In his book The Body of Faith, a fascinating account of classical Judaism in the clothes of modern theological and philosophical discourse, the Jewish theologian Michael Wyschogrod writes:

The circumcised body of Israel is the […] carnal presence through which the redemption makes its way in history. Salvation is of the Jews because the flesh of Israel is the abode of the divine presence in the world. It is the carnal anchor that God has sunk into the soil of creation.[1]

I believe that Wyschogrod here is basically in line with a much earlier Jewish sage, Paul of Tarsus, and I will argue that this perspective is essential for the Pauline understanding of the relationship between the church and Israel, but also for the Jews in the world. Christian theology having departed from its Jewish roots has not only excluded Israel from its symbolic universe, but also excluded itself from the symbolic universe of Israel. Illustrated by a simple duality, the church as organism is part of Israel, otherwise it is excluded from the covenants of God (a point which I will clarify below), but as organisation Church history tells us that it has alienated itself from Israel, and thus to a certain extent from the God who in the gospels is presented as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (Matt 11:22; Luk 13:28). This estrangement is originally a hermeneutical one, when the church began interpreting itself as something fundamentally other than Israel, but was soon manifested in praxis.[2] The acknowledging of Israel as God’s chosen people ceased, and Christians as well as Jews began defining themselves as entirely different, if not opposing bodies. Not to reiterate my earlier argument, this perspective dominates Christian theology from perhaps the 140’s to the 1940’s. But with what can be called a ‘repentance under the gallows’, that is, a repentance forced upon the repentent, things took on a new note after the Shoah. The World Council of the Churches 1948 and 1961 began to acknowledge the guilt of anti-Semitism in church history and the need to reject the deicide charge. The Second Vatican Council with its Nostra Aetate 1965 took further step in declaring that Jews cannot be regarded as rejected by God, forming the strongest stand against supersessionism till then,[3] and an important one.

To be continued…

[2] Perhaps already in the Didache, probably dating from 70?–100 C.E., where e.g., the days of fasting stipulated diverge from those of contemporary Judaism and Shabbat. This is true even if the teaching of the two ways seems to have deep roots in Jewish tradition, Brock, Sebastian. 1990. The Two Ways and the Palestinian Targum. In A Tribute to Geza Vermes. Essays on Jewish and Christian Literature and History, ed. Philip R. Davies and Richard T. White, 100:139–152. Sheffield: JSOT Press.

[3] Leighton, Christopher M. 2000. Christian Theology after the Shoah. In Christianity in Jewish Terms, ed. Tikvah Frymer-Kensky, David Novak, Peter Ochs, David Fox Sandmel and Michael A. Signer: 36–48. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 40–41.