Paul’s Anti-Semitism
But it is not as though the word of God has failed. For they are not all Israel who are descended from Israel; Romans 9:6 NASB
Descended – Isn’t it nice that the NASB glossed the Greek text so that it fits our politics. The Greek is literally, “not all who are out of Israel this Israel” where the pronoun houtos (“this”) has about thirty different possible meanings. Of course, the Church made a lot of this awkward expression, claiming that the true Israel is now the Christian Church. The impact of this manifest destiny theology has been a horrendous blight on human history. Gregory Baum wrote something nearly twenty years ago that articulates the audacity of this exegesis.
In recent Christian theology we find principally two ways of relativizing the Christian claims. The first way removes Christianity’s monopoly on divine grace by regarding Jesus as the visible embodiment of a divine principle operative, in a hidden way, in the entire history of men. This approach is a version of the ancient Logos Christology: Jesus is identified with the divine Logos that is creating the cosmos and redeeming the history of men. Thanks to the omnipresence of the Logos, divine grace is available to people wherever they are; even the world religions may become mediators of salvation, even though this grace is fully and completely embodied only in the man Jesus. This theology of universal grace, developed by Protestant thinkers in the nineteenth century and by Catholic thinkers such as Maurice Blondel and Karl Rahner in the twentieth, was able to influence the teaching of Vatican II and create the doctrinal basis for the Catholic Church’s new openness to the world religions and to secular culture in general. According to this new approach, grace is as universal in human life as sin, and more abounding. . . . according to this theology, other religions inasmuch as they are authentic are implicit Christianities destined to be superseded by explicit Christianity. They are provisional and partial, . . . We are left with a theology which, in a more refined form, negates Jewish existence as an abiding historical reality. Judaism and the other world religions are stages on the way to the Church. If Jews were faithful to their divine call, they would cease to exist as Jews.[1]
When people suggest that the Jews are “incomplete Christians,” they are essentially espousing a deeply seated anti-Semitism based on the idea that Christianity is the destiny of the world. This, of course, treats Yeshua as “Jesus,” the universal man. He is himself a disguised Christian, pretending to be Jewish in order to show the world that Judaism has been supplanted. This theology allowed Christians to murder Jews by the thousands because they refused to acknowledge the “truth.” It continues today, especially in the claim that Paul founded the Christian Church. Isn’t that obvious? Just read this line in Romans!
It is critically necessary to stop this nonsense! Perhaps you will need to re-examine your own version of manifest destiny and see if there is any hint that Judaism is just a stepping stone to the real Messiah. Perhaps you need to repent of your own implicit anti-Semitism when you go to Church on Sunday and imagine that you are serving the God of Israel. Perhaps you need to apologize to those who keep Torah, who desire to follow the God who involved Himself primarily with Israel and whose Messiah was Jewish to the core.
Or you could just go on pretending that history doesn’t matter and Paul was a Christian.
Topical Index: anti-Semitism, Rosemary Ruether, Gregory Baum, manifest destiny, Romans 9:6
[1] Gregory Baum, in the introduction to Rosemary Ruether, Faith and Fratrcide: The Theological Roots of Anti-Semitism (Wipf and Stock, 1997), pp. 16-17.
The ides of March is an appropriate day to be slaying this (and other) dragons.
Wasn’t Heraclites the original proponent of the universal Logos? I mean, in the way that the church has been using it? Greek to the core.
I have been talking with a friend a bit and whenever I bring up Jewishness in any fashion he immediately brings up and equates it to Talmud and reminds me that the Talmud has Jesus in hell boiling in human excrement! Frustrating that he has latched on to this so firmly that we cannot talk about Jesus’s Jewishness let alone Pauls.
In fact, he really does not seem to have any desire to talk about anything Old Testament with me. It is all about New Testament. There seems to be a obstinate refusal among NT Christians to even consider the fact that Jesus and the Apostles (I think all but am not positive) were not Christians but Jews.
Frustrating this browbeating to just be a NT Christian. Kinda goes back to yesterdays post for me.
