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Chris Haw
Ecclesiology: Semester research
Dr. Bernard Prusak
Spring 2008
Joining the House of Abraham
“Neither Jesus, nor Paul, nor the apostolic communities rejected normative Judaism…The Jews
did not reject Christianity.”1
“The first and fundamental division was that between Jews and Christians; we may well call this
the primeval division. It endures till today and is perhaps the deeply hidden cause of all other
divisions.”2
***
Jews and Christians have obviously, for the most part, gone their own separate ways. Much
historical scholarship should be and has been devoted to how, why, and when they deviated. We
are indebted to their increasing our understanding. My concern here is on a slightly different note:
to explore theologically why it did not have to be that way. It seems to me that Christianity is not
a new religion, and certainly not a new “election,” but a stream of Judaism. If that is true, to
become a Christian, as a Gentile, is in some way to attach one’s self to Israel, even to become part
of it. This conviction is shared by many scholars, but was especially brought to my attention
through the work of Gerhard Lohfink in his work, Does God Need the Church? From that body of
work, the following quote seems to sum up his perspective on the topic at hand:
Still whatever may have been the case with Pentecost the word ekklesia reveals that the
Church did not regard itself as a new people appearing in the stead of the old people of
God, having dissolved and replaced it, but as Israel, or more precisely as the beginning
and center of growth for the eschatological Israel.3
1
Yoder, John Howard. The Jewish Christian Schism Revisited (Wm.B. Eerdmans: Grand Rapids, 2003) 49, 51.
Lohfink, Gerhard. Does God Need the Church?: Toward a Theology of the People of God. (Collegeville, Minn:
Liturgical Press, 1999), 293.
3 Lohfink 220. Also, “The ekklesia came into existence in Israel, understanding itself as the eschatological Israel
gathered by God, and it is therefore inextricably and forever bound to the whole of Israel” (241).
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Paul had argued in the first century that Gentiles are branches grafted into the larger tree of Israel.
Lohfink makes the same connection as above:
The image of the olive tree and the branches grafted into it shows how much a matter of
course it is for Paul that the Church is Israel…of the Gentile Christians he says explicitly
that through their faith they have been implanted in the ancient root and live out of its
strength.4
That the olive tree is rather Christ does not inherently work against this thesis, especially if Jesus
is the Christ of Israel. The title “Christ-ian” (“Messiah-ian”) is itself a category of Israeli
governance.5 If Christ called the Twelve to renew Israel, and with this body, act as its
representative, then to be grafted into Christ is to be grated into the eschatological Israel. (This
will be revisited later.) But a myriad of concerns accompany this grafting motif: how do the
Gentiles relate to the Mosaic Law? Is there a difference between Jew and Gentile? Is there a
difference between being “in the house of Abraham” and being a “Jew”? Or, on a contemporary
practical note, how can the Church do its part in repairing relationship with Israel? And so on. To
discover what is at the heart of these concerns we will briefly consider three points: 1) Covenants,
2) The Law, and 3) Corporate identity. The point, however, is not to exhaust answers to those
questions—as if that were possible here—but through the exploration of those topics to support
the broader thesis here, that Christianity entails the Gentiles coming into the people of Abraham.
1) Covenants, Election, and Jesus
Lohfink 242. Also, Wychogrod: “But the gentiles in Christ have been grafted into the tree, even if it is a grafting of a
new branch into an old tree. They had become members of the household of Israel, something which prior to Christ
could be achieved only by full conversion to Judaism” (Wyschogrod, Michael, and R. Kendall Soulen. Abraham's
Promise: Judaism and Jewish-Christian Relations. Radical traditions. Grand Rapids, Mich: William B. Eerdmans, 2004.
191).
5 “Neither Sanders nor Borg deals at all with the question of Jesus’ Messiahship in its relation to Israel…And
Messiahship in this context is not (as, surprisingly, even Vermes seems to think) a ‘divine’ category. It is an ‘Israel’
category” (Wright, N.T. Jesus and the Victory of God [Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1996], 94).
See also Frymer-Kensy: “The messianic impulse is a fundamental expression of Judaism’s ongoing vitality.
In that sense, Christianity is not a mere deviation or misunderstanding; it is an organic outgrowth of Judaism itself”
(Frymer-Kensky, Tikva Simone. Christianity in Jewish Terms. Radical traditions. [Boulder, CO: Westview Press,
2000]. p 155).
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To begin with a most basic presupposition, we must clear the ground of Marcionism and all other
sorts of crude supercessionism: is the God of the New Testament the God of Abraham, Isaac, and
Jacob (i.e. the God of the “Old” Testament)? There is almost no quarrel to the orthodox Christian
version of this answer: it must be a resounding yes. For the Christian, here is no dichotomy
between the “Christian” God and the “Jewish” God. This also means that we do not need to
“balance” these two “gods”, but that it is the same one. Christians (whether Jewish or Gentile)
worship YHWH who led the Hebrews out of Egypt.6
Given that there is this same God between these two “religions”, what has made for the
differences? To get at this question we will consider the covenants, particularly the Noachide, the
Abrahamic, the Mosaic, and the Jeremiahic-Jesus covenant. Beginning with the Noachide
covenant, we are talking about the first and most basic body of covenantal “requirements”
delivered in the Torah, which are considered binding for all people of the world. Judaism
eventually developed a tradition in which Gentiles could join themselves to the People of God by
obeying these Noachide laws.
