An Unjust God?

A Christian Theology of Israel in light of Romans 9–11

Jacques Ellul, Anne Marie Andreasson-Hogg

• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781630874346
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Studies

First-timeTranslation in English- - - The relationship between Christians and Jews has often been very tense, with misunderstandings of Paul's teachings contributing to the problem. Jacques Ellul's careful exegesis of Romans 9-11 demonstrates how God has not rejected Israel. The title is taken from the verse, "Is there some injustice in God?" The answer is a clear "no." God's election simply expanded outward beyond Israel to reach all peoples of the earth. In the end, there will be a reconciliation of Jews and Christians within God's plan of salvation.Written in 1991, three years before Ellul died, An Unjust God? brings a new understanding to a section of Scripture known for its conventional and limited interpretations. One significant feature of the book is Ellul's personal experience of the suffering of Jews under the Nazi regime; and this has direct bearing for the way he links the sufferings of Israel with the sufferings of Jesus. Ellul is then bold enough to say that a major reason why the Jewish people have not accepted Jesus as Messiah is because the Christian Church has not done well to emulate the Jewish Savior of the world.

1

The Unique People

Right from the beginning of the ninth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, Paul strongly and clearly affirms his solidarity with this people. It is very important to emphasize this fact (and we will encounter the same assertion at the beginning of chapter 10) because Paul has traditionally been declared an enemy of the Jews, and his whole theology has been seen to condemn the Jews. As chapter 8 ends in the great joyous proclamation of the love God has shown us in Christ and from which nothing can separate us, Paul says he is full of grief for the sake of his brothers. This may seem very curious, indeed, coming after the assertion that salvation is by grace outside of the Law (which leads Maillot to maintain that the Torah is completely abolished). Paul explains, “I am telling the truth . . . I do not lie . . . ,” and “it is not only ‘my opinion’ that I am here presenting (my conscience is a witness to this); it is the Holy Spirit himself.” In a way he maintains that the following argument is completely vouched for by the Holy Spirit! The Spirit who causes us to address God as Father guarantees that Paul’s grief is sincere and that his great concern is Israel! This grief is at the core of his being. Paul could not have been an “anti-Semite.” Vischer says that it is the very grief of Jesus that is transferred to his apostle, the grief of Jesus weeping over Jerusalem (Luke 19:41–42). Paul maintains that if any further sacrifice is necessary for God’s people to acknowledge Jesus as the Messiah, he is willing to sacrifice himself, to become “anathema,” which means loathed in the strong and religious meaning of the term, rejected from the company of the elect, subject to a herem. He is even ready to be “separated from Christ” (even though a few lines earlier he stated that nothing can separate us from the love of God manifested in Jesus Christ), which is no doubt the utmost limit to which he would go if it could help his people in any way. He, who became obedient by grace, can in no way come to terms with the refusal and rejection of Israel.

If he states such things, it is not to add anything to the sacrifice of Christ or to give himself up for the salvation of his brothers, but he does so in order to affirm that his own obedience must be part of the obedience of his people, almost that it is dependent on the fact that those who did not believe (and have therefore “disobeyed”) must not remain in a state of disobedience! His sense of membership in the people of Israel is so strong and his faithfulness to the election of Israel is so unquestionable that, were they to persevere in this disobedience, then he also would accept his own exclusion from the gospel. And when he claims the Holy Spirit as his witness, it is indeed to affirm that he is not referring to human faithfulness but to this special tie between all Jews as the people of God, which nothing, not even faith in Christ, can sever. It is essential to emphasize this in our time when many Jews, following the spirit of the age, are no longer believers! However, declaring that the Jew who has become a Christian does not cease to be united to his Jewish people also means affirming that the gospel, if it is wholly true, requires complete and wholehearted solidarity between those who disobey and all those who obey! This is a crucial truth in our world! Not only does this prohibit any judgment of non-Christians by Christians, it is, moreover, a question of solidarity: all Christians should feel and declare themselves to be in solidarity with non-Christians! If I am saved, I cannot bear the thought that one single individual might be “damned” and excluded from God’s love. Before God I declare that I am in solidarity with that individual. I do not want to be separated from him on judgment day. No matter what he might do or say, he is my neighbor, and Jesus commanded me to love him as he loved unbelievers . . . The Christian should say with Paul, “I would rather be anathema than see people damned.” We also have the example of Abraham arguing with God to save the sinful people in Sodom (yet finally obeying God and stopping when God told him to)!