Hopefully over the next few weeks as we look at this subject, you will be able to point your friend to the fact that the New Testament is no only not Christian, but that the real founders of Christianity were virulent anti-Semites, brutal, callous and bigots. Christian academics recognize this. It just isn’t preached because it undermines the idea of Christianity. But the scholarship is solid and cannot be denied. Get him to look at any of the early fathers and see if these men, who established the Church, are anything like the religious path he wants to follow.
Thank you for telling us what this verse does not mean but now I eagerly await to hear what it does mean.
If not “not all who are out of Israel (is) this Israel”, then what or who was Israel? What is Paul trying to tell us here? Was Israel, at this time, a multicultural state that was no longer unified under Torah? Did Israel have its own problems abiding in foreign customs and the traditions of men that Yeshua condemned? Perhaps this is not only a Christian problem.
While it is certainly historically true that Israel in the first century was not a monolithic faith (i.e., there were many sects and probably just as many who embraced Hellenism and abandoned religious Israel), Paul probably is not referring to the political situation. He is more likely hinting at the difference between ethnic Israel and those who embraced the God of Israel as a way of life. The Pharisees would have argued the same. We can see this in the Talmud. Remember if you will traveling to the synagogue where we saw a Greek Helios symbol in the floor with signs of the Zodiac around the center? Hellenism was making inroads even into religious practice. But I think Paul is speaking of those who accepted the Messiah and those who did not. They are still ethnic Israel but they are not the Israel Paul desires. The Messiah has come. Let all God’s children rejoice.
Shalom, Skip. Has “The Messiah” REALLY “come”? “Messiah was Jewish to the core”, or is he?
Did this “Messiah”‘s genealogy come from man, as in/with the seed of man?
IF “THE Messiah” has come, Tanakh says there will be world peace, with knowledge of GOD Almighty filling the earth as surely as the waters that cover the seas? Has that happened YET?
Did the Tanakh ever mention that “The Messiah” will return to accomplish that, to finish the job, having to re-do that which was NOT completed?
IF “The Messiah” was god being “the word was god”, why didn’t he finish the job as written in THE WORD (Tanakh), if he and THE WORD is one and the same?
Thanks Skip.
You might want to remind your friend that the Rabbie’s created the seat of Moses that they chose to use to displace YAVAH from his thrown, But He is still sitting there very comfortably laughing at there conceit just as he laughes at the conceit of Christians who have ignored his Torah and created a Greek ladder to heaven.
YHVH should be spelled correctly and I should elaborate that it was the church “fathers ” who take a gospel that Niemiahah suggested could be understood by children and convoluted it into something that few can grasp. I have been saying for years that Jesus would have the same concondemnation for many church leaders today that he did for the Rabbis of His day “you teach the traditions of men as if they where the oracles of God ” truth is they are just the ideas of men. Best to stick with the basics found in the Word itself. Better yet to walk hand in hand with the author Himself. ..
Ugh sorry for the lack of spell check presence of mind. I seem to get it to late being so enthusaitc about my content to get it right perhaps that’s the issue with the church fathers ando the rabbis. .
Mark Parry, Did the Rabbis create the seat of Moses? The seat of Moses only appeared in the “NT”, therefore would be created by the writers, whoever they be, of the “NT”.
The seat, in fact points to the places (gates) where judges sat to teach folks who came to them for counsel, to set them on the right Torah path.
True, to laughs “at the conceit of Christians who have ignored his Torah and created a Greek ladder to heaven.”
Shalom!
My honest opinion is that your friend is probably on the right track; Messiah wasn’t jewish so much as he was Hebraic, ‘jewish’ was in it’s embryonic form at the time Messiah walked this earth and (in my opinion) he spoke virulently against it.
Hebraic, however, he supported. He might have been a Torah follower, now referred to as ‘Karaite’, and i understand that this thought is just as virulently opposed today by ‘jewish’ adherents.
It is sad that he refuses to acknowledge the OT, w/out it the NT is pretty much useless in it’s self, it has no guide wire for interpretation and therefore can be read to mean anything present day individuals dictate.
No offense, but WHAT? Yeshua not Jewish? He spoke virulently against Judaism? Judaism was in its embryonic form in the 2nd temple Era? Yeshua “might have been” a Torah follower? Who are You? And what did you do to bcp?