In the period prior to the Christ-event, the Jewish view of gentiles who wanted to be
associated with Israel was quite clear. Gentiles were perceived as being under the
Noachide Law and by obedience to this a gentile became a Ger Toshav and was ensured
of a portion in the world to come, but remained a gentile. Such obedient gentiles were in
some sense associates of Israel, but were clearly distinguished from the Ger Tzedek who
was regarded as no longer a gentile because he had accepted circumcision and Torah, and
was now perceived as being reborn into the household of Israel.”7
Yoder also writes of this Noachide function in later rabbinic thought. “The rabbis did not ask of
the Gentiles that they keep the Law, and less that they become full Jews. They developed a
Jesus’ hope for the kingdom fits into long-standing and deeply held hopes among the Jews, who continued to look for
God to redeem his people and constitute a new kingdom, one in which Israel would be secure and peaceful, and one in
which Gentiles would serve the God of Israel” (Sanders, E.P., The Historical Figure of Jesus. New York: Penguin
Press, 1993, 193).
7 Campbell, William S., Paul and the Creation of Christian Identity. (London: T&T Clark, 2006), 56.
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theory, based on God’s covenant with Noah, to explain how Gentiles can be accepted by God in
the Age to Come on their own terms, i.e. in terms of their own covenant and its own Law.”8 In
what sense and by what stipulations they “join,” I will talk more about in the “Law” section.
Next, the Abrahamic covenant is what constitutes the identity of the “People of God.” It
is there that God sets apart a people, sustained by a promise, told that they will be a blessing to all
people, and that Abraham will be the “father of many nations.” It is also here that the Land is
named as “given” (in whatever sense) to his progeny. This is also the “election” covenant, and it
grants the essence of Israel’s political identity. Nevertheless, from Paul’s commentaries on this
covenant, one is led to believe that this election is not solely based on genealogy, but that there
are non-elect among the elect (and later, there are elect among the non-elect).9 We will treat this
tension of genealogy vs. choice in the third section. Whatever the tension, the broad scope of
these first two covenants is that we have a particular body known as the “People of God” and a
potential tradition for outsiders to join that body.
The Mosaic or Sinaitic covenant is that which constitutes the peculiar practice of the
people of God. This is where Law enters Israel’s constitution. (We also have the covenants with
Jacob, David, and conceivably other marginal ones, but they will not be treated here.)
In the prophesy of Jeremiah, we have the foretelling of a new covenant to come. By the
text of Jer. 31:31 this is a covenant inextricably tied to the forgiveness of sins. Matthew,
knowledgeable of the Scriptures, is keen to connect this (Mt. 26:28); Jesus speaking of the “new
covenant” at the last supper, ties it to the “forgiveness of sins.” Jesus is acting in fulfillment of
Jeremiah’s prophesy, actualizing his vision. (To connect the new covenant with the forgiveness of
sins, we could also draw upon Ezekiel 16:59-63 and 37:21-28.10) What is new about this new
Jesus covenant? Initially, this covenant seems like an expectation for the day when Jews will no
8
Yoder 95.
Romans 11:7.
10 See Norbert Lohfink, The Covenant Never Revoked: Biblical Reflections on Christian-Jewish Dialogue. Trans by
John J. Scullion (New York: Paulist, 1991).
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longer need to study Torah, but will obey it charismatically. We can affirm that while looking
deeper; for Lohfink this covenant does not introduce as new grace, pacifism, atonement for sins,
or, even in some sense, the entrance of the Gentiles into the people of YHWH. For, as noted
above, there was already before Jesus a path for Gentile entrance.11 Rather, “That new covenant,
after all, is nothing other than the Sinai covenant that Israel had broken and that God is renewing
eschatologically, in a way that surpasses all that has gone before.”12 That “surpassing way,” for
Lohfink, oddly enough, is that the people of God finally enter the Land of Promise through Jesus.
That is what is new about the New Testament—at least for Lohfink.
Not only the Torah, but the reading of the Torah in the synagogue and the entire Hebrew
Bible thus end with a fundamental status of Israel: the people stand on the threshold of
the land of promise, but they are not yet in the Land itself. Everything remains open. The
threshold has not yet been crossed. And the New Testament takes up this very situation.
Here the threshold is crossed.13
How does Jesus make for a redefinition of “the Land,” let alone an entrance into it? John the
Baptist’s positioning in the gospels is regarded as a resettling of Israel back into its threshold
position, as outside the Promise Land in the wilderness.14 And after Jesus’ forty days (Israel’s 40
years) in the desert, he enters into the land, unlike the prior-aeon Israel, and calls the Twelve,
followed with God’s abundance of healing, forgiving, and exorcising of demons. And the
subsequent “kingdom is at hand” proclamation of Mark 1, in its exegetical connection with Isaiah
52, is meant to mean more than its meaning that something great, in general, is happening.
Rather, the Scriptures are more clear: “that God begins to reign means quite concretely that Israel
“In the Old Testament are election and salvation history, healing and forgiveness, mercy and compassion, festive
gatherings and worship of God, representation and atonement, faith and discipleship, love of neighbor and love of God,
critique of the temple and critique of merely external fulfillment of the Law. There is even the justification of sinners
by grace alone, and there is openness of the people of God to all nations” (Lohfink 124).
12 Lohfink 250. Yoder (77) also sees the Jesus covenant as tied to Jeremiah’s proclamation, arguing that “fulfill” means
confirming the life and hope set up by the Jeremiah generation.