The first verses thus have a far-reaching impact1 and are still terribly relevant today. For as Paul proclaims his anguish, he does not make this a personal affair or a family affair (my brothers in the flesh . . .); what he wants to state is “the truth in Christ.” He sees his people in Christ and sees the role and the future of this people in relationship to Christ. Paul does not insist on this nor does he explain it at length for the purpose of presenting us with a gratuitous theological construct. Do not forget that this letter is addressed to the Christians in Rome, who were not well acquainted with the Jewish people and were not converted Jews; therefore, they need complete instruction. In this prophetic role, Paul is not expressing patriotism or ethnic solidarity. Paul is working to unite the church and to explain God’s plan.

Now that he has declared his love for the people of Israel and his faithfulness as an Israelite, Paul will explain who those Jews are. They are not just any people; they have not been excluded since Jesus came. Not at all! First of all, Paul generally speaks of “Jews” but calls them “Israelites” here. With this name, he begins listing their gifts and their uniqueness. Let us remember that at the beginning of this same letter (3:2) he already said that the Israelites were given “the oracles” of God. The oracles are, in practical terms, the words of the promise and of the Law. In our text, he now continues to list the things that make Israel, God’s people unique in the world.

They are called “Israelites” from the wonderful name that was given to Jacob by God and that was passed on to the whole people: this name is their divine qualifier. Once and for all, God tied all the display of his unique divinity to their historical existence (Vischer), and this has not in any way been cancelled. This is their real name, given by God—and we know the importance of naming in Jewish thought. This name designates the whole Being and is the statement of its truth. It shows that in them and with them, God made a covenant with mankind. They have been adopted, says Paul; this does not come from their will or from flesh and blood. Because of their adoption, they are children of grace and not natural children. Their name, their being, their relationship to God have nothing to do with the fact that all men are, in a sense, children of God since all descend from Adam. This does not refer to the “general relationship” between God and men. By insisting on this term “adopted,” Paul means that grace makes them sons of God, for Israel was called “first born of God” (Exod 4:22). Paul means that the only son Jesus did not cancel this divine filial adoption of Israel.

To these adopted sons belongs the glory, the kabod YHWH, which accompanied Israel in its journey through the desert and which filled the Ark of the covenant.

The assertion that the glory of God belongs to them is doubly important. First, let us remember what Paul said at the beginning of his epistle: “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” Unlike all other men, the Jews, although they have sinned, have received this glory and are not deprived of it! I have often put forward one meaning for this glory of God (a bold assertion, one that may be wrong, but I insist on it): I believe the glory means revelation. When Jesus says he glorifies the Father, it means that he reveals him, and when the Father glorifies Jesus, he reveals who this Jesus is. I believe that all other explanations are either meaningless or weak. Consequently, in my opinion, to say that the glory belongs to the Jews means that they are the ones among men who can still reveal the presence of God. Before the revelation of Jesus this was unquestionable, since then it seems impossible. Yet, it is so and the explanation will come later. Furthermore, says Paul, they are the trustees of the covenant, of both the successive covenants and the provisions of the covenant in the most precise and integral sense. The covenant is thus the act by which God forms an alliance with man-the-sinner, not to condemn him according to his justice, but in order to save him according to his mercy. Even if they do not know it, the Israelites are also the first bearers and witnesses of this covenant, which God establishes with all of humanity in Jesus Christ and through which men are reconciled to God. This universal covenant was already written in their election because they have been chosen to bear witness to God’s love and God’s revelation to all men.

