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The continuing validity of the Jewish covenant: a Christian perspective
John McDade

 

When Pope John Paul II met the Jewish Community at Manz in November 1980, he spoke about "God's people of the Old Covenant which has never been revoked". His words are a simple recognition by the Catholic Christian leader that God continues to bestow his love on the Jewish People. and that they are, through their faithfulness, in a way of salvation: "for the gifts and the call of God are irrevocable" (Rom 11:29).

The Pope's statement is made without the reservations which have often accompanied Christian interpretation of Jewish religious identity. And so, there is no suggestion that Judaism stands to Christianity as a "pre-history" which is superseded by Christian fullness. Neither is there a false opposition between the Sinai covenant and the covenant through the death of Jesus: for Christianity, the Sinai covenant is not replaced by the death of Christ, but is extended to the Gentiles. Nor is there any attempt to argue in Pauline categories of "competing claims" that the practice of the Torah cannot bestow righteousness on faithful Jews. The Holy Father's words are spoken not in the spirit of competition but in humble acknowledgement that there is a mutuality between Jews and Christians in their reception of God's love. Can Christian theology give due weight to such a mutuality without undermining the bases of the claims it has traditionally made? Can it recognize that Judaism continues to be a divinely enabled focus of God's revelation whose validity does not end with the coming of Jesus, and whose integrity cannot be absorbed into the Christian dispensation? Pope John Paul's words invite a positive answer.

A Problem for Christian Theology

But it is no easy task: Pheme Perkins writes that "though both exegetes and official church teachings have often acknowledged the necessity of a renewed, positive understanding of Judaism, the magnitude of the task has hardly been recognized".1 She draws attention to the conflict which can arise between, on the one hand, a Christian theology which has found its way back, beyond polemics, to a positive evaluation of Judaism as a divinely ordained way of salvation, and, on the other hand, the elements of Christian tradition which present Christ's death as the unique mediation of God's salvation. This latter tendency is inscribed within the New Testament:
The ecclesial consequences of the theory of cosmic atonement on the cross such as that in Colossians/Ephesians make it difficult to imagine a history of salvation that is not finished with Jesus' death and heavenly exaltation. For Colossians/Ephesians the reign of the exalted Christ is expressed through the Church. In such an ecclesiology there are no genuine initiatives for salvation left except for those which may be offered through the mediation of the Church. If Christians enter into dialogue with Judaism from that perspective, the presumption remains that the 'place" of Judaism is determined from the Christian side. Jews are not allowed to tell us about God's saving power of their messianic election in suffering. They are not allowed to tell us that we have been wicked tenants in the vineyard, more than willing to kill God's beloved children. 2

Perkins is right to draw attention to the perspective in which the saving victory of Christ issues in a church-centred account of salvation, because a strict form of this "soteriological/ ecclesial" axis simply does not require Christians to attend to the significance of continuing Jewish faith.3 The presumption within this perspective is that God's relationship to the creation is now illuminated by the Church's experience of God's salvation through Christ, and consequently a Jewish faith which denied the significance of Jesus is radically flawed as a trustworthy interpretation of God's love. If the Church is now the sign of redeemed life, the focus of humanity's entry into a grace-filled life with God, then there is no need to ask if any mediation other than the Christian dispensation possesses divine validity: the particularity of Israel's election has given way to the particularity of the Church's mission, and faithful Israel has been superseded.

Salvation beyond the Church

But this church-centred perspective has always been subject to constraints which are all too frequently and conveniently forgotten. The most notorious attempt on the part of Christians to restrict the scope of God's salvation to the Church has been the formula extra ecclesiam nulla salus, "outside the Church there is no salvation", embraced at certain times as Catholic teaching.4 The formula deliberately excludes the possibility of a genuine initiative for salvation outside the confines of the Christian (and perhaps even Roman!) Church. But it has been subject to an important control: while Christians may say positively that they know, in faith, that there is the offer of salvation within the Church, they are not in a position to say negatively that the Church community is the only location of God's saving action. God's mercy cannot be circumscribed by ecclesiastical diktats, and it is simply beyond the scope of our knowledge to say positively that a way of life, conducted with the integrity and responsibility of conscience, is not directed by God. A theology which loses sight of the mystery of God, and claims a control over what God may and may not do, has lost sight of the need to respect, and not prescribe, the pattern of God's action.

