October
2015 marked the 50th anniversary of Nostra
Aetate, a seminal document that came out of Vatican II and set the course
for the formation of Roman Catholic identity and the place of missionary work moving
into the next century. While it was
communicated as a document on the relationship between Roman Catholics and
other religions, the primary focus was no doubt on a reconciliation of the
historically negative attitude towards Jews that had for too long been
reflected in Church teaching and politics.
Pope
John Paul II, building on Vatican II, made Judaism a special project of the
Roman Catholic Church, making such gestures as establishing ties with the State
of Israel and famously apologizing for the Holocaust. Following these cues, the
Church set out to establish newly imagined relationships, both with kindred
Christians and Jews, and one such experiment was my alma mater. Under the supervision of liberal Sulpician Roman
Catholicism, the Ecumenical Institute of Theology in Baltimore, MD was born in 1968
and became a place where Christians could come together for interdenominational
instruction, and where Jewish instructors, mostly rabbanim from neighboring communities, could float in and out to
teach as needed.
The
EI provided me with my first opportunity to engage Jewish intellectuals. As my
curiosity in Judaism grew beyond typical Christian interest in how Jewish
biblical literature supports and props up Christian revelation, I was
encouraged to enter Towson University’s Jewish Studies program in 2012 to pursue
a second master’s degree, where I am now currently in my fourth year, and
working on a thesis in approaches to Jewish theology.
But
looking back to my days at the EI from the perch of my more immersive
experience in Jewish Studies, Judaism didn’t appear to be the grand goal conceived
by an ecumenical and interfaith experiment, but remained largely a supplement,
there for the exploitation of Christian understanding. I feel this all the more strongly now, after
what little I have so far learned about Rabbinics, Orthodoxy, Reform,
Conservative, and Reconstructionism, not to mention every other shade of
Judaism along the way. Looking back, I
have regrets about what I would have liked to have learned about Judaism at my
alma mater before becoming entrenched in Judaism (to the extent that an
outsider can be entrenched), and this brings me to my point: Christian programs participating in
interfaith dialogue can do a much better job of letting their spiritual
progenitor speak for itself.
No
doubt there are places that do interfaith dialogue better than others, and I
don’t want to paint every effort with the same brush. Yet even where interfaith dialogue succeeds,
it is also prone to extremes, where the more dominant religion, recognizing historically
oppressive tendencies, gives up its voice completely. So for institutions of Christian learning
interested in Judaism, I have a few practical points that may help bridge the
gap between words and actions. The first is making a concerted effort to remove
the phrase “Old Testament” from theological settings and move to a more appropriate
use of the term “Jewish Bible.” There is nothing particularly radical about
this desire, and it bodes with the spirit of Vatican II that was meant to
restore the dignity of Judaism. But without giving Judaism the right to
self-determination, it cannot be thought to control its own destiny. I don’t think
this change requires Christians to give up their claim of special revelation,
and what is gained is a defense against oversimplifying the Jewish Bible as a bridge
to a destination that always has Christianity on the horizon. Changes like this
will no doubt be resisted in more conservative settings. But in programs that
have already accepted critically informed changes, the label “Old Testament”
has curiously survived the culture wars.
An
immediate effect of this change might unleash the potential of Jewish
professors teaching at Christian confessional institutions. If any program
aligning itself to the motivations behind Vatican II accepts that conversion is
not just a formal interaction but is heavily influenced by indirect
environmental factors then it follows that teaching the Old Testament as the
Jewish Bible reduces the oppressive overtones of Supercessionism. The name of
the Jewish Bible has never been a matter of Christian doctrine, but at this
critical stage in history, it is a matter of good neighborliness. It is difficult to suggest as some read Nostra Aetate that Jews are co-equals in
salvation and at the same time diminish their scriptures by treating it as
supplemental material. We should challenge any tradition that enshrines a thread
of interpretation that for many Vatican II Catholics does not resonate.
A
second point is a greater focus in Christian theological programs on Judaism as
a comprehensive movement with a vast body of literature and not as a one-trick-pony
whose identity is only conceived through the bible. Not only does this diminish
a tradition that for all its brilliance spans biblical, Rabbinic, and modern
trajectories, but it creates a classification for Jewish literature that it
does not acknowledge; namely, that the closed canon experience of Christians is
the same for Jews. During my time at the
EI, there was one requirement for a World Religions course. Yet, in the
mandatory survey courses related to the Bible, the Old Testament label was
still firmly affixed. So despite those times when we looked at “appearances of
Jesus in the Old Testament” using the critical tools of biblical scholarship,
confessionalism found other entry points.
While
many Christians are used to living in the uncomfortable tension between
doctrine and ethos cultivated by the
Roman Catholic Church, I echo J. J. Goldberg’s opinion (http://forward.com/opinion/327449/what-everyones-getting-wrong-about-that-vatican-memo-on-converting-jews/)
that opportunities to make religious life for Jews easier are opportunities
worth pursuing. One only has to look at the many historical papal declarations enlisted
against the Jews over time to know that the relationship between Jews and
Christians is always in danger of collapsing without an active effort to prevent
it.
