Judaism
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Krister Stendahl was a Swedish Lutheran theologian, New Testament scholar, and ultimately a bishop of the Church of Sweden. He’s probably best known for arguing that St. Paul’s letters were responding to a specific context–namely the relationship between Jews and Gentiles and his mission to the latter. According to Stendahl, much Western theology (Lutheran in Read more
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I’ve read more than one work of theology that attempted to explain the rejection of Jesus’ messiah-hood by the majority of Jews like this: Jews expectated the messiah to be a nationalist–even military–leader who would liberate them from Roman oppression, but Jesus was a different kind of messiah, a “spiritual” one who came to liberate Read more
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Clark Williamson’s systematic theology Way of Blessing, Way of Life is less focused on Jewish-Christian relations than his earlier work A Guest in the House of Israel (which I blogged about previously), but the project of re-connecting Christianity to its Jewish roots is still a major concern. One point Williamson makes is that the way Read more
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I stand in awe before the memory of the K’doshim [holy ones] who walked into the gas chambers with the Ani Ma’amin–I believe–on their lips. How dare I question, if they did not question? I believe because they believed. And I stand in awe before the K’doshim, before the memory of the untold suffering of Read more
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Readers may have noticed that my posts on Williamson’s book haven’t been very critical. That’s in part because I think he’s right about a lot of things. But it has more to do with the fact that I was mainly trying to get clear in my own mind about what he’s saying. I think a Read more
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A question that naturally arises for any Christian theology that attempts to recognize the ongoing reality of Jewish faith and life is What about Jesus? That is, do Christians need to sacrifice, or at least modify, their convictions about the uniqueness and salvific importance of Jesus in order to avoid supersessionism? In A Guest in Read more
A Thinking Reed 