Confessing the Messiah: The Church's Confession of Christ in Jewish-Christian Dialogue - Bishop Müller's Statement Pt. IV

Concluding our series regarding Jewish salvation and the liceity of the extraordinary form Good Friday prayer for Jewish conversion, with all the far-reaching implications this has for central questions of our Faith, here is the last part of the momentous statement of Bishop Gerhard Ludwig Müller (see part I, II and III here, here and here, and Dr Thomas Pink's Introduction to it here and here).



The Church's Confession of Christ in Jewish-Christian Dialogue - Part IV

By Bishop Dr Gerhard Ludwig Müller

Translated by Dr Thomas Pink

The Search for Fundamental Reconciliation

The text of the ZdK's 'Jews and Christians' dialogue circle carries the all too showy title 'No to Mission to the Jews - yes to Jewish-Christian dialogue'. The either-or choice suggested here oversimplifies beyond the possible measure the theologically complex unity of the Old Covenant with the New as well as the difference between the Jewish and Christian faith-communities in respect of the confession of Jesus the Christ.

We must surely welcome it if in a theological research circle there is a deepening of the positive relation between Christians and Jews regarding the sources of revelation and confessional belief, if wounds are healed and if a deeper reconciliation is sought. Given a spiritual relationship rooted in the God of creation and of covenant (see Nostra Aetate §4), Christians and Jews face a common challenge, namely that of giving witness before a secularised world to the liberating power of God and of proclaiming the human dignity that is based on that power. Man is created in the image of God, and is called to the freedom and glory that belongs to God's children (see Romans 8, 21).

Dialogue in a research circle cannot however occur at the expense of qualifying or muddying essential Christian doctrines about the mysteries of the Trinity and Incarnation, about the redemption and justification of sinners, about grace and original sin, about the universal and sole mediation of Christ, about the necessity for salvation of the Church, of faith in Christ, and of union with Christ in the sacraments, and about the relation of God's will that all be saved to that will's realisation in Church and sacrament.

From the point of view of Catholic theology it is very difficult to make out any convincing conception of the subject in the text being considered.

Magisterial evaluation of the 'Jews and Christians' dialogue group's declaration

The text has no magisterial authority. It can in no way be regarded as an official document of the Catholic Church or as an authentic presentation of the Catholic faith and confession. The text is guided by a quite blatant setting of the teaching of the Second Vatican Council and of John Paul II against the teaching and legitimate measures (in the formulation of liturgical texts) of Pope Benedict XVI - an opposition (ZdK Declaration pp1, 10) which both in form and content is completely off the mark.

Neither is it true that the reformulation of the intercession for the Jews in the extraordinary rite of the Good Friday liturgy has anything to do with a 'Mission to the Jews' in the absolutely pejorative sense which the research circle's paper insinuates ("the Mission to the Jews … as expression of a disdain of Judaism... and therefore prepared the ground for the anti-Semitism of National Socialism." ZdK Declaration p13). Nor is there a 'Church of the Second Vatican Council' which presents the covenant of God with the Jewish people as one saving way to God – ‘even without any recognition of Jesus Christ and without the sacrament of baptism’ (ZdK Declaration p1).

The Second Vatican Council precisely did not express itself in this reductive and ambiguous way.
Nostra Aetate is of great importance for the new beginning in relations between Jews and Christians. But neither this declaration nor other Council texts nor the New Testament may be interpreted selectively on the basis of certain preconceptions which qualify the universal mediation of salvation of Jesus Christ and the consequent necessity for salvation of the confession of Christ, of the Church and of her sacraments.

Church teaching in its entirety and interrelatedness remains determinative. In the interpretation of revelation as it is transmitted in proper yet related ways in each of Scripture and Tradition, Catholic theology must always respect the fact that the binding explanation of revelation is 'entrusted exclusively to the living magisterium of the Church, whose authority is exercised in the name of Jesus Christ.' Dei Verbum §10

For this reason the Church’s undiminished confession of Christ remains constitutive of the Catholic faith and a central point of reference in the dialogue with the Jewish faith-community.

Jews and Christians should be a blessing to the world

The Second Vatican Council has in Nostra Aetate framed the foundations for a dialogue which encompasses both what has already been achieved and responsibility for the future: 'Together with the Prophets and the same Apostle, the Church awaits that day, known to God alone, on which all peoples will call on the Lord in a single voice and "serve him shoulder to shoulder" (Zeph. 3:9). Since the spiritual patrimony common to Christians and Jews is thus so great, this sacred synod wants to foster and recommend that mutual understanding and respect which is the fruit, above all, of biblical and theological studies as well as of fraternal dialogues.' Nostra Aetate §4.

The words of John Paul II which he uttered in 1993 to the Jews of his homeland Poland are still valid for the proper development of Jewish-Christian dialogue: 'As Christians and as Jews we follow the example of Abraham. We are called to be a blessing to the world. That is the task that awaits us. It is absolutely essential for us, Christians and Jews both, first to be a blessing to each other!'

