“Salvation is from the Jews” (John 4:22). This is because Jesus was born to the chosen people and fulfils the covenants that God made with Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses and David.
From the outset, however, Christians have wondered about the Church’s relation to Israel and the status of Jewish people under the New Testament. Do those Jews who do not believe in Jesus form part of the Church or has the Church replaced or supplanted the chosen people?
Unfortunately, there have always been some Christians who have strayed from the Gospel, blamed the Jewish people collectively for Christ’s death, and even made that charge or some other the pretext for nurturing hatred, hostility, and abuse toward its members.
Hoping to disqualify such an unchristian mindset once and for all, the Second Vatican Council issued a declaration, Nostra Aetate, in which it condemned antisemitism and recalled St. Paul’s teaching that God’s gifts and call to the chosen people are irrevocable (Romans 11:29).
In this interview, Prof. Gavin D’Costa talks about his own work and some other books on Catholic teaching and current theological reflection on the Jewish people’s relation to the Church.
Gavin D’Costa is Professor at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas, Rome; and Emeritus Professor of Catholic Theology at the University of Bristol, UK. He is author of eight monographs, most recently: Vatican II: Catholic Doctrines on Jews and Muslims, (OUP, 2014) and Catholic Doctrines on Jews after the Second Vatican Council (OUP, 2019). He has edited, with Faydra Shapiro:Contemporary Catholic Approaches to the People, Land, and State of Israel (Catholic University Press of America, 2022). His work has been translated into seven languages. He is an advisor to the Roman Catholic Bishops in England and Wales on matters related to other religions and has worked with the World Council of Churches and the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue.
- Vatican II: Catholic Doctrines on Jews and Muslims
by Gavin d’Costa - Catholic Doctrines on Jews after the Second Vatican Council
by Gavin d’Costa - From Sinai to Rome: Jewish Identity in the Catholic Church
by Angela Costley and Gavin d’Costa - Catholic - Jewish Engagements on Israel: Holy Land, Political Territory, or Theological Promise?
by Gavin d’Costa, Étienne Vetö CCN, and Thomas Joseph White OP - Contemporary Catholic Approaches to the People, Land, and State of Israel
by Gavin d’Costa and Faydra Shapiro - Israel: A Christian Grammar
by Paul J. Griffiths - Jewish Church: A Catholic Approach to Messianic Judaism
by Fr. Antoine Lévy OP
Jesus has fulfilled the law of Moses and established the New Covenant. Some have claimed therefore that the Old Covenant has been abrogated and replaced by the New: the people of Israel replaced by the Church. What are the main theories on the current Judaism’s relation to the Church?
Since Vatican II, the main theories within the Catholic orbit hold that Judaism has not been replaced but, as the Letter to the Romans teaches, continues to have a role in God's plan and will. They also hold, it needs to be said, that Judaism will find its fulfilment in Jesus Christ, the telos and meaning of its whole destiny.
This contrasts with an earlier tradition, which tended to see Judaism as null and void: as superseded.
There is controversy surrounding both points of the modern view. However, the basic theory is that God’s covenant with the Jews retains its validity and meaning. As a result, even though its fulfilment is to be found in Christ and the Church, we can learn from the Jewish people in their relationship to the living God, the same God we worship.
“The council declared publicly that anti-Semitism is at all times incompatible with the Catholic faith."
Does that encompass the whole of the Church's teaching on the relation of the Jewish people to the Church?
No, but those are the main bullet points. Since 1964-65, there has been a remarkable level of unfolding Lumen gentium 14-16 and Nostra aetate 4.
Those two documents established that, first of all, Jesus, the Blessed Virgin Mary, the apostles and disciples were practicing Jews. That goes without saying. They went to the temple. They prayed. They expressed the faith of Israel. Their Bible was what we call the Old Testament. In establishing that, Nostra aetate 4, opened up an avenue for the Church to rediscover its Jewish roots: that the Gentiles are grafted onto the Jewish people. There is not a Church of Gentiles, with the Jews on the other side of the street (though, with Rabbinic Judaism, there is a sense in which they are). Rather, the Jews are within the heart of the Church. The opening line of Nostra Aetate 4, recalls “the bond that spiritually ties the people of the New Covenant to Abraham's stock.”
This has all sorts of implications for our own prayer life, understanding of the New Testament, liturgy, and eventually our understanding of the Jewish people. However, it is also an internal matter.
The second thing that Nostra Aetate established is that the Church officially condemns anti-Semitism as incompatible with its own nature and own Jewish roots. The council declared publicly that anti-Semitism is at all times incompatible with the Catholic faith.
