Articles
 Justice for All
 Church in Decline
 Striking Similarity
 The Efficacy of Prayer
 Are You Ready for Change?
 A Question of Vocation
 The Challenge of Change
 Elul 24
 Elul 23
 Elul 22

Series [All]
 Administration
 Elul 5777 (9)
 Exploring Translation Theories (25)
 Live Like You Give a Damn
 Memory and Identity
 The Creative Word (19)
 The Cross-Cultural Process (7)
 The Old Testament is Dying
 The Oral Gospel Tradition (4)
 We the People (8)

Archive

Thursday, 28 January 2016

Continuing Validity

Seeing Judaism Anew: Christianity's Sacred Obligation,
Ed. Mary C. Boys, Rowman and Littlefield, 2002
Chapter Jesus as the Universal Saviour, "127-137", page 131

So what were the Roman Catholic theologians going to do about that? Peter Phan points out that while the Cathloic Church has always recognised the special status of Judaism, the claim in "Seeing Judaism Anew" that Jews are in a saving covenant with G-d simply makes things worse and intensifies the theological problem.

The challenge for Roman Catholic theologians, then, is to articulate a coherent and credible Christology and soteriology that both honours the Christian belief in Jesus as the saviour of all humankind and includes the affirmation that Judaism is and remains eternally a "saving covenant with G-d".

This approach, fails to recognise the relationship between Jews and Christians, between the church and the synagogue. Instead, it seems to portray them as two different things for different peoples. It entirely misses the point that Rav Sha'ul makes about the olive tree (in Romans 11) and the One New Man (in Ephesians 2). Gentiles are brought near and made a part of the covenants of grace, not given their own covenant. Most importantly, of course, this approach also completely ignores the existence and status of Jewish believers in Yeshua - who seems to rather spoil the picture.

Posted By Jonathan, 9:00am Comment Comments: 0