Pope Benedict XVI took up this theme in the Cologne synagogue on his visit in 2005 during World Youth Day: 'On this occasion too I would like to assure you that I intend to continue with complete commitment on the path of improving relations and friendship with the Jewish people - a path along which Pope John Paul II took decisive steps.'

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Previous parts of the series:

Confessing the Messiah: The Church's Confession of Christ in Jewish-Christian Dialogue - Introduction Pt. I

Confessing the Messiah: The Church's Confession of Christ in Jewish-Christian Dialogue - Introduction Pt. II

Confessing the Messiah: The Church's Confession of Christ in Jewish-Christian Dialogue - Bishop Müller's Statement Pt. I

Confessing the Messiah: The Church's Confession of Christ in Jewish-Christian Dialogue - Bishop Müller's Statement Pt. II

Confessing the Messiah: The Church's Confession of Christ in Jewish-Christian Dialogue - Bishop Müller's Statement Pt. III

Confessing the Messiah: The Church's Confession of Christ in Jewish-Christian Dialogue - Bishop Müller's Statement Pt. III

As we continue our series regarding Jewish salvation and the liceity of the extraordinary form Good Friday prayer for Jewish conversion, here is part III of the statement of Bishop Gerhard Ludwig Müller (see part I and II here and here and Dr Thomas Pink's Introduction to it here and here).



The Church's Confession of Christ in Jewish-Christian Dialogue - Part III

By Bishop Dr Gerhard Ludwig Müller

Translated by Dr Thomas Pink

The concept of 'Mission' and Judaism

In any dialogue between Jews and Christians the concept of mission must be presented properly. Christian mission has its source in the Father's sending forth of Jesus. Jesus gives his disciples a share in that mission in relation to God's people Israel (see Matthew 10, 5) and then also as the resurrected Lord in relation to all peoples (see Matthew 28, 19). Thus comes into being the people of God founded in the covenantal blood of Jesus, who calls his Church from both Jews and Gentiles (Ephesians 2, 11-21), on the basis of faith in Christ and by means of baptism, which is incorporation into his body, which is the Church (Lumen Gentium §14).

The Jews who do not arrive at faith in Christ are not excluded from salvation on that account, if they live from the grace of the covenant and in accordance with God's commandments. The salvation of which we are speaking here means though on the Christian understanding the salvation which God has given to Jews and Gentiles through Christ.

Differences in soteriological conceptions follow from the different evaluation of the person and mission of Jesus. Christian mission, therefore, is not about the use of subtle arts of persuasion to entice away believers in other religions, or of threats of disadvantage in this world and of punishments in the next to coerce someone into Christian faith.

Faith and freedom are mutual conditions of each other. A faith that is compelled or a baptism that is forced are contradictions in themselves and are opposed to revealed teaching (Dignitatis Humanae §10).

Mission and non-violence

Christian mission and witness through proclamation of the word and through the conduct of one's own life belong together. To prefer to suffer violence than to inflict it is the fundamental principle that Jesus gives to his disciples when he sends them forth. Christians can therefore trust in God, who will carry out his universal saving plan in ways that only he knows. For though Christians are witnesses of Christ, they do not have to accomplish the salvation of men themselves.

Zeal for the 'house of the Lord' and calm trust in the victorious action of God belong together. Christian mission means that the appointed messengers witness to and proclaim the historical realization of the universal salvific will of God in Jesus Christ and celebrate the sacramental presence of that realization in the martyria, leiturgia and diakonia of the Church of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

The reason for this missionary Church lies in the universal salvific will of God, which realizes itself in the saving mediation of Christ: 'Therefore, all must be converted to Him, made known by the Church's preaching, and all must be incorporated into Him by baptism and into the Church which is His body. For Christ Himself by stressing in express language the necessity of faith and baptism (cf. Mark 16:16; John 3:5), at the same time confirmed the necessity of the Church, into which men enter by baptism, as by a door. Therefore those men cannot be saved, who though aware that God, through Jesus Christ founded the Church as something necessary, still do not wish to enter into it, or to persevere in it. Therefore though God in ways known to Himself can lead those inculpably ignorant of the Gospel to find that faith without which it is impossible to please Him (Hebrews 11:6), yet a necessity lies upon the Church (1 Corinthians 9:16), and at the same time a sacred right, to preach the Gospel. And hence missionary activity today as always fully retains its power and necessity.' Ad Gentes §7

Thus does the Second Vatican Council present the necessity for salvation of faith in Christ and of the Church.

The people of God made up of Jews and Gentiles - the witness of Scripture

It is and remains a qualitative definition of the Church of the New Covenant that both synchronically and diachronically she is a Church made up of Jews and Gentiles, even if the quantitative ratio of Jewish and Gentile Christians may give a different impression.

Just as after the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ there are not two unrelated covenants existing alongside each other, so there is not the covenantal people of Israel existing apart from and alongside the 'people of God made up of the Gentiles' (ZdK Declaration p17). Rather the continuing role of the covenantal people of Israel in God's salvific plan is dynamically related to the 'people of God made up of Jews and Gentiles – united in Christ', whom the Church confesses to be the universal mediator of creation and of salvation.