Of course, defining anti-Semitism is a somewhat complicated matter. Some follow the IHRA definition, which views criticism of the state of Israel's justification to exist as antisemitic. Many institutions in the West have adopted this definition of antisemitism but it is a controversial one because some Jews and many others believe that Israel is a “colonialist enterprise.” So, condemning antisemitism does not clarify some of the questions on the radar.
Third, the council taught that, “God holds the Jews most dear for the sake of their Fathers; he does not repent of the gifts he makes or of the calls he issues” (Nostra aetate 4). God’s gifts and promises are irrevocable (Romans 11). He does not go back on what he promises. He is faithful, regardless of the people.
This particular theme becomes central to the Church’s understanding of the Jewish people especially with St. John Paul II’s 1980 meeting with representatives of the Jewish community in West Germany. He identifies his audience, contemporary rabbinic Judaism, with the people who have inherited the covenant promises. He identifies them with the biblical Judaism described in the council’s documents.
From 1980 onwards Catholic teaching on the Jewish people goes into fast forward. The question becomes, “If this covenant is valid, are there two ways to God.” On the one hand, every document of the Holy See makes it absolutely clear that Jesus Christ is the only way to salvation. On the other hand, it speaks of the legitimate covenant into which the Jewish people have entered.
The most recent document on the matter was issued by the Commission for Religious Relations with Jews to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of Nostra aetate: “The Gifts and Calling of God are Irrevocable” (2015). Though it does not have magisterial authority, it comes up with a very interesting statement (n. 36): “That the Jews are participants in God’s salvation is theologically unquestionable, but how that can be possible without confessing Christ explicitly, is and remains an unfathomable divine mystery.” It is referring to the same mystery as Paul in Romans 9-11.
We may be able to interpret this remarkable statement using the Church’s teaching on implicit faith, which goes back to Thomas Aquinas and the Fathers. In their true worship, the Jewish people is always teleologically oriented toward Christ.
Of course, Jews find this offensive. As one friend put it, “So now you accept us because you think we are anonymous Christians.”
“No,” I replied, “Each human’s goal is to be, collectively and individually, united with the Triune God.” Anonymousness is not what the Catholic Church is about. When we Catholics talk of “God” and “grace” we are talking about Christ and the Holy Spirit: the Triune God.
Some more radical theologians argue that we need to step back and recognise Judaism's own autonomous path towards God: that there should be no witness or mission to the Jewish people because they are already in a relationship with the living, true God. It is difficult to hold this minority position, even though some push it strongly, because it does not have any biblical or theological foundation. Mission and witness are the Church’s whole raison d’être. The crucial question is how one conducts that mission and bears witness. It will be peculiar and particular to each religious group.
There are many other interesting elements here, such as issue of the interpretation of Scripture. The 2015 document makes an interesting point. While Jews and Christians share the Hebrew Bible, each reads it through a further interpretative layer. We read it through Christological and ecclesiological spectacles as the Old Testament. The New Testament interprets the Old, according to Augustine’s favourite and famous adage. Something analogous occurs within Judaism itself. It relies not only on the Bible but also on the oral tradition. There is the written Torah and the oral Torah. The latter is the development of the rabbinic tradition and constitutes a further interpretative layer. add-on.
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This leads to a fascinating question. If we both drink from the same water, the Old Testament, might we learn about God and his through Jewish exegesis? Rabbinic exegesis is incredibly sophisticated in its attention to the words, their grammar, and symbolism. This is not to say that the Jewish tradition has the status of an unfolding Revelation. However, it may shed lend on the Revelation it regards. Hopefully we can learn a lot by reading the Bible together and seeing how it is deployed in each of our traditions.
Two more very important elements have come out.
The other issue for many Jews is the question of the land. If God’s gifts, covenant, and promises are irrevocable, it is clear from the Old Testament that the land is one of those gifts. What then do Catholics have to say about the particular significance of the land in God's unfolding revelation. This is a very interesting issue for obvious political reasons, but also for Jewish self-definition.
In 2002, the Pontifical Biblical Commission addressed The Jewish People and their Sacred Scriptures in the Christian Bible. This remarkable document, which should be read more widely, contains a section on the land (nn. 56-57).
There, it points out that, while at the historical critical level God certainly promises the land, there are complexities in interpreting it. Where are the boundaries of that land? Under which conditions is it given? What should we make of the murder or destruction of the local inhabitants when Israel arrives?
Then the document shows that there two ways of reading the New Testament teachings on the land promised. One is that the promise is fulfilled in Christ: the land is no longer to be understood literally. A second reading holds that the land is still important and has a role for the return of Jesus. Israel is given the land so that the nations will come to worship the Jewish God. The document leaves the question open. If we take this emerging and developing teaching seriously, we Catholics need to answer this question.
First, this is one of the questions that Jews ask about most often. Second, it is a difficult, explosive question and we should always follow where Revelation leads. Third, it has an ecumenical dimension because large Protestant traditions, especially in the United States, are connected with this question.
