The concept of election and second Isaiah: recent literature

Biblical Theology Bulletin, Winter, 2001 by Joel S. Kaminsky

Abstract

In this article I contend that the conceptual categories utilized by many recent scholars engaged in analyzing the idea of election in the Hebrew Bible have led to a variety of interrelated misunderstandings, both of the idea of election in general and of specific texts invoked in such discussions. This article traces out the distortions in the scholarship on this central theological concept and shows how similarly problematic trends also occur in discussions of Second Isaiah, a text frequently cited in studies of election. I conclude by offering a brief sketch of both a new possible reading of Second Isaiah and the theological implications of such a reading for the contemporary situation.

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It was over 50 years ago that H. H. Rowley wrote his book, THE BIBLICAL DOCTRINE OF ELECTION, probably the most popular comprehensive theological examination of the full range of texts that are called to mind when one considers the biblical concept of Israel's election. While Rowley must be complimented for bringing renewed scholarly attention to the oft neglected and sometimes, as will be seen below, maligned concept of election, his own treatment of this issue was itself problematic in a number of ways. Rowley's understanding of the nature and function of election in the Hebrew Bible is tainted by his tendency to read the Hebrew Bible through the New Testament and subsequent Christian history. Thus he argues that Judaism failed to carry out its election responsibilities in two major ways. First, they rejected God's self-revelation in Christ.

   That Judaism has cared so little for One who, on lowest count, is the
   greatest of her sons, and the One who has most powerfully influenced the
   world, is a singular fact .... If, then, the first element of the service
   of the elect was to receive and cherish the revelation of God given to
   Israel, then the church performed it more fully than did Judaism [Rowley:
   162].

Second, Rowley sees election as involving Israel's duty "to mediate to all men the law of her God, and to spread the heritage of her faith through all the world" (Rowley 164). And here too, as he notes, Israel has forfeited her status by abandoning her responsibilities.

   Through the Church Gentiles from every corner under heaven ... have learned
   the law of God. The Jewish Bible has been translated into innumerable
   languages and has become the cherished Scripture by multitudes who would
   never have heard of it through Jews alone. These are objective facts. It is
   not merely that the church believed she was commissioned to take over the
   task of Israel. She did in fact take over from an Israel that was less
   willing to undertake it; and she has indisputably fulfilled that task in a
   great, though still insufficient, measure [Rowley: 165].

To some extent Rowley's biases are not purely Christian in nature, but are a rather complex mix of Christianity and various Enlightenment ideas that are closely knit together. On the Christian side of things, I would contend that Rowley's move to make the idea of an active mission to convert the world to biblical religion central to the Hebrew Bible's message is a Christian reading which reduces a much more nuanced idea into a simple binary opposition. What I mean by this is that Christianity's deep commitment to mission that Rowley wholeheartedly reads back into the Hebrew Bible appears to be driven at least partially by the sense that either one is elect or one is lost to God. However, while not usually noticed, much of the Hebrew Bible offers three categories of election which includes the elect, the non-elect and the anti-elect. And while the anti-elect like the Canaanites are generally seen as beyond the pale of divine mercy and doomed for destruction, the non-elect have a place within the divine economy even while they retain a different status than Israel, the elect of God.

As an unwitting child of the Enlightenment, Rowley assumes that Christianity is superior to Judaism because Christianity is a more inclusive and tolerant religion, as evidenced by its pervasiveness in the world today and its openness to converts. However Rowley's Enlightenment preference for tolerance and inclusiveness is itself tied up with a certain Christian reading of the Bible that assumes that Judaism became an exclusivistic and thus intolerant religion, thereby forfeiting its elect status to a tolerant and open Christianity which brought God's message of salvation to the gentiles. While such a stance is in my opinion fairly widespread, it is highly problematic on a number of fronts. To begin with, in much of the Hebrew Bible as well as in much of rabbinic thought being non-elect is in no way equivalent to being damned. Thus Jewish exclusivism properly understood might be more tolerant, by allowing the non-elect to serve God in their own way, than Rowley's Christian inclusivism that only recognizes a single path to salvation. Secondly, while there is a widespread tendency for contemporary Christians to see Christianity as a universal religion, meaning not only that all might attain salvation through it but also that all people are accepted as they are, historically it would be quite inaccurate to think of New Testament Christians as all embracing universalists and their Jewish counterparts as exclusivists who reject others out of hand. As Levenson points out, in the early New Testament period, "it was actually Judaism that was the larger community, spread throughout the world, with influence even in the centers of power, and attracting converts and semi-converts" (Levenson 1993, 216). Furthermore, early Christianity's sectarian and apocalyptic stance means that it conceived of itself as the rather small remnant who would survive the widespread coming divine judgment in which all non-believers would be subject to punishment.