As a consequence of his covenant, God states his Law—and we often need to repeat this—which is not a gloomy and sterile legal code but the positive, good, and saving expression of his will. And if God reveals his Law, it is not to place man under a yoke but to reveal to him how he should live so that it is at all possible for him to live. (The commandments are, according to Barth, the boundary between life and death: on this side you live, on the other side you enter into the realm of death by transgressing). When God gives his Law on Mount Sinai, it is right before entering the desert, but also, right when the Jews become free and need a law so that their freedom might not be incoherent, might not be a case of “one thing being as good as another.”2

The Israelites are also the holders of the cult (that is, service and worship). They are the example of what a real act of worship should be (recitation and meditation on the Word of God). Furthermore, they have “the promises and the patriarchs” (this of course refers to all the promises God made to the patriarchs and especially the promise of the Messiah), and they are the authentic descendants of the patriarchs: Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (see especially Gen 12:2ff. and 17:16ff.). This seems to me to be radically important in our era and very different from the importance that Paul gave to it. Indeed, in the past fifteen years, the argument that the Jews of today have no historical claim to the land of Israel because they are not in any way the descendants of the ancient Hebrews regularly comes up in anti-Zionist propaganda. This is pure usurpation on their part and they cannot claim ancestry going back to the patriarchs! Here is Paul, however, maintaining that the Jews of his time were without any doubt descendants of these patriarchs; and there cannot be much doubt as to the identity between the Jews of today and their ancestors in the Roman Empire . . . This Paul maintains the legitimacy of the people of Israel as descendants of the patriarchs for us today too. Moreover, the fact that Paul uses a verb in the present tense shows that the privileges of Israel are not only gifts of the past, formerly granted by God to Israel, but permanent gifts still existing today.

We must therefore clearly reject the view that these privileges have passed from Israel to the church (which we are often told). This is precisely what Paul does not say! I have the feeling that the purpose of this list is to establish that Israel has not been dispossessed of any of the rights, privileges, and mercies that God has granted. On the contrary, what is admirable is the fact that Christians are by grace now also called to share in these privileges (we will see this again in chapter 11). Christians can only give thanks to God for the gift that is given to them and consider with respect and gratitude the privileges of Israel, which they now share! This brings us to the greatest of these privileges. Paul concludes this passage by reminding us that, in the flesh, the Christ comes from this people. What would Paul use as a more decisive and important argument to certify the present relevance of these privileges of Israel? This people has been the bearer of the ultimate mercy of God toward all of humanity! Moreover, Franz Mussner sees another argument to affirm the relevance of these privileges in the present: As far as Paul is concerned, Christ is not dead. The living Christ is still bound to his people. If the Christ is still alive, accepting his people, he has never separated himself from that people, and he has never contested those privileges granted by his Father. Consequently, these are still relevant.

One can never repeat enough that Jesus is Jewish, that he never denied it (he proclaimed, for instance, that he came for the lost sheep of Israel—that Israel is the people who are the children of the house . . .). On the contrary, he fulfilled and fortified the promises and he lifts the first covenant higher. He restores to Israel’s worship its former strength and truth (outside of intellectual discussion), and he is a reflection of the divine glory in the midst of his people.

All of this is merely the development of the fundamental confession of faith according to which “salvation is of the Jews,” a statement attributed to Jesus himself (John 4:22) and which clearly means that Jesus does not separate himself from this very people, that he is only a representative of this people, which the first generations of Christians fully acknowledged. Paul strongly insists on this fact: “For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever!” (Rom 11:36), and “For us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live; and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live” (1 Cor 8:6). The fact that Jesus was born of Israel reinforces the privileges of Israel and makes them more relevant, even if these Jews do not believe it. After all, how many times do we not read that in the face of prophets sent by God, the people revolted and rejected the messengers. But . . . after the necessary time, this same people finally accepted them as true prophets and included their prophecies in the Book.

The question that Jesus raises is harder, and the answer is more inacceptable, all the more given that Paul does not scale down the scandal. After affirming the persistence of this chosen people, he concludes with a doxology that could only appall the Jews and that still appalls them today. Indeed, he declares that Jesus is above all and that he is blessed forever. This is the breaking point with monotheism conceived in Israel. Is there really a break, however? This same Paul says (Rom 11:36) that God is not removed nor supplanted by the Christ, but only that God makes himself known and reveals himself fully only in Jesus. All the gifts belonging to the Jews are more understandable, more luminous, more assured in Jesus, so that Jesus appears ...