Gentile Christian Identity– Part Sixteen

Last updated on: January 21, 2021 at 1:40 am by Ben Witherington

Gentile Christian Identity– Part Sixteen 2020-12-15T14:43:13-05:00 Ben Witherington

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Q. On p. 417 you point out that Justin seems to have been the first Christian who consistently used the term ethne to refer to Gentile Christians, even to the point of seeing the use of that term in the Greek OT as prophecies about Gentile Christians, not about possible adherents to the Jewish faith from the Gentile world. This could be seen as part of the takeover by Christians of Jewish Scriptures as meant ultimately for Christians and predicting the coming of Gentile Christians as the fulfillment of promises to Abraham, for example. Part and parcel of this was the conviction, as mentioned in the Petrine literature that the prophets were writing not only about Christ and his people, but even writing for them, though they were not totally aware of it at the time (1 Pet. 1.10-12). One has to admit that various aspects of Justin’s ‘hostile takeover’ of the Jewish Scriptures, if you want to call it that, in fact has a grounding in what the writers of the NT themselves claim at various points. Justin’s anti-Judaism is plain at various points, unlike the earlier writers in various respects. It is difficult to know how much of all this to take at face value and how much should be seen as a rhetorical attempt at apologetics and self-definition. In any case, the net effect of Justin’s efforts would seem to further the rising tide of both anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism in the growing, overwhelmingly Gentile, church. How as a practicing Christian yourself (p. 81 n. 122) do you come to grips with this often troubling data?

Particularly, how does this affect your view of the authority of the NT Scriptures themselves? I take your point that intramural debates between Jewish Christ followers and non-Christian Jews is one thing, and Gentile use of the earlier material to further cast shade on Judaism and their reading of Scripture is another, but still the issue can’t merely be ‘we Gentile Christians need to repent’— can it? Do we need to repent of believing that the NT itself is inspired by the same God who inspired the Hebrew Scriptures? I ask this in all seriousness because your book raises these sorts of larger issues.

A. These are complicated and often troubling questions indeed; in various ways I have been wrestling with them for a long time. It’s clear that in the story I trace in this book, scripture plays a central role. To the extent that the story raises disturbing questions, especially for Christians, these questions have to do in significant measure with scripture—its interpretation, to be sure, but also more fundamentally with its nature and character. Such questions first emerged for me as a student in my initial encounters with the adversus Judaeos tradition, and I’ve continued to wrestle with them ever since.

While the adversus Judaeos tradition dealt primarily with Old Testament material, it is readily apparent that this interpretive tradition stands in continuity with the “according to the scriptures” proclamation and polemic in the New Testament. Not that there weren’t differences, but many of the texts and arguments in the later tradition are found in NT material as well. My initial way of coming to terms with this placed emphasis on the intra muros character of (much of) the NT material; that is, it stemmed from a Jewish subgroup that was engaged in an in-house debate with the larger Jewish environment in which it lived. So even if some of the specific arguments and interpretations were the same, the fact that the adversus Judaeos tradition was directed “against the Jews” by gentile outsiders meant that there was a considerable difference between the two. While I still see this distinction as significant, it is nevertheless the case that the contemporary church stands in a direct line of descent from the gentile church in the pre-Constantinian period. In approaching the NT material, the gentile church of today can’t simply take refuge in the fact that troubling NT texts were originally written by Jewish Christ-believers.

As I became more familiar with the Judaism of the Second Temple period, however, and got a better sense of Jewish interpretation of scripture and expectations of eschatological redemption, I became increasingly aware of how the claims made by the early Jewish Christ-believers—e.g., that “what God promised to the ancestors he has fulfilled for us, their children, by raising Jesus”—would have seemed extravagant and puzzling to most Jews. The early Christian message both ascribed ultimate significance to Jesus and asserted that Christ’s person and work represented the goal and culmination of the story of Israel. Jewish expectations about the promised age of salvation did not seem to be consistent with the notion of a messiah who would suffer and die, who would do so as a means of bringing salvation, but who would be removed to heaven without having established the expected era of righteousness under the reign of God.

Uncategorized

Previous Post

January 20, 2021

Gentile Christian Identity-- Part Fifteen

Next Post

January 22, 2021 Gentile Christian Identity-- Part Seventeen

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Uncategorized

Select a Month October 2026 September 2026 August 2026 July 2026 June 2026 May 2026 April 2026 March 2026 February 2026 January 2026 December 2025 November 2025 October 2025 September 2025 August 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 February 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 October 2024 September 2024 August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz