Tuesday, 23 February 2016

Seeing Judaism Anew: Christianity's Sacred Obligation,
Ed. Mary C. Boys, Rowman and Littlefield, 2002
Chapter 13, "Covenant and Conversion" (pp. 151-162), page 156

Philip Cunngingham prepares to move on by making a statement:

Respecting Israel's enduring covenant requires concluding that G-d does not want a world without the distinctively Jewish way of covenanting.

That sounds fine as far as it goes, but completely fails to address the situation of those Jews who have found faith in Yeshua. As usual with these approaches, Jewish believers in Yeshua are the excluded middle. Neither side want to admit that they exist and neither wants to take ownership of them, except to assimilate them to their default position. However, Cunninghan goes on to set up his next two topics:

The argument that Christians should not seek to baptise Jews conflicts with two conscious or subconscious Christian assertions: (1) Jews should have recognised Jesus as their own saviour (and so subsequent Rabbinic Judaism is essentially the result of an error); and (2) G-d intends all humanity to be baptised (and so Jews should not be excluded from this goal).

There's no denying that there is a lot of these about ...

A Christian with such beliefs would likely find it unimaginable that a "real" Christian would not seek to convert Jews.

... but perhaps this hinges on what 'convert' means? Perhaps not - let's read on.