© 1977 by American Academy of Religion
Abstracts of Articles |
Affirmation of the Jewish People: a condition of theological coherence
Paul M. van Buren is Professor in the Department of Religon of Temple University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and author of The Edges of Language (1972) and The Burden of Freedom (1976).
Insofar as the churches do not affirm the existence of the Jewish people, they stand in theological self-contradiction. Such an affirmation, hitherto withheld, would be consistent with a hermeneutical principle at work in the formation of much of Scripture and especially of the Apostolic Writings, new events in Israel's history occasioning reinterpretation of Israel's tradition, so that they might be included as the latest happening in a continuing story.
The formative events leading to the church's originating reinterpretation included not only those of Good Friday and Easter, but also the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 C.E. Two later historical facts, however, require further reinterpretation, if theological coherence is to be restored to a church claiming dependence on Scripture and so on historical events. It can ignore these facts only at the price of living in self-contradication, for it would be excluding from its agenda the very class of items within which falls its own origin. One fact concerns the Jews: their survival and continuity, up to and including the existence of the State of Israel. The other fact concerns the church: its having become, early in its history, an almost completely Gentile enterprise, distinguished from other Gentile entities primarily by its inherited Jewish characteristics, especially its vocabulary.
A possible reinterpretation would take the preservation of the Jews as a crucial sign of the faithfulness of God. Jesus would be understood, not as the inaugurator of the messianic age (i.e., not as Mashiah), but as the elect Jew (Christos) through whom countless Gentiles have been drawn by the Spirit to adore the God of Israel. The church's characteristic doctrine—that of the Trinity—would then be seen to express the peculiarly Gentile (in contrast to the Jewish) apprehension of the One God of Israel.