Ecclesial exclusivism with regard to salvation will always be modified by considering the wider sphere of grace which extends to the whole of humanity. This is a general principle within Christian theology which is applicable to all those outside the Christian community, but there are good reasons why Christians ought to make an even stronger statement in favour of Jewish faith and lite as a positive way of salvation with a unique position in God's dispensation. I want to suggest that it will be an enrichment of Christian theology, rather than a diminution of its claims, to recognize that Jewish faith is a distinct focus of God's action which, within our present history, cannot be integrated in any simple fashion with Christian identity (Rom. 11:28). The suggestion that "after Christ nothing remains for an unrepentantJudaism", is both a pernicious restriction on God's action, and an unwarranted judgment which ignores Paul's pained refusal to dismiss the "mystery" of Israel's faith from the Christian account of the dialectic of history.

But does not the claim that there is "a distinct focus and source of revelation" in Jewish experience conflict with what the Church has traditionally said about the saving significance and unique status of Jesus? For a Christian theology, such as that identified by Perkins, whose dominant categories are concerned with salvation through the death of Jesus and entry into the Christian community. there are indeed difficulties: such a narrow focus makes the salvation of the world depend upon faith in the saving efficacy of death, and does not leave any room for other mediations of grace and salvation. But the Christian belief that God's revelation of his love for creation is given a culminating focus in the person of Jesus does not exclude other mediations of God's love within history. Christian theology recognises that the God who "saves" is also the God who "creates": the God whose love is known in Jesus is active in all the dimensions of created existence (from Genesis to Apocalypse). Within this history, there are particular points at which the nature of this divine love becomes intensified and luminous. Christians, by accepting the sacred status of the Jewish Scriptures, acknowledge that the past, present and future history of Israel's relationship with God is to be regarded as such a moment.

The Jewish Scriptures and Christian Faith

One of the simplest, and yet most significant, decisions of the early Christian Church was to retain the Jewish Scriptures as writings which still spoke to the largely Gentile Church. This was an acknowledgement that the inscription of Jewish faith and experience in these writings were of inspired significance for communities separated from Jewish life. The Marcionite rejection of the significance of Jewish faith—a recurring tendency within Christian history—was condemned by the early Church which recognised in the Jewish Scriptures a source of revelation which is not co-extensive with Christian experience.

The anti-Marcionite decision marked a recognition that God's revelation is known in experiences which not only do not originate in the Christian community, but which are in addition a source of nourishment and instruction for the Christian Church. One of the most positive images of the Church's identity which gives due weight to this insight is in the Roman Church of Santa Sabina: there a 5th century mosaic portrays two mature women, one representing the ecciesia ex circumcision, and the other representing the ecclesia ex gentibus. (It stands in marked contrast with the medieval portrayal which juxtaposed "the Lady Church" and the "Blind Synagogue") As the Church of the nations increased, there was, and still is, a need to recognise that the experience of Jewish faith nourishes the Church, while, by contrast, one cannot posit a similar dependence of Jewish faith on Christian experience.

God's Saving Action in the "Period of Church and Synagogue"

Although the significance of God's saving action within the Christian dispensation should not be minimised, it exists in relationship to a distinct focus of God's action, centred on Jewish life and faith which flows into the Church: the relationship is asymmetrical, as the Pauline image of the engrafted olive tree suggests. That focus continues to be a source of divinely guided life, because God does not take back what he gives, and he has chosen this people for his continued purposes within "the period of Church and Synagogue".

It is necessary for Christian theology to recognize that God wills the continuance of Jewish faith for his purposes, even in what we have, with some arrogance, designated as "the Christian centuries". The "period of the Church" is also "the period of the Synagogue" in which Jewish faithfulness to God is maintained alongside the emergence of the Christian community and in many situations, in the face of Christian sin and unfaithfulness. Witness to God is given in this period, not by those who persecute Jews in a cycle of repeated violence, but by those whose faithfulness brings upon them the hatred of anti-Semites. Christians do not, and cannot have, a monopoly of right judgment and action and a monopoly of divine assistance in this shared "period of Church and Synagogue".

