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want to speak to you this evening about Jewish-"hristian
relations.
It is a subject rhich seems to me to be of the
gn atest
It is much more important, for example, than
possible igportance.
Jewish-Buddhist relations, for the siLwle reason that we live, and
that our fore—fathers have lived for many centuries, in a Shristian
environment.
We are therefore bound to have relations, as a matter
of fact, with a good many Christians; and it is obviously desirable,
for quite general human and social reasons, that these relations
should be as harmonious as possible.
There are indeed a number
of organisations, such as the Council of Shristians and Jews
(whose Education Officer will be visiting us next week), which
exist principally to promote good neighbourly relations between
Jews and Christians.
But it is not only a matter of being good ne$ghbours in
Into the relations between Jews and Shristians
the ordinary sense.
In the past it has entered with dis-
religion is bound to enter.
astrous consequences.
He cannot avdid these consequences in the
future simply by ignoring our religious differences.
As religion
has marred Jewish—Christian relations in the past, so it must make
In the long run Jews and Christians Gag hope
them in the future.
to live together as good neighbours only because of, not in spite
of, their religious convictions.
The question which
I
want
m
pose this evening is therefore fundamentally a religious one:
What should be our religious attitude towards our Christian
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fellow—citizens, and what should be their attitude to us?
Until quite recently that attitude was, on both sides,
Christianity grew out of Judaism; but it cla.med
one of hostility.
to be the new religion which superseded the old.
Everything which
was good and true and beautiful in the Judaism of antiquity passed
over; without residue, into Christianity, which enlarged, fulfilléd
Thereafter Judaism could continue only as a fossil
and perfected it.
(a view to
which even Arnold Toynbeehas subscribed in our time) and
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'these who coa§£n&eé to aégere to it were blind and obstinate and the
spiritual descendants of those who had rejected and crucified the
Christian saviour,
guilt.
inheriting both their perverseness and their
They must be either punished as deicides or converted to
the true faith.
This religious intolerance combined with ordirary
social intolerance, rooted in fear, suspicion and sadism, t6 produce
those indescribably brutal and merciless persecutions which were
inflicted upon £he Jews in Christian lands, with little respité,
from the fourth century until the modern age.
The Jews responded, as humanly speaking they were bound
with the hostility of the persecuted towards the persecutor.
to do,
Chr$$t
ianity was looked upon as a distorted and diluted Judaism not far
removed from Paganism.
The Gospels became forbidden literature
and their hero maligned and scorned.
The very mention of his
name NEE became an act of blasphemy.
And the word ggxig, originally
referring to Pagans, was applied to Chrisyian; with similarly
unfavourable emotiumal undertones.
-3To-day all that has changed or is changing.
And it is
interesiing to trace the stages through which the change has
passed.
The chief factor,
I
believe, has been the emergence of
the scientific spirit which, beg;nning as a secular movement in
the Renaissance, could not but penetrate, ultimately, into
the sphere of religion.
One consequence was the study of
Comparative Religion which revealed to Christians the existence
and the character of other religions than Thristianity, and to
J;3:¥;m the existence and character of other religions than
Judaism.
And knowledge, objectively pursued, was bound to breed
respect.
That, of course, took
a
long time.
At first there was
too much prejudice for genuine apgreciation, and the other religions
were merely objects of academic curiosity, like the quaint customs
of prinitive and backward tribes.
But the more these other religion
were studied, the more they appeared to possess a vitality and a
value and a validity of their own.
Finally there arose a number
of scholars, both on the Christian and Jewish sides, who conglered
their inherited prejudices to such an extent, and who studied the
history and literature of the other feligion with such thoroughness,
that they developed for it a genumne appreziation and reg)ect.
On the Christian side the outstanding example is Travers
Herford, and his remarks about Judaism are charactertstic of the
new attitfide.