Is Christian Zionism the movement within American Protestantism to which you are referring?
Yes. There are different forms of Chrisitan Zionism. The most uncomfortable form, of which Catholics are very suspicious and critical, sees in effect a one-to-one match between contemporary Israel and strands of biblical Revelation. Therefore, it lends unconditional and uncritical support to the State of Israel in the belief that this serves God’s plan for bringing in the end of the world.
However, other forms of Christian Zionism are much closer to what a certain Catholic Zionism could look like.
Putting that aside, the nature of the covenant is the other issue that is very important for Jews and Catholics.
Do Jews who become Catholic simply bid farewell to their religious and ethnic culture? Until the twentieth century, the answer was pretty much that they should push their religious and ethnic background to the side and become gentilised. However, Jesus, Mary, and his disciples follow Jewish rituals and prayers. We still use Jewish liturgical texts: the Psalms and the books of the Old Testament. So, what role is there for Jewish self-identity in the Catholic Church?
The 2015 document, a landmark reflection on Nostra Aetate and how far we have come, speaks of how the distinction between the Church of the Gentiles and the Church of the Circumcision is both a qualitative and quantitative definition of the Church: quantitatively, this is not a big deal, but qualitatively it describes the nature of the Church.
This is quite a remarkable point. Fifty years from now, certain shifts that allow us to see the significance of this more clearly.
Another very significant question is the Jewish nature of the Catholic Church.
Hopefully, this does not derail much of the good relationships that have been built up. Jews who convert to Catholicism, even if they were secular rather than religious Jews, are considered apostates and so do not have the right to return to Israel, under the state’s current laws.
This is quite a controversial point. Certain Jews who have been honoured at Yad Vashem and were very important in the struggle against the Holocaust, were Jews who became Catholics. A famous one is Oswald Rufeisen. A Jew himself, after helping many Jews escape the Nazis in Europe, he became Brother Daniel, a Carmelite priest. When he applied for Israeli citizenship, he was refused. He took his case to the Supreme Court of Israel, which ruled that he was an apostate and technically had lost his rights as a Jew. Potentially, this was quite scandalous. It is okay to be a Jewish Buddhist, atheist, or Marxist and claim the right to return to Israel. So, this ruling of the Supreme Court is an important issue both politically and for the Church in Israel, which has Jewish Catholics.
“Christ, the Church, and its liturgy subsume all that is good and true in Israel, transforming it in Christ. That transformation though is not an erasure of what is good and true in Israel."
You mentioned how there is a small community of Jewish Catholics who continue to celebrate certain Jewish rites. However, the Mass and the Paschal mystery are the fulfilment of the Passover celebration. To what extent are the Jewish rituals of the Old Covenant subsumed within the sacraments and liturgy of the Church?
Both are true. This is a brilliant question. It goes back to the heart of the controversy in Acts 15.
Some of the disciples claimed that a Gentile who came to follow Jesus needed to undergo circumcision, enter the Jewish community, and observe kosher laws. The Gentiles objected that they could follow Christ without doing all that. So, a controversy arose.
There was a meeting between the groups advocating each position. It came up with a very important solution. First, the Jews who were following Jesus could keep all these rules and laws on the condition that there was table fellowship: in Christ, everyone comes together to eat the special, blessed meal of celebration. Second, the Church imposed on the Gentiles minimal laws about refraining from idolatry and only eating meat that had undergone proper ritual cleaning. This was very important because the Levitical law required that any Gentile living in Israel must undertake these commitments.
This begins to answer to your question. Yes, Christ, the Church, and its liturgy subsume all that is good and true in Israel, transforming it in Christ. That transformation though is not an erasure of what is good and true in Israel.
A teaching emerges at the Council of Florence and later: Jewish rituals are permissible provided that those performing them do not see them as in any way necessary for salvation. They cannot deny the sole efficacy of Christ. They cannot set up themselves up as a separate group that does not share table fellowship.
In one sense, you are right to say that all Gentile Catholics are required to do with regard to their Jewish heritage is acknowledge, as the popes have taught, that we are spiritual Semites. However, as a Gentile Catholic, I can understand my liturgical texts and my prayers more deeply by attending to that heritage.
The question is whether Jews are called to live in the same way when they become Catholics. The answer to that goes back to the Church of the Circumcision and the Church of the Gentiles.
Some feel that maintaining Jewish rituals is a denial of the transformation that Christ brings. I don't think that it is. To draw a slight ethnic analogy, I am an Indian who became Catholic at birth. My experience of Catholicism was a very Latin, Western European one. I love it and am grateful for it. I visited India for the first time when I was about 15 and was struck that, until then, I had never encountered a Catholic liturgy that reflected my Indian background and traditions. So, the issue of Jewish Catholics is also one of enculturation to some extent, with one difference. In his wonderful encyclical Faith and Reason, John Paul II makes it clear that, while we must accept the patrimony of the Church as providential, this does not close the door to other cultures and traditions. This is true about me as an Indian. However, it is not true about Jews, who are the root of the Church itself.