13 Lohfink 125.
14 Hence John represents the old aeon, that “the least in the Kingdom is greater than John” (Lk 7:28)
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will now be gathered and brought home to its Land.”15 The eschaton and its gathering is tied to
the Land and Israel’s fulfillment. But the Mark 10:29-30 formula seen in light of the Acts 4:36-37
Barnabas-land-sale, reveal an interesting twist in the Land motif:
[Barnabas] sold that field to benefit the young Jesus community in Jerusalem, because it
was more important to him to build up that community than to possess the field. That
event makes clearly visible what is meant in Mark 10:29-30: the houses and fields that
Jesus’ disciples will leave are their share in the “Land.” Those are lost to them. But their
share in the land of promise is not lost, because their ‘Land’ is the new family that Jesus
gathers around himself. There they will find everything again a hundredfold; in it they
will truly enter the Land; in it the promise of the Land to Israel is fulfilled.16
Thus, the Abrahamic promise of “land” is here taken up, but with fullness in God’s people.
Moving beyond the new Land motif and into the previous note about Gentile conversion,
the New Testament is not new in the sense that Gentile conversion was already possible to
Judaism.17 (Obviously the volume of Gentile inclusion was new to the post-Jesus-event, but we
are looking for a new quality.) Rather the newness is the eschaton, a new era, which is being
inaugurated in Jesus. And through that, the New Covenant is new in the sense that it pertains to
the creation of a new category of persons for the Gentiles who join Israel. “Gentile Christfollowers were considered to have through Christ, a place in the renewed covenant as gentiles.”18
This opening up through Jesus of both Israel and, in a way, the “land,” is what makes for the
“mystery” of the New Testament. James D.G. Dunn states this quite plainly: “Clearly the mystery
for Paul was the divine purpose to bring in the Gentiles into the people of God (Rom 11:25), the
mystery ‘made known to all the nations, to bring them to the obedience of faith.’”19 Indeed Jesus
15
Lohfink 130.
Lohfink 132.
17 Consider also Jesus mentioning that the Pharisees and teachers of the law go over land and sea to make converts
(Matt 23:15).
18 Campbell 59.
19 Dunn, James D.G., Jesus Paul and the Law: Studies in Mark and Galatians (Louisville, KY: Westminster Press:
1990), 90.
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is the mystery, but we must mean Jesus in all of his people’s history and in all that he represents.
With that broader context of Jesus taken into account, the mystery entails also what Jesus means
to the “People of God” and for how the Gentiles join in. McKnight describes the “broader
context” that Jesus and his salvation represent:
In the biblical perspective salvation was always and everywhere understood as destined
precisely for Israel. ‘Salvation’ and ‘Israel’ were utterly inseparable. There was never a
Savior apart from a saved Israel, nor would there be a Messiah apart from a messianic
Israel…Israel, in short, understood salvation in ecclesial terms. Where the salvation of
the nations was promised or announced, this was conceived as an assimilation to saved
Israel.20
To unite with Christ, then, is to unite with Israel. Or, we might consider how N.T. Wright ties
Israel with the salvation that comes through Jesus. For Wright, Jesus’ welcoming of sinners and
proclaiming the forgiveness of debts is not an abstract proclamation that can be accepted by
anybody who wants to therapeutically heed the call of absolution of their sins. Jesus’
proclamations are to welcome and eschatologically restore all into a body of people.
[Jesus] welcomed people into his retinue as, by implication, part of the restored people of
YHWH”…[T]he story Jesus was telling, the story of the kingdom, was Israel’s story. He
intended those who responded to him to see themselves as the true, restored Israel…Jesus
was therefore summoning his hearers to be Israel in a new way, to take up their proper
roles in the unfolding drama; and he assured them that, if they followed him in this way,
they would be vindicated when the great day came.21
Lastly on this point, we can see how Lohfink ties Jesus into this broader, corporate covenantal
salvation.
20
McKnight, Scot. A New Vision for Israel: The Teachings of Jesus in National Context [Grand Rapids, MI: Wm.B.
Eerdmans, 1999], 83. See also, Ben F. Meyer, Aims of Jesus, 133-34.
21 Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God, 272, 316, 201.
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In him all Israel is gathered together. In fact, all Israel is the faithful servant and beloved
Son through whom God is now definitively acting in the world for the fulfillment of the
divine plan, but here again God must begin with an individual as once God began with
Abraham. Now everything depends on Jesus. He is the representative for all Israel.22
In light of this mystery (that through Jesus the Gentiles stream into Israel), the Second
Vatican Council’s commentary on Judaism could use clarification. The Council’s minimal
commentary on Judaism is centered in its Nostra aetate released on October 28, 1965 in which it
is treated as a “non-Christian religion.”23 But if Christianity indeed sprang as a stream of Judaism
and not a new religion, then Judaism is at least a non-non-Christian religion. The use of phrases
like, “God doesn’t break God’s promises,” should warrant caution. For this can imply that the
meaning for the old People of God is that for them God must, out of integrity, hold up an old
deal. Nostra’s language could be interpreted that the people of Israel are no longer of immediate
significance in this New Era of the Church. But is there not more to the whole Hebrew Scriptures
than that it simply produced Jesus for us? We are potentially left in that document with a sense
that the Church is the People of God like Israel—as if Judaism inspired Christianity or gave it a
form to follow as it carried on. This is the potential difficulty in seeing the tree as only Christ. If
the tree is only Christ, not along with his full symbolic representation of all of Israel, then the
Church would be constrained to view the non-believing Israel as utterly insignificant, only due
for God to settle any open accounts from the past.
But the document itself contains the elements of its own revision: for Christians are
indeed acknowledged as “the stock of Abraham.” Indeed the unbroken Abrahamic Promise is
what Gentile Christians are grafted into, not leaving behind. While Wychogrod is wary of
Lohfink 128. Said in another way, “We have to ask in concrete terms how a person comes to believe in Christ, and
the answer can only be that one becomes a member of the Church and so of the one people of God, the people that
began with the faith of Abraham, the Exodus from Egypt, and the gift of the Torah at Sinai” (Lohfink 76).
