An Unusual Relationship

Evangelical Christians and Jews

Yaakov Ariel

• Publisher: NYU Press
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9780814764657
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christianity

Itis generally accepted that Jews and evangelical Christians have little incommon. Yet special alliances developedbetween the two groups in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Evangelicalsviewed Jews as both the rightful heirs of Israel and as a group who failed torecognize their true savior. Consequently, they set out to influence the courseof Jewish life by attempting to evangelize Jews and to facilitate their returnto Palestine. Their double-edged perception caused unprecedented political,cultural, and theological meeting points that have revolutionizedChristian-Jewish relationships. An Unusual Relationship explores thebeliefs and political agendas that evangelicals have created in order to affectthe future of the Jews. Additionally, it analyses Jewish opinions and reactionsto those efforts, as well as those of other religious groups, such as ArabChristians. Thisvolume offers a fascinating, comprehensive analysis of the roots,manifestations, and consequences of evangelical interest in the Jews, and thealternatives they provide to conventional historical Christian-Jewishinteractions. It also provides a compelling understanding of Middle Easternpolitics through a new lens.

1

The Roots and Early Beginnings of the
Evangelical-Jewish Relationship

The evangelicals’ interest in the Jews, the role they ascribe to that people in history, and their understanding of the relationship between Judaism and Christianity have roots that go back as far as the early generations of Christianity. Evangelical relations to the Jews, however, have also departed in meaningful ways from more traditional Christian perceptions of who the Jews are and what that people’s position is in God’s plans for humanity. One should look for the beginnings of evangelical attitudes toward the Jews among Protestant groups in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that emphasized a literal reading of the Christian Bible and advocated a new understanding of the Jews and their role in history. Some of the parameters of the evangelical-Jewish relationship were spelled out at that time.

The Protestant reformers reevaluated the Christian position toward the Jews, at times following traditional Christian perceptions and at other times questioning them, making up their minds anew on Judaism and its position vis-à-vis Christianity, as well as on Jews as sojourners in Christian societies. They took a renewed interest in the Jews and in the Hebrew Bible: a number of them, including Martin Luther himself, participated, at least to some degree, in the Hebraist tradition of the Renaissance and at times developed an appreciation of postbiblical Jewish texts.

While Protestants adopted the Roman Bible, both the Old and New Testaments, as their sacred scriptures, they produced their own translations and interpretations of the biblical texts and gradually gave up on parts of the Catholic sacred canon. By the eighteenth century the Protestant Old Testament came to resemble the Jewish Tanakh, since most Protestants had removed from this first part of their sacred canon the books that the Jews had not included in their canon, such as the books of Judith or the Maccabees.¹ This would prove significant for evangelical-Jewish relations, since, when approaching Jews, evangelical Christians would point to a mutual sacred text as a basis for a theological discussion.

Likewise, Protestants gave up on the adoration of Mary and the saints, whom they saw as redundant mediating elements, and eliminated much of the traditional iconography and priestly vestments. They turned the Roman Eucharist, in which the sacrifice of Jesus had been reenacted, into the more symbolic Lord’s Supper. Theologically, the boldest Protestant move was to give up on the idea of the priesthood and the sacramental system as necessary mediating elements between God and the faithful, replacing it with the idea that Christians could be justified before God on their own with no need for the mediating role of the church.² Likewise, Protestants declared that Scripture alone was authoritative, denying the authority of institutions and traditions that had developed throughout the Middle Ages. These new choices and understandings also enabled evangelicals to present their theology, liturgy, and environment as Jewish-friendly and compatible with Jewish understandings and styles.

However, the Protestant cultural heritage was that of Western Christian societies of the Middle Ages and the early modern era. The cultural baggage from those times strongly affected the initial evangelical relation to the Jews. While some Protestant and later evangelical theological attitudes were innovative, Protestant feelings toward the Jews were often shaped by traditional Christian teachings and popular Christian European images that portrayed the Jews as greedy, cowardly, dangerous, and diabolical.³ Evangelical thinkers would change their theological positions on the Jews, developing more appreciative understandings of the Jewish people and their role in history, but as an examination of their opinions of Jews would show, this did not necessarily mean giving up all at once on the cultural Christian stereotypes of Jews that had endured for many generations.

While many Protestants continued to agree with the traditional Christian claim that Christianity had inherited God’s covenant with Israel, many did not. It was within the ranks of Protestantism, both in the radical left wing of the Reformation and among a number of mainline thinkers, that a new appreciation developed toward the Jews. While their perspective retained some elements of anger and bitterness, such Protestants often looked upon the Jews of their generation as heirs to the covenant between God and Israel and as objects of biblical prophecies about a restored Davidic kingdom in the Land of Israel. In their relation to the Jews, these segments of the Reformation served as the forerunners of contemporary evangelical Christians.