The Church is required to recognize and to acquire a humility appropriate to that recognition, that God's election of this people is not over and done with: the significance of Jewish experience cannot be consigned, fossil-like, to "Christian pre-history". The continued practice of reading the Jewish Scriptures in the Christian liturgy is an affirmation of their divinely ordained status as a source of faith for the Christian community. But more than that: the Jewish Scriptures also invite the Christian community to recognise that the tradition of Jewish faith and experience is not over and done with, but it continues to be a divinely enabled faith which is still under God's direction.

God's Blessing on Creation

Christian theology has always recognised, though it has had difficulties in giving it proper weight, that there is a divine blessing in God's dealings with the whole created order which is no less important than the blessings brought through Jesus. The Christian Apologists of the 2nd century, for example, made use of the Stoic notion of the "logos" to relate Greek philosophy to Christian truth and to relate the orders of creation and salvation. It is noteworthy that their optimistic estimate of pagan wisdom is accompanied by a negative estimate of Jewish faith: it was ideologically easier for them to recognise that Greek philosophy was inspired by God than to say that continuing Jewish faith was under God's action.

In the most recent version of the theme of God's presence to creation, Karl Rahner speaks of two inseparable modes of Gods self-communication: the "transcendental" presence of God as "holy mystery" to the whole world, and the "categorical" instance of divine love in the person of Jesus. 6 The former is an accompanying and inseparable mode of divine action ("the Spirit") which extends beyond the particularity of Jesus of Nazareth, and incorporates the whole created order within God's love. It is the shaping, conditioning and dynamic presence of God who draws the world to himself. For Christians, God's action through Jesus exists in relationship to a more "universal" presence: in this way, the tendency to concentrate solely on Jesus—a "christocentrism" related to what I have called a church-centred account of salvation—is balanced by another principle, that of the creative and sustaining presence of God's Spirit.

We might then say that within the context of the Spirit's action on the creation, and as a particular instance of what the Spirit does, the people of Israel have a unique status as an elected people in whose faith-experience is embodied "for all the nations to see", the character of divine love. Christians could then acknowledge that what is worked out in Jewish faith is a response, willed and enabled by God, to God's revelation. It would then be possible to attribute a continuing significance to Jewish faith, not as an incomplete articulation of divine revelation, but as a distinct focus through which God's love is known.

In an interview in 1974, Rahner considered the question of what is "the fundamental and basic conception" within Christian theology. His answer, significantly, is neither Incarnation nor soteriologyneither "Christocentrism" nor redemption through the death of Jesus—but "the divinization of the world through the Spirit of God", in which Incarnation and salvation arise as "inner moments". 7 This reply, which takes the doctrine of creation as the overarching framework of Christian theology, makes it possible for Christians to account for instances of divine revelation which occur outside the particularity of the Church's life. It seems to me that the Sinai covenant, the giving of the Torah and the practice of Jewish faith ought to be readily acknowledged by Christians as just such an "inner moment" within the world's history which intensifies the action of God's Spirit. In my estimate, there is nothing in the teaching of Jesus which runs counter to such a judgment, but it is significant that the New Testament, particularly in the polarity represented by, on the one hand, the Gospel of Matthew, and on the other hand, by the Epistle to the Hebrews, struggles to find an adequate account of the relationship between Jesus and the faith in which his mission is conducted.

Continuity and Discontinuity between Christian and Jewish Faith

The diversity of approaches to Jesus and Torah within the New Testament is a paradigm of the difficulty which all subsequent Christian generations have experienced in holding together that dialectic of continuity and discontinuity between Christian and Jewish faith. The competing range of categories often used to describe Jesus' relationship to Jewish faith—"fulfillment", "transformation", "re-visioning", a "decisive mutation", "intensification", "radical discontinuity", "prophetic restoration"—show that there is no exhaustive account of the relationship between these aspects. I prefer John Barton's dialectical description of Jesus' relationship to his community's faith: he speaks of "a reaffirmation that transforms what it reaffirms, a transformation that respects what is transformed". 8 This is as much a delineation of the difficulty as a resolution of the relationship between these central moments of God's action.

