The Anatomy of Anti-Semitism

The question of responsibility for the crucifixion of Jesus Christ continues to be an irritant in Jewish-Christian relations. Its long, unresolved history and the current interest in the problem of racism combine to make the question particularly lively. A preliminary report of a continuing five-year study of anti-Semitism in the United States has recently been issued by the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith. The report, based on questionnaires sent adult members of Protestant churches, shows that 69 per cent of those questioned believe that the Jews are the group “most responsible” for the death of Christ, and that this view is held more extensively in conservative, fundamentalist churches than in liberal churches. Benjamin R. Epstein, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, reported that this view continues to be a “cruel, critical factor in perpetuating anti-Semitic prejudice.” He declared that the report’s preliminary findings “merely reinforce us in our long-time speculation on the role of church institutions in developing ambivalent and often tragic attitudes toward Jews—a speculation that led to the study itself.” And he added that the treatment given Jews by Christians represents a “failure” of Christendom.

How should the Christian churches meet this charge of “failure”? Can they dismiss it by asserting that the study was prejudiced to prove the speculation that initiated the study? Can they appeal to the historical records of the New Testament and prove that the Jews are in fact “most responsible”?

There is an answer to anti-Semitism, and although it is neither simple nor easy, the Church owes it to herself even more than to the Jews to make the answer clear.

While the Church cannot expect Jews to accept the theological interpretation given to the history of Christ’s death in Scripture, it can expect the Jews to acknowledge the actual historical facts. A Jewish denial of history is, as any denial of history, in the long run futile. There is no justification for a denial of the recorded history of Christ’s death, for the authenticity of the records is not doubted by responsible scholarship.

According to the New Testament records, it was the Jews who desired, plotted, and promoted the execution of Jesus (Matt. 27:1). No rewriting of history by scriptwriters of modern movies placing the responsibility on the Romans will effectively conceal these historical facts. The records reveal, moreover, that it was not the “common people,” nor the “publicans and sinners,” nor the Jewish drunkard or woman of the street who demanded the death of Christ. Not a lunatic fringe, nor a religious extreme right or left, nor the denizens of an ancient skid row brought about the execution of Christ. It was rather the Jewish religious leadership—the scribes and Pharisees, the priests, men of the holy place—that took council together to put Jesus to death. It was the chief priests and elders who moved among the rabble on the night of Jesus’ trial, inciting them to cry, “Crucify him” (Matt. 27:30). It was the Jewish religious hierarchy that pressured Pilate and brought false witnesses into court to testify against Jesus (Matt. 27:59; Mark 14:55, 56). All this is not a fabric of prejudice against the Jews but historical record.

According to the same historical records, Jesus was betrayed to his death. Now no one is ever betrayed by his enemies; one can be betrayed only by a friend, for a betrayal is by definition a turning against a friend. Jesus was a Jew; his friends were Jewish. He was delivered into the hand of the enemy by one who sat at his table and ate with him (John 13:18). And eating together, then even more than now, was an exercise of friendship. A betrayal has to be an “inside job”; a betrayer must be one called “friend,” one from whom a kiss is customary. The New Testament record repeatedly stresses that Jesus was betrayed by “one of the twelve” (Matt. 26:14; Mark 14:20). It was to his own that Jesus came, and it was his own who received him not.

These historical data relate the facts of the Jewish role in the crucifixion of Christ. If the destruction of another carries responsibility, then Jewish responsibility is a matter of historical fact. Even from the Jewish point of view, a man was destroyed; and it is better to face the fact of history than to suggest, as the Anti-Defamation League study does, that the similarity between the words “Judas” and “Judaism” tends to perpetuate anti-Semitism. Judas was a Jew, and a people as conscious of its unity as the Jews are cannot dismiss him, nor play with the accident of his name. The Jewish people would help eliminate anti-Semitism if they would admit, as honesty could do without violating the terms of the Jewish faith, that they did destroy a man. There is little, if indeed anything, of such an admission in current Jewish concern about anti-Semitism. Let Jews, if they must, regard Christ as only a man; but let them admit what honesty and integrity demand—the destruction of a man by their ancient leaders’ insistence that he be put to death.

Sharing The Guilt

Before the question may be raised as to the theological interpretation that must be placed on these facts, the Gentile Christian Church must also face the historical facts of the Gentile role and responsibility for the crucifixion of Jesus.

