christian tradition, I should like to mention that, although from one point of view there is some similarity between Jewish and Christian thought on the matter, from another point of view there is considerable dissimilarity. Each religious community has its own history and is confronted by different sorts of questions. Certain issues pre-occupied the Church that were not important to the Synagogue. For this reason we shall turn to some areas of religious reflection that were not mentioned by Rabbi Plaut.

The idea of "chosenness" is central in Christianity. A good case could be made for the view that "divine election" sums up the entire Christian message. The Christian message presents itself as "good news'; it proclaims that God acts on behalf of man. It is not, in the first place, people who seek the invisible God, but it is God who has chosen people and comes close to them in Jesus Christ. Chosenncss refers to the covenant, and both in the Jewish and Christian tradition this implies divine initiative out of mercy.

Yet in the course of the Church's history different aspects of this election were spelled out. I wish to mention three of these. In the early period, in New Testament times and after, the young Christian community understood itself as the continuation of the people of Israel and applied the self-understanding of the chosen people to itself. This, as I shall show presently, had damaging consequences for the Jewish community. The Christian Church tended to define itself as the "new" or "true" people of God and hence thought to replace Israel in the providence of God.

In the second period, which lasted from the early centuries until modern times, the Church became more and more interested in personal history, in the passage of individuals toward salvation, and in this contextelection referred to God's gratuitous choice of his sons and daughters. There were sociological reasons for this shift, I suppose. At the beginning Christians constituted a small community, threatened in its existence, uncertain of its survival. In this situation God's call of the community and God's ongoing election were central in its self-understanding: they assured the young Church of its place in history. Yet later when Christianity was secure as the state religion of the Empire and at the same time assimilated the Roman pessimism in regard to the future, the Church concentrated more and more on the fate of individual Christians, on their salvation, their faith, their divine election. This emphasis lasted right into modern times.

There is, however, a more contemporary way of understanding divine election, one that emerged in certain Protestant writers in the nineteenth century, that influenced the church's public teaching, and that is being explored at this time by Catholic and Protestant theologians. We shall explain this new position farther on.

The Chosenness of the Church

Let me begin with the early doctrine of election. The early Christians regarded Jesus as the one who had been chosen, as the one sent to deliver the people. In him were fulfilled the ancient promises; in him redemption became available to the whole human race. Jesus, as the chosen one, suffered, died and rose—and was accompanied in this drama by the community of his followers. This community believed that the ancient promises were fulfilled in their midst. 'They had the consciousness that a new age had broken in, that in some hidden way the messianic days had begun with them, and they eagerly expected the return of Jesus to make an end of history altogether. This yearning for the end of days characterized the early Church.

In this context the Church had to clarify its relationship to the ancient people of Israel, the Jewish people. This is a painful story to review, for the various positions adopted in the New Testament were all harmful to the Jewish people. When the Church was a small group of believers, its teaching had no social consequences, but when the Church became powerful and culturally successful, its views regarding the Jewish people had devastating social and political effects. Let me add that since the great horror, since the holocaust, the Christian churches have begun to reread and reinterpret their ancient teaching. I shall refer to this in due time.

There are several theories in the New Testament relating the Church to the ancient people. In Luke's Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles the Christian community understands itself as the Church of Jews and Gentiles. The Church is here made up of people derived from two distinct groups, Jews and Gentiles, and the reconciliation between these two distinct sections of humanity symbolized for the believers the redemption of the whole humanity. The tension in the Church between Hebrew and Hellenistic Christians, one might add, gave the emphasis on reconciliation great pastoral importance for the Church. The Church saw itself as the new people, the third race beyond Jews and Gentiles. By implication this position negated the future of the Jewish people and the pagan Empire. Only the Church had a destiny.

The second view, found especially in Matthew's Gospel, was even more harmful to the Jewish people. Here we find the view that the old Israel had been unfaithful to the covenant, that it had sinned, that it had broken the covenant many times and that this infidelity reached its peak in the rejection of Jesus. The divine covenant has been dissolved: the people of Israel are no longer God's people. In his mercy God has made a new covenant in Jesus which extends to all who believe in his name. The Church is the new people of God; it takes the place of the ancient Israel; it alone is the inheritor of Israel's promises and blessings.