Judaism, he wrote, "has kept its vitality alongside
of Christianity as a continual reminder that no one religion, and
not that particular religion, exhausted all the possibilities of
revelation, summed up the whole of the divine purpose toward
mankind." (The Pharisees, 255)
"Each, therefore, (Judaism and
Christianity) has an independent right of existence; ana while
the adherents of each may, as thqy naturally Would, find more
satisfaction for their own spiritual needs in their own type
of religion, neither is entitled to deny the validity of thg
other." (Ditto, 234)
Similarly, Dr James Parkes has written:
"The traditional Chrisyian interpretétion...implies that...
Judais..had lost divine authority,
its adherents were under
a curse...all truth had passed from it to the religion of
Christianity, and in Christianity all the promises made to it
were fulfilled and all its spiritual content retained.
The
history of the last two thousand years disproves every one of
these statements...lf the hand of God is visible in the story
of the Church, it is equally viSible in the story of the
Synagogué." (Judaism and Christianity, 12)
And an even more
daring statement was made by the late Archbishop William Temple
who said that the separation of Judaism and Christianity was a
schism which, like all schismé, left truth divided.
On the Jewish side the outstanding r gresentative of the
new trend is Claude Montefiore, the founder of our Liberal Jewish
Movement.
With great courage he once wrote: “I seem always to come
back to an old thesis of mine: namely that we are richer for
possessing both the ethical téaching of the Rabbis and the lofty
enthasaasm and paradoxes of the Sermon on the Mount."(A Rfi)binic
- b _
And again: "Judaism...¢ust ahswer the questions,
Anthology, xliv)
and answer them better and more imgartially than they have yet been
faced and anSWCred: What is the right Jewish attitude towards the
New Testament?
What are We to think about the Gospels and the
Gospels' hero?
I
cannot believe that tfie best and final answers
will be merely negative.
They will nof be framed upon the familiar
lines that what is new in the Gospels is not true, and what is true
is not new." (Synoptic Gospels, 1, cxxxvii)
All this has bean the resuit of the scientific sgirit, and
The resultm as well
its agplication in the sphere of religion.
as the cause, is wholly to be apglauded.
What, after all, is the
scientific sgirit but the pursuit of truth without blinkers,
unfettered by prejudice and presupgosition?
truth is itself a religious mbligations.
And the pursuit of
Indeed the beneficial
results which it produces, mutual understanding and respect, are
ma
only a vindication of its basically religious nature.
But side by side with the scientific Spirit, another factor
not, of coyrse, unrelated - has been at Work, namely liberalism,
and the human tolerance and goodwill which it engenders.
has tended to cut acfiross religious differences.
intolerant statements in the New Testament.
This
TheIe are some
fHe that believeth
on him is not condemned, but he that believeth not is condemned
already,,, He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life;
and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the
wrath of God abideth on him." (John 3:18, 36)
But under the
-
influence of modern liberalism, these harsh sentiments were
evuloulzul
.
conveniently £Q;ee$%en.
Ordinary human decency and affection,
itself A product of religion, got the better of theological
dogmatism.
Whereas the scientific spirit led to mutual understanding
and respect between Jews and Christians on the basis of their
differences, the spirit of liberalism led to co-operation on
the basis of their common ground.
Can we go any furhher than yhat?
Surely we can.
If the
schism between Judaism and Qhristianity left truth divided, if
it is no longer necessary for either to apgroach the other with
the prejudice that what is new in it i; not t"ue and what is tnAe
is not new, then surely it should be possible for JeWS and christ-
ians to enter into a KIRK religious dialogue with one another from
which they may expect not only mutual understanding, but mutual
enrichment.
That indeed is the bold vision underlying the Society
of Jews and Christians which was founded by the late Dr Mattuk
over :0 years ago and which has as its President the Dean of st
Paul's.
It is also the argument of a most important lecture —
on "Co-operation between World Religions"
-
which Rabbi Edgar
delivered before the General Assembly of Unitarian and Free
Churches in 1952.
There must be, then, basically, mutual understanding and
respect, and KKXX;§;;NKKXK there must take place, on the one hand, mutua
co—operation on the basis of the common ground and, on the other,
mutual discussion on the basis of the differences.h All these
_ 7 _
things are happening in our time, and we ¢ust thank God that it is
50.