Over the centuries, some Christians and even bishops have been guilty of animosity towards Jews. Has the official teaching of the Church ever condoned such anti-Semitism?
We need to be very clear about what counts as official teaching.
Various councils took discriminatory action against Jews. They decreed that Jews should reside in a particular part of town, wear identification, and not walk the streets during Easter.
Importantly, as the context shows, some of these actions were not straightforwardly discriminatory but meant to protect the Jewish community from attacks. For example, the main attacks on Jewish communities occurred at Easter.
The canons of the councils are not always doctrinal teachings and have a complex history.
Has the Church formally sanctioned discriminatory behaviour towards Jews? At the level of individual bishops and countries, yes. At the level of its universal teaching, no. In fact, the popes have one of the best records of protecting Jews from virulent anti-Semitic attacks by Catholics. I am not claiming that they have a clean sheet or that we should be proud. However, they do have a clean sheet at the level of their official universal magisterium.
It is important to establish this point. Some young Catholics, feel that Vatican II’s teaching on the Jews overturns tradition. It does not, even though it certainly overturns some elements that have existed in the Catholic Church. Formally, however, it does not overturn or question any magisterial teaching. In a sense, it simply goes back to Scripture.
So, it overturns bad theological opinions or theories, but not the Church's actual teaching.
Yes, and does so in several other fields, such as the questions of religious freedom, usury, or the death penalty. As Newman points out, there can be an evolution in Church doctrine provided the basic core principles are kept intact in that development. We need to constantly keep an eye on the tradition and return to Scripture to make sure such developments are organic and rooted in the soundest theology.
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Despite the horrors of the Holocaust, anti-Semitism is still around, even among some Christians. Is there anything the Church can do to inoculate the faithful against both old and new strands of antisemitism?
This mention of inoculation reminds me of how we were given injections for the various strands of COVID.
To be frank, antisemitism in very active in some parts of our body as a Catholic Church. In Poland for example—and I say this with great respect and love for the Polish people—there is a resurgence of Catholic antisemitism out of a fear that the country and its tradition is being changed and liberalized.
In my biased view as an educationalist, I believe that we need educate Catholics at all levels, especially the clergy, to inoculate them against antisemitism.
Educating the clergy is important because most people encounter Scripture through hearing it exposed at church. In my experience of traveling around the world, you get antisemitism from the pulpit a lot, without it being intentional. The priest is simply working with old biblical scholarship. For example, it is very interesting to listen to sermons dealing with the Pharisees, who are mentioned very often in the Gospels. Some priests are stuck in a time warp and depict all Pharisees as the ones who oppose Jesus and his new teaching.
To inoculate seminarians, deacons, religious or anyone who has a teaching role, we need to make sure that the formal teachings of the Catholic Church and their biblical foundations are communicated to them during their training and that they see this as an instance of the Church, not going soft, but grappling with its background.
The second important thing, and it is taking place for example in the Pontifical University of St. Thomas in Rome, is to have some Jewish teachers for the seminarians.
Many of my students in Rome are from the Middle East, Africa, or Eastern Europe, and have never met a Jew. Demographically, this is not surprising. It is wonderful therefore to have a Jewish teacher come in and teach about Jewish Scripture or, as happened recently, the Jewish tradition’s views on Jesus. The students can meet and converse with actual Jews who have a profound faith and a deep knowledge of Christianity.
A third and final thing is friendship. It is very difficult to be prejudicial against a group if you meet some of its members and they do not conform to your prejudices.
As a student, I used to hitchhike in the UK. Often, a lorry driver would give me a ride. Sometimes, he would start complaining about the Indians living in such-a-such an area. Eventually, if the climate was right, I would mention that I am Indian. He would reply, “Yeah, but not you.” The point is that meeting and talking to me helped break down the stereotype. A word of warning. Sometimes, meeting members of a certain group can enhance the stereotype and build up new walls. I am not being rosy-eyed. This is a complicated matter. However, contact is very important for creating sensibility in this area.
Your research has focused on the theology of religions. However, much of your recent work has focused on Judaism rather than non-revealed religions. Is this by happenstance or a response to specific debates?
My doctoral work was on a Hindu philosopher, indeed Hinduism and Christianity. So, my first books engaged with Catholics and Hindus. The theology of religions was very important to me. I was a specialist, not in Hinduism, but in the theological reflection on Hinduism. This interest goes back to my Indian roots.
