The Christian Extinguishing of Identity
“We hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues.”
“There is neither Jew nor Gentile . .”
Those present at Pentecost were all Jews, and yet hearing their native languages at the Temple was clearly remarkable. It affirmed a real diversity, anticipated in prophecy, but obscured by the dominance of Hebrew as a unifying liturgical language.
Paul’s letters dating from little more than a decade later attest to the diversity of the Christian community even as they seek to define a transcultural unity in Christ. But note the negative in the quote above from Galatians. Being one in Christ means giving up an identity, specifically a Jewish identity tied to being part of a people created by the Covenant at Sinai. The word Gentile (sometimes mistranslated as “Greek”) isn’t ethnic, it's simply a generic term for non-Jews. “Neither Gentile” doesn’t negate anything anybody cared about. “Neither Jew” does.
Being Gentile wasn't intimately bound up in idolatry or immorality, the only things forbidden to those reclothed in Christ. Nor did Paul expect men and women to quit acting out the sexual identities. He didn’t expect slaves and masters to cease the relationship that defined them socially.
Only Jewish identity, an identity centered on the covenant at Sinai, was extinguished by accepting Christ as Messiah. Paul’s history of salvation in Galatians and Romans leapfrogs Sinai to move from Abraham to Jesus. Yet Sinai, present in the Jewish community as the written and the oral Torah, is exactly what makes a Jew a Jew.
True, in Romans Paul affirms that because of the covenant at Sinai Jews have many things. But note well that Paul redefines the covenant at Sinai, the “Law,” in a way that no Jew as a Jew could possibly affirm. And all these things the Jews have fade into obscurity in light of Christ. He grants the Jews their covenant, but only by redefining it in Christian terms. And what he gives the Jews on one hand he takes away with the other.
This is a major shift away from the Jerusalem Council which allowed a way into the Jesus movement for Gentiles. At Jerusalem Gentiles were to be accepted into the Christian community, but on Jewish terms. They would have to follow the covenant of God with Noah as understood in the rabbinic tradition.
By the time Paul is fully engaged in his mission to the Gentiles he has significantly changed the ground rules. Gentiles are now the dominant culture, and Jews are only allowed in on Gentile terms - as the introduction to the book of Romans makes clear. Paul frames his mission in terms of the Gentiles, and in Paul’s churches it is the circumcised who must conform, not visa versa.
The result was inevitable as Gentiles came to dominate the church: Jewish Christianity disappeared, because the gospel Paul proclaimed undermined and in fact denied Jewish identity at its core.
It would be nice if, in fact, Christianity was a genuinely new identity that equally undermined and replaced all the old ethnic identities. Such was the argument of Tertullian, but the claim was specious. By the time of Constantine Christianity had become a new religion laid on top of first Greek, then Roman cultural roots. Later ethnocultural groups were likewise affirmed. A small tweak in their pagan customs and they too could be Christian. Sure, there would be efforts at hegemony in terms of using the Latin Bible and mass, but this was less cultural hegemony than a means of concentrating power in the hands of the emperor and the Bishop of Rome.
Until the era of modern missions and their hegemonic advancement of European culture, it was only Jewish identity that was extinguished by conversion to Christianity. And the reason for this is that the essence of orthodox Christianity has been the repudiation of the covenant at Sinai as a witness to God’s righteousness. True, a Jewish Christian could always keep the law as a cultural memento, in the same way I as a Texan can still wear cowboy boots up to the altar to receive communion. But keeping the law doesn't mean what it means to those for whom it is God’s witness to God’s righteousness. It doesn't mean what it means for those who understand that living out the covenant at Sinai is precisely how the Jews are a light to the Gentiles and a blessing to the nations.
Given these reflections Messianic Judaism can now be seen more clearly for what it is: a modern way of being Christian. Modern because it appears to treat Jewish identity in terms of cultural mementos and ethnic legacy rather than as participation in God’s mission cemented at Sinai. It is a Judaism that, by accepting the Pauline perspective, reduces the Law as understood by rabbinic Judaism to mere customs. Because in the orthodox Christian understanding the Law is a witness only to sin, while it is the Messiah who reveals the true nature of righteousness “to faith for faith.”
In short, Messianic Judaism is possibly only because it redefines Judaism in terms that most Jews cannot recognize. And in fact a constant theme in my dialogue with Jewish partners has been exactly this; I’ve never met a rabbi, orthodox or otherwise, who would affirm that Messianic Jews are Jews.