According to the New Testament, Jesus himself declared that he would be “delivered unto the Gentiles, and shall be mocked, and spitefully entreated, and spitted on; and they shall scourge him, and put him to death …” (Luke 18:32, 33). If Jews tend to ignore their historical role, honesty compels the admission that few sermons are preached in the Church on this text. The same records assert that he was tried in a Roman court—the highest structure of justice in the Gentile world of the day—and condemned under Pontius Pilate, a Roman judge. He died at the hands of Roman soldiers and in the Roman manner, on the cross. Although Pilate was reluctant, his wife uneasy, no Gentile rose to protest the injustice of Christ’s condemnation. The reality of Pilate’s responsibility and its creedal significance were recognized by the early Church, which recorded in its Apostles’ Creed that Jesus “suffered under Pontius Pilate.” By Jewish insistence and by Gentile instrumentality, Christ was crucified. Jewish insistence alone was impotent, having no authority to put a man to death. Roman power alone was also impotent, being reluctant and without motivation to complete the betrayal of one who was not their Messiah. Together Jew and Gentile accomplished the deed; neither is without guilt.

But is one group more guilty than the other? Are the Jews “most responsible”?

This is the crucial question. It is interesting to observe that the report shows it was the membership of the liberal churches rather than that of the conservative, fundamentalist churches that more frequently gave the right answer, that the Jews are not “most responsible.” But the question of the greater responsibility and guilt is crucial only within anti-Semitism, for the question itself is the source of all religious anti-Semitism. There would be none of that anti-Semitism which concerns the Anti-Defamation League study if the question had not been asked at all. And it ought not to be asked, because the question is illegitimate.

Nowhere in the New Testament are the Jews condemned and rejected by God, or by the early primitive Church, for crucifying Jesus. Jesus himself prayed for their forgiveness. On New Testament grounds Jews are under the judgment of God for rejecting the crucified and living Christ as he came to them in the proclamation of the Gospel. The Jew is condemned only if he believes not—as is the unbelieving Gentile. Peter in his Pentecostal sermon recognizes the guilt of the Jews when he says that they took the Christ and with wicked hands slew him—but when he says this, he is not condemning them but preaching the Gospel to them (Acts 2:23). It was only after the Jews rejected the Gospel that Paul turned to the Gentiles. For the Christian Church to blame and to urge the guilt of the Jews for crucifying Christ is to entertain an attitude that disqualifies it for its task of preaching the Gospel.

Secondly, the question is illegitimate because the Gentile, being also responsible for the death of Christ, is in no moral position to blame the Jew, and is especially not in a position to charge him with greater culpability. He who shares guilt with another for an evil act cannot condemn the other—not even if the other’s guilt is greater. Penitent for his own role in crucifying the Son of God, cognizant of the infinite guilt of such an act, the Gentile can, in the spirit of true repentance, condemn only himself. As regards other sinners, he can only say, as did Paul, “of whom I am chief” (1 Tim. 1:15). Through the knowledge of its faith, the Church knows what it did when it nailed Christ to the Cross. With this knowledge it can only say with Paul that had the Jews known what they were doing, “they would not have crucified the Lord of glory” (1 Cor. 2:8). Confessing its own sin, the Church cannot impute the “most responsibility” to the Jews without denying the genuineness of its own confession. By casting stones at the Jews for the crucifixion, the Gentile Christian reveals the spirit of the New Testament Pharisee, the spirit that desired, plotted, and promoted the crucifixion of Jesus.

The Cross Misunderstood

Thirdly, ignoring the fact that the Jews are not rejected in biblical thought for putting Christ to the Cross, the Church has often fallen into anti-Semitism because, like the unconverted Paul, it misunderstood the Cross. Prior to his Damascus experience, Paul remembered the teaching of the Book of Deuteronomy, “… he that is hanged is accursed of God” (21:23b). From the fact that God in his providence allowed Christ to hang on the tree of the Cross, Paul concluded that Christ was cursed and rejected by God; and if God rejected him, Paul felt he should do the same. He thought he did God a service when he persecuted those who preached Christ for acceptance by others.

According to the Scriptures, the Jewish rejection of Christ as proclaimed in the Gospel brought on the temporary rejection of the Jews by God. Christians have sometimes reasoned like Paul before his conversion: they have felt that if God rejected the Jews, they were justified in doing likewise; and they have sometimes practiced anti-Semitism on the ground of this alleged right.

This is a profound error. Christians are not God. God may curse; they may not. God may damn; they may only bless—and curse not. Vengeance, judgment, and rejection belong to God alone. God may punish the Jews for rejecting the Christ of the Gospel; the Church may not. God may punish his enemies; the Church may only love its enemies and pray for them.