God always engages human beings in their freedom and in the constraints of their historical context, and brings from them a complex variety of responses; the resulting interpretations of the divine mystery offer a range of beliefs and practices which resist comfortable harmonisation. But what Rahner calls the "inner moments" of God's action are separated and conflictual in their refraction within human history. Jewish and nascent Christian communities gave foundational interpretation to how the relationship between those "moments" are to be understood. In this process, the communities defined their religious principles in relation both to their inherited tradition, and to the new situation in which they found themselves. With rapid historical consolidation, normative oppositions were set up which froze both communities in mutual distrust. The self-definition of Jewish faith, over against what it sees as Christian "revisionism", and the corresponding Christian consignment of Jewish significance to the preparatory stage of Christian "pre-history", are the characteristic positions which emerge from this period.

It is beyond the scope of this article to analyse this in detail, but it should be pointed out that the interpretations offered by both sides are never pure, never simply a matter of "theological truth": they are always subject to social and cultural constraints, and exhibits what Wayne Meeks calls a "harmonic reinforcement" between social experience and theological assertion. 9 Paul Ricoeur pointed out that it was impossible to identify, in a pure way. what was to be counted as the "evil" of the world, so much has it been permeated by human malice. In the same way, it is impossible to separate the antagonism of Jewish/Christian theological positions from the bitterness of the conflicts in which they were made. The tragedy is that both communities, in their divergence and mutual self-definition, have been more ready to see themselves as competing claimants to the shared history they inherit, rather than as joint participants in God's revelation, each with a continuing role to play.

But the contlictual character of our shared history is not without God's presence. The action of the Spirit, in evoking from humanity a divinely enabled response to God's love, accompanies the world in the complexity and dialectic of its history. "We know that the whole creation has been groaning in travail together until now ... The Spirit intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words" (Rom 8:22-26). Within the particular history of God's action through Israel, nowhere is the dialectical character of God's action more mysterious than in what Paul calls the "mystery" of the salvation of "all Israel", in spite of what he calls the "hardening" which has come upon part of Israel (Rom 11:25). It is open to Christians to consider that within this history of dialectical and pained process, the Spirit of God is at work in both communities, Jewish and Christian, until we all enter the fullness of God's mercy (Rom 11:32).

Respecting God's Action

A recognition that Jewish faith is a way of salvation need not be seen as a diminishment of the significance of Jesus: rather, it offers to Christian theology a way of acknowledging the constitutive features of God's action which need to be respected. To use the language of Christian Trinitarian theology: the work of the Spirit is no less important than the work of the Son—it is simply more easily forgotten. The temptation, within organised religious approaches is to attempt to curtail or reduce the scope of God's action.

At its best—the qualification is important—the instinct of Catholic Christianity is to rejoice in the complexity and rich fullness which it sees in God's revelation, and to resist attempts to delimit or contract the breadth of God's salvation. It will always attempt, in that spirit, to hold together the constitutive aspects of God's revelation, and to resist its reduction to a simpler pattern, because in their unity the aspects are all willed by God for his purposes.

This divinely willed "unity"—the varied dispensation of divine love, with distinct focuses of illumination—is quite distinct from the unity created by human systems of thought which attempt lo detect and "contain" the mystery within comprehensive schemes. At its best, Christian theology respects the varied dimensions of the mystery 'ft contemplates but cannot regulate. It tries to revere the mystery of God's love with a sense that al/ its historical aspects, however divergent they may appear at particular times, must not be set in mutually exclusive opposition.

Consequently, Christian theology needs to give due weight to the conviction that while God's action is unmistakable within the Church's life, there is another focus of that action in Jewish identity which in the present time retains its own character and autonomy. The order of God's dispensation, in this "period of Church and Synagogue', requires Christians to acknow/edge a distinct focus and source of revelation in Jewish faith which remains an indispensable part of God's action, but whose final relationship to Christian life is hidden from us (Rom 11:12).