In the context of God's will that all should be saved, all those who have not yet received the Gospel of Christ are ordered towards the people of God of the New Covenant: 'In the first place that people to whom the testament and the promises were given and from whom Christ was born according to the flesh, a people most dear according to its election on account of the patriarchs: for the gifts and vocation of God are irrevocable.' (Vatican II Lumen Gentium §16)

Jews and Christians as brothers in dialogue

Hence it is possible to set out, in terms of the theology of revelation and the history of salvation, the relation of the Jewish and Christian faiths - and to do so without the Church of Christ having to restrict or even qualify the substance of her faith in her Lord and in her universal mission to proclaim the Gospel for all people.

Faith in Christ cannot be reconciled with any form of polemic or denigration of those 'Jews' (any more than of those 'Gentiles' or 'heathen') who in full sincerity of conscience lack belief in Jesus as the Christ. A Christian who is hostile to Jews - that would be a contradiction in terms. And the awful fact that there have been excesses committed by Christians against their Jewish brothers and sisters only shows that those have acted in a way that blatantly contradicts their own name of Christians.

Hostility towards Jews in circles that are (nominally) Christian is not a consequence of the confession of Christ, but proof of a betrayal of it. Enmity or any form of persecution is diametrically opposed to Christ's command. This is the declaration of the Council: 'Furthermore, in her rejection of every persecution against any man, the Church, mindful of the patrimony she shares with the Jews and moved not by political reasons but by the Gospel's spiritual love, deplores hatred, persecutions, displays of anti-Semitism, directed against Jews at any time and by anyone.' Nostra Aetate §4

On the other hand, in the context of the Jewish-Christian dialogue of today that has developed in so positive and friendly a way, there is equally no place for polemics and for the constant use of history to fuel renewed resentments or Christian self-accusations, as when the slogan 'Mission to the Jews' with all its load of historical and theological negativity is used to discredit the mission of the Church to witness Jesus, the Christ, as 'a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and for glory to thy people Israel.' Luke 2, 32.

How can New Testament passages when interpreted in a way hostile to Jews ever support a 'Mission to the Jews' (ZdK Declaration p16)? A scripturally based enmity towards Jews would be a contradiction in itself. Since 'the pilgrim Church is missionary by her very nature, since it is from the mission of the Son and the mission of the Holy Spirit that she draws her origin, in accordance with the decree of God the Father' (Ad Gentes §2), mission has nothing to do in any way with an attitude of hostility either to Jews or towards heathens that would, as in a form of political imperialism, confront opponents with a choice between extermination or subjection.

The opposite is the truth: 'This decree flows from the “fount-like love” or charity of God the Father' (Ad Gentes §2). God's reign is love, and his kingdom means the raising up of man in the grace of Christ, who has sacrificed his life for all out of love, and thereby the overcoming of all enmity.

Being a Christian is not the basis for some feeling of superiority, let alone for any contempt towards those of other faiths, but rather for assimilating oneself to Jesus's own attitude of humility and readiness for service, so that 'all the Church's children should remember that their exalted status is to be attributed not to their own merits but to the special grace of Christ.' Lumen Gentium §14

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Previous parts of the series:

Confessing the Messiah: The Church's Confession of Christ in Jewish-Christian Dialogue - Introduction Pt. I

Confessing the Messiah: The Church's Confession of Christ in Jewish-Christian Dialogue - Introduction Pt. II

Confessing the Messiah: The Church's Confession of Christ in Jewish-Christian Dialogue - Bishop Müller's Statement Pt. I

Confessing the Messiah: The Church's Confession of Christ in Jewish-Christian Dialogue - Bishop Müller's Statement Pt. II

Subsequent parts of the series:

Confessing the Messiah: The Church's Confession of Christ in Jewish-Christian Dialogue - Bishop Müller's Statement Pt. IV

Confessing the Messiah: The Church's Confession of Christ in Jewish-Christian Dialogue - Bishop Müller's Statement Pt. II

Continuing our series regarding Jewish salvation and the liceity of the extraordinary form Good Friday prayer for Jewish conversion, here is part II of the statement of Bishop Gerhard Ludwig Müller (see part I here and Dr Thomas Pink's Introduction to it here and here).



The Church's Confession of Christ in Jewish-Christian Dialogue - Part II

By Bishop Dr Gerhard Ludwig Müller

Translated by Dr Thomas Pink

God's grace and human action

We must distinguish between, on the one hand, any reduction either of Judaism or of Christianity, both of which know themselves to derive from a divinely given covenant, to ethics as a humanly self-sufficient way to God - indeed almost to a claim on salvation - and on the other hand recognition of the fundamental human right to religious freedom (Vatican II Dignitatis Humanae §2). In this sense the Second Vatican Council teaches that each person has the right and duty to follow their own conscience in matters of religious conviction and moral action and in this way to fulfil the rule of truth and goodness (Dignitatis Humanae §3).

Hence those people can be saved and attain final communion with God who through no fault of their own lack belief in Jesus Christ, indeed under certain circumstances even lack belief in the existence of a personal God as creator and consummator, but not – and this is decisive – without the grace of Christ working invisibly within them.

