The April issue of the Journal of the Central Conference of American Rabbis contained a lengthy article, “Christians and Jews in Western Civilization” by Professor Reinhold Niebuhr of Union Theological Seminary, New York, in which the Christian missionary obligation to the Jew is virtually dissolved. The article attracted wide attention in the secular and religious press, and was received with great joy in many Jewish circles. The editor of the CCAR Journal, Abraham J. Klausner, introducing Niebuhr’s article, stated: “For the first time in Christian history,” we believe, “a leading scholar suggests that an end be put to the attempt to convert the Jews.”
Professor Niebuhr maintains:
These (missionary) activities are wrong not only because they are futile and have little fruit to boast for their exertions. They are wrong because the two faiths despite differences are sufficiently alike for the Jew to find God more easily in terms of his own religious heritage than by subjecting himself to the hazards of guilt feeling involved in a conversion to a faith, which whatever its excellencies, must appear to him as a symbol of an oppressive majority culture. Both Jews and Christians will have to accept the hazards of their historic symbols. These symbols may be the bearers of an unconditioned message to the faithful. But to those outside the faith they are defaced by historic taints. Practically nothing can purify the symbol of Christ as the image of God in the imagination of the Jew from the taint with which ages of Christian oppression in the name of Christ tainted it.… We are reminded … of anti-semitic and semi-fascist groups, claiming the name of Christ for their campaigns of hatred.
Niebuhr recommends:
The problem of the Christian majority, particularly in America, is therefore to come to terms with the stubborn will to live of the Jews as a peculiar people, both religiously and ethnically. The problem can be solved only if the Christian and Gentile majority accepts this fact and ceases to practice tolerance provisionally in the hope that it will encourage assimilation ethnically and conversion religiously.
From the above it follows that Niebuhr’s two main objections to missionary activities among the Jews are these: (l) the efforts are futile and have little fruit to show, (2) they are wrong because the Jew can find God in the pattern of his own religious heritage.
Let us consider these objections.
Futility Of Jewish Missions
The statement that missionary activities among the Jews are futile is untrue. Christ and Christianity were born among the Jews. The first Christians were Jews. The first apostles and martyrs who carried the message of Christ into the pagan world were Jews. The preaching of the Gospel by Peter and Paul to the Jews of their day was not futile then, else there would have been no Christianity. Why should it be futile today?
When Christianity later became the religion mainly of Gentiles, it lost much of its original purity, and above all, its original love for Israel. Instead of a persecuted minority, Christendom became a persecuting majority. In a large measure this alienated the Jews from the Christian faith. Nevertheless, throughout history there have always been earnest Jewish believers in Christ, and whenever the Gospel has been preached in humility and sincerity, it has made its impact upon Jewish minds.
In the middle centuries an arrogant and unchristlike church tried to force Jews into baptism. This left a tragic and lasting scar upon the Jewish mind, even to the present day. However, abuse and distortion of the Christian message by a corrupt Church could not cancel its eternal validity, even as the rejection of Christ by ecclesiastical authorities of his own nation never voided the truth that “God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in him should not perish …”
Modern Jewish missions go back to the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and parallel the revival of Christian missions across the world. In spite of severe handicaps and age-old prejudices, the impact of the Gospel upon the Jews throughout Europe, Africa, Palestine and the American Continent was little short of amazing. Those acquainted with the history of Jewish missions have estimated that proportionately conversions to Christ among the Jews have far outnumbered conversions from other religions to Christianity. Qualitatively Jewish Christians have greatly enriched the Church by adding a new dimension of depth, a new sense of reality and immediacy to evangelical Christianity.