And yet - well modernity brings another complication - the redefinition of Judaism precisely as an ethnic identity tied to the promise of the land that need not be enacted in affirmation of God’s covenant at Sinai. The Zionist movement of the 19th century, coupled with the Nazi effort to exterminate world Judaism, and completed with the birth of the modern nation of Israel brought about new complexities in Jewish self-understanding.
Both rabbinic Judaism and European and American anti-Semites defined Judaism based on ancestry rather than belief or practice even if they disagreed on just how the identity was passed down. (The rabbis had stricter rules.) Zionists added the promise of the land, but without necessarily the cultic worship originating at Sinai. (Yossi Klein Helevi has documented the crisis posed when modern Israel actually came into control of the Temple Mount.)
In the state of Israel the concept of a “secular Jew” became possible, so that for the purposes of state of Israel one is Jewish based on parentage rather than either belief or practice, and being a Jew is the only qualification for becoming a citizen of Israel. The only exception, and one that is fascinating, is that even for the state of Israel a Jewish convert to Christianity ceases being a Jew. One can be an atheist and a Jew, or a Buddhist and a Jew, but not a Christian and a Jew.
And there is a reason for this exception that bears consideration: the fundamental conflict between the claims at the heart of Judaism and Christianity. Christianity is defined by its claim that the Messiah has come in Jesus. A fundamental claim of rabbinic Judaism, the Judaism of the Talmud, is that the Messiah has not yet come. Or as one rabbi at a large synagogue in Dallas put it to me: "The day you accept that the Messiah has come you cease to be a Jew."
Which really gets us right back to what the rabbi Paul said, “in Christ there is neither Greek, nor Jew.”
The challenge for Christians is to now develop a theology that doesn’t effectively lead to the extinction of Jewish identity - whether now or in some anticipated future when all the Jews will acknowledge that the Messiah has come. And that, it seems to me, will require we that learn to affirm that Sinai, and not just Golgotha, is a witness to the righteousness of God. But of course when we do that we’ll have opened the way for other witnesses to the righteousness of God beyond the narrow history of the children of Abraham.
“There is neither Jew nor Gentile . .”
Those present at Pentecost were all Jews, and yet hearing their native languages at the Temple was clearly remarkable. It affirmed a real diversity, anticipated in prophecy, but obscured by the dominance of Hebrew as a unifying liturgical language.
Paul’s letters dating from little more than a decade later attest to the diversity of the Christian community even as they seek to define a transcultural unity in Christ. But note the negative in the quote above from Galatians. Being one in Christ means giving up an identity, specifically a Jewish identity tied to being part of a people created by the Covenant at Sinai. The word Gentile (sometimes mistranslated as “Greek”) isn’t ethnic, it's simply a generic term for non-Jews. “Neither Gentile” doesn’t negate anything anybody cared about. “Neither Jew” does.
Being Gentile wasn't intimately bound up in idolatry or immorality, the only things forbidden to those reclothed in Christ. Nor did Paul expect men and women to quit acting out the sexual identities. He didn’t expect slaves and masters to cease the relationship that defined them socially.
Only Jewish identity, an identity centered on the covenant at Sinai, was extinguished by accepting Christ as Messiah. Paul’s history of salvation in Galatians and Romans leapfrogs Sinai to move from Abraham to Jesus. Yet Sinai, present in the Jewish community as the written and the oral Torah, is exactly what makes a Jew a Jew.
True, in Romans Paul affirms that because of the covenant at Sinai Jews have many things. But note well that Paul redefines the covenant at Sinai, the “Law,” in a way that no Jew as a Jew could possibly affirm. And all these things the Jews have fade into obscurity in light of Christ. He grants the Jews their covenant, but only by redefining it in Christian terms. And what he gives the Jews on one hand he takes away with the other.
This is a major shift away from the Jerusalem Council which allowed a way into the Jesus movement for Gentiles. At Jerusalem Gentiles were to be accepted into the Christian community, but on Jewish terms. They would have to follow the covenant of God with Noah as understood in the rabbinic tradition.
By the time Paul is fully engaged in his mission to the Gentiles he has significantly changed the ground rules. Gentiles are now the dominant culture, and Jews are only allowed in on Gentile terms - as the introduction to the book of Romans makes clear. Paul frames his mission in terms of the Gentiles, and in Paul’s churches it is the circumcised who must conform, not visa versa.