Since from a Christian viewpoint nothing can be said of God apart from Jesus the Christ, the incarnate Word, and apart from the Holy Spirit eschatologically poured out 'upon all flesh' (Acts 2, 17), the salvation that comes from God is always through Jesus Christ and through the inner working of the Holy Spirit (Vatican II Gaudium et Spes §22).

'Besides, as the Church has always held and holds now, Christ underwent His passion and death freely, because of the sins of all men and out of infinite love, in order that all may reach salvation. It is, therefore, the burden of the Church's preaching to proclaim the cross of Christ as the sign of God's all-embracing love and as the fountain from which every grace flows.' (Vatican II Nostra Aetate §4)

The explicit confession of Christ and the making concrete of that confession in membership of the Church, a life based on the sacraments and on following after Christ - these are therefore necessary as means to salvation for all who recognize Jesus as the Christ.

Mutual respect without qualification of one's own belief.

Walter Cardinal Kasper stressed that if one 'is convinced, with Scripture, of the universal salvific significance of Jesus Christ' one cannot speak of two ways to salvation, one for Jews and one for Christians. Rather in the relationship of the Scriptures of the Mosaic covenant and of the New Testament there is revealed a common salvation history, within which 'the Jewish people remains God's chosen people', a people whose covenant is confirmed, surpassed and universalized by Jesus Christ (Walter Kasper, Where the Heart of Faith Beats: the Experience of My Life, Freiburg 2008, pp294f).

Differences between religions have their origin not in mutually independent revelations, covenants and saving actions on God's part - a God who directs himself to each one of a variety of targeted groups and who would thereby split up humanity rather than unite it. This would contradict the singleness of God: 'God our Saviour, desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all.' 1 Timothy 2, 4-5

From here flow both the being and mission of the Church as sacrament of the world's salvation in Christ, in whom the Church is 'a sign and instrument both of an intimate union with God and of the unity (!) of the whole human race'. Lumen Gentium §1

Credal differences result from the diverse reactions of men following their own conscientious conceptions of the truth in relation to God's self-revelation.

People of differing faiths can therefore live together in complete mutual respect with people of other religions and work together in friendship for the construction of a single society based on ethical principles founded on religion or natural law.

But they can also bear their differences without attributing to each other false or evil intentions. A qualification of each party's own binding creed would, on the other hand, make any dialogue superfluous. Such dialogue is however both sensible and mutually beneficial since particularly between Jews and Christians the fact of an historical self-revelation of God is not in dispute, even if there remain diverse convictions about the scope of that revelation, that is about its culmination in the person and mission of Jesus Christ.

Hence it would be a reduction of Catholic teaching about the realization of the universal salvific will of God in Jesus Christ and about Christ's sole mediation of salvation and about the consequent necessity to salvation of the Church and of baptism, as well as about the possibility of salvation of those who, through no fault of their own, lack belief in Christ, if alongside and independent of these conditions there were also a way to salvation 'even apart from recognition of Jesus Christ and apart from the sacrament of baptism' (ZdK Declaration p5) as something confirmed by God himself.

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Previous parts of the series:

Confessing the Messiah: The Church's Confession of Christ in Jewish-Christian Dialogue - Introduction Pt. I

Confessing the Messiah: The Church's Confession of Christ in Jewish-Christian Dialogue - Introduction Pt. II

Confessing the Messiah: The Church's Confession of Christ in Jewish-Christian Dialogue - Bishop Müller's Statement Pt. I

Subsequent parts of the series:

Confessing the Messiah: The Church's Confession of Christ in Jewish-Christian Dialogue - Bishop Müller's Statement Pt. III

Confessing the Messiah: The Church's Confession of Christ in Jewish-Christian Dialogue - Bishop Müller's Statement Pt. IV

Confessing the Messiah: The Church's Confession of Christ in Jewish-Christian Dialogue - Bishop Müller's Statement Pt. I

After the Introduction by Dr Thomas Pink (Part I - Part II) we now come to the statement by Bishop Gerhard Ludwig Müller of Regensburg himself (you can find the German original at the site of the German Bishops' Conference here).



The Church's Confession of Christ in Jewish-Christian Dialogue

By Bishop Dr Gerhard Ludwig Müller

Translated by Dr Thomas Pink

The Chairman of the Committee for Ecumenism of the German Bishops' Conference, Bishop Dr Gerhard Ludwig Müller, has written a statement regarding the Declaration of the 'Jews and Christians' dialogue circle of the Central Committee of German Catholics (ZdK) "No to Mission to the Jews - Yes to dialogue between Jews and Gentiles".

The life and mission of the Church can only be understood on the basis of her confession of Jesus the Christ: 'because, if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; the same Lord is Lord of all and bestows his riches upon all who call upon him.' Romans 10, 9-12

The Church's confession of Christ has its source in the living encounter of the disciples with the person of Jesus. The primitive Church recognized in him the Word which is God, and that has taken flesh for the sake of our salvation. Through his preaching, teaching and saving works and finally through his death on the cross, his resurrection from the dead and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit has communicated himself to all men as truth and life in a way that cannot be surpassed by any new revelation and that is final (eschatologically).

