I emphatically disagree.Christianity is the replacement for Judaism. Judaism was valid and in full effect until the Death of Jesus. Upon His death the temple veil was ripped in twain from top to bottom by the hand of God. This signified that the rituals and practices of Judaism were no longer in effect, but that man could now approach God directly because of the sacrifice of His Son.
As one Christian writer put it more than thirty years ago:
Franklin H. Littell wrote:
"The cornerstone of Christian Antisemitism is the superseding or displacement myth.... This is the myth that the mission of the Jewish people was finished with the coming of Jesus Christ, that "the Old Israel" was written off with the appearance of "the New Israel." To teach that a people's mission in God's providence is finished, that they have been relegated to the limbo of history, has murderous implications which murderers in time will spell out.... The existence of a restored Israel, proof positive that the Jewish people is not annihilated, assimiliated, or otherwise withering away, is substantial refutation of the traditional Christian myth about their end in the historic process.....
"....A basic affirmation is the right of the Jewish people to self-identity and self-definition. No sound dialogue, let alone friendship or brotherhood-love, can develop if one partner is constantly endeavoring to categorize, to define, to box-in the other party. That has been the malaise of Christianity's relation to "the Jews" for centuries...
"The displacement myth, advanced by the gentile church fathers and repeated without biblical justification ever since, solved the problem by praising the dead Jews of the distant past (patriarchs, prophets and lawgivers) and teaching contempt for living Jews. A reconstructed and genuinely Christian theology will have to deal affirmatively with the contribution of the Jews in the last two millenia as well as with our fathers-in-God before the Christian era."
From The Crucifixion of the Jews; The Failure of Christians to Understand the Jewish Experience, Harper & Row, NY, 1975, p. 2-5.
Since that was written, "replacement" or "supersessionist" theology - the idea that Judaism is, with the arrival of Christianity, an obsolete and invalid religion and that Jews are now required to become Christians because they and their religion have otherwise been discarded by God - has been formally renounced and repudiated by virtually every Christian denomination, including the Roman Catholic Church. It is still taught today only by some fundamentalists.
It has been recognized as unScriptural (see my post to Easyrider on the eternal nature of the Old Covenant), and as the very root and cause of antisemitism and of the oppression and persecution of my people for centuries.
Questions for debate:
(1) Does "replacement theology" still have a place in the dialogue between Christians and Jews?
(2) If so - since it does not recognize Judaism as a viable religion and basically requires Jews to commit mass religious suicide and stop being Jews - what can that place possibly be?
One final note: this thread is addressed to Christians, and not to nontheists. If I could post it in Holy Huddle, I would, but I am not permitted to post there.
The non-theists present are welcome to post responses; but I would be most grateful if they would resist the urge to ring in and ask their usual question of why ANY religion is worth following.
That is not the topic here, and that would amount to hijacking this thread and preventing discussion of its intended topic. There are plenty of other threads where that question can be, and has been, explored.
Thanks in advance.
