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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 February 2024
Npstra Aetate, the Declaration on the Relation of the church to NonChristian religions issued by Vatican II, notes that the Church regards God’s election of Israel and the dispensation brought by Christ as intimately connected with one another. It is indeed important for Christians to realise that the dispensation of Israel and the disposition represented by the Church are continuous, that each forms part of a continuous and integral history of salvation. The Church acknowledges the salvific character God’s covenant with Israel, and of divine revelation to Israel in the Torah of Judaism. Indeed, the Church cherishes the Hebrew scriptures, uses them extensively in its liturgy, and views them as fundamental to its Christian faith.
Some Christians argue that the new covenant in Christ supersedes and abrogates the older covenant with Israel, and that the coming of Christ marks the end of the covenantal and salvific value of the Torah. Such Christians also argue that post-Christie Jews are rejected by God, and that the Israel of the old covenant is eliminatively replaced in the economy of salvation by a new Israel comprising gentiles who have accepted Christ. On this account, part of Christ’s mission was the destruction of the Torah and the rejection of Israel in favour of the gentiles, and the good news of Christ’s coming is not good news for the Jewish people at all but rather a curse. This flies in the face of some of our Lord’s own sayings. Does our Lord not state that he has not come to abolish the Torah, but rather to bring it to perfection, and that not a jot and a tittle of the Torah will pass away until all things are brought to their eschatological perfection, presumably in the general resurrection and judgement? For that matter, our Lord acknowledges the magisterial authority of the Pharisaic forbears of the Rabbis, saying that they speak with the authority of Moses, and that their rulings in matters of observance must be obeyed. The burden of our Lord’s criticism of the Pharisees is not that their tradition and authority is false or invalid, but rather that they fail to live up to it. As for the claim that our Lord comes to disown and reject the Jewish people, it should be noted that he tells us that he has come to the lost sheep of Israel, that he commissioned the twelve apostles to go not to the gentiles ‘but... rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel’, and states emphatically that salvation itself is of the Jews.
1 ‘Jot’ presumably refers to the Hebrew letter yod, the smallest of all the letters, and ‘tittle’ presumably refers to the ‘crowns’ on the letters in Torah scrolls.
2 See Mt 5. 17–18.
3 See Mt 23. 2–3.
4 Mt 15. 24.
5 Mt 10. 5–6.
6 Jn 4. 22.
7 Rm 11. 27–29.
8 Rm 11 26.
9 Rm 11.15.
10 The New Testament Greek for ‘Church’, ‘ekklesia’, means ‘assembly’ and is related to a number of Hebrew terms which are to be found in the Pentateuch and later. These Hebrew terms, which are used of the people of Israel, include qahl, ‘community’. ‘edah’, ‘convocation’, and the Rabbinical term knesset, ‘assembly’. All of these are ‘ecclesiastical’ terms, as it were, and by using them both the Old Testament and later Rabbinic tradition in effect refer to Israel as God's Church.
11 I am indebted to my brother in St Dominic and teacher. Herbert McCabe, OP, for this point. See the first two essays in McCabe, , God Matters (London: Geoffrey Chapman)Google Scholar.
12 I remember once reading a long article about Cardinal Lustiger, the Archbishop of Paris, in Ha'aretz &‐ the finest of Israel's daily newspapers. The writer of the article was at pains to point Out that Cardinal Lustiger is Jewish.
13 Ishall use the term ‘Jew’ as if it were a gender‐neutral term instead of using the awkward longer phrase ‘Jews and Jewesses’.
14 I cannot resist a story about an incident when I was at Rabbinical college. I happened to be seated on a bus piously reading a volume of psalms with a Rabbinical commentary. A respectable lady with an educated accent sat next to me, glanced at the volume, and asked me what it was, and in what language. Once I had explained what they were, she expressed amazement that the Bible had been translated into Hebrew of all languages. As far as fondness for Latin chant is concerned, I do not wish to suggest that it is invariably associated with rejection of our Lord's Jewishness, or that Latin chant is in any way suspect. As my autobiographical sketch states, I happen to enjoy it and have occasionally been known to indulge in it. I also plead guilty to the presence of a few reproductions of Byzantine icons in my room.
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