'The Christian dispensation, therefore, as the new and definitive covenant, will never pass away' (Vatican II Dei Verbum §4). With this understanding the Second Vatican Council summarises, in the Dogmatic Constitution on divine revelation, employing the highest level of magisterial authority, the fullness of the Church's confession of Christ both in its origin in Scripture and in its unfolding in faith in the greatness of Tradition.

Jesus is the Christ

The Church believes therefore in the person of Jesus Christ. She does not build on an historical reconstruction of some image of Jesus abstracted from biblical sources according, for example, to the preconceptions of a liberal world picture that is merely culturally Christian. Hence the Old Testament cannot be read as witnessing the real giving of a covenant by God in contrast to the New Testament which is supposed to use merely literary stylistic devices to interpret a Jewish teacher of the Torah merely as if he were Son of God or universal redeemer, without Jesus being really and truly the incarnate Word of God. (See ZdK Declaration, p9)

Holy Scripture: the Word of God in human language

As far as the relation to each other of the Jewish and Christian faith-communities is concerned, there is a common frame of reference - a faith-hermeneutic which is profoundly theological, and which is qualitatively removed from comparisons made from an historical or a literary point of view. Believing Jews and Christians both presuppose that God can reveal himself in history and that in fact he has revealed himself as creator of all men and as saviour and redeemer of his chosen people.

The Holy Scriptures of Israel and of the Church witness and contain the Word of God expressed in human language. The Jewish Bible and the Christian Bible (in the Old and New Testaments) are therefore not purely human interpretations which, on the model of liberal theories of projection, assume for themselves 'God' as fictional subject of some salvation-historical revelation in word and deed (and so introduce ‘God’ only 'as if' he were a 'person').

What differentiates the confession of Jews and Christians is not the affirmation of a real action on the part of God in the covenant for Israel and a merely human interpretation of the figure of Jesus in the New Testament writings, but the question whether Jesus really is the promised Messiah, and whether the incarnation, the atoning death on the cross and the resurrection from the dead really have been effected by the same covenantal God, the God and Father of Jesus Christ, .

The Self-Revelation of the Triune God

In the text of the 'Jews and Christians' dialogue circle of the ZdK, by contrast, the dividing line between Jews and Christians is placed merely in the 'idea' of the Trinity and of the incarnation. But for Catholics and for all Christians who recognize the creed of Nicaea-Constantinople, the mystery of the Trinity is not some metaphor of the closeness and love of God applied to God from without, but the revelation of the innermost being of God which he himself declares to us men in the true historical incarnation of the Son of God and in the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, and within which being we are included.

Salvation is becoming filled with the love of God - now and forever through eternity. We then can no longer speak of the universal salvific will of God apart from his being made present, both historically and eschatologically, in Jesus Christ, the sole mediator between God and man.

God's covenant - the offer of salvation

The primacy of grace and of faith renders completely unintelligible any standpoint that 'opens up the ethical action of general humanity' as 'a way to God lying beyond all differences of belief' (ZdK Declaration p5). There is no way round the central Christian faith-conviction of God’s real action of grace in the death of Christ for the redemption of all men. 'Since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, they are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus... Or is God the God of Jews only? Is he not the God of Gentiles also? Yes, of Gentiles also, since God is one; and he will justify the circumcised on the ground of their faith and the uncircumcised through their faith.' Romans 3, 23-30

The attainment of eschatological salvation according to the gospel of St Matthew, the declaration of the dialogue circle suggests, is supposed not to be tied to the person of Jesus, but to be dependent 'solely' on actions involving love of neighbour. So Jesus can stand for the Jews as an interpreter of the Torah while for the Gentiles he serves to motivate their recognition of the God of Israel. (ZdK Declaration pp18f)

There is no mention that the mystery of and confession of the Messiah is central to all the gospels. Mary, who has conceived Jesus through the working of the Holy Spirit, is commanded to give her son the name of Jesus (Matthew 8, 29; John 11, 27) 'because he will redeem his people from their sins' (Matthew 1, 27). Jesus is designated prophetically as the 'shepherd of my people Israel' (Matthew 2, 6). To restrict the redemptive action of Jesus Christ to the Gentiles that live outside the people of God that is Israel - this would be to turn the entire witness of the Bible on its head.

Rather, it is congruent with the sovereignty and uniqueness of God that HE approaches us by the path of election, vocation, covenantal grace, redemption, justification and - as Christians confess - incarnation. Men then can follow the way of God to their salvation if they show him the 'obedience of faith' (Dei Verbum §5), which shows itself in love of God and neighbour in fulfillment of the will of God in his commandments.

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Previous parts of the series:

Confessing the Messiah: The Church's Confession of Christ in Jewish-Christian Dialogue - Introduction Pt. I

Confessing the Messiah: The Church's Confession of Christ in Jewish-Christian Dialogue - Introduction Pt. II

Subsequent parts of the series:

Confessing the Messiah: The Church's Confession of Christ in Jewish-Christian Dialogue - Bishop Müller's Statement Pt. II

Confessing the Messiah: The Church's Confession of Christ in Jewish-Christian Dialogue - Bishop Müller's Statement Pt. III

Confessing the Messiah: The Church's Confession of Christ in Jewish-Christian Dialogue - Bishop Müller's Statement Pt. IV

Confessing the Messiah: The Church's Confession of Christ in Jewish-Christian Dialogue - Introduction Pt. II

We continue Dr Thomas Pink's Introduction to the statement of Bishop Gerhard Ludwig Müller regarding Jewish salvation and the liceity of the extraordinary form Good Friday prayer for Jewish conversion (see part I here.)