Some of the finest pages in the history of the Church during the last 150 years were written by Jewish men won for Christ through the preaching of the Gospel. Among them were Michael Solomon Alexander, first Anglican bishop of Jerusalem, and translator of the New Testament into Hebrew. Many Jewish Christians carried the Gospel not only to their native land, but like the Hebrew Christians of the early Church, went far and wide as ambassadors of Christ. Isidor Loeventhal was the pioneer missionary to Afghanistan and died there as a martyr to Christ. Bishop Schereschevsky was the famed translator of the Bible into Mandarin Chinese and founder of the St. John University in Shanghai. Neander, the Jewish Christian, is known as a great Church historian. Alfred Edersheim, Oxford University professor, wrote extensively about early Christianity, and his works are still studied profitably by earnest students of the life of Christ and his times. In more recent years Jewish Christians of the highest spiritual and intellectual stature included Adolph Saphir, David Baron, Rabbi J. Lichtenstein of Budapest, Max Reich, and others.
Jewish Interest In Christ
Today there is a resurgence of Jewish interest in the person of Christ and in the New Testament. Never before has the subject of Christ been given so much attention in Jewish literature as now. In Israel the New Testament is used in many government schools. Most Jewish homes have a New Testament in some language. Today more Jews are accepting Christ here in America and in Europe than ever before in the history of the Jewish nation. There are probably more Jewish Christians in the world nowadays than there were in the early Church. Most of these people do not seek assimilation, but continue to consider themselves as Jews, the core of a spiritual remnant. They were driven to Christ by an inner need which Judaism could not meet.
There is hardly a major city in the Western world without a substantial group of Jewish believers in Christ. In this country many belong to various churches of their choice, while a goodly number have formed themselves into several Hebrew Christian congregations with their own pastors, elders, and other church officers. These Jewish Christians represent a cross section of the Jewish community in America at large. They are craftsmen, laborers, businessmen, professional men, people of every walk of life, including the proverbial “tailors, bakers, and candlestick makers.”
In Philadelphia some 150 to 200 people, of whom the vast majority are Jewish Christians, gather at the annual dinners of the local branch of the Hebrew Christian Alliance. These represent a fraction of the Jewish Christians in that one city. Similar gatherings could be duplicated in many major metropolitan areas of the United States.
Is this a futile effort? With little fruit?
The preaching of the Gospel usually is an uphill task, not only among the Jews but among all people. It was so when Christ and his apostles were the original missionaries. Why should it be less so for his lesser disciples of this generation?
In any case Christian missionary activities are not determined primarily by their fruitfulness or fruitlessness. The determining factor for the Christian is: (1) obedience to his Lord, who commands, “Ye shall be my witnesses,” and (2) the inner compulsion of the believer who, if he is true, must witness.
Jewish Missions Are Wrong
Niebuhr’s second argument is this: “They (the Jewish missionaries) are wrong, because the two religions, despite their differences are sufficiently alike for the Jew to find God more easily in terms of his own religious heritage than by subjecting himself to the hazard of the guilty feeling in the conversion to the Christian faith.”
Dr. Niebuhr’s assertion about the futility of Jewish missionary activities can be partly excused by ignorance of the facts. But the second contention of this prominent theologian is little short of a betrayal of the Christian faith. It goes far beyond the issue of Jewish missions. For if what Niebuhr maintains is true, then the Christian faith is not the Truth and the Rock of Salvation, but a delusion and a snare.
If these two religions are so basically alike, then why in the first place did Christ have to come into the world to die upon the Cross? Under what kind of delusion did he labor when he proclaimed, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man cometh unto the father but by me?” (John 14:6). Didn’t he know that “The two religions are sufficiently alike for the Jew to find God more easily in the pattern of his own religious heritage?”
What kind of an obsession was that of the apostle Peter when he declared to a vast crowd of Jews in Jerusalem, “Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). If Peter and the other martyrs could only have studied theology under Professor Niebuhr, would they have deviated from the need to lay down their lives for their Master? If Niebuhr be right, why did Paul, so steeped in Judaism and its traditions, declare, “For I am not ashamed of the Gospel, for it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth, to the Jew first and also to the Greek” (Rom. 1:16).
And what of Professor Niebuhr’s statement that the Jew who accepts Christ does so outside his “own religious heritage and subjects himself to the hazard of a guilty feeling?”