The result was inevitable as Gentiles came to dominate the church: Jewish Christianity disappeared, because the gospel Paul proclaimed undermined and in fact denied Jewish identity at its core.
It would be nice if, in fact, Christianity was a genuinely new identity that equally undermined and replaced all the old ethnic identities. Such was the argument of Tertullian, but the claim was specious. By the time of Constantine Christianity had become a new religion laid on top of first Greek, then Roman cultural roots. Later ethnocultural groups were likewise affirmed. A small tweak in their pagan customs and they too could be Christian. Sure, there would be efforts at hegemony in terms of using the Latin Bible and mass, but this was less cultural hegemony than a means of concentrating power in the hands of the emperor and the Bishop of Rome.
Until the era of modern missions and their hegemonic advancement of European culture, it was only Jewish identity that was extinguished by conversion to Christianity. And the reason for this is that the essence of orthodox Christianity has been the repudiation of the covenant at Sinai as a witness to God’s righteousness. True, a Jewish Christian could always keep the law as a cultural memento, in the same way I as a Texan can still wear cowboy boots up to the altar to receive communion. But keeping the law doesn't mean what it means to those for whom it is God’s witness to God’s righteousness. It doesn't mean what it means for those who understand that living out the covenant at Sinai is precisely how the Jews are a light to the Gentiles and a blessing to the nations.
Given these reflections Messianic Judaism can now be seen more clearly for what it is: a modern way of being Christian. Modern because it appears to treat Jewish identity in terms of cultural mementos and ethnic legacy rather than as participation in God’s mission cemented at Sinai. It is a Judaism that, by accepting the Pauline perspective, reduces the Law as understood by rabbinic Judaism to mere customs. Because in the orthodox Christian understanding the Law is a witness only to sin, while it is the Messiah who reveals the true nature of righteousness “to faith for faith.”
In short, Messianic Judaism is possibly only because it redefines Judaism in terms that most Jews cannot recognize. And in fact a constant theme in my dialogue with Jewish partners has been exactly this; I’ve never met a rabbi, orthodox or otherwise, who would affirm that Messianic Jews are Jews.
And yet - well modernity brings another complication - the redefinition of Judaism precisely as an ethnic identity tied to the promise of the land that need not be enacted in affirmation of God’s covenant at Sinai. The Zionist movement of the 19th century, coupled with the Nazi effort to exterminate world Judaism, and completed with the birth of the modern nation of Israel brought about new complexities in Jewish self-understanding.
Both rabbinic Judaism and European and American anti-Semites defined Judaism based on ancestry rather than belief or practice even if they disagreed on just how the identity was passed down. (The rabbis had stricter rules.) Zionists added the promise of the land, but without necessarily the cultic worship originating at Sinai. (Yossi Klein Helevi has documented the crisis posed when modern Israel actually came into control of the Temple Mount.)
In the state of Israel the concept of a “secular Jew” became possible, so that for the purposes of state of Israel one is Jewish based on parentage rather than either belief or practice, and being a Jew is the only qualification for becoming a citizen of Israel. The only exception, and one that is fascinating, is that even for the state of Israel a Jewish convert to Christianity ceases being a Jew. One can be an atheist and a Jew, or a Buddhist and a Jew, but not a Christian and a Jew.
And there is a reason for this exception that bears consideration: the fundamental conflict between the claims at the heart of Judaism and Christianity. Christianity is defined by its claim that the Messiah has come in Jesus. A fundamental claim of rabbinic Judaism, the Judaism of the Talmud, is that the Messiah has not yet come. Or as one rabbi at a large synagogue in Dallas put it to me: "The day you accept that the Messiah has come you cease to be a Jew."
Which really gets us right back to what the rabbi Paul said, “in Christ there is neither Greek, nor Jew.”
The challenge for Christians is to now develop a theology that doesn’t effectively lead to the extinction of Jewish identity - whether now or in some anticipated future when all the Jews will acknowledge that the Messiah has come. And that, it seems to me, will require we that learn to affirm that Sinai, and not just Golgotha, is a witness to the righteousness of God. But of course when we do that we’ll have opened the way for other witnesses to the righteousness of God beyond the narrow history of the children of Abraham.
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