This teaching recalls the hostile position adopted by some of the Jewish sects in the first century. In particular, we know that the Qumran community looked upon the official Judaism of Jerusalem as corrupt, rejected the mainstream piety of the people, demanded conversion to a new life, and regarded itself as the authentic heir of the covenant, the true Israel in fact.

Matthew's teaching was widely received in the Christian Church. It is reflected in other parts of the New Testament—in the Fourth Gospel, for instance—it influenced the Fathers of the Church, the great Christian writers of antiquity, and it entered the Christian self-understanding in the Middle Ages. We find an artisticexpression of this doctrine in medieval art which represents "synagogue" and "church" as two women, the synagogue" with broken staff and blindfolded, and the "church" with triumphant staff and queenly eyes. This doctrine of substitution has, alas, penetrated deeply into Christian consciousness.

There is a third position in the New Testament. In the Epistle to the Romans, Paul proposes a very different theory of history. Paul introduces here the old prophetic idea of "the remnant'. In all trials and tribulation, a remnant shall always remain faithful in Israel. God's promises are fulfilled first of all in this remnant of Israel, and through this remnant shall be extended to the entire world. The faithful remnant of Israel, he argued, was Jesus himself, and, with him, the community of believers. It is to this covenanted fellowship that the Gentiles are now added through conversion and baptism. In the Church, the true Israel, the promises made to the ancient people are extended to the Gentiles. Paul uses a number of graphic images to describe his theology of history. He calls Israel "the olive tree" planted by God. Salvation is present only in this tree. As the Gospel is being preached, some branches, the Jews, are cut out of this olive tree because of unbelief, and in their stead Gentiles are "grafted" upon the tree. But even the branches that have been cut off, Paul argues, shall not be lost. After the number of the Gentiles has been completed, these branches shall again be inserted in the olive tree. Paul teaches that the Jewish people remain God's chosen race, that despite their rejection of Jesus they cannot lose themselves in the world, that God's election is unshakable, and that at a time in the future, before the end of the world, the Jews shall be reconciled with the Church of Jesus. When Paul insists that Israel remains God's chosen people, however, this does not mean for him that God continues to be present in the Jewish community and remain for them a source of grace. According to Paul, God only protects Israel from losing itself until, on the day of his choosing, Israel recognizes Jesus as the holy one of Israel.

These are three ways in which the early Christians tried to explain the Church's relationship to the Jewish people. Possibly there were others. All of them, as you can easily see, are very damaging to the Jewish people. When the Church achieved cultural and political power this spiritual negation of Israel translated itself into concrete social terms: the Jews became the sacred outcasts in the Christian world.

After the holocaust, the Christian churches began to reflect on this teaching in a critical way. While Nazi anti-Semitism had no direct Christian roots, it was yet able to create continuity with the ancient Church's anti-Jewish polemics of the Christian tradition, make use of the Church's anti-Jewish symbols, and for this reason count upon the support of vast numbers, even when they did not share Nazi principles. After World War II, the churches were willing to confront their own past. They recognized the anti-Jewish trends in their preaching and tried to purify their teaching of these blemishes. But how can religions change ancient teaching? Conservative members of religion are opposed to this. Yet many churches believe that through the great horror God has spoken to them, God has condemned them, God has demanded repentance and the reformulation of doctrine in accordance with the divine love manifest in Jesus. But how can this be done?

One doctrine emerged in the Church's life that was to be very helpful here. Relying on a few biblical texts and the teaching of some of the ancient Fathers, Christian thinkers defended the view that God's saving grace is operative everywhere in the world. Wherever people are, God's presence is available to them. None is left without the means of salvation. Humanity is indeed sinful, but God's call and God's power are present to people in all religions and in secularism. This doctrine helped the churches to gain a more positive approach to the world religions, and in particular to Judaism.

At Vatican Council II (1962-65), the Catholic Church clearly affirmed that divine grace was indeed operative in the whole of humanity. The Council also affirmed that the Jews are God's chosen people, the most beloved people according to divine election, that God is present in the worship and the life of the Synagogue, and that the Church is united with the Jewish people by bonds of friendship and love. The Council asks Catholics to enter into dialogue and cooperation with Jews and to purify Christian teaching in preaching, catechetics and theology, from the anti-Jewish trends, from the many ways of putting down Jewish religion and from the destructive myths in which the Jews have been denigrated. In this paper I cannot discuss to what extent the demands of the Council have been carried out. It is even possible to question whether the Christian religion is really capable of divesting itself of its anti-Judaism. Can the Church transcend Matthew's "theory of substitution'? The topic would demand an extended discussion. At this point I simply emphasize that on the highest level the Catholic Church has corrected the teachings found in the ancient books: it has acknowledged that according to the Scriptures the Jews remain God's chosen people. The Council left it to theologians to examine how the chosenness of Israel can he reconciled with the chosenness of the Christian Church.

