The Decade of Evangelism raises the question: must Jews accept Jesus in order to be saved? I find it curious that the question asked in the Early Church was just the opposite: must Gentiles accept Judaism in order to be saved? The debate is mentioned in Acts 15. The Jerusalem Church’s answer was no, gentiles could be saved if they observed the Noachide Laws.¹

CHRISTIANS TURNED THE QUESTION AROUND
It is remarkable how quickly Gentile Christians turned the question around. Justin Martyr (100-165) in his Dialogue With Trypho said that the covenant belonged exclusively to Christians. Jews were on the outside and needed to come in by accepting Jesus. For nearly nineteen centuries the accepted "truth" has been that there is no salvation outside the Church. In just the last half of this century some Christians, following the lead of James Parkes, have begun to wonder if the Jerusalem Church was closer to the truth. This type of rethinking is beginning to gain acceptance in some circles, but once again Justin Martyr’s argument is being rehashed, saying that Jews must accept Jesus to be saved.²

CONTROVERSY IN LONDON
I followed the latest round of the controversy while I was in London this summer to work with the Council of Christians and Jews (CCJ) in developing house-group Christian-Jewish dialogues through the use of Interfaith Circles. While there I read the articles and letters on this subject in The Church Times.

The controversy began on June 14, before I arrived in London, with an article by Rev. John Fieldsend, Minister at Large of the Church’s Ministry among the Jews (CMJ). Mr. Fieldsend’s thesis is simply that nobody can be saved without accepting Jesus. He acknowledges that the history of Christian contempt for Jews was a mistake because Jews were made to feel excluded from the Gospel. Then he writes:

"So the answer is that the Church should not have taken Jesus from the Jewish people in the first place, and we do have a clear duty to present him as the Jewish Messiah. . . . Not to share the good news of Jesus with the Jewish people today would compound our disobedience to God and only serve to make matters worse, for it is only through Jesus that true reconciliation with God and with one another is possible."

Mr. Fieldsend’s piece was followed by opposing articles, one on July 5 by the Jewish scholar Hyam Maccoby and another on July 12 by Rabbi Dr. Dan Cohn-Sherbok.

As I followed this discussion I was chagrined at the lack of any kind of clear Christian response to Mr. Fieldsend’s article. The only rebuttal that I saw was Michael Latham’s letter to the editor in the July 5 issue. I think we should reread the words used to record God’s conversation with Abraham. They are in Genesis 17:7-8, and they are clear.

AN ETERNAL COVENANT

"I will fulfil my covenant between myself and you and your descendants after you, generation after generation, an everlasting covenant, to be your God, yours and your descendants’ after you. As an everlasting possession I will give you and your descendants after you the land in which you are now aliens, all the land of Canaan, and I will be God to your descendants."

The words caused my theology of Jews and Judaism to unravel. If God was so definite in stating that the covenant was eternal, how could anyone say that it had changed? Eventually I realized that Jews have a special covenantal relationship with God, and I have no more right to disparage their relationship than they have of disparaging mine (which I have never heard them do). God’s promise to Abraham has become foundational to my understanding of how an immutable God deals with Jews.

Over the past four years I have had the opportunity to meet and talk with many Jews, both professional and lay, of all backgrounds and education, all over the United States, Canada, Great Britain and other parts of the world. Each contact confirms to me that Judaism is not a dead religion. I cannot recall one visit during which I felt that the person was lacking anything by not believing in Jesus. However, I can recall several times wishing that I had some of their sense of the holiness of God or their vitality of faith. Frankly, I have learned more about practical spirituality in 12 years of contact with Jews than I did from 18 years of Sunday School teachings and 10 years of studying doctrine in a Christian university and two theological seminaries.

THE IMMUTABILITY OF GOD
I once supported Jewish evangelism, but I now strongly oppose it because it assumes that God’s covenant with Abraham has been replaced with a better one.³ I remember the linguistic gyrations that were used to explain how an unchangeable God had changed the covenant, and at one time I even thought I understood them. For example, in A.W. Tozer’s The Knowledge of the Holy, there is a chapter on "The Immutability of God" in which he defines "immutable" this way:

"To say that God is immutable is to say that He never differs from Himself. The concept of a growing or developing God is not found in the Scriptures."⁴

But a few pages later he says:

"In the working out of His redemptive process the unchanging God makes full use of changes and through a succession of changes arrives at permanence at last. . . . The old covenant, as something provisional, was abolished, and the new and everlasting covenant took its place."⁵

Such reasoning is typical of most evangelicals, but to me it is full of holes. Since God’s covenant with Abraham is unconditional and eternal, how can we justify saying that it has changed? And if it has changed, then what assurance do we have that our covenant will not be changed?