The seed of my interest in Judaism was planted some forty-five years ago when I was in Israel for a course at Yad Vashem, the Museum of the Holocaust. I was the only Catholic in a group of twenty-three Jews. As I got to know them, and particularly after the tutor began a open meeting for them to talk to me about Catholic theology, I became aware that they felt Catholicism was the main oppressor of their people and had very deep anger toward Catholics. However, things changed when they met me, the first Catholic with whom they had talked about these things. This alerted me to the issue.
Upon returning to the UK, I went to the Jewish Christian Forum but was disappointed. It was full of liberal Christians who seemed to water down their faith to accommodate Judaism. To be nice to Jews, they denigrated some of our beliefs about Jesus Christ. The entrenched liberalism from both Jews and Christians put me off back then. Things have changed since then.
I came to Judaism again was when I was writing a book on Vatican II’s teachings on other religions. Suddenly, I realised something I had never noticed. On the one hand, there was the the internal dimension. On the other, here is another religious tradition where Revelation exists.
My 2014 book was about Vatican II’s teaching Jews and Muslims. I uncovered so much in my research that I decided to write a second volume on the Jewish people in the teachings of the Church since Vatican II. This coincided with meetings with more Jews who were interested in conversations, not with liberal Christians, but with orthodox Catholics, so as to discuss some of these issues properly. It was a grace to meet several Jewish people who were not just great conversational partners but also knew about Catholicism. As a result, I began to learn more about Judaism.
Then I began to teach at the Angelicum. It had partnerships with Jewish groups, which I have been developing.
I thank God for this late but providential calling and for the friendships it has bought. I thank the Angelicum for supporting this as a sort of flagship project: for engaging with these questions seriously from a traditional, orthodox, and even a Thomistic perspective.
I shall probably end my career in this track because there are still quite a few things that I wish to think about and time is moving on.
Looking back, this is strange. I never thought I would end up where I am. When I first broached the issue, I was very disappointed by the liberal theological culture that surrounded it. Things have changed since then.
I shall keep working on the theology of religions and touch on Islam, partly because of my 2014 book and because, living in London, Rome, Jews and Muslims are the two religious groups that occupy the screen much of the time. It is important for the Church to think through its very complicated response to them, doctrinally, socially, and politically.
1.
The first book is the one you have just mentioned, your study of Vatican II's teachings on Jews and Muslims. You have already touched upon what Nostra aetate and Lumen gentium taught on the subject. Is there anything more to add about Vatican II's teaching?
Simply this. People often look at the councils as if they provide definitive teachings. On some issues, they do, but on this matter, Vatican II was merely opening a series of doors for further exploration. This led to me write the next book.
In a remarkably prophetic and prophetic way, the council left an agenda for the Church with regard to Islam and Judaism. It pointed out what we can share and hold together. Now we are finding out what we cannot share and what divides us. This is deeply problematic but necessary for good, mature relationships. The council was a launch pad for a movement, which has had crises, difficulties, and even gone down some wrong paths. What could one expect other than that? However, the Catholic Church is at the forefront of the theology connected with these two traditions.
Was it a misstep to discuss the Church’s relation to the Jewish people and to Muslims in the same declaration, Nostra aetate? After all, God made an irrevocable covenant with Israel, whereas Islam is not a true religion in the technical sense of the term.
It was a providential mistake because the document on the Jews would have never happened had it been on the Jewish people alone, as was originally intended.
Comments on Muslims were amalgamated into the declaration because the Middle Eastern Christians and many Arab governments were very hostile to anything positive being said about the Jews. During the sixties, much like today, the situation in the Middle East was very tense.
Paul VI had to deal with this headache. He realised that the only way to get the document through was to connect it with Islam. Some council fathers then called for Hinduism and Buddhism to be addressed. The Africans asked that their religious traditions be addressed as well.
Your question is a very significant one. Judaism is not another religion in the way others are. This was reflected in the organisation of the Holy See. At the time of the council, a Secretariat for Non-Christian religions was set up. Jews were excluded from its brief. Instead, the Secretariat for Christian unity dealt with religious relations with the Jewish people and this continues to be the case. This attests to their unique position and role.
Several official documents issued since the council have reiterated that Judaism has a unique dimension and is not to be understood as another religion.
This was a recognition that the council had made a mistake to get Nostra aetate through, but a providential one. A providential mistake is better than a terrible mistake. It would have been a terrible mistake if there had been no declaration on the Jewish people.
I believe that the next council, whenever that may be, will distinguish Judaism from other religions very clearly. Judaism is not just another religion. To think of it as such actually creates problems within the theology of religions. Karl Rahner is the foremost exponent of this line of thought, according to which whatever is true of Judaism may also be true of Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and so forth. But Judaism is not like them. These other religious traditions belong to a different category.
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Does your interpretation of Nostra aetate differ in any way from the standard scholarly consensus?