Confessing the Messiah

By Dr Thomas Pink

One question still remains. Has not the post-Conciliar magisterium renounced a 'Mission to the Jews' understood precisely as a targeted programme of conversion aimed at securing the final conversion of all Jews to Christianity? Such a renunciation would make perfect sense in terms of a dual covenant theology. And indeed Cardinal Kasper himself in a widely read article in Osservatore Romano of April 10, 2008 sought to explain the extraordinary form prayer for Jewish conversion in terms that do eschew a 'Mission to the Jews' specifically so understood. The final conversion of the Jews, he has observed, is an eschatological event associated by St Paul in Romans Chapter 11 with the coming again of Christ from Zion. It is not therefore something which the Church should be taking active steps to bring about by itself in the here and now.

But this gloss has not satisfied liberal critics. And nor should it. For in the very same article Cardinal Kasper still endorses St Paul's habit of preaching first in the synagogues to gain converts to Christianity - and only then, if no conversions occur, moving on to evangelize the Gentiles:

Naturally, Christians must, where it is opportune, give to their older brothers and sisters in the faith of Abraham (John Paul II) a witness of their own faith and of the richness and beauty of their faith in Christ. Paul did this as well. During his missionary journeys, Paul always went first to the synagogue, and only when he did not find faith there did he go to the pagans (Acts of the Apostles, 13:5,14ff., 42-52; 14:1-6 and others; Romans 1:16 is fundamental).

A 'Mission to the Jews' understood as a strategy to end the very existence of Judaism as a religion rejecting of Christ - that would be to address an eschatological matter properly in the hands of God alone. But St Paul's general evangelisation of Jews along with and even before Gentiles, a strategy aiming at individual conversions - Kasper in fact endorses that. St Paul's missionary strategy would certainly have no place in a dual covenant theology.

So the liberals have remained unmollified and the protest and outcry has continued, with the strongest objections to the prayer for Jewish conversion coming from liberal theologians in the United States and Germany. And that reminds us that the real explanation for these objections may not lie in some compelling theological principle, but rather in a crisis of Christian guilt following the Shoah - a guilt that given the ethnic politics of the US and the history of Germany, is likely to be particularly deeply felt by Christians in those two countries. But such feelings of guilt, however warranted and understandable in themselves, do not constitute any theological argument sufficient to compel revision of fundamental Catholic teaching about Christ.

Indeed how could there be a theological principle compelling in terms of orthodox Catholicism for viewing Christ's and the Christian mission as being specifically to the Gentiles and not to the Jews as well? How can Christ's redeeming work, and then human acknowledgement of this work through faith and participation in it through baptism all be less necessary for Jews than Gentiles? For Christ's sacrifice is required to undo the sin of Adam, the father of us all. The alienation from God that is involved in original sin, and that only Christ can repair and end, is not an exclusively Gentile predicament. At the same time, from the prayers and thanks of Mary, Simeon and Zechariah onwards, the New Testament very consistently presents Christ's universal redemptive work in terms of his fulfilment of specifically Jewish hopes for a Messiah to save Israel.

It is not surprising then that liberal opposition to the extraordinary form prayer for Jewish conversion should extend to denial that Christ's work really is to redeem humanity from the sin of Adam. And the recent March 2009 Declaration 'No to a Mission to the Jews - Yes to Jewish-Christian dialogue' in denunciation of this prayer of the liberal Central Committee of German Catholics (ZdK) makes just this move. Here is a key claim made on the first page:

"Christians today maintain along with Jews that the ethical action of general humanity opens up a way to God that goes beyond all differences of belief."

Far from salvation being through faith in Christ and baptism, what saves us is nothing more than praiseworthy human moral action. Christ's role is no more than to call us to follow a moral code - a moral code that had already been sufficiently presented to Israel in the teachings of the Old Testament. So the Jews have no need specifically to follow Christ. But nor, of course, in a sense do we - provided that we all do what is right. Christ is just a moral teacher, albeit perhaps one who for Christians is supremely representative of and communicative of the divine goodness. So while moral action is demanded of all, attention specifically to Christ is just another faith-option - and one which, given the history of Christian ill-treatment and persecution of the Jews, it would be unwarranted and oppressive, as well as strictly unnecessary, even to recommend to the Jewish people. The idea that all humans are burdened by original sin, and that faith and baptism in Christ is what releases all of us, Jew and Gentile alike, from this burden - this is just dismissed by the Declaration as an outmoded pre-Conciliar theology (see ZdK Declaration pp7-8). At the heart of objections to the extraordinary form of the Roman rite and its prayer for Jewish conversion lies then the Pelagianism so characteristic of modern liberal Protestantism - a Pelagianism that, it is now very clear, has entered deeply into the belief of important parts of the German Catholic theological establishment.