In general, Reformed, pietist, and Puritan thinkers who were forerunners of evangelicals developed mixed feelings toward the Jews: both anger and appreciation, both hopes for the national revival of the Jews and claims that the Jews, by their refusal to accept Jesus, had halted the redemption of humanity. Even thinkers who on the whole expressed positive opinions on Jews found it difficult to shake off commonly held stereotypes. Such conflicting expressions would characterize the writings of evangelical thinkers well into the twenty-first century. Their attitudes have been too complex to be classified in the simple categories that late nineteenth-century thinkers established, such as “anti-Semitic” and “philo-Semitic.” In general Judaism and Jews have been more important to Protestant thinkers than to exponents of other brands of Christianity in the modern era. Protestants related to the Jews in strong terms, their understanding of their own tradition depending on defining the role and place of Jews in God’s plans for humanity. For their part, Jews paid attention to Protestant claims: the theological elites of both traditions were well informed about each others’ opinions and publications. The lively exchanges that have taken place between Protestants and Jews have helped both communities define their feelings toward each other, as well as determine the character of their own communities.

Evangelicals have often referred to Martin Luther (1483-1546), the reformer who led much of the early protest against the Roman Church, as a forerunner of a new approach toward the Jews. Luther indeed set some of the parameters of evangelical attitudes. He embodied in his early thought the complex and ambivalent attitudes that would often characterize the initial evangelical relation to the Jews. In the early stages of his career as a reformer, he invested efforts and hopes in inviting Jewish conversions to Christianity and absorbing interested Jewish inquirers into the newly created Protestant society. Luther was initially inspired by Paul’s letter to the Romans, in which the apostle predicted the redemption of the Jews in the fullness of time. He believed that the Jews had been justified in refusing, over the centuries, to convert to Christianity, since the Christian religion they had previously encountered was a corrupted form. He was hopeful that the Jews would join his Protestant Church, which he believed went back to the origins of Christianity, and he looked upon the Hebrew Bible as one of its major sources of authority and inspiration.⁴ Many evangelical missionaries would adopt Luther’s attitude, insisting that there was really no reason for Jews not to accept their version of Christianity.

Jews took notice of the Reformation and its innovations and were actually impressed, although not with the results Luther hoped for. Especially in areas where Protestants were minority groups, Jews were sympathetic to the new community of faith and saw Protestantism as a faith closer to Judaism, and liberated from what they considered to be pagan elements prevailing in other forms of Christianity. Pietist and evangelical missions to the Jews would promote the notion that Protestantism was a purer and friendlier version of Christianity, closer to Judaism. However, as a rule, Jews as a group did not see a reason to adopt Protestantism, and Luther’s attitudes turned hostile when he realized that no major movement of Jewish converts to Protestant Christianity was under way. In his negative sentiments, Luther was not original. Such attitudes reflected Christian European understandings of Jews and Judaism at the time. While pietist and evangelical Protestant thinkers and groups developed more friendly and appreciative attitudes toward the Jews, they too would not be able to free themselves entirely from traditional negative images. As a rule, evangelical Christians would follow in the footsteps of the younger Luther: while often disappointed over the choices Jews had made throughout history, they would invest time, resources, and hope in attempts to approach them and convince them of the truth of the Gospel.

Luther’s opinions were not the only Lutheran ones to affect the way evangelicals would approach the Jews. Some reformers, such as Andreas Osiander (1498-1552), defended the Jews, writing tracts denouncing the “blood libel,” the accusation, originating in western and central Europe in the late Middle Ages, that Jews murdered Christian children to use their blood in rituals.⁵ Denouncing such charges would become routine for evangelicals writing on the Jews. Evangelicals had developed their own complaints about the Jews, but they fought bigotry and discrimination that seemed to them to be based on unsubstantiated defamation. Like evangelicals in years to come, thinkers such as Osiander and Philip Melancthon had to contend with accusations that Protestants were “Judaizing” Christianity, and the need to combat the label Judaizing would occasionally affect evangelical writings as this segment of Protestantism struggled to create an environment that would be inviting to Jews.

In general, the Reformation did not bring about an immediate transformation in popular attitudes toward the Jews. Well until the late twentieth century, most Protestant churches held to replacement theology, the traditional Christian theological understanding that Christians had superseded the Jews as heirs to the covenant between God and Israel and that Jews were cast out on account of their refusal to accept Jesus as their Lord and savior. According to that view, the role of the commandments had come to an end with the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross and his atonement for human sins. Only through faith in Jesus Christ could humans attain justification and salvation. Only if Jews joined the Christian Church and accepted the faith in Jesus they would be morally and spiritually redeemed. While evangelicals would reject replacement theology, they would agree with the traditional Protestant understanding of the purposelessness of the commandments and the need for Jews to accept Jesus as their Lord and savior.