Maybe in one respect.
When I started my work on Nostra Aetate, I was convinced that Islam was a natural religion. Then, I started reading the debates Islam that were carried out on the council floor and the drafting committee, and about Louis Massignon’s influence on Paul VI and two of the drafters of Nostra aetate. I began to realize that maybe something else was going on. Why was the council talking about the so-called Abrahamic origins of Islam? Both Lumen gentium and Nostra aetate mention that Muslims trace their origins back to Abraham while also making it clear that the Church disagrees with them over this. Still, the council brings up the connection with Abraham, which was very central to Massignon's view.
The other point is that Lumen Gentium speaks of how they adore and worship same God as we do. This assertion was taken verbatim from Paul VI's address in Bethlehem.
This is where my interpretation of the council’s very tentative and unclear train of thought comes in. Is it possible that Islam contains elements of Revelation, insofar as the Quran, which is not authoritative per se, is dependent on textual and oral traditions of the Old Testament and New Testament traditions that were circulating in Arabia? If that is the case, certain elements of the Quran’s description of God may derive from supernatural Revelation, not just natural theology.
This is a contested reading. Some scholars follow it, others do not. I have still not reached a decision over it and may not need to. However, the Church needs to think this matter through and which direction it should take.
Otherwise, my reading of Lumen gentium and Nostra aetate is straightforward and, I hope, fully in keeping with the Church’s understanding of these documents.
“When Catholics talk with Jews, they are talking about and reflecting on themselves."
2.
In the next book, you survey the Church’s post-conciliar teaching on the Jewish people. Have there been any developments in the Church’s teaching since Nostra aetate?
There has at different levels of the magisterium, whether in encyclicals or addresses. Papal addresses carry less weight and binding authority than encyclicals but show the direction of a pope’s teaching.
St. John Paul II did much to develop the momentum of Nostra aetate. My book looks closely at him and at the documents of the Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews. Though an organ of the Holy See, the commission’s documents do not have the same authority as a papal teaching. It is also necessary to look at the writings of theologians, but they have no magisterial authority.
This follow-up book describes how the Catholic Church is moving quite fast in thinking about its relationship with the Jewish people but not in a conclusive way. It focuses on the hot potato issues: the mission to the Jewish people, the land, the ways in which Judaism has understood within the tradition, and the Church has made a U-turn on these matters.
The biggest of the new questions regards the Jewish nature of the Church. This aspect has come into greater clarity. It is no secret that for many years now the Holy See has been in conversation with Messianic Jews. This has been kept quiet because it would be upsetting to the conversation with mainstream Jews. However, the Messianic Jews are important because the issue of Jewish Catholics is important. The Dicastery for the Doctrine of Faith is responsible for this conversation.
This issue is the prime one and needs much further exploration.
The second one is to determine what authority the teachings and oral tradition of the rabbis have. It is quite fascinating and important that official documents and speeches of the popes that are addressed to Jews have started citing rabbinic sources to clarify or underline what the Church is saying. The implications of this need to be discovered.
Of course, with the Israel-Gaza war still with us, the question of just war and its application to the present conflict is important, partly because there is anti-Semitism, but also because the Holy See has supported of the rights of Palestinians. This makes for a very difficult conversation, but one which from which Catholics cannot refrain and which is central to the future of our relationships with the Jewish people. We need to face the issue of the Jewish state, reflect on it theologically, while also promoting justice and peace.
3.
In From Rome to Sinai, you and Angela Costley aim to recover “the Jewish dimensions of the Gospel and the Church so that Catholicism may recover its full ecclesial dimensions as consisting of Jews and gentiles under the Messiah of Israel.” What exactly do we need to recover.
We need to recover the fact that our Lord was a Jewish teacher, operating within Jewish traditions, and Israel's Messiah. Hearing that, most Catholics might say, “Yes, we know all that.” To some extent, we do; to some extent, we don't.
By working on this subject over the last ten years, my daily prayers, the saying of the Office, or being at Mass have become a different experience. Every time I pray the Psalms, I recognise that I am connected with another religious community that is praying them and seeing them in the same way. I keep hearing echoes from that community. Because I have friends who are Jews, I am also beginning to understand how the longings of the Jewish people were met in Jesus but also how he upsets the apple cart deeply. Who wants a Messiah who is a political or social loser and ends up on a cross? It was such a dramatic move to call such a person the Messiah of Israel given the mainstream anticipations at the time. But at Christmas, as we listen to Isaiah, we get a sense of the Jewish people coming to terms with interpreting the Messiah in this way.
From Sinai to Rome is a process of keeping the Catholic faith, a universal faith, absolutely central to our self-understanding. However, that universality is grounded in the particularity of Sinai, the elected Jewish people, and the person of Jesus.