Christ and the New Testament are the Jew’s own religious heritage, at least as authentic as the Rabbinical heritage, and certainly far more nourishing. And, as for the hazard of a guilty feeling, the contrary is true. The Hebrew Prayer Book for The Day of Atonement reflects the tremendous burden of guilt under which the Jewish people labor. The more conscientious and sensitive the soul of the Jew, the greater the sense of guilt. It is when a Jew finds Christ that he is able to rid himself of the guilty feeling through Christ his sin-bearer.
There is no alternative: If Niebuhr is right, then Christ and his apostles were wrong. But the men of every nation (including Jews) who have found in Christ forgiveness of sin, new life and the peace of God which passeth all understanding, would declare: “No, Christ has not deceived us. He is God’s power unto salvation.”
Those of us who were raised in Judaism, know from our own most intimate experience, that it is incapable of satisfying the deepest spiritual yearning of the human soul. Like millions of other Jews, there was a time when we had lost touch with God but found our way back to the living God and to a satisfying fellowship with him through Christ.
Multitudes of Jews today, who are not Christians, attest that Judaism has left them spiritually sterile and unsatisfied. Professor Niebuhr need only follow the Jewish press and read what leading Jews themselves say about the spiritual condition of Jews today.
In saying that missionary activities among the Jews are futile and wrong, Niebuhr goes far beyond this immediate issue. His is essentially a denial of Christ. For if Niebuhr be right, that Christ is powerless to win the Jewish heart and mind, why should he be able to win others for himself? If the deepest longings of the Jew can be satisfied through “the Jewish heritage of religion,” could not others also find fulfilment in their own religious heritage?
Where then is the uniqueness, the universality, and finality of Christ and of his Gospel?
Plea For Tolerance
Niebuhr’s plea for tolerance vis-a-vis the Jews is as confusing as it is misleading. Every sincere Christian and every man brought up on the ideals of Western democracy is in favor of tolerance. We would oppose any discrimination that would infringe upon the civil, religious, or cultural rights of the Jews, or of any other man. But does tolerance mean that a Christian should be spiritually deaf and mute and cease giving expression and sharing with Jews or anybody else his deepest convictions and his faith?
Missionary activity is at the very heart of Christianity. Without is there is no Christianity. “Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature” were the last words of our risen Saviour.
Does tolerance mean that we disobey Him and disregard the innermost promptings so ingrained in the soul of every Christian believer? The kind of tolerance which Dr. Niebuhr advocates is not really tolerance but moribund indifference, born posthumously of a faith which died.
As a matter of fact, everybody, whether he knows it or not, is a missionary of some cause. We share and propagate our political, social, educational and economic beliefs. We even spend millions of dollars propagating certain brands of cigarettes or motor cars, beer or toothpaste.
When two people meet and each of them advocates his particular viewpoint, they are both missionaries. Should the Christian be deprived of his privilege to advocate his Lord and His Gospel, or to share that which means to him more than anything else in the world? Would that be tolerance?
The Christian has a right and a duty to express his faith and to seek to win everybody else for his Lord. Everybody else has a right to listen or not to listen to him, to believe or to disbelieve. And as long as Christ will continue to call men to follow him and to become fishers of men, there will always be missionaries. When Christians stop being missionaries they will stop being Christians.
END
Two Ways
Religion may be fashioned by a man
from out the hope and heartache of his need,
may draw its form, its spirit, and its creed
from desperation; but it never can
find God that way. For God is past the scan
of human mind, and though a man may seed
his soul with speculation, yet the weed
resulting leaves him worse than he began.
Religion cannot rise from earth to God.
It must come down from God to man. The Word
in which we find our life is He who trod
the land we know, who spoke what we have heard.
When Christ was born, our God came from above.
By showing us Himself, God showed his love.
TERENCE Y. MULLINS
Victor Buksbazen is Vice President of The International Hebrew Christian Alliance of London and General Secretary of The Friends of Israel. He lives in Philadelphia where he is active as President of the local branch of the Hebrew Christian Alliance. Mr. Buksbazen was born of Jewish parents in Warsaw, Poland. It was here that he accepted Christ in 1922.