23 Wychogrod writes, “The Church’s claim of being the new people of God—a claim the Vatican II declaration under
discussion specifically reiterates—is, from the Jewish point of view, another example of the nations’ protest against the
election of the stock of Abraham” (Wyschogrod 184).
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Nostra’s ecclesiology, Gehard Lohfink finds Vatican II’s treatment good and acceptable, if only
we interpret it correctly:
When Vatican II speaks of the Church as the “People of God” it uses both the expression
“messianic people” (populus ille messianicus)_ and the words “new People of God”
(novus populus Dei). Cf. Lumen Gentium II.9; Nostra aetate 4. In analogy to the “new
covenant” we should understand this as referring to the eschatologically renewed Israel,
newly gathered by God in Jesus Christ and newly created through his death. This must be
emphasized in order to exclude the misunderstanding that there has been a substitution (a
new people in place of the old.24
If the scheme of the Abrahamic and Noachide covenants I laid out in this section is true, might a
better phrasing be that the Church is the people of God with Israel?25 This conviction might help
Christians move beyond ecumenism with Jews and work toward a more genuine connection.26
2) The Law
To talk about covenants and Gentile incorporation bleeds right into the issues about the
law. For if Gentiles are to somehow to be brought into this identity of Abraham’s people, should
they not also follow the peculiar practices of that people?
The popular refrain about Jesus and the Mosaic Law was that he did not void the Law,
but came to “fulfill” it. This often does not get us too far; for what does “fulfill” mean?
24
Lohfink 246.
See also, Fox: “Rather than viewing the history of Israel and the nations as preparation for the gospel, Soulen argues
that this history ‘surrounds the gospel as its constant horizon, context, and goal.’…Scott Bader-Saye, another Christian
theologian who has considered the meaning of election for contemporary Christianity, refers to the church as “God’s
chosen people with Israel” (Frymer-Kensy, 166; from chapter by David Fox-Sanders “Israel Judaism, and
Christianity”).
26 Granted, my reflections focus toward what the Church might think on this. What Jews ought to think is harder to say
for them. For some Jews, the barrier is not so much that Jesus might be considered a Messiah—that is not a priori a
problem. Of course, Jesus’ ontological coessentiality with YHWH is a problem. But another problem for Jews is how
violent Christians have been in their checkered past of Crusades and the Holocaust; for some that I have talked with,
the world is ironically full of “Christians” who do not believe in the nonviolent teachings of their “Christ.” This fact
does not inspire their belief and works directly against their belief more than does Christ-ontology. Indeed, “all the
‘high christological’ statements made about Jesus in the New Testament were made by radically monotheistic Jews and
were not, when made, seen to be in any sense polytheistic or idolatrous” (Yoder 153). I can see here the problem of
John 19:7; but this issue seems to not be as plainly “theological” as theo-political taken in the context of the larger
debate about the “king of the Jews,” insurrection, and kingdoms clashing.
25
10
Responses are equivocal: “fulfill” can mean slight-abrogation, redirection, finishing/completing,
or proper-enactment.
In the least, for the Jewish Christians, there was certainly no thought that Jesus had
“cancelled” the Law. If so, there would have been no debate among the early Jesus-gatherings
whether Gentiles should be circumcised. (The question then would have been whether Jews
should be circumcised.) Rather, the natural gravitational pull and temptation was toward the Law.
The problem was the nuance.27 James D.G. Dunn writes on this movement of the Gentiles into
Judaism and the subsequent questions raised.
The point is that earliest Christianity was not yet seen as something separate and distinct
from Judaism. It was a sect, like other sects within first-century Judaism. The first
Christians had some distinct and peculiar beliefs about Jesus; but their religion was the
religion of the Jews. So that when Gentiles began to embrace these particular beliefs
about Jesus the question raised was still only in terms of what requirements were
necessary for Gentiles to join themselves to the people who worshipped the one God and
to whom God had sent his Messiah, Jesus.28
As stated above, this tension was resolved in a way that was not fully unique to the Church.29
Apart from Christianity, Judaism had established a path for Gentile entrance—the Noachide rules,
but not the Abrahamic circumcision or Mosaic code. Those latter covenants of circumcision and
Law obedience had normally been necessary for full entrance. But Jesus somehow “creates” a
“The ‘Christians’ did not differ at the point of keeping the law, because as we can tell from the writings of Paul they
did keep the law, although with their own understanding of just why…They did not differ by being less concerned for
Jerusalem. The difference was a very thin line between degrees or tonalities in the attitude towards the incorporation of
the Gentiles into the faith of Abraham. Should that widening of the covenant be permitted, or even encouraged to
proceed so wholeheartedly and so rapidly as to shake the structures of the diaspora minority community?” (Yoder 59).
28 Dunn 131 (second emphasis added).
29 On the rabbinic resolution about the Law, Dunn writes: “Although it understood the biblical ger to refer to the
proselyte, rabbinic Judaism also recognized a different category of Gentile, the ger tosab, the resident alien. He too
lived within the borders of Israel, but unlike the proselyte he accepted only some of the commandments of the
Torah…But the halakah which gained greatest support and decided the matter was that a ger tosab was any gentile
who takes upon himself the seen Noachic laws—that is, he holds himself subject to the established courts of justice,
and refrains from blasphemy, idolatry, adultery, bloodshed, robbery, and eating flesh cut from living animals (b Aboda
Zara 64b; cf. b. Sanhedrin 56a)” (Dunn 143f).
