One of the most troubling things about reading Clark Williamson’s A Guest in the House of Israel is realizing that anti-Judaism isn’t just some anomalous bug of Christianity that can easily be tossed out. It’s more or less a constitutive feature of the patristic-medieval-Reformation-modern Christian consensus. As Christianity gradually emerged as a separate religion, the church defined itself, in myriad ways, as the anti-Judaism. Jews were, according to this line of thinking, “carnal,” legalistic, hypocritical, particularistic, ethnocentric, unfaithful, etc., while the church was “spiritual,” grace-full, upright, universal, faithful, etc. This stuff is all over Tertullian, Irenaeus, Athanasius, Augustine, the medievals, Luther, Calvin (although, according to Williamson, Calvin actually comes off better than nearly anyone else in the tradition on this score), the anabaptists, liberal theologians, neo-orthodox theologians, liberation theologians–pretty much everybody. It infects the church’s view of covenant, its doctrine of the authority and interpretation of scripture, its Christology, its doctrine of God, its view of the sacraments, and its approach to mission. This is why Williamson thinks that a more radical re-thinking of the church’s theology is necessary in a post-Holocaust (or post-Shoah) context than most Christians have been willing to countenance.
Category: Clark Williamson
-
Anti-Judaism as works-righteousness
The claim that Jews lost the covenant because they were not worthy of it is simply works-righteousness. Works-righteousness takes a gift provided by the free and unconditional grace of God and turns it into a condition apart from which God is not free to be gracious. Works-righteousness has nothing to do with an entirely different matter, the question of whether we are to do works of love toward the neighbor. With regard to the covenant, works-righteousness contends that God is not free to covenant with whomever God pleases but only with those who deserve to receive it. It claims that we deserve it, Jews do not. Christian anti-Judaism reflects a reward and punishment mind-set. Jews are punished by losing the covenant; we are rewarded with receiving it because we deserve it.
That’s from Clark Williamson’s A Guest in the House of Israel (pp. 113-114), tracing the development of Christian anti-Judaism. I plan to write more about this very challenging book soon.
A Thinking Reed 