JEWS and Christians need not argue about the identity of the Messiah. We merely have to await his coming in triumph, and then ask: “Sir, is this your first visit to Jerusalem?” So said the Jewish scholar David Flusser. Can we agree to differ?
Historically, Christians have thought not. We have insisted that Jesus is the Messiah — the Jewish Messiah. We have, more fatefully, claimed that the Church has thus superseded and replaced Israel.
To “supersede” is “to sit on top of”. The violence of this definition is appropriate. It makes sense to think of “supersessionist” or “replacement theology” as a family of ideas. First, it imputes ill will to Jews failing to see Jesus as Messiah. Their supposed “no” to Jesus is based on their hardness of heart and cold legalism at best, on diabolical possession at worst.
The “no” was soon associated with the supposed Jewish initiative in the killing of Jesus. Melito of Sardis (died c.180) was the first to accuse the Jews — all Jews everywhere — of “deicide”, and others developed this tradition with relish (such as Ambrose in the West and Chrysostom in the East).
This, in turn, relies on and encourages a reading of the Hebrew scriptures — the Old Testament — in a systematic way. All the threats, warnings, and curses rest on the Jewish people. All the promises, visions, and blessings pass to the Church.
The Church is the New Israel (an unbiblical phrase, Galatians 6.16 notwithstanding). The Jewish community, in its sinful disobedience, is destined to remain in exile. Augustine saw “the wandering Jew” to be preserved as a proof and a warning, but properly powerless.
Such theological supersessionism is likely to repel 21st-century Christians. We have to acknowledge, though, that the above were commonplaces to the Church Fathers. There has been what the Jewish historian Jules Isaac called a “teaching of contempt”. In the light of this history, Christians are called to the task of repentance, metanoia, change of heart.
For some, both Jews and Christians, this account does not go far enough. The Roman Catholic feminist Rosemary Ruether and the pioneer Anglican priest-scholar James Parkes are among many who argued that we must be honest that supersessionism is found in the New Testament, and that it means that, ultimately, there is no place for (non-Christian) Jews in the world. This leads directly to subjugation, pogrom, and riot, and thence to the annihilation-attempt of the Holocaust.
Others would counter this. For all that the Church has been complicit in discrimination against the “godless” Jews, it has required there to be Jews present, to mistreat in God’s name: hateful, yes, but not genocidal.
WHAT, then, is “non-supersessionist” Christian theology to look like? There is no evidence of a consensus emerging. For many, it must centre on the insistence that Judaism and Christianity are parallel faiths, equally valid in every way; the difference that Jesus makes is simply opening the covenant to Gentiles.
Yet, as Pope John Paul II noted, parallel lines never meet. Both our faiths, at least in their liturgies, look for a time that is the transfiguration of all suffering and the consummation of all hope. This assumes a time when we meet as one.
This hope need not be supersessionism subtly disguised. The Vatican II document Nostra Aetate (1965) and subsequent magisterial statements are clear that the Jews have — present tense — “the glory and the covenants” (citing Romans 9.4).
The Archbishop of Canterbury, in his speech “The finality of Christ in a pluralistic world” (2010), echoed this sense that the deepest hopes of all human beings must cohere. If Christianity is true, it is about eschatological fulfilment and reconciliation.
Here, though is a prickly nettle to grasp: can we speak, however diplomatically, of such fulfilment as “in Christ”? If so, we cannot dismiss the historical evidence that the world remains as unfulfilled as ever, even after the coming of Jesus and of the Church.
There is something improbable, or paradoxical, about the Christian claim. Part of that paradox might be that the hoped-for “fulfilment” of Judaism is as certain, but also as unimaginable, as “life from the dead” (cf. Romans 11.15). Christians who name it fulfilment “in Christ” must also add that this “Christ” is not the possession of the Church.
On the other hand, those who find the whole notion arrogant should note that Judaism, at least since Maimonides (12th century), has had traditions that see Christianity (and other faiths) as mere preparations for the full awareness of the God of Israel, as Israel already knows him.
THE Roman Catholic Church sees Judaism as unique, sui generis, different in kind from the set of “non-Christian religions”. Both the Anglican Communion (in its 1988 Lambeth Conference paper Jews, Christians and Muslims: The way of dialogue) and the Church of England (in its 2001 discussion document, Sharing One Hope?) keep the question wide open.
To adopt the Roman Catholic distinction would be to own that the living religion of Judaism — the Judaism of the rabbis — is a place where authentic interpretation of the Hebrew scriptures takes place. In that sense, it must be a place where God continues to inspire and direct “his own”.
Then, since those who know Judaism best are the most insistent that it is radically different from Christianity — it is not “like church, but without the references to Jesus” — it follows that God speaks within Judaism in different tones from those God shares with the Church.
So there will be a mutual fascination here, based on more than taste or liking — namely, on God’s ways. We need not systematise these ways, nor seek some common essence. We can be partners in an endless exploration of this unique close relationship. We must not — and need not — ever seek to sit on, or above, or in place of, our archetypal other.
The Revd Patrick Morrow is Anglican chaplain and interfaith adviser to Brunel University, west London.