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new category that allows Gentiles to fully enter into God’s people through “faith in him” along
with following the minimalist Noachide requirements.30
To expand this point, I cite Michael Wyschogrod at length, where he draws out what he
sees happening in the early Church:
We are now in a position to understand Paul’s view of what the Christ event had done for
gentiles. With the coming of Christ, a gentile who was willing to obey the Noachide
Laws and who had faith in Jesus as the Messiah became an associate member of the
house of Israel. I use the phrase ‘associate member’ because it is the only expression I
can think of to characterize the new standing of the gentile Christian. He was more than a
Ger Toshav [defined as, “followers of the Noachide Commandments who were at various
times attached to the Jewish communities as sympathizers with the faith of Israel who
had not fully embraced Judaism.”]…For Paul, the Christ event had made possible a new
category: gentiles who were not circumcised and not obedient to the Torah but who were
still not excluded from the house of Israel…They had become members of the
household of Israel, something which prior to Christ could be achieved only by full
conversion to Judaism.31
Many questions are then left open to the Gentile Christian. What is the worth of the Mosaic Law
for us? Is the Noachide covenant then the Gentile’s Torah?32 Does that not leave us with a fairly
“The Gentile Christian men need not be circumcised, but all the converts should hold to the things that, according to
Leviticus 17:10-14, were to be asked of every foreigner living in Israel, namely to eat no meat from strangled animals
and no food containing blood…” (Lohfink 230).
See also Sanders: “Paul also thought, of course, that Gentiles should not accept those parts of the law which
distinguish Jew from Greek, especially circumcision, if doing so was understood as necessary for membership in the
people of God” (Sanders, E.P., Jesus and Judaism, Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1985, 217).
Sanders writes elsewhere, “The subject of Galatians is not whether or not humans, abstractly conceived, can
by good deeds earn enough merit to be declared righteous at the judgment; it is the condition on which Gentiles enter
the people of God…Paul’s argument is not in favor of faith per se, nor is it against works per se. It is much more
particular: it is against requiring the gentiles to keep the law of Moses in order to be true ‘sons of Abraham’”
(Sanders, E.P., Paul, the Law and the Jewish People, [Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1983], 18f, emphasis added).
See also Wychogrod: “Paul, in discouraging the circumcision of gentiles, was therefore acting within the
traditional rabbinic framework. What was new about Paul’s view, as we have already seen, was the belief that the
Noachide Laws combined with faith in Jesus as the Messiah brought into being a new category of persons, associate
members of the house of Israel” (Wyschogrod 193).
31 Wyschogrod 190f (emphasis added).
32 “The Noachide Law is, then, the Torah of the gentiles” (Wyschogrod 190).
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thin amount of ethical guidance or responsibility?33 If we ascent to the above necessity of “faith
in Jesus,” how does “faith” avoid becoming apolitical and immaterial if we don’t follow the same
moral code as Jesus? No matter where one lands in these details of the Noachide and Mosaic
tumult around the Law, there seems to be no question about the larger import and thesis of this
paper: we are talking about the Gentiles fully joining into Abrahamic People of God. It’s not
that Gentile Christianity is the new Israel, annulling Jewish identity—it is quite the opposite.
Rather, when Gentiles profess their faith in a “Christ” (again, a title of Israeli governance) they
are implying a relationship to the concrete and historic Israel, and with that faith they join as
Gentiles into that larger plot and people, the “house of Abraham.” This does not annul Jewish
identity but clarifies its peculiar nature in terms of international scope and meaning. Campbell
puts it this way: “In Paul’s perspective, the Christ-even offered a new option to the Ger Toshav.
Because of faith in Christ, this gentile could now assume the status of an adopted son and be
regarded, by Paul at least, as a member of the house of Abraham whilst retaining his status as a
gentile.”34
An important twist to the end of this section, however, is to ask: what was demanded of
Jewish believers in Jesus? Did they not need to become baptized—i.e. undergo a change? We are
struck by stories in Acts of crowds becoming baptized by the hundreds in the primordial
Church—and many of these earliest converts are ostensibly Jews (likely many Ger Toshav). Let
us consider the dramatic changes in the duration of the catechumenate over a century or so; why
did the early Church baptize on the spot while the later candidates would take years to become
inducted? Lohfink’s answer: “Judaism was the catechumenate of the primitive Church. Only
when there was a danger that the Church would lose its roots in Judaism was it necessary to
introduce the catechumenate as a separate institution.”35 Jews indeed underwent a renewal in
33
Might we then say Gentiles, then, are like those who are paid the grace of a full days work as they join in with the
Jews who have labored a full day (under the Law)? The former should not gloat while the other should not be jealous.
34 Campbell 56.
35 Lohfink 268.
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Christ, a “rebirth,” to join into what Jesus was doing; but this is a renewal of Israel, not a different
project—and that is a world of difference.
3) Corporate Identity—or, Israel not as a Religion but as a People.
If Gentiles do not fully participate in all the peculiar practices of the People of God, then should
they not be considered outside the full identity of the elect People of God?36 This is also to ask
whether Judaism, in its allowing Gentiles into the fold, is essentially a stable ethnic identity or
simply a group of people who choose faith in God.
In what sense is Israel a “nation” or an “ethnicity”? Israel is not easy to distinguish, for it
is an alternative project, unlike the other projects in the world. They are called out of the nations,
to be unlike other nations, to become a nation!37 They are “aliens and strangers,” exilic refugees
scattered in foreign lands, and yet they have some sort of relationship to “inheriting the land”
promised to Abraham. They are founded on faith, propagated by discipline and economic norms.