The Chosenness of Souls

Let me now turn to the second phase of the history, through which the doctrine of divine election has moved.

When the Christian Church became safely established in the Empire and no longer had to worry about its survival and when it was influenced at the same time by the cultural pessimism of this Empire and despaired of the meaning of history, it turned its attention to personal biography. What counted now was the personal way toward salvation. In this context the doctrine of divine election was applied to God's gracious governance of individual life. It is possible for man to enter into faith, grace and ultimate salvation because God has chosen him. From all eternity God has chosen those whom he loves. Man enters upon the way of holiness not on his own strength, but on God's strength. Prior to any choosing on the part of the human person, God's choice takes hold of the person, calls her and empowers her for new life. It is good news that our future is not in our own hands: it is in God's hands, and he has manifested his good will toward us in Jesus Christ.

I do not know whether there are similar trends in Jewish theology that relate election to personal life. It wuold not surprise me, since Jewish religious thought is so rich and varied. Still, the issue of personal salvation has not preoccupied religious Jews. For Christians, the question of salvation became focal, and with it the ancient doctrine of divine election moved into the center of attention. Certain biblical texts became very important to the believing community. Jesus had said to the apostles: "You have not chosen me, but I have chosen you." This was understood as the summary of the divine-human relationship. It all begins with the divine initiative. God chooses and acts first, and all human action pleasing to God is response to divine grace. In the fifth and sixth centuries a group of Christians, later referred to as Pelagian, wanted to put more stress on will-power and personal initiative. They taught that while God's help was indeed necessary, the way toward salvation depended on one's own personal effort. It was up to us. This doctrine was condemned by the Church as heretical. God's election was primary: whatever individuals do to forward their salvation and to grow in holiness was released through an antecedent divine call. This emphasis led to the famous doctrine of predestination. From all eternity, God had predestined his saints. This doctrine preoccupied the Church's imagination for many centuries, from the time of St. Augustine on, right into the age of the Reformation.

The theologians who defended the doctrine of predestination were sometimes driven, by the logic of the argument, to affirm that God predestines some people to eternal salvation and others to eternal damnation. This extreme formulation has always been rejected by the Catholic Church. But the doctrine of positive predestination to faith, grace and glory was adopted as the Church's official position.

Modern readers of Christian teaching often think that this special doctrine of divine election is excessively gloomy and that it fosters an unhealthy passivity in the Christian community. Both of these suspicions are unjustified. This at least is my view of the matter. For one, the doctrine of election was meant to be good news; it was meant to free people from preoccupation with their future; it was to convince them that the future lay in God's hands and that God had taken over their lives in a manner that could not be shattered by any of their mistakes. God had covenanted himself to his people. Secondly, the doctrine of divine election did not dispense people from acting and exerting themselves in the shaping of their lives. On the contrary, God's antecedent grace was thought of as empowering and directing people to action. God was thought of as releasing power and energy within the human personality so that an abundance of grace meant a wealth of personal engagement, adventure and daring. The sociologist Max Weber has shown that the strong doctrines of predestination have not made people passive but active. This is verified especially in the Calvinist community where this doctrine became central. According to Weber this doctrine is connected with the enterprising spirit and the work ethic of the Puritans.

Who was elected according to Christian teaching? After the Reformation, it became common in all churches, Protestant and Catholic, to stress that election took place in the community of Christians. But in the Middle Ages, the Catholic Church held a wider view. The mystery of God was believed to be operative in the lives of all people. All people were addressed by God. All people had salvation offered to them. One classical text in which this position is expressed and defended is the Summa of St. Thomas Aquinas, in which the great Christian thinker examines the way children enter into consciousness. Thomas based himself on an antiquated view of psychology derived from Aristotle. He believed that at a certain point, possibly when the child is seven years old, he enters the age of reason. But how does this entry into consciousness take place? Thomas held with the Church Fathers that a person is either in sin or in a state of grace; here is no middle ground. For this reason he supposed that when the child reaches the age of reason, God utters his hidden call. If the child receives it, he enters consciousness in a state of grace; if rejects the call, then he enters consciousness in a state of sin. What is interesting for us in this teaching is the universality of divine grace. The Church is not the only place where salvation is offered; it actually takes place wherever people are.