This book, which Angela and I edited, is a collection of essays by a group of scholars. Angela is a Jewish Catholic. I am a Gentile Catholic.
Anyone reading this book will just be wonderfully surprised at what it is saying: that our, wonderful tradition is even more wonderful if we dig into it, appreciate its richness, and rejoice at its complexity. There are many more questions to be answered, but it opens some doors onto the important question that are coming up now. When Catholics talk with Jews, they are talking about and reflecting on themselves.
“It is not that the Gentiles have now universalised Israel. Rather, the Gentiles have been grafted onto Israel so that the nations might inherit its promises."
You just mentioned the need to maintain the catholicity of the faith. According to some readings, the New Testament, or at least of some of its books, tells the story of how Jesus makes Israel universal. He brings the Davidic Kingdom to its fulfilment, making it encompass both Jews and Gentiles and extending it to the ends of the earth. In a sense, he catholicises Israel. Therein consists the catholicity of the Church. For Christians, Israel, in the theological sense, finds fulfilment in the Church, not a particular state. Is that correct?
Yes. It would be idolatrous to see the state as a fulfilment. The issue is that the Church’s universality is never undercut by particularity. Jesus was a Jewish man. This particularity of his being a male is central to the Church’s understanding of the priesthood and the Eucharistic sacrifice. Such a particularity does not just evaporate.
My concern is that we have not always taken into sufficient account the particularity of its Jewishness. This does not mean that you need to be Jewish to be saved or in the Church, just as Christ’s reserving the priesthood for men does not impede women from being in the Church. The inclusivity and universality of the Church are grounded in particularity.
That particularity is not simply about Judaism per se. It has to do with Catholicism per se and its own roots.
Paul is very clear that the Gentiles have been grafted onto Israel. It is not that the Gentiles have now universalised Israel. Rather, the Gentiles have been grafted onto Israel so that the nations might inherit its promises. If you say that they have inherited those promises from Jesus Christ and you leave out the Jewish dimension, you leave out some of the particularity upon which the Church is based.
4 & 5
The next two books are collections of papers that you have co-edited on Catholic and Jewish perspectives on the state of Israel. They broach an issue that stands between theology and politics. Zionism can be construed as a purely political project. It can also be construed as a political goal that has a theological justification, whether Jewish or Christian. While the Holy See recognises the state of Israel, its legitimacy, and the need for a Jewish homeland, it does not appear to endorse a Christian Zionism. It does not view the state of Israel as a necessary stage in salvation history. Rather its position on Israel appears to be underpinned by considerations of international law. Is that an accurate assessment?
That is a totally accurate assessment. I would add a post scriptum. The exchange of diplomatic relations in Fundamental Agreement Between the Holy See and the State of Israel (1993) is based on international law and the rights of a people to nationhood. However, the first line of the charter is very interesting. In it, the Holy See acknowledges the religious dimensions of Israel. This remark is left totally ambiguous. That is the point. Rome is not in the business of giving religious status to nations. That would be a weird and crazy thing to do. However, John Paul II was the first but not the last pope to see in the Jewish homeland signs of God's providential care. The term “signs of God's providential care” was used by John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and the Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews. This is a clear attempt to distinguish this affirmation of it as a religious reality from Christian Zionism, which has fused politics and religion together in a way that's problematic and uncomfortable.
I am trying to tease this out in the two books you mentioned. The first book, edited with Faydra Shapiro, brings together Catholic theologians to reflect on the matter. In it, a minimalist Catholic Zionism emerges. The second book is an attempt to test that thesis in conversation with Jews. The majority of the contributors to the first book are not Catholic Zionists. Some argue quite strongly that the Church can affirm Israel on the basis of international and natural law, but not in any other way.
Pope Benedict is the best at getting to the nub of the issue: the Catholic Church cannot affirm any understanding of Israel as a messianic state or the fulfilment of the religious tradition of the Jews. He adds, however, that we cannot deny that the establishment of the State of Israel may be part of God's providential care for his people. Theology and politics do intersect. The danger is to freeze a political configuration and divinize it. The path of Catholic Zionism, if it exists, is to find the space between divinizing Israel, which is what has happened with the Christian Zionism of certain American evangelicals, and recognizing that Israel may be a sign of the times. It may be a sign of the return of the Jewish people to the land. Moreover, more Jews in Israel are coming into the Church.
6
You have recommended a couple of additional books. The first is Israel: A Christian Grammar. In it, Paul Griffiths argues that Israel includes both the synagogue and the Church. Do you agree with that thesis?
I agree with it in this respect: the 2015 document from the Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews is very explicit that the Church is in engagement with rabbinic Judaism and also in an internal conversation with its own Jewish element, and that this is the reality of one covenantal community recognising another.
Reading Paul Giffiths’s book is a remarkable experience, partly because of his manner of writing.