Catholic Christianity, when it exhibits a proper reverence for God's action, always chooses what Aloys Grillmeier calls the lectio difficilior,1° the more difficult construal of divine truth, because only in that way can the mystery of God's revelation be preserved, and simplistic systems be avoided. John Henry New-man's comment is particularly appropriate here:
"Whatever is great refuses to be reduced to human rule, and to be made consistent in its many aspects with itself Who shall reconcile with each other the various attributes of the Infinite God? and. as He is, such in their several degrees are His works." 11

From a Christian point of view, I would regard the double trajectory of God's action within Jewish faith-experience and within the Church's faith-experience as "the works of God", the central constitutive aspects of the living God's revelation. Paul's list of Jewish privileges—"to them belong the sonship, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship and the promises" (Rom 9:4)—remains valid, and should be acknowledged by Christians without any reluctance.

The recognition that continuing Jewish faith, deriving from the validity of the Sinai covenant and the giving of the Torah, is a focus of God's action is slowly entering the consciousness of Christians. But the implications of Franz Mussner's words need to sink deeper into Christian thinking: "Israel has a significant and comprehensive salvific function in the world even post Christum".12 Pope John Paul's words in Mainz, (which were quoted in the Vatican "Notes" of 1985), are an invitation to Christians to welcome Jewish faith as a constitutive feature of God's action in our world, different and yet familiar, distinct yet of significance for Christians and for the rest of humanity, and to regard it as a central focus of divine guidance and salvation.

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John McDade is a Jesuit priest who teaches theology at Heythrop College, London University. He is the Editor of The Month.
1 Pheme Perkins "Scripture in Theology", in Faithful Witness: Foundations of Theology for Today's Church, ed. Leo J. O'Donovan & T. Howland Sanks (Geoffrey Chapman, 1989), p.129.
2 Op.cit., pp.129-30
3 A thorough and chastening survey of Christian antagonism to Jewish self-definition is given by M.Simon, Verus Israel: A Study of the Relations between Christians and Jews in the Roman Empire (AD 135-425) (Oxford University Press, 1986)
4 The American Jesuit who most recently propagated this doctrine in the 1950s, Father Feeney, was excommunicated for making such an absolute claim. In its strict form, it is not orthodox Catholic teaching.
5 An instructive and dramatic insight into the mystery of salvation is given in Dante's Purgatorio: the first soul
Dante meets in the Ante-Purgatory is Manfredi, the King of Sicily who died excommunicate and whose body was disinterred after its death and cast out of Church lands by order of the Pope. In spite of these censures, he is not condemned by God, because, as he tells Dante:
My sins were horrible,
but the infinite goodness has arms so wide that it receives whoever turns to it
Words like this speak to us with a grace-filled intuition the divine mercy exceeds human constraints: the Church may make its censures, may declare that a person is no longer within the ecclesial Ark, but God's mercy is not bound by these prescriptions. "I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy (Ex.33:19). Dante offers a telling counter-example in the Inferno when the first soul he identifies as consigned to Hell is the hermit-Pope Celestine V, revered and canonised as a saint
6 The theme pervades the whole of Rahner's work. His approach is summarized in Karl Rahner: an Introduction to his Theology, by Karl-Heinz Weger (Burns & Oates, 1980), pp.128 ft
7 P. Imhof & H. Biallowons, (eds.), Karl Rahner in Dialogue: Conversations and Interviews 1965-1982 (Crossroad, 1986), p.126.
8 John Barton, "Preparation in History for Christ" in The Religion of the Incarnation: Anglican Essays in Commemoration of Lux A4undi, ed. R. Morgan (Bristol Classical Press, 1989), p.70
9 W. Meeks, "The Man from Heaven in Johannine Sectarianism' Journal of Biblical Literature 91 (1972), pp.44-72
10 A.Grillmeier, Christ in Christian Tradition (Mowbrays, 1975, 2nd Edition) pp.555-6. Grillmeier's remark applies to the formulations of Patristic Christology: I have used it as a feature which should characterise Christian theology.
11 J.H. Newman, Preface to the Third Edition of The Via Media (London, 1877), p.xciv
12 Franz Mussner, Tractate on the Jews: The Significance of Judaism for Christian Faith (London: SPCK, 1984). p.51.