Messiah was Hebraic, “jewish” as we know it today, is a religion of rabbinical creeds, just as catholicism is about the pope, LDS is about the prophet joseph smith and any other religion that puts man made edicts in front of the Scripture.
“JEW” or “JEWISH” isn’t ever mentioned in Scriptures, “Israelites”, “Hebrews”, those are the descriptives words found in TORAH.
Strictly speaking.
and Michael, this isn’t the first time i’ve made a statement like this.
And, again, this is my opinion, and you are welcome to yours.
Wow! Really? Strictly speaking, the word anti-semite is not to be found in the Torah either, but…. Since you graciously granted to me my opinion I will henceforth keep it to myself regarding your religious philosophy, but I am now curious, does bcp stand for Baptist Creed Proponent?
re: bcp
NICE!
And i’m curious if you have read Skip’s post “the impossible truth”? Seriously, seeing as how you know me consisting of less then 2 dozen posts on here, you want to try to withhold judgement of me?
That would be nice, too.
Hello All,
This is a very interesting reflection and causes me to share two telling experiences that have had positive impact on my faith journey and opened appreciation for our Jewish faith heritage:
– Some years ago I read the book referenced as, “Our Father Abraham” by Marvin Wilson. The take-away for me was the concept of being grafted in to the wild olive tree, being thankful to the Jewish people for our faith heritage, and the appreciation for Romans chapter 11 where the Apostle urges non-Jews not to get smug in their own standing before YHVH.
– Appreciation for folks like Jeff and Denise Benner of the Ancient Hebrew Research Center who offer a monthly EZine and wordlist defining Hebrew to English words. Emunah as being supported, and created as being filled up were especially poignant for me.
– Regretfully, coming to learn there are those who feel Romans 9, 10, 11 are misplaced basing it on the notion that the end of Romans 8 and the beginning of Romans 12 fit better if those mentioned chapters are not considered. Wow, still stunned!
My wife’s pastor (whom I occasionally email Skip’s commentaries too, refers to us both as obstreperous), and I sign my emails, your obstreperous friend,
David Russell
Just like others we too can sometimes feel like we have an axe to grind to fix something that is out of alignment. I have found that using comparisons such as not all Christians are truly Christians and not all Jews her truly Jews for instance acts Romans Ephesians and Galatians speak of only one type of Jew and that’s the wrong kind if there is such a thing just because 1 type of Jew is causing trouble does not mean that all Jews are causing trouble. I came across the term god-fearer in the meaning was a gentile believing in Yahweh this term helped me understand that not all Christians we’re believers. So it’s this comparison that people find very interesting hope this was helpful to someone Lord bless you and keep you and make his face shine upon you and give you peace peace is the ultimate goal we can not give away or help someone find that peace that only God can give if we don’t have it especially when we car sharing.
At least you haven’t been ex-communicated or worse.
Okie dokie, We are sounding a trumpet like the angry prophets of old who where jelous for the truth of YHVH. I recalled a message by Art Katz agin on “The Spirit of truth” when reading this . He states “partial truth is not the truth it is a lie “…
NO NAME TAGS
Paul and I, and I assume most all reading this blog, have had the same experience.
Paul wrote about it in Gal 1:16: “God was pleased to reveal His Son in me.”
That personal revelation is THE determination, is it not, of who has been “set apart”,
“appointed”, or “called”?
No ethnicity or cultural lines involved. Whomever. Ask Abraham.
We are known by our love for one another, Yeshua says.
No name tags, please.
I apologize for not adding on earlier Hebrew could be an appropriate distinction as long as its meaning is one who is going through
Brett, you mean one who has crossed over to the other side-Hebrew?
Shalom.
Christ in us the path to salvation revealed only to those to be saved at that point in time… You spoke my thoughts here Rich…
Thank you Skip Moen for this message… especially the last paragraph. It was validating for me to say the least. As we are learning to follow Torah, we have had so many loved ones criticize and ostracize us(it really is sad). One went so far as to say we were demonic now. (How we can be fully following “the whole Bible” can make us demonic is beyond us???)
Once our eyes had been opened to truth, there’s no going back. We wouldn’t want. We love learning to trust and to pattern our steps after His Word. We just wish that our loved ones wouldn’t be so hateful.
Thank you for speaking truth that validates where we are on our journey. SHALOM!