How can the Church possibly justify anti-Semitism when the Jews, according to the Bible, are enemies of the Gospel “for your [Gentile] sakes” (Rom. 11:28)? In the inscrutable wisdom of God, whose ways are past finding out, the Gentiles have entered into salvation through the Jewish rejection of it.

In Ephesians, Paul admonishes Gentile Christians: “Wherefore remember … that ye were at that time separate from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world” (Eph. 2:11, 12, ASV). The Gentiles, according to Paul, have entered into the covenant and inheritance of the Jews, into their salvation and glory. “Salvation is of the Jews” (John 4:22b), and Gentiles are saved through the Jews’ Messiah. Christ was a Jew. In coming to the Jews, he came to “his own.” He is Israel’s glory.

From Aliens To Citizens

How did Gentiles, who were “aliens” and “strangers,” become “fellow citizens” and members of “the household of faith” (Eph. 2:19)? How did the outsider become an insider? This historical transition is one of the basic themes running through that great epistle of Paul to the Romans. The transition was a historical event. It is therefore real and must be taken seriously. What is revealed is not a timeless, eternal truth but rather one that became real in the historical happening. The historical movement in which this truth becomes truth and is revealed as truth is not simple and direct; it is an uneven movement, a historical zigzag. The truth thus revealed is not simple and immediate, but one that calls for a deep and sensitive spiritual comprehension.

The Gentiles, according to biblical teaching, enter into the Jews’ glory and inheritance only after, and on the occasion of, its rejection by the Jews. God’s act of turning toward the Gentiles is also his act of turning from the Jews. The divine election of the Gentiles has as its other side the divine rejection of the Jews. If Gentile branches are grafted in, it is only after, and on the occasion of, the break-off of Jewish branches. Through Israel’s fall, salvation comes to the Gentiles. Gentiles are saved only after, and because, Jews are lost (Rom. 11:17, 19).

Paul, moreover, also teaches that Gentiles have been saved, not for their own sakes, but to provoke the Jews to jealousy that they too may be saved (Rom. 11:11). As the Gentiles obtained mercy through Jewish disobedience, so the Jews are to obtain mercy through the mercy shown to the Gentiles (Rom. 11:31). As the Jews did not stumble that they might fall but that salvation might come to the Gentiles, so Gentiles are saved, not for their own sakes, but for the sake of the salvation of the Jews.

Paul urges that if the Jewish disobedience is the reconciling of the world, i.e., the means through which the Gentile is saved, the coining reception of the Jews will be like a resurrection from the dead! In Paul’s explanation of the Gospel, the Gospel is for the Jew first; and even the purpose of Gentile salvation is the ultimate salvation of the Jews.

In view of this, how can a Gentile church or the individual Gentile Christian regard the Jew with religious prejudice? Can he underscore and urge the special guilt and disobedience of the Jew through which he himself and the Church have been saved? Can he condemn those through whom and for whom he himself has received his redemption? Can a Christian be anti-Semitic and reject the Jews without rejecting the Gospel? Anti-Semitism is anti-Gospel, and ultimately anti-Christ, for it is a rejection of God’s method and means of saving the Gentile and the Jew.

If the Gentile Christian truly understands the Gospel of his salvation, he cannot judge the Jews as “most responsible” for the crucifixion of Christ without condemning the Gospel, and the Lord who bought him.

Gentiles are saved, and the Gospel has come to them, not apart from the Jews and their particular history, but as a part of their history. For Gentiles to reject the Jews because of their history is to reject Jesus Christ himself, because Christ, as does their own salvation, exists not apart from but only in that history, and apart from that history is unintelligible.

Instead of measuring Jewish guilt for the crucifixion, the Gentile who knows the time of his salvation will break into doxology to God. Paul saw God’s historical-revelational dealings with both Jew and Greek as his method of having “mercy upon all” (Rom. 11:32). Seeing this he condemned neither Jew nor Gentile but raised a doxology: “O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God!” (Rom. 11:33a).

The basis for this doxology is the final, positive answer to all anti-Semitism. When the Gentile Church recognizes it and lives accordingly, she will be close to that moment in her history that will be as a resurrection from the dead: the reunion of Jew and Gentile in the oneness of the Church. For anti-Semitism hinders the Gentile’s calling to provoke the Jews to jealousy.

The ecumenical movement is rightly concerned about the disunity existing among the various Gentile segments of the Church. But this disunity will be overcome, as Barth reminded Evanston, only when the Church understands the Gospel of Jesus Christ in a way that excludes all anti-Semitism. Without the renunciation of all anti-Semitism, the Church will lack the quality of spirit that can achieve the unity of all Christians.

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