Jewish - Christian Dialogue

How could Orthodox theology reorientate its approach to Judaism and Jews? After the Shoah, the Catholic-Jewish dialogue has reached considerable intellectual depth, existential honesty, theological advancement and thematic width. The Orthodox Church, however, has hardly started its process of reconciliation. At the heart of the problem is the patristic argumentation on the forsakenness of the Jews, which in the Early Church was organically connected with the truth of Christianity. The patristic authors, however, were largely ignorant of the theological developments of Rabbinic Judaism and thus based their reasoning on mistaken presuppositions. In our times, this is especially clear with the patristic argument that it is perpetually impossible for the Jews to return to rule their Holy Land and Jerusalem.

A strange quotation from Clement of Alexandria's now lost Hypotyposeis, preserved in the Areopagite material within the writings of Maximus Confessor/John of Scythopolis, claims that Luke the Evangelist wrote the Jewish-Christian dialogue Jason and Papiscus. This information seems so fantastic that several scholars have attempted to explain away the attribution through the composition of various hypotheses. The most popular of these was published by Johannes Ernest Grabe in his Spicilegium SS Patrum in 1698. Despite being cited by scholars from the eighteenth to the twenty-first century, Grabe's hypothesis has never been the subject of a detailed investigation. Two conclusions result from an investigation of his hypothesis: Grabe's claims of textual corruption are unfounded; and it seems clear that Clement actually did claim Lukan authorship for Jason and Papiscus.

"Helmut Gollwitzer was one of Karl Barth’s most significant students for a number of reasons, and not least among these was his deep-seated commitment to establishing a positive relationship between Christianity and Judaism."

Follow this link to read / download the article as a .pdf: http://ejournals.bc.edu/ojs/index.php/scjr/article/view/8657/7783

A free online course. The main content is four lectures offered for the Catholic Biblical Association in 2002. They are now available on line, with the opportunity for further discussion, at Bat Kol International. Topics: The Psalms in Jewish prayer; ancient mythology in the Psalms; Midrash on Psalms; the Psalms in the tales of Rebbe Nachman of Breslov.

Recent developments in the Christian world (especially in the Catholic Church) regarding Christian-Jewish relations—initiated by the papal Nostra Aetate declaration of 1965—have led to the questioning of some classical Christian attitudes vis à vis “the Jews”. They culminated in “the most important development in Christian teaching on the Jewish people since the second and third centuries” (R. Kendall Soulen): the abandonment of supersessionism. On the Christian side, this step triggered, unsurprisingly, also considerable backlashes. These stem in the fear that the theological difficulties accompanying the new Christian nonsupersessionism could jeopardize the very raison d’être of Christianity. On the Jewish side, the unprecedented Christian overture has elicited increasing efforts to provide a positive theological answer. Most of these efforts, however, are based on a political model of “conflict resolution or diplomatic negotiations” (Levenson) rather than on sound theological reasoning and thus bear the stamp of theological light-mindedness. In this context, the pioneering efforts of two Jewish thinkers, Eliahu Benamozegh (1823-1900) and Franz Rosenzweig (1886-1929), in laying the ground for a Jewish theology of Christianity become relevant again. These two major Jewish attempts at a largely positive reevaluation of Christianity that preceded the present Christian overture might deliver, albeit in a rather rudimentary form, some non-apologetic and authentic tools necessary for a Jewish reassessment of the relationship between Judaism and Christianity. However, even according to Benamozegh and Rosenzweig, whose theological benevolence toward Christianity is unique, a theological harmony that would somehow make both sides happy seems a mission impossible. They could nevertheless help in establishing a modest model of a possible collaboration as well as a dialogue between these two religions, while delimiting honestly the theological limits of such an interreligious endeavor.