Where I disagree strongly is with his argument that, given the reality of Israel, the Church can never act in such a way that it presents Jesus Christ to Jews as their fulfilment.
That doesn't seem to be what St Paul did.
Right. However, Paul Griffiths’ argument comes from a different angle and needs to be heard. He is not claiming that Jews do not need to come to Jesus. Rather, his argument is a delicate one. If the Church simply says this it is not showing the depth of repentance required on account of its history. To push a metaphor that Griffiths does not use, it would be like a child abuser inviting the abused child out for dinner (and I am not implying that Israel is a kid). Griffiths is saying that the Church does not have the right to make these claims because of what has been done historically.
I am sympathetic to his argument, but Judaism is not a frozen reality. I meet young Jews who are not hung up with Christian antisemitism and are quite comfortable about talking to Christians in a way that older Jews, for whom this history is more vivid, are maybe not.
Nevertheless, Paul Griffiths’s book is worth reading because he thinks through the most difficult questions. I disagree with him on that matter, but I think it's a prophetic book because it's trying to recognize that if Israel is still God's beloved, as the Church teaches, then actually Israel comprises both the Church and Jewish people. We cannot get around that. This insight is enshrined in the council.
Reading a summary of the book, another thing that struck me as problematic is Griffiths’ assertion about the best working assumption for Christians: that Jews are in general more intimate with God than Christians. I can grant that there are aspects in which they are more intimate with God than Gentile Christians simply because Jesus was a Jew. Nevertheless, Griffith’s working assumption seems to undervalue the greater intimacy with God that Christians have through their belief in the Trinity, their incorporation in Christ, and the Eucharist. Have I misread Griffiths and what he is trying to get at?
I am not sure entirely if Paul Griffiths wants to say that a Christian’s intimacy God is less than a Jew’s intimacy. As I understand, he is trying to say that by virtue of election, a there is something almost co-natural to a Jew’s intimacy that a Gentile need to burrow into. He is working out what it means to be the elect and the chosen, which is central to the biblical promise.
I share your concern about the direction of his argument, because it could be misleading for Catholics and for Jews learning about what Catholics think.
7
Finally, there's Father Antoine Levy's Jewish Church. In it, he debates Mark S. Kinser's proposal of a messianic Judaism. What is messianic Judaism and is it compatible with the faith?
Messianic Judaism is a movement that began in Protestant churches. It has two elements.
One comprises Jews who follow Jesus Christ and see him as the Messiah and Saviour but who resist entering into the Gentile churches established with Catholic faith because they feel they will be swallowed up and their Jewishness will be lost.
Another type of messianic Judaism developed from the Protestant tradition, mainly in the US, to evangelize Jews. It might involve Gentiles adopting messianic adopting Jewish ways of worship and practice to plant local communities.
Mark Kinser belongs to the first group. He is a Jew who takes his Jewishness very seriously. He is also very uncomfortable about becoming a member of, say, the Catholic Church, the one with which he has the longest history and most intimate knowledge. He wants to remain Jewish and follow Jesus.
My answer to him is that you can remain Jewish and be Catholic through this developing view of Hebrew Catholicism.
In this regard, Antoine Levy is one of the most important figures. His book, Jewish Church, puts forward a thesis.
Is Messianic Judaism compatible with Catholicism? No, in that Catholicism demands universal table fellowship as the bottom line. I can go to Mass anywhere in the world and not be told that I cannot eat with that community. This is what it means to be one body. Fr. Levy criticises Messianic Judaism because its concept of the Church is not catholic enough. You cannot have full unity if there is a community that doesn't accept the Petrine authority.
Mark Kinser is a good friend of mine and I am always taken by the fact that he says he would love to be in full communion with the Catholic Church but that it would not allow him to be a Jew in the way he is.
Nevertheless, an interesting conversation is going on between Hebrew Catholics, Messianic Jews, and our own Catholic authorities. There is a recognition that Messianic Jews contain something of the early Church's authenticity but lacks its fullness because it has not taken the step to universalness. I see them as a positive sign of the vibrancy of Jewish following of Jesus. They are entirely compatible with the Catholic Church if they came within it and accepted the authority of the Magisterium. It is incompatible movement as long as it stays outside. We need to converse with it to find full unity. Full unity is much more possible in this case because they accept Jesus as Lord and Saviour.
Some Messianic Jews have a problem with the doctrine of the Trinity because of its Greek conceptualisation. However, one finds that, when pushed, they have a clear doctrine of the divine authority of Jesus and the Holy Spirit.
I strongly recommend Fr. Levy’s book because he answers in detail what it might be to be a Jewish Catholic. He is a Dominican priest and based in Jerusalem. His is probably the most important book of the ones we have discussed. It points to a future that we have only begun to think about.