But those spiritual “values” are held in tension with their being an irreducible nation, an ethnicity,
and a genealogy from Abraham’s seed.
Wyschogrod argues that Jewish identity is a mixture. He can ascent to the claim that not
everyone from Abraham is of Abraham.38 But he is very cautious with Paul’s exegesis; we must
keep the element of flesh and descent in Judaism (and by extension, Christianity’s view of Israel),
lest we fall into a denigration of the body and fleshly reality. But the greater risk of “a spiritual
election” for him is God’s promise: if Israel denotes only those who choose God’s path, then
36
Put in a more symbolic way, are Gentile Christians the Ishmael—as Ishmael—joining again in family with Isaac?
Or, are Gentile Christians, by faith, gaining the Isaacan identity? But, if this seemingly Gentile audience of Galatians 5
is to be read into the discourse of 4:21-31, the Gentiles are then considered, through Christ of course, “children of
Sarah” (Isaac) not of Hagar (Ishmael). Is it that Gentiles were once like Ishmael but have become like Isaac through
faith? It seems so. The adoption theme does not work as well here—which would simply imply Ishmael joining the
family of faith. But if an Ishmael becomes an Isaac, a Gentile then ontologically unites fully with Israel.
37 One problem in this peculiar Jewish identity is that of the “secular” Jew. Wyschogrod writes: “The simplest and most
direct explanation of this discrepancy [of “secular” Jews and no such Christian category] is that, unlike Christianity,
Judaism is not only a religion, if by religion we mean a set of ideas reflected in conduct. It is also a nationality, though
perhaps a somewhat unusual one. The unusual aspect is that for a very long time Jews had no national territory or
common language, features possessed by most nationalities” (Wyschogrod, Michael. The Body of Faith [New York:
Seabury Press, 1983], 43).
38 Romans 11; see also Luke 3:8; or Hosea 2:23.
14
God’s promise to Abraham can be negated like a divorce—rather, God’s connection to Israel is as
indissoluble as a family.39
But, there is no doubt: people can be “adopted into” the “People of God.” 40 Yet adoption
does not make the People of God spiritually abstract; adoption implies a stable, concrete family.
Adoption, in a way, changes the family and those who join. The Gentiles are not simply Gentiles
anymore; the Seven have been brought into the work and ethos of the Twelve. But Israel is not
necessarily the same either —for the Seven have been brought in to make a new body.41 This is
why Abraham is the figure Paul uses to make sense of the Jew/Gentile issue in the Church; for in
him is the symbolic locus of the seven and the twelve.
[Abraham] is the first monotheist and the first member of Israel, the first gentile to leave
idolatry behind to serve the one true God. He is thus the model for gentile proselytes to
Judaism as well as for Jews in his worship of the one God through obedience to the
law…It was not just that Abraham received the promise but it was also the content of the
promise that was crucial. He was to become ‘the father of many nations’, not just of
“Descent from Abraham is not totally without value…He loved Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and therefore he loves
their descendants. And he loves not only their souls but also their bodies…A wife or a husband can be divorced. But a
child or a parent cannot and that is the kind of bond that connects the Jewish people to God…The Jewish people is thus
God’s family in the world. God is present in the world through this family. No relation with their God is possible
without a relation with this people” (Wyschogrod, Michael, and R. Kendall Soulen. Abraham's Promise: Judaism and
Jewish-Christian Relations. Radical traditions [Grand Rapids, Mich: William B. Eerdmans, 2004], 98f).
Also, “Judaism does not accept the contention that God became flesh. But it does teach that God elected a
people of the flesh as the people of God. In some sense, this irrevocable election constitutes a unique dwelling of God
among or in this people. And it is an indwelling not only in the spiritual and ideological sense but in the physical
one…An election by faith alone would have been a purely spiritual election.” (Wyschogrod 98).
40 “Thus Israel is a people, an extended family in which all Jews are related. But the family is open. Those who become
‘Jews by choice’ are adopted into the Jewish people and become indistinguishable members of the family” (FrymerKensy, David Fox Sanders, et al, 160, ch. “Israel Judaism, and Christianity”).
41 It is interesting here, though not essential, to consider the meaning of “the Seven” and the Gentiles. The leftover
baskets of twelve are usually quite obvious for indicating the abundance of Israel’s place at the eschatological banquet;
and the seven baskets seem to propose a twist: the Gentiles are filled at YHWH’s banquet. Maybe this is significant
because the number seven foreshadows the second-wave of Gentile Apostle-Disciples in Acts. Maybe, but that answer
does not seem complete. Might another meaning be that seven is a number representative of fullness, indicating the
totality of nations coming to the feast? Maybe. Might it also be that the Noachide covenant, given through seven major
marks [1) Blessing Noah and sons, 2) placing all plants and animals under human command, 3) forbidding bloody
meat, 4) forbidding murder, 5) conceivably “allowing” capital punishment, 6) vowing never to destroy by the flood, 7)
rainbow as sign of covenant], was the Jewish pathway for Gentiles to join by association into the blessing of God’s
people? It might also be significant that the Gentiles in Romans 11 is symbolized by the “seven thousand who have not
bowed…”
39
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one…Abraham is the father of both the descendants by his blood and also those by
adoption through incorporation into Abrahams’ blood descendant, Christ.”42
While there is “neither Jew nor Gentile” in this new body, it is not as if we only count them as
“the nineteen.” Jews are still Jews (and they give thanks for election); Gentiles are still Gentiles
(and they give thanks for adoption). Each is still distinct; otherwise, it makes full sense that
Gentiles should be circumcised. In other words, that the Gentiles are not to be circumcised
confirms that the Abrahamic People of God is in some sense genealogical. If the People of God
were constituted by spiritual choice alone, the Gentiles, in their choosing, indeed should be
circumcised. As previously noted, Jesus marks the difference now—something new is happening
in him with regards to Israel and the Gentiles. But, in their difference, through Christ they
nevertheless have been brought fully together into the family of Abraham, the people set-apart to
bless the world. And they come together in the Abrahamic blessing (or, gathering43) while the
celebrated eschaton is at hand in Jesus.44
(The finer distinction between being a “member of the house of Abraham” and a “Jew” is
still operative here and not easily defined. But regardless of the definition of this distinction, the
broader thesis of the paper still seems upheld: Christianity is not a “new religion” but a new
reality within the Abrahamic plan, and Gentiles are thus joining into that people, however
nuanced the conditions of joining.)