To be blunt, replacement theology makes God out to be a liar.

JESUS THE JEW
At the heart of my rethinking about Jewish evangelism is the person of Jesus. We say, "Jesus was a Jew," but what does that mean? It means that Jesus was the son of a Jewish mother. At the proper time he was circumcised, named, and appropriate sacrifices were offered.⁶ His life conformed to Jewish expectations.⁷ He was committed to Torah.⁸ Therefore, to understand Jesus I need to know as much as possible about Jews and Judaism. I need to study his context, his frame of reference. My twentieth-century Gentile Christian perspective cannot lead me to a proper understanding of a first-century Galilean Jew, because I will inevitably interpret according to my own context, rather than his. Here is one place where Jewish writers and dialogue with Jews are invaluable.

Take, for example, the Pharisees. According to the false traditional Christian understanding, they were legalistic, hypocritical Jewish leaders who were so jealous of Jesus’ influence with the common people that they demanded Pilate crucify him. Today, as a result of centuries of Christian preaching, "Pharisee" is erroneously equated with "hypocrite."

According to Dr. Ellis Rivkin, a leading scholar on the Pharisees, they taught a triad of belief that calls to mind John 3:16:

"(1) The singular Father God so loved the individual that he (2) revealed, through Moses, his twofold Law which, if internalized and steadfastly adhered to, (3) would gain for such an individual eternal life for his soul and the resurrection of his body."⁹

FOCUS OF A MAJOR DISPUTE
It is the twofold Torah, or Law, that we Christians often misunderstand. Judaism teaches that at Mount Sinai Moses revealed the Law that was committed to writing (the written Torah), and that an oral tradition of explanation began (the oral Torah). It is the oral tradition that became the focus of a major dispute between two schools of Pharisees – Bet Shammai and Bet Hillel. The dispute began about 20 years before Jesus’ birth when the two groups began to argue with each other over issues that defined Judaism and how it related to the non-Jewish world. Jesus participated on the Bet Hillel side of the argument against Bet Shammai.

Bet Shammai was the dominant, conservative school of interpretation in Jesus’ day. They said that only Jews could hope for eternal life and resurrection. The Bet Hillel group was more liberal. They taught that righteous Gentiles (who obeyed the Noachide Laws) could share in the covenant. They even engaged in a mission to the Gentiles to enlighten them to the truths of Pharisaic Judaism.

RABBINIC JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY DEVELOPED AT THE SAME TIME
Bet Shammai disappeared when the Roman army destroyed Jerusalem and the Temple in 70. Bet Hillel, because it was more accommodating and not a threat to the Romans, was allowed to relocate at Yavneh, where they began to develop into what we know today as Rabbinic Judaism. I find it fascinating that Rabbinic Judaism and Christianity developed at the same time.¹⁰

Rabbi Harvey Falk, in his book Jesus the Pharisee, shows that Jesus’ diatribes in the Gospels were part of the conflict against Bet Shammai.¹¹ Throughout his book, he compares Jesus’ statements with Bet Hillel decisions. The comparisons are startling and the conclusion is unavoidable: Jesus sided with Bet Hillel in its opposition to Bet Shammai’s exclusivity. ¹²

An understanding of the Pharisees helps me to see Jesus in his historical context as a committed Jew actively trying to preserve Judaism and concerned about reaching out to non-Jews to share with them its truths (could we say the Gospel of Judaism?). As a Christian, I feel I am a product of that outreach. Recognizing the diversity among the Pharisees also cautions me to be careful in what I say about them in order that I do not perpetuate the slander about the ancestry of both Rabbinic Judaism and Christianity.

BOTH COVENANTS ARE BASED ON GRACE
I believe the Christian problem with evangelizing Jews is due to a misunderstanding concerning the Jewish and Christian relationships with God. Jews are born into a covenantal relationship, Christians enter a relationship by means of a decision. We fail to appreciate the Jewish relationship with God because we assume that they must come to God by way of a faith commitment, as we do. Conversely, it is difficult for them to realize that we are not automatically born Christians. (The Christian perspective was summed up by Billy Sunday, the flamboyant evangelist of the 1920s, who used to say that being born in a Christian home didn’t make one a Christian any more than being born in a garage made one an automobile.)

We Christians, for the most part, are determined to follow our understanding of the Bible, into which we read an assumed theology of replacement. Therefore, the proselytizing of Jews will end only when we realize that Jews are born into an unconditional covenant relationship (as Scripture says),¹³ and that their covenant is still in effect (as Scripture says).¹⁴ Christian-Jewish dialogue helps us understand that the Jewish covenant with God is based on pure, unconditional grace just as the Christian covenant.

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