It is of vital importance to the future of the Catholic Church in Germany that this ZdK Declaration of liberal protest against the liturgical policies of Pope Benedict XVI has not been met with by silence from the German bishops. Indeed it matters to the universal Church that the issue has been addressed by the formal magisterium of a bishop with both responsibility for ecumenical dialogue and a role in the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith - and in a local context where some might have expected more reticence or evasion. As Chairman of its Committee for Ecumenism, on April 15th 2009 Bishop Gerhard Ludwig Mueller of Regensburg put out a strong official statement on behalf of the whole German Bishops' Conference defending both Catholic orthodoxy regarding Jewish salvation and the licitness of the extraordinary form Good Friday prayer for Jewish conversion. In this statement the German bishops defend the following positions:

- that Jesus is the Jewish Messiah and that his role as such is one with his role as universal saviour of mankind.

- that all are saved in the same way from sin by the one sacrifice of Christ.

- that participation in that saving work through faith and baptism is no less necessary for Jews than for Gentiles.

- that the Church of the New Covenant is indeed to be, as Lumen Gentium teaches, the new People of God made up of Jews and Gentiles alike.

- that Christian dialogue with Jews in no way excludes a Christian mission to evangelize all peoples, Jews along with Gentiles, and that Christian mission ought not to be discredited by association of it with past Christian oppression of the Jews, an oppression that was opposed to Christian faith and witness properly understood.

- that the Declaration of the ZdK forswearing any kind of mission to the Jews has no doctrinal standing whatsoever, and indeed lacks any coherent or plausible grasp of its subject. The Declaration's suggestions of a supposed discontinuity between pre- and post-Conciliar Catholic teaching on Jewish salvation, or of a similar supposed discontinuity between the teaching of Vatican II and John Paul II and that of Benedict XVI, are completely misguided.

For those of us who value the traditional liturgy of the Roman rite, there are two lessons to be drawn. First, that Summorum Pontificum has clearly been of vital importance in nerving even those parts of the world episcopate less than fully sympathetic towards the 1962 Missal to reassert the continuity of orthodox Catholic teaching on human salvation - a teaching that the traditional liturgy presents without ambiguity, and indeed with unsurpassed beauty and clarity. Secondly that behind opposition to the Good Friday prayer for Jewish conversion lies an even more profound source of opposition to the traditional liturgy as a whole - which is a theological Pelagianism that clearly finds the deeply Augustinian orthodoxy of the traditional Roman rite unbearable. But is not such a Pelagianism just the enemy of Christianity itself? Much that extends far beyond the liturgy itself is at stake in Pope Benedict's liturgical programme. The Holy Father, and the bishops who support him, deserve our prayers.

Dr Thomas Pink is Professor of Philosophy at King's College London, who is working on (amongst other things) conceptions of religious liberty, religious coercion and relations between religions held by Catholics from the Counter-Reformation onwards, and who is preparing an edition of Francisco Suarez's moral and political writings.

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Previous parts of the series:

Confessing the Messiah: The Church's Confession of Christ in Jewish-Christian Dialogue - Introduction Pt. I

Subsequent parts of the series:

Confessing the Messiah: The Church's Confession of Christ in Jewish-Christian Dialogue - Bishop Müller's Statement Pt. I

Confessing the Messiah: The Church's Confession of Christ in Jewish-Christian Dialogue - Bishop Müller's Statement Pt. II

Confessing the Messiah: The Church's Confession of Christ in Jewish-Christian Dialogue - Bishop Müller's Statement Pt. III

Confessing the Messiah: The Church's Confession of Christ in Jewish-Christian Dialogue - Bishop Müller's Statement Pt. IV

Confessing the Messiah: The Church's Confession of Christ in Jewish-Christian Dialogue - Introduction Pt. I

No doubt most readers are aware of the controversy which arose after the reformulation of the Good Friday intercession for the Jews in the usus antiquior by Pope Benedict XVI in 2008 and the very important questions raised in this context. While preeminently theological in nature, these are, as so often, deeply related to the liturgy, as here again applies the famous axiom lex orandi lex credendi. The NLM is therefore very happy to present to you an English translation of a recent and very important statement which Bishop Gerhard Ludwig Mueller of Regensburg put out on behalf of the whole German Bishops' Conference defending both Catholic orthodoxy regarding Jewish salvation and the licitness of the extraordinary form Good Friday prayer for Jewish conversion. The translation was done by Dr Thomas Pink (with some little help and advice by myself), who has also written an excellent introduction to the document for the NLM. I will be posting this in several parts, and begin today with the first part of the introduction.




Confessing the Messiah

By Dr Thomas Pink

Nothing following the motu proprio Summorum Pontificum of Pope Benedict XVI has caused more theological protest among Catholic liberals than the Pope's refusal to replace the 1962 prayer entitled Pro conversione Iudaeorum - 'For the conversion of the Jews' - in the intercessions of the Good Friday liturgy in the extraordinary form with the 1970 prayer entitled simply Pro Iudaeis - 'For the Jews' - that is to be found in the ordinary form of that liturgy, and which, though it prays for Jewish redemption, makes no explicit reference to Jewish conversion to Christ.

