Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: cctr114@csc.canterbury.ac.nz Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: Christian attitudes w/ Jews Message-ID: Date: 17 Apr 91 05:00:24 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Organization: University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand Lines: 126 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu >I have two questions about the relationship between Christians and the >Jewish people. Since I'm new to this group, I feel that they may have >been discussed already, so please respond via Email if redundant. > >1) What is a good Christian attitude toward the salvation of the > Jewish people? I could take the New Testament as it is, which > says quite clearly that those who don't acknowledge Jesus Christ > as our savior will not achieve salvation. But others have told me > that the Jews are God's chosen people and He has His own plans for > them. One of the objections Jews have to us trying to convert them is our track record of keeping our children in the faith. They point out that their faith has been passed from parents to children for between 37 and 40 centuries for they do not seek converts and very few willingly convert to their faith. Once a Jew converts to Christianity it is usually only two and sometimes three generations before all faith is lost and the children grow up with no personal faith at all. >2) I've heard many say that we Christians are not "under the law", and > thus not subject to the much of the customs and observances in the > Old Testament. Please provide me with scriptural support for this. > Also, if this is so, how do we know what to follow from the OT and > what not to? (I know that this a virtually textbook question for > a well versed Christian and I've heard the answer, but my mind slips > me right now!) I think your statement that this is a textbook question is part of the problem people face when they attempt to read and understand the Hebrew Scripture believing them to be Gods' Word. In my experience most Christians do not truly value the Hebrew scriptures. Most seem to only find the Hebrew Scriptures of value as a source of prophecies of Christ, allegories of Christian experience, or as a source of negative things to contrast with the postive things of the New Covenant. The use of the Old Testament as ``Law'' falls into the last catagory. If we actually read the Old Testament as it is rather than through New Testament blinkers we will find very little that is actually ``Law''. The emphasis is on the grace of God, particularly in the prophets. I suspect that a lot of Pauls' railing against the ``Law'' and teaching about being free from the ``Law'' is not actually just against Biblical law but rather also against the large body of extra-Bibilical law which as a Pharisee he would have had an intimate knowledge of. One place where is it reasonably easy to see how our understanding of the New Testament has affected our understanding of the Old is in the forgiveness of sins. To most Christians I know it is almost an article of faith that there is no forgiveness of sins in the Old Testament without a blood sacrifice. There are some verses which seem to imply this (the one in Hebrews is often quoted). But it only takes a few minutes with a good concordance and a Bible looking up words like sin and forgive to see that there are a number of non-sacrificial ways of obtaining forgiveness and even among the sacrifical ones not all are blood sacrifices. It is also clear that even in the sacrificial methods of obtaining forgiveness that the attitude of heart of the sacrificer was more important than the sacrifice itself for a wrong attitude would render a sacrifice ineffective at best and offensive to God at worst. The religion of the Pharisees had degenerated into a religion of external observances and rituals. What I think Paul was attempting to say that true religion is always a matter of the heart. If this is his message then it accords well with that of the prophets and needs to be heard in every age for there is always a tendency to settle down into some clickty-clack railroad track of comfortable religious observances where the form of religion is observed but the vital relationship to God and love, concern and compassion for others is missing. Today ``Law'' is often used by preachers to mean rote religious observance which has to be done for the sake of doing it. It is also used to mean doing good in an effort to win God's favour by our own acts of righteousness. I beleive Paul is really trying to say that our motivation for worship and good deeds should come out of our love for God and in response to His love and grace rather than out of a compulsion arising from a legal requirement. If we were to take Paul at face value then his teaching is quite different from that of Jesus. In Matthew 5:17-19 Jesus makes it quite clear that He had no intention of abolishing the law and makes it clear that He does not approve of others doing so either. Pauls' view of the Biblical Law was a new and very radical approach and one which the Church through the ages has almost always pulled back from. He viewed the Biblical Law as a burden which God had placed on people to show them that they were hopelessly sinful and in need of a saviour. This view, as I understand it, cannot be found anywhere earlier than Paul. There may be the beginning of this view in the Acts 15 speech by Peter but it was Paul who really made it explicit. This teaching clashes with the Old Testament teaching, the teaching of Jesus, and also other portions of the New Testament. Most have never been comfortable with abandoning the moral teaching of the the Old Testament in favour of being lead totally by the Spirit as Paul seems to advocate. If you ask a Jew what the Christian approach to the Biblical Law should be they will usually tell you that only the ``Seven Laws of Noah'' are expected to be kept by devout non-Jews and that the remainder of the hundreds of laws which can be found in the legal sections of the Books of Moses apply only to the Jews as Gods' special people. The argument in Acts about keeping the Biblical Law appears to me to center around whether the Christians were Jewish converts or still Gentiles. Peter still spoke in an ``us and them'' manner even though he acknowledged that God had made no distinction. The descision seems to me to reflect the view that Christians were not even then regarded as converts to Judaism. I have rambled around a bit but I hope what I said helps a bit. > >Robert John Butera Jr., aka "Knome" | "Indeed, one can reasonably argue Bill Rea ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- | Bill Rea, University of Canterbury, | E-Mail b.rea@csc.canterbury.ac.nz | | Christchurch, New Zealand | Phone (03)-642-331 Fax (03)-642-999 | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- [Of course Judaism was as varied in the 1st Cent. as Christianity is. I'm not sure one can generalize even about Pharisees. But it's important to understand that Law had a far broader meaning than external laws. I'm not the best person to explain Judaism. But Torah means more than just following external laws. It is probably better translated "instruction". It refers to all of God's revelation, including the message of the prophets. Following the Torah means being dedicated to applying God's precepts to everything you do. It should be a way of worshipping God. The fact that for most Christians the Law has been replaced by a new covenant should not prevent us from appreciating it as something more than simply legalism. It's also worth noting that Paul's opponents in his letters are normally Judaizers, not Jews. That is, they are Christians who wanted to impose the Law on Gentile Christians in a way that would actually have been legalism. --clh]