I find Read's frankness refreshing, although I suspect that he and Rabbi Sacks would in practice find a great deal in common. Catholics and Jews, at any rate if they are orthodox, both take doctrine, prayer and ritual seriously; they have survived for so long precisely because they maintain unambiguous criteria for membership. It is, indeed, the clear demarcation between these two orthodoxies that has helped to make dialogue between them so fruitful. The documents Lumen Gentium and Nostra Aetate, issued by the Second Vatican Council half a century ago, were the product of decades of dialogue between Catholic theologians, several of them converts from Judaism, and Jews, including the Holocaust survivor Jules Isaac, who made an impassioned appeal to Pope John XXIII at an audience in 1960 to abandon the teaching of contempt for the "blindness" of Jews.
The language of these documents was fiercely fought over at the Council and repays close reading. Of the Jews Lumen Gentium says that "this people remains most dear to God, for God does not repent of the gifts he makes nor of the calls he issues", a direct quotation from Romans 11:29. Lumen Gentium goes on to acknowledge that "the plan of salvation also includes those who acknowledge the Creator . . . Nor does Divine Providence deny the helps necessary for salvation to those who, without blame on their part, have not yet arrived at an explicit knowledge of God". In other words, the council abrogated the Augustinian dictum: Salus extra ecclesiam non est ("there is no salvation outside the Church"). In Nostra Aetate, the council fathers went further, explicitly condemning "hatred, persecutions, displays of anti-Semitism directed against Jews at any time and by anyone". They abandoned the ancient accusation of deicide "against all the Jews, without distinction, then alive, nor against the Jews of today . . . the Jews should not be presented as rejected or accursed by God, as if this followed from the Holy Scriptures." As John Connelly points out in his book From Enemy to Brother, the German Cardinal Bea, who oversaw the drafting of Nostra Aetate, had advocated precisely these ideas until the early 1960s: "Cardinal Bea found a new language to talk about Jews only after he began talking to Jews." Doctrine and dialogue exist in a delicate symbiosis.
Not surprisingly, these declarations and others like them since have not been universally popular among some Christians, who cling to "supersessionist" interpretations of the New Testament. Others are hostile to the State of Israel, identifying the Church with the Palestinian cause while ignoring the global persecution of Christians by Islam. The Vatican has not been immune to such attitudes, yet successive popes, beginning with John XXIII but especially the Polish, German and Argentine Popes John Paul II, Benedict XVI and Francis, have taken great care to maintain and expand Judaeo-Christian dialogue.
What we have not seen, however, is any sustained attempt to deepen the exegesis of the key text for Catholic-Jewish theology: St Paul's Epistle to the Romans, especially chapters nine to 11. As we have seen, the council fathers drew on Paul's language, but the deepest question remains unresolved: that of salvation. Paul writes in Romans 11:25-26: "For I would not, brethren, that ye should be ignorant of this mystery, lest ye should be wise in your own conceits; that blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles be come in. And so all Israel shall be saved." Paul appears to be prophesying that the Jews "in part" have been ordained to remain outside the elect until the Church has accomplished its mission to the Gentiles, but that nevertheless God is bound to keep his promise that the Jewish people as a whole, converted or not, will ultimately attain salvation.
The language of these documents was fiercely fought over at the Council and repays close reading. Of the Jews Lumen Gentium says that "this people remains most dear to God, for God does not repent of the gifts he makes nor of the calls he issues", a direct quotation from Romans 11:29. Lumen Gentium goes on to acknowledge that "the plan of salvation also includes those who acknowledge the Creator . . . Nor does Divine Providence deny the helps necessary for salvation to those who, without blame on their part, have not yet arrived at an explicit knowledge of God". In other words, the council abrogated the Augustinian dictum: Salus extra ecclesiam non est ("there is no salvation outside the Church"). In Nostra Aetate, the council fathers went further, explicitly condemning "hatred, persecutions, displays of anti-Semitism directed against Jews at any time and by anyone". They abandoned the ancient accusation of deicide "against all the Jews, without distinction, then alive, nor against the Jews of today . . . the Jews should not be presented as rejected or accursed by God, as if this followed from the Holy Scriptures." As John Connelly points out in his book From Enemy to Brother, the German Cardinal Bea, who oversaw the drafting of Nostra Aetate, had advocated precisely these ideas until the early 1960s: "Cardinal Bea found a new language to talk about Jews only after he began talking to Jews." Doctrine and dialogue exist in a delicate symbiosis.
Not surprisingly, these declarations and others like them since have not been universally popular among some Christians, who cling to "supersessionist" interpretations of the New Testament. Others are hostile to the State of Israel, identifying the Church with the Palestinian cause while ignoring the global persecution of Christians by Islam. The Vatican has not been immune to such attitudes, yet successive popes, beginning with John XXIII but especially the Polish, German and Argentine Popes John Paul II, Benedict XVI and Francis, have taken great care to maintain and expand Judaeo-Christian dialogue.
What we have not seen, however, is any sustained attempt to deepen the exegesis of the key text for Catholic-Jewish theology: St Paul's Epistle to the Romans, especially chapters nine to 11. As we have seen, the council fathers drew on Paul's language, but the deepest question remains unresolved: that of salvation. Paul writes in Romans 11:25-26: "For I would not, brethren, that ye should be ignorant of this mystery, lest ye should be wise in your own conceits; that blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles be come in. And so all Israel shall be saved." Paul appears to be prophesying that the Jews "in part" have been ordained to remain outside the elect until the Church has accomplished its mission to the Gentiles, but that nevertheless God is bound to keep his promise that the Jewish people as a whole, converted or not, will ultimately attain salvation.
Like this article? Share, save or print using the icons below:
More Features
- Migrant Crisis? Europe Hasn't Seen Anything Yet
- Why Palmyra Should Matter To The West
- Corbyn's Rise Makes Cameron Redundant
- No, Jeremy: Politics Is All About Borders Now
- Why 'Lady Chatterley' Still Provokes Us
- For Climate Alarmism, The Poor Pay The Price
- Will Putin's Empire Outlast The Soviets?
- British Witnesses To Lenin's Revolution
- Bibliophiles Beware: Online Prices Are A Lottery
- How Jeremy Corbyn's Coup Hijacked Labour
- Corbyn's Signpost Back To The Ghetto
- Unionists, Don't Despair: Scotland Is Not Lost — Yet
- Britain's Apologists For Child Abuse
- Lift The Fee Cap And Set Universities Free
- The Story Behind One Dead Man's Penny
- Hitler's 'Ecological Panic' Didn't Cause The Holocaust
- Meet The Montalvos: The First Global Family
- Mr Gove, Here Is Our Statute of Liberty
- A British Bill Of Rights
- Something For Nothing Just Won't Do Any More
Popular Standpoint topics
11:12 AM