The Chosenness of Humankind

Let me recall the two views of divine election we have examined. In the early Church, divine election referred to the Church's place in history, while in the long period from antiquity right into modern times, chosenness referred above all to personal biography. Christians were no longer that much concerned with their historical destiny; they concentrated more on their personal salvation. In more recent times, however, we find among Christian theologians the consistent attempt to reintroduce history into the theology of election. Christians want to move beyond the preoccupation with individuals to rediscover the Gospel as a message having to do with man's historical destiny. This is how the New Testament understood the Christian message. Some nineteenth-century Protestant thinkers, following Hegel, and a good number of twentieth-century Catholic thinkers have tried to regain the historical perspective; divine election has to do not just with an endless list of individuals but with a people, a community, which is addressed by God in its history and appointed to salvation. Who is this people chosen by God? It is the Church; it is also the Jewish people as we mentioned earlier; ultimately it is the entire human family. According to a recent doctrinal development in the Catholic Church, human history is the locus of divine grace, and humanity as a whole is destined for salvation and glory.

To clarify this doctrinal development let MC briefly compare the teaching of Pope Pius XII with that of Vatican II. For Pius XII the Church was above all "the mystical body of Christ". This unusual expression referred to all the bonds of grace, sacrament and governing power that Christ was thought to have given to his Church and through which he remains active in the Church and binds his followers together into a living community. Following this image, Pius XII was able to reflect on the Church in isolation from the rest of humanity. The Church appeared here as the circle of salvation in a dark and sinful world. At Vatican Council If, the concept of God's people moved to the center of eeclesiology. The Church is God's people. But in the documents of the Council we are repeatedly told that the Church is in solidarity with the entire human race and that in fact humanity itself is God's people. God has chosen mankind. History is the locus of divine grace. But what is the relationship between Church and humanity when both Church and humanity deserve the title "people of God"? In the conciliar documents it appears that the Church as God's people is called and appointed to serve God's reign in the whole of the world, The Church is called upon to be in solidarity with others, to bear the burden with them, to cooperate with others in the building of a more human world and to become the servant of others as Jesus Christ was servant. The Church is here asked to give witness to the good news that humankind has been elected and called, that God's grace is operative in the struggle of people for justice and fraternal community, and that in seeking a more human social order people are in fact following the lead of God and acting out of the divine purpose.

This doctrinal development has several practical consequences. It conceives the Church's mission in a new way. Let Inc add at this point that the major Christian churches have altogether abandoned any intention to convert Jews to Christianity. They have abandoned this above all out of a feeling of guilt. After the awful history of Jewish humiliation and persecution it is Christians who need conversion. Some churches have also laid a theological foundation for this refusal to missionize the Jews. The Catholic Church, as mentioned earlier, has declared that the Jews are indeed God's most beloved people, that the divine election remains with them, that they are therefore a biblical religion before God that deserves love and respect, and that the Church's task in regard to the Jews is to enter into dialogue with them and to work together with them in the fulfillment of God's plan for the world. Among the evangelical churches and sects, we still find Christians who want to convert Jews, but this is not so in the major churches.

The new concept of mission which relates the Church ultimately to the whole of humanity introduces Christians to a new ethos. Again, this can be documented from Vatican Council II and more recent ecclesiastical teaching. Vatican 11 criticized a Christian outlook that is overly individualistic. What counts today is solidarity with the community, especially the poor and exploited; what counts now is a new, critical awareness which makes us see the structures of domination in the world, including our own institutional participation in them; what counts is a new sense of social responsibility which makes us recognize that we are in fact collectively responsible for who we shall be in the future; what counts is a new sensitivity to the divine mystery present in people, in their interaction and their struggles to enter more deeply into their humanity. In the churches we are only beginning to explore this new religious experience and, connected with it, this new understanding of God's election. In this perspective it becomes clear that when Christians speak of "incarnation" they do not only affirm that God has wedded himself to Jesus in an unparalleled union but that in some way God has wedded himself to the whole of the human race.

Copyright: The Ecumenist