Theology & Faith
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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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I’ve honestly not paid much attention to Glenn Beck–I’ve never even seen a clip of his show, and most of what I know about him comes from blogs and other media reports. This past weekend’s “Beckfest” on the Mall, though, significantly raised his profile. It’s even being suggested that he’s now the head of a 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
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I have one or two more posts on Williamson’s Guest in the House of Israel in the works, but if you’re interested in what I’ve been writing about so far you might want to check out this article–Speak Rightly of God: Clark M. Williamson as a Church Theologian–which provides an overview of his work. I Read more
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I’m not going to blog exhaustively about the remaining chapters in Clark Williamson’s A Guest in the House of Israel, where he applies the insights of a post-Holocaust theology to various topics (covenant, scripture, Christology, doctrine of God) with interesting results. What I thought I’d do instead is take a look at one area–the doctrine Read more
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After surveying the issue of anti-Judaism in Christian theology, Clark Williamson proposes some criteria for a post-Holocaust theology: – Beware of unchanged “pre-Shoah” theological statements (i.e., we need to apply a hermeneutic of suspicion to traditional formulations). – Do theology in conversation with Jews. – Say nothing that could not be said “in the presence Read more
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Brandon points out in a comment to this post that I haven’t really defined what Williamson means by “anti-Judaism.” So here goes. First, it’s distinguishable from, though obviously related to, anti-Semitism. Anti-Judaism refers more broadly to the notion that Christianity is superior to, completes, and/or replaces Judaism as an ongoing religious enterprise. Williamson’s argument is Read more
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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 Read more
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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 Read more
A Thinking Reed 