The Reformed tradition, which had developed alongside but separately from the Lutheran tradition, ultimately had a powerful impact on evangelical positions toward the Jews. Reformers of that school, such as Johannes Oecolampadius (1482-1531), Huldrych Zwingli (1484-1531), Martin Bucer (1491-1551), John Calvin (1509-64), and Theodore Beza (1519-1605), developed a more appreciative attitude toward the Jews. Leaders of the Reformed tradition put an even greater emphasis on the Old Testament than Lutheran reformers, viewing it as equal in importance to the New Testament. Their reading of the Hebrew Bible strongly influenced their view of the Jewish people and the role of that people in history, ultimately creating goodwill toward the Jews.⁶

John Calvin, who became the most well-known Reformed theologian, wrote commentaries on a number of books or chapters in the Hebrew Bible, taking special interest in the biblical codices of law as well as in psalms with messianic overtones.⁷ Like Luther’s, Calvin’s thoughts about the Jews vacillated between rejection and appreciation, anger and sympathy. When it suited his arguments, he related to Jewish regulations based on biblical commandments as adequate and commendable, as when he discussed the Sabbath or the prohibition on images.⁸ Less than pleased with the Jewish refusal to accept the Christian tenets of faith, Calvin nonetheless argued that when the Bible spoke about the sinfulness of the Jews it referred to that nation as symbolizing all people. Not only Jews but all humanity stood guilty before the Lord, and what happened to the Jews, he warned his readers, could also happen to the Christians.⁹ Unlike Luther, who believed that the role of the Jewish people, as an entity separate from Christianity, had come to an end, Calvin believed that although God was angry at the Jews they could still be redeemed as a nation.¹⁰ This idea would become a cornerstone of evangelical attitudes. At the same time, Calvin, like other Protestants, was influenced by the historical dispute between Christianity and Judaism. He wrote a dialogue in which he argued with a (probably imaginary) Jewish polemicist. Theodore Beza, Calvin’s heir and continuer in Geneva, expressed more sympathy for the Jews. Like Luther in his early days as a reformer, Beza blamed the Christians for the Jewish refusal to accept the Christian faith. While holding the view that the Jews had been rightly punished by God through their exile and scattering and their subsequent tribulations, he was praying daily for the redemption of that people.

By the seventeenth century, a number of Reformed thinkers developed the understanding that the Jews were not cast out by God but were still, in principle, heirs and continuers of biblical Israel, destined to play an important role in the unfolding of the divine plan of salvation. While often mixed and ambivalent, Reformed attitudes toward the Jews were more positive than traditional Christian understandings of the Jews at the time and marked an improvement in the relation of Christians toward the Jews. For the most part it would be Reformed thinkers in England, Holland, France, and Switzerland, as well as in those parts of the New World where Reformed theology would gain influence, who would express hope for the Jews’ prospect of national restoration and conversion to Christianity.¹¹ A number of Reformed theologians took special interest in the Jews, viewing them as the chosen people, and followed closely developments such as the rise of a large Jewish messianic movement in the mid-seventeenth century, stirred by Shabattai Zvi’s claim to be the Messiah.¹²

Puritans and the Jews

The Reformation in England in the sixteenth century gave rise to groups and ideas that promoted a new outlook on the Jews. Expelled from that country in 1290, Jews lived on in English imagery despite their physical absence. Echoes of long-held negative images would persist for centuries and would eventually play a part in early evangelical conceptions of Jews.¹³ However, the impact of the Reformation, and especially the Reformed tradition, and the Puritan and later on the evangelical messianic faith, would eventually counterbalance the traditional understanding of the Jews and their character. The translation of the Bible into the vernacular had a strong effect on the English Protestant mind, as well as on the English language.¹⁴ The Christian sacred scriptures stirred new eschatological expectations, which became especially prevalent among those influenced by the Reformed tradition. While some thinkers identified the English with Israel and believed that Jerusalem could be built in England, many also paid attention to the prospect of the return of the Jews to Palestine and their conversion to Christianity.¹⁵ Such attitudes began in the late sixteenth century but became more prevalent in the seventeenth century. Thomas Brightman, rector of Hawnes, predicted the conversion of the Jews to Christianity and their restoration to Palestine. Earthly Jerusalem, he believed, would become the center of the universe as well as the center of a world-dominant Christianity.¹⁶ Giles Fletcher, fellow of King’s College, Cambridge, and ambassador of Queen Elizabeth to Russia, expressed his belief in Israel’s future restoration and conversion. Fletcher, who was considered an expert on Russian matters, believed the Tartars to be the ten lost tribes of Israel and included them in his vision for Israel’s conversion. The lawyer Henry Finch published in 1621 The Calling of the Jews, which stirred much attention. Like other Protestants adhering to a Christian messianic faith, Finch insisted that the biblical references to Israel, Judah, Zion, and Jerusalem should be read literally and that the Old Testament prophecies that spoke about the return of Israel to its land were therefore meant for the descendants of Abraham, whom he identified with the Jews of his time.¹⁷ Evangelicals would be strongly influenced by English Reformed theology as well as by the New England Puritan understanding of the Jews.

Premillennialist messianic convictions were popular among the first generations of English settlers in what was to become the United States.¹⁸ The New England Puritans were committed to building a perfect Christian polity in the new land, “a city built upon a hill,” and saw themselves as having entered into a covenant with God, based on their perfect Christian faith and saintly membership.¹⁹ Strongly impressed by the Old Testament narratives and identifying with the biblical Children of Israel, they often referred to their experiences in their new environment in biblical terms, similar to those used in the sacred Jewish and Christian scriptures to describe the Israelites entering Canaan. While they worked to build the kingdom of God in America, their messianic hopes...