What are the implications for ourselves?
that there are three.
I
want to suggest
In the first place we must conquer any
lingering prejudice in our minds.
task for Christians than for us.
In some ways that is a harder
They have somehow
no reconcile.
the new tolerance with certain quite contrary statements, such as
those which
I
have quoted, in their sacred scriptures.
That is
one of the greatest tasks which Christian theologians ought
tackle.
m
Judaism, happily, has never been burdened with such
intolerant utterances.
"The righteous of all nations (and that
means of all religions) have a share in the world to come."
is the accepted Jewish teachmng.
That
We need to pvercome a different
kind of prejudice, which is the inevitable product of our long
history of persecmtmon in Christian society.
That too, hard though
it may be for some, is nothing less than a religious duty.
In the second place we must maintain our confidence in our
own faith.
At-a time when even Chrisfians,
a:
thahr surprise, are
discovering the beauty and the power of the Jewish Faith which it
has preserved throughout the ages in the teeth 6f every kind of
‘
denigration and persecution, at such a time it Would be foolish
indeed, as well as tragic, if we were to become timid and apologetic
about our own religion.
mutual respect demands self-respect.
we-have every reason flor self-respect.
And
K0 religion has preserved
so lofty a monotheism and so noble a moral code for so long a period
-
a -
and under such adverse circumstances.
Neither religious co-operm inn
nor discussion requires any dilution of our conviction or distinct-
ivgness.
on the contrary, they are dangerous without them.
The
morzegiited we are in our own re-igious tradition, and the more
wholeheartedly devoted to it, the better from ebery point ofview.
Yor need we think that Judaism posseSSes value only for her own
children.
As we concede the right of christians to propagate
their faith, so we just claim the same right for ourselves.
indeed more than
a
right.
It is our sacred
If is
duty to defend our faith
against misrepresentation and to offer it to any of our fellow-men
who may wish, with free conviction, to avail themselves of it.
We must rid ourselves of the inferiority complex which sees Judaism
as a duarf beside the giant of Christmanity.
In the realm of the
spirit, which knows nothing of numbers, Judaism is as gigantic
a
giant as any.
Anfi yet, in the third place, this confidence, which both
the content of Judaism and its history amply justify, must be
tempered with humility.
There is, as a former member of our Choir
remarked to me the other day, an "irreverence of knowing too much".
On the whole Judaism has been relatively free from that arrogance
which claims to possess the monopoly of all truth.
It does not
dgserve the stricture which Annld Toynbee made in a recent issue
of the Sunday Times against "these intolerant Judaic religions".
Judaism, if any religion, has upheld the wholesome dqctrine that
"heaven is no totalitarian state" (H. Loewe: Judaism & Shris:ianity,
ed. Oesterley, I, 185)
We may believe and believe fervently; but
in the sphere of religion there can be no complete or final kno“1edge.
God is great beyond our finding out, greater than any theology which
any man has ever devised or can ever devise.
are finite.
God is infinite; we
We cannot Kgg; God anfi live; that is to say, we cannot
know Him perfectly and remain humant
In history we can only see
His HKIXVXXX goodness, and in nature the outskirts of His ways.
"Teach thy tongue to say:
I do
not know", said one of the Rabbis.
Underneéth all our convictions, however passionate, there must be
a humble and
reverent acknowledgement that, after all, the filole
truth is not revealed to us.
We can only pray to God, as Moses did,
"Show me thy ways"; and we must be prepared to believe that d hers,
whose cohception of God differs from ours, may seek Him no less
sincerely.
This kind of humility is the only sure foundation or that
mutual resgect which must govern the relations of the adhenznts
of one feligion with those of another.
Nor must we, if We possess
that humility, rule out the possib.1ity that at some time, in a way
which we cannot yet envisage, the age-old breach between Judaism
and Christianity will be healeé. Indeed we must entertain some such
hope unless we are prepared to abandon hs mere illusion the ancient
prophecy of the end of days, when the Lord will be One and His name
One.