True, the content of that 1962 prayer for Jewish conversion was revised by the Pope in 2008. But the revision seems merely to have removed language referring to Jewish blindness and darkness that was seen in many quarters as needlessly insulting. Indeed, the new 2008 revision not only retains its 1962 title referring to conversion. It also states expressly as the 1962 prayer previously did not that Jesus Christ is the saviour of all people, and makes it explicit that the salvation of the Jews involves their acknowledgement of him as such. The introduction to the new 2008 prayer characterizes it as being specifically for the Jews to recognize Christ as the saviour of all and so, in particular, as their saviour; and then the prayer itself asks for Israel to be saved - something which therefore must inherently involve acceptance of faith in Christ as redeemer.

The liberal protests are based on their allegation that the Second Vatican Council changed Catholic teaching about Jewish salvation. Before the Council, Jewish salvation was taught by the Catholic Church to depend, just as did Gentile salvation, on conversion to faith in Christ and entry through baptism into the Church - the Church being a New Israel to be made up of Jew and Gentile alike. Whereas according to the dual covenant theology favoured by these liberal protestors and associated by them with the Council, Catholics should now admit that the Jews have in fidelity to the Old Testament Covenant a promise and means of salvation that is both unrevoked and quite separate from the way taken by Christians who follow Jesus Christ as their redeemer. The text that is alleged to support this is the conciliar decree Nostra Aetate with its Pauline message that the promises made by God to the Jewish people are irrevocable.

These claims about Vatican II are curious. For that same Council's Lumen Gentium itself describes the Catholic Church as the New Israel, and as involving a new People of God made up of Jew and Gentile alike based on a more perfect covenant than that which formed the Israel of the Old Testament:

He therefore chose the race of Israel as a people unto Himself. With it He set up a covenant.... All these things, however, were done by way of preparation and as a figure of that new and perfect covenant, which was to be ratified in Christ, and of that fuller revelation which was to be given through the Word of God Himself made flesh.... Christ instituted this new covenant, the new testament, that is to say, in His Blood, calling together a people made up of Jew and gentile, making them one, not according to the flesh but in the Spirit. This was to be the new People of God. Lumen Gentium §9

It is true that Vatican II allows that people can be saved without actually receiving baptism of water in this life, and also without attaining explicit faith in Christ during their lifetime. And so this possibility applies also to the Jews. But this admission was by no means original to the magisterium of Vatican II, and is arguably rooted deeply in previous Church teaching at the highest level (see Quanto conficiamur moerore of Pius IX and Suprema haec sacra of the Holy Office under Pius XII). And the admission certainly does not involve treating Judaism as offering for Jews an alternative and self-sufficient means of salvation besides that offered to Christians. For example Vatican II still insists that anyone who recognises the truth of the Catholic Church's claims must enter or at least intend to enter the Church through baptism if they are to be saved (see Ad Gentes §7 on Christian mission). Jews are not exempted from this requirement, which they would be if, consistently with Catholic truth, they had their own separate path to salvation.

Moreover, whether or not the 1970 Good Friday prayer is unclear about the terms of Jewish redemption, the 1970 Liturgy of the Hours, as has been pointed out by Gregor Kollmorgen and Fr Brian Harrison, is full of prayers that the Jews recognize Jesus as their Messiah and Redeemer.

The natural conclusion is that as a promise of salvation the Jewish covenant has indeed not been revoked - but rather has been fulfilled, being continued, in a more perfect and universal form, in the covenant of the New Testament. The Old Covenant has not been cancelled by the New, but has been transformed. Judaism is mistaken, not in thinking that it is involved in a still valid saving Covenant with God, but in the nature and true basis of that saving Covenant, which in actual fact involves all of humanity, Jew and Gentile alike, and which operates solely through the sacrifice of Christ. Christ's role as true Messiah of the Jews, the Messiah promised in the Old Testament, is just his role as universal saviour of mankind, the saviour proclaimed in the New Testament. And that seems indeed to be precisely the position of official post-conciliar Roman theology.

Dr Thomas Pink is Professor of Philosophy at King's College London, who is working on (amongst other things) conceptions of religious liberty, religious coercion and relations between religions held by Catholics from the Counter-Reformation onwards, and who is preparing an edition of Francisco Suarez's moral and political writings.

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Subsequent parts of the series:

Confessing the Messiah: The Church's Confession of Christ in Jewish-Christian Dialogue - Introduction Pt. II

Confessing the Messiah: The Church's Confession of Christ in Jewish-Christian Dialogue - Bishop Müller's Statement Pt. I

Confessing the Messiah: The Church's Confession of Christ in Jewish-Christian Dialogue - Bishop Müller's Statement Pt. II

Confessing the Messiah: The Church's Confession of Christ in Jewish-Christian Dialogue - Bishop Müller's Statement Pt. III

Confessing the Messiah: The Church's Confession of Christ in Jewish-Christian Dialogue - Bishop Müller's Statement Pt. IV