Christology and the Jewish-Christian dialogue

Encounter, Winter 2002 by Jones, Joe R

It is a pleasure to write an article in this festschrift issue honoring my friend and colleague of many years, Clark Williamson. We taught systematic theology together for several years at Christian Theological Seminary, and I confess that his passionate concentration on Jewish-Christian dialogue deeply aroused and influenced my awareness of the issues and necessities of engaging in the dialogue in our post-Holocaust situation. Without his insistent arguments, I might well have neglected issues that have profound implications for how we construe Christian faith. While it has been clear to many over the years that Clark and I disagree over important matters in Christian theology, it may have been overlooked that we also agree on a wide range of Christian concerns. This essay on christology is written in gratitude for the conversations with and writings of Clark, and for the persistent passion of his theologizing in a way that does not forget the Holocaust. I choose to write on christology because that is an area in which our strongest theological convictions sometimes collide.

I am under the impression that we are now entering a phase in Jewish-Christian dialogue in which Christian guilt is no longer the shared premise of the dialogue. When this premise is given full reign, we often have Christian theologians eager to diminish distinctive Christian claims and to find ways in which the common ground between Jew and Christian can be emphasized. In this situation, the more liberal voices in both traditions can play out the agreements and neglect the differences. In the course of this phase of the dialogue, Christian christology often became the scapegoat for the sins and guilt of the Christian tradition. It was not seldom in this dialogue that it seemed that Christianity had become a slimmed-down Judaism for Gentiles with a prophetic Jesus and a Christ idea without the particularities of incarnation.

We are now in a new phase of the discussion, beyond Christian guilt, in which a resolute honesty on both sides is emerging with a new acceptance of both the profound continuities and significant differences that obtain between Jewish traditions and Christian traditions. The recent publication by Jewish scholars, Christianity in Jewish Terms,1 is a bold attempt from various Jewish perspectives to characterize Christian faith and to identify those areas of significant agreement and difference. At many points in their essays the issues of christology and incarnation come repeatedly to the fore as a set of beliefs that dramatically differentiate Judaism and Christianity.

I think they are on target in identifying these issues as the deep markers distinguishing Christianity and Judaism, and it is important that the disagreements in christology be discerningly articulated. It is my project in this brief essay to explore a schematic understanding of christology and the doctrine of God that acknowledges the differences without: (a) advocating a supersession of Judaism by the Church; or (b) diminishing an incarnational christology; or (c) lapsing into the glib locution that "Judaism is for Jews and Christianity is for Gentiles."

From the Christian side there is general agreement that all forms of supersessionism are to be repudiated, but the term `supersessionism' often gets up and walks around on us. I find there are at least two different meanings attached to the term "supersessionism."2

S1 - The belief that since most Jews during the time of Jesus (and most since) rejected him as Israel's Messiah, God has rejected Israel as God's people, canceled God's covenant with Israel, and replaced or superseded Israel with the Church, and therefore only those Jews who accept Jesus as Messiah and Savior will be saved.

S2 - The belief that Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of God's work in Israel and that Jesus Christ therefore has salvific import for the life and destiny of Israel.

I reject S1 as an illegitimate but unfortunate belief of the Christian Church through many centuries. But I am concerned about those Christian theologians who would also call S2 a supersessionism to be rejected. With the apostle Paul in Romans, chapters 9 through 11, I affirm:

a. that what God has done in Jesus Christ has been done in the history of Israel, in a Jew, and in fulfillment of God's intent with Israel as covenant people and therefore for Israel;

b. that God is faithful in God's promises, and God has not rejected Jewish people who have not accepted Jesus as Messiah;

c. that what God has done in Jesus Christ has been done for all God's children, Jew and Gentile alike;

d. that a Jewish person is not making a conceptual mistake in believing that Jesus Christ has salvific meaning for Jews; certainly Paul the Pharisee, and all the other New Testament authors who were Jews, thought Jesus was their Savior and Lord;3

e. that it is, therefore, not the case that Jesus Christ is for Gentiles only and Judaism remains theologically untouched by the life and destiny of Jesus.