42
Campbell 61, 63.
“The blessing of Abraham” seems to mean the ingathering (as opposed to scattering) of people around God. “Jesus
wanted nothing more than to gather Israel anew in light of the approach of the reign of God. Since Easter the name of
the Israel gathered around Jesus is ekklesia (congregation, assembly), and wherever in Judaism the knowledge merges
that Israel must come together there appears the word ‘kibbutz,’ from the old theological concept of qbs, ‘gather’…The
people of God cannot exist without constantly gathering from all the corners of the universe. It cannot exist without
bringing together all its strengths and abilities, and it cannot live without constantly reconciling itself. When that
happens it is not simply preparation for service to the world that can only begin after this has happened, but it is the
service that the people of God does for the world” (Lohfink, Gerhard. Does God Need the Church? 59).
See also Yoder: “We recognize in Jesus the inbreaking of the messianic age. It is actually happening on a
greater scale than before, that Gentiles who hear about Jesus come to the messianic synagogues. Conclusion: the will of
God for our age is the active ingathering of Gentiles into a new kind of body” (Yoder 96).
44 “He redeemed us in order that the blessing given to Abraham might come to the Gentiles through Christ Jesus, so
that by faith we might receive the promise of the Spirit” (Galatians 3:14).
43
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If Gentiles join into the people of Abraham, why the new word “Church”? In short, it
seems that “Church” is a word that is not intended to separate “Christianity” from “Judaism,” but
to honor Israel. It is a word denoting the public visibility appropriate to Israel so that it might not
steal its name; the name entails deference to the Israel who does not yet believe in the Christ.
Lohfink writes, “What Jesus does is therefore not immediately directed to the Church, but to the
eschatological Israel. We can only speak of ‘church’ at a time when it is clear, after Easter, that
the greater part of Israel will not come to believe.”45 Because Jewish and Gentile Christians are
intimately linked with Israel in its belief and unbelief, they cannot simply call themselves the
“new Israel.” Again, might we say that the Church is with or within Israel, that it is participating,
in a particular way, with the People of God? The words of N.T. Wright conclude this notion:
“Their thorough reworking of symbol, praxis, and answers to questions was generated, not by the
abandonment of the classic Jewish story, but by the belief that that they were living in its longawaited new phase. There is all the difference in the world between a new story and a new Act
within the same story.”46
A Closing Thought on Tribalism and Universal Urges
To “join the people of God” is different from the modern liberal motif that “we just need to
realize that we are all children of God.” Though we are all, “made in the image of God,” it is
indeed something different to join in the divine Abrahamic plan to “bless the world”—that is,
Israel. Not everybody is a part of that.47
45
Lohfink 163.
Wright 219.
47 “When Christians carry on their covenanted mission, are they members of the house of Israel? Are they in a parallel
covenant or part of a single covenant alongside Jewry? Personally, I believe that world religions such as Islam and
noncovenantal faiths such as Buddhism and forms of Hinduism should be recognized as movements legitimately
striving to fulfill the universal divine covenant with humanity. However, only Christians (although possibly also
Muslims) may be deemed to be members of the people Israel, even as they practice differing religions than Jewry does
(Greenberg, Frymer-Kensy, et. al, 158).
46
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Biblically speaking, the “people of God” is not a universal noun describing any general
part of humanity that has realized its dignity or honored its Creator.48 The entire scope of the
Biblical narrative entails the creation of an actual, empirical people. If we are to make any sense
of the doctrine “there is no hope for salvation outside the Church” (apart from dissolving it for
modern tastes), we must turn to the offense of the election of Israel, of the world-blessing setapart people. This is essentially to open the Biblical narrative, now under great modern and
postmodern suspicion for its ostensible “exclusion,” toward the positive and hopeful elements of
particularity. After all, “diversity” is a principle predicated on distinct particularities. The nosalvation-outside-Church doctrine implies that one (or we) cannot “find salvation” in one’s (our)
own “personal journey,” but one (we) must be incorporated into a new body and a new history.
This doctrine is not so much about the brokerage of salvation and saying who gets it and doesn’t;
it is rather a radical redefinition of what salvation is in the first place and what it looks like. It is
about a belonging to a new sociological way of being in the world, not simply a “connection with
God.” It entails being born again into a new family.
The great opportunity and challenge is whether we can see how “salvation is from the
Jews” is connected with the doctrine that “there is no salvation outside the Church.”49 We might
here answer our modern liberal need for equality by meditating on possibly the most fantastic
juxtaposition of the Bible: “[There will be] glory, honor, and peace for everyone who does good:
first for the Jew, then for the Gentile. For God does not show favoritism.”50 Our demand for a
God who does not play favorites is satisfied in a most peculiar way—an ostensibly universal and
omnipresent God acts through a finite set of events and persons. And the Bible calls this “fair”—a
fascinating tension.
“All attempts to transform its election into a universal election of all people in faith can be interpreted by Israel only
as the beginning of that movement toward the universal which, fully developed, culminates to the universal truth of a
philosophy antithetical to the concreteness of the God of Abraham” (Wyschogrod 184).
49 It is my hope that “salvation through the Jews” does not inherently contradict the Second Vatican Council’s urging
that “‘many elements of sanctification and of truth’ are found outside the visible confines of the Catholic Church”
(Prusak 280). That Judaism is founded on blessing the world gives me this hope.
50 Romans 2:10-11.
48
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To take that Romans verse seriously involves entering into a worldview quite distinct
from modern universalism. It is to still believe in the beauty and dignity of all creation, but to
consider God acting through peculiarity. In that we can regard salvation for the whole world
through a single person (Abraham, Jesus) and through the People they represent. There is no
essential divide between the fact of Jesus being for Israel and Jesus being for the world. Taken in
light of primordial Abrahamic vision—and the whole scope of much Israelite exilic self-reflection
in Torah and Talmud—Israel’s being set-apart is for the sake of the world.51 To harmonize this
peculiarity with universality, Campbell writes: And to begin this family with theological
reflection on Abraham unites the universal scope with the peculiar:
The figure of Abraham could simultaneously serve as the ultimate symbol of Israel and
the point of contact between Israel and the rest of the peoples of the world. Paul’s
mission proclaimed that ‘in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham’ comes upon the
gentiles…In making Abraham the father of both Jews and gentiles in the Christian
movement, Paul found a means to give gentile Christ-followers a specific identity that
located them meaningfully ‘in a larger cultural story’ within his understanding of the
divine purpose for the world.52
To redeem the salt of the world, is to care about the unsalted; to fan the flames of the light is to
care about the darkness; Jesus was a prophet to Israel for the sake of the world. For Israel exists
(as salt, as light on a hill) for the sake of the world. In other words, to be for Israel—in its truest
sense, not necessarily in the new nation-state sense53—is to be for the world. In terms of Pauline
theology, “Paul’s vision for gentiles originated from his understanding of the divine purpose for
“[God] has tied his saving and redemptive concern for the welfare of all humankind to his love for the people of
Israel. Only those who love the people of Israel can love the God of Israel” (Wyschogrod 180). Lohfink also writes,
that because Adam denotes humanity and not a particular individual, “the Bible begins with humanity. This
observation, banal in itself, is of serious theological import, for it makes clear that everything the Bible goes on to
describe is not only an action between God and God’s people; it is aimed toward the nations, the world, the universe.
God’s concern is not first of all for Israel, but for the whole world. Franz Rosenweig says it this way: ‘God did not
create religion, but the world’” (Lohfink 21—a section titled “Why God Needs a Special People”).
52 Campbell 61, 64.
53 Consider here the Neturei Karta movement, opposing Zionism.
51
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Israel and the nations. Since his vision was Israel-oriented, so too was his mission.”54 It is this
joining into the larger story of God’s project in Abraham that Gentiles find their blessing.
As a disciple of Paul’s explains, no longer were [gentiles] strangers and sojourners,
alienated from the commonwealth of Israel but fellow citizens with the saints and
members of the household of God. They had a new ancestor in Abraham and belonged to
his house. And yet, despite all this, in Paul’s understanding, they were not Israelites even
though they shared in the symbolic universe of Israel.55
While in Christ Gentiles are not now “Jews,” they have entered into the Jewish symbolic
universe, thus acquiring a political identity adhering them to Jesus, the Messiah of Israel and their
Lord and Savior, not any proximate Caesar. This is a transnational identity they can carry
wherever they find themselves in Diaspora.
Because God desires the salvation of all, and indeed, that God is the Creator of all, we
might say that the YHWH of the Scriptures is not only the God of the Jews, but God through the
Jews. YHWH, the Lord of all, is offered to the world through the Jews. This is what “salvation is
(for the Gentiles) from the Jews” means. For, even as YHWH established rapport and tradition
among the descendents of Abraham, we trust that, as the Lord of all, this God is acting for all. We
Gentiles, in our non-election, do not need to feel wholly alienated from YHWH, but recognize
that because God has particular characteristics and a certain nature, God thus has been revealed
and shared with the world through a particular people.56
54
Campbell 55.
Campbell 59.
56 This discussion of the relationship between Israel and the Church—or, on a different note, Jew and Gentile—is not
only important for proper ecclesiological dogma but may be helpful for investigating the ecclesiological roots of
violence. As Yoder writes, “it was in the process of becoming non-Jewish that Christianity also became non-pacifist”
(Yoder 72). In our day, the classic warrior’s invoking of the “God of the Old Testament” continues to be employed for
war. That many supersessionists are not rigorous pacifists complicates the irony.
Wychogrod writes of the connection between Israeli identity and violence: “Israel refuses to invent the idea
of a church which forces men to live in two jurisdictions and to assume two identities: a member of a nation and a
member of a church. When such a bifurcated existence is decreed for human life, European wars in which Christian
fights Christian, not as Christian but as German, Frenchman, or Pole, become possible” (Wychogrod 98). While rabbi
Steven Schwartzchild, who considered Judaism to be a pacifistic religion (Yoder 95), would still find an Israeli fighting
as an Israeli problematic, Wychogrod’s notion is at least less schizophrenic with regards to social identity.
55