From intolerance to salvation. The relationship between Christians and Jews in a conversation between a journalist and a cardinal

Jean Daniel: In a work that is no longer read widely enough, Ancient Judaism, Max Weber repeatedly highlights the reasons why, in his view, the Jewish people – the bearers of revelation – choose to isolate themselves, to separate themselves; in short – and the term is his – to ‘ghettoise’ themselves. The original initiative would come first and foremost from them, from the Jewish people. In a sense, it is they who bear the responsibility for having drawn attention to themselves in the eyes of others, but Max Weber does not accuse them of this at all. He simply believes he can observe this fact. He draws the conclusion that the essence of Jewish communal life lies in the elitist and aristocratic will of a ‘chosen’ minority to bear witness (to be exemplary, one must be set apart). Whereas, again according to Max Weber, the essence of the Christian horizon lies in the possibility of offering everyone – Jews or Greeks, men or women, rich or poor – the chance to live out their faith, but also to spread the Good News. That is to say, to continue the Pauline mission. Despite this difference—which is significant, if not decisive—Max Weber emphasises that the continuity between Judaism and Christianity is evident and total. It can be said that the Second Vatican Council and the pontificate of John XXIII confirmed this observation of continuity between the Jewish and Christian messages. Yet today, two questions arise. Is the return to this continuity driven by advances in historical research, or by the need to make amends for the disasters caused by the glorification of the rupture? In other words, does the Christian feel Jewish? And, secondly, is the new or modern affirmation of Christianity better received when its continuity with Judaism is emphasised, or when its rupture with it is emphasised?

Jean-Marie Lustiger: Max Weber rightly emphasises the universal message of biblical revelation and describes, no less rightly, the reasons that make the Jewish people a people apart. Since they receive revelation from God, the One and the Transcendent, they must refuse to compromise with the idolatry of other peoples. This separation is necessary not to preserve itself, but to remain faithful to the gift received. Nevertheless, the people of Israel receive this revelation solely with a view to the salvation of all nations. In other words, this particular message, which must be guarded like a precious flame, is intended for all mankind. God says to Abraham: ‘Through you all the nations of the earth shall be called blessed’. This divine oracle clearly sets out the universal purpose of Abraham’s singular election. Ultimately, the God of Israel reveals himself as the God of the whole earth, of all humankind; he is not an ethnic or territorial deity. The uniqueness of the people of Israel heralds the universalism of salvation and is its bearer. If the Jewish people forget the universalist horizon of their vocation, they fall into the trap of interpreting their own particular situation in isolation; they ‘ghettoise’ themselves, to use Max Weber’s expression, whilst God ‘sets them apart’ for a universal mission. When the people, weary, ask to be a nation like any other, they renounce both their uniqueness and their universalism. From this perspective, I believe that Paul’s universalism has its roots in the universalism of the Jewish tradition as expressed by the prophets of Israel.

Daniel: Cardinal, you cannot be a Pauline – that is, sever your ties with Judaism – in order to attempt a redefinition of Judaism prior to St Paul. On the one hand, there is the vocation that you feel you must attribute to the Jewish people; on the other, there is the way in which you have lived out your own Judaism.

Lustiger: When Paul develops the theme of universalism, he draws on an essential element of the vocation of the people of Israel. He brings something new through the practical consequences he derives from it. Today, twenty centuries after the birth of Jesus – whom his disciples recognise as the Messiah, the Christ – but also twenty centuries after the destruction of the Temple and the dispersion of the Jewish people, twenty centuries of Christianity during which history has not stood still, Jews and Christians are striving to assess their mutual situation in new terms. The question facing Judaism is no longer merely one of survival, but also of redefining its vocation. What is the meaning of its existence? It could be defined in many ways: political, religious, historical… But sociology does not weigh in on the matter. Many had hoped that the creation of the State of Israel would be the solution to the Jewish question; although it alters the political landscape, it is not sufficient to define a vocation. Similarly, a sociological view of the Jewish diaspora, which would portray it as a thorn in the side of other nations and religions, answers neither the questions that Jews ask of themselves, nor those that non-Jews ask as a result.

Daniel: Can we return to our original topic, namely the debate on continuity and rupture? Recent research findings in this field demonstrate irrefutably that what would become Christianity is all the more a product of first-century Jewish history in that it was born precisely there, amongst the Jewish sects. And yet, this is a source that has been rejected by numerous Western Christian writers and religious figures, driven by their anti-Semitism to recoil at the idea that there could be any debt owed to the ‘God-killing’ people. Some, reluctantly abandoning the idea of Jewish guilt, have even gone so far as to imagine that the Passion took place somewhere other than Golgotha…

Lustiger: Today, we have reached a fascinating moment in the history of relations between the Jewish people and the Gentiles, or indeed between Judaism and Christianity. Recent studies that restore the Gospel to its first-century Jewish context do not introduce any new discoveries. In fact, they challenge the prejudices that prevented people from recognising that this text is a Jewish text and that Jesus himself is a Jewish rabbi, as the first disciples describe him in the Gospel. The emergence of ‘Christianity’ within Judaism thus appears as a schism within Judaism itself.

However, the Jewish society in which the early Church emerged was not only in contact with, but also engaged in cultural exchange with, the surrounding cultures. Judaism had taken root in Hellenism, not least thanks to the translation of the Bible into Greek by the Septuagint in Alexandria during the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC. Similarly, in Rome, Berenice was probably on the verge of becoming the first Jewish empress of the Roman Empire, had it not been for Poppea. Judaism’s relationship with pagan antiquity should not be understood along the lines of the relationship between the Jews of the Central European ghettos and 18th-century Christianity, or between the mellahs of Morocco and their Muslim context. The situation in antiquity was more open. Jesus’s preaching and the question of his identity initially provoked not a break with Judaism, but a conflict centred on the understanding of issues within Judaism itself: eschatology, the destiny of the people and their mission, and the fulfilment of divine promises. Mutual distancing and exclusion have been theorised, on both the Jewish and Christian sides, in a dispute over legitimacy that has fuelled Christian anti-Judaism.

Daniel: Over the course of these two millennia, rupture has often masked continuity. But surely the intense and organised plundering of Jewish heritage by Christians – essentially, the latter’s claim to appropriate the entire biblical message – can only fuel new temptations to break away?

Lustiger: Today, rather than erasing the rupture, it is possible to make it more legible. Since the Second Vatican Council, a different perspective has emerged, one that highlights, within Christian renewal, the continuity of the divine plan. Christianity cannot be conceived without Judaism, even though it has misunderstood it. This is why, in the Gospels as well as in the writings of Paul of Tarsus, references to the tension between Israel and the pagan nations are ever-present. Judaism has only just begun to recognise in Christianity a form of kinship, perhaps even a mirror, a mirror image that allows it to identify what it carries within itself. Rabbinic Judaism had shut itself off, out of a need for survival, in a denial of Christianity, the very name of which was not to be uttered. Apart from a few veiled allusions, there is no mention of Jesus in the Talmud. Judaism believed it could do without this part of itself for fear of disappearing. This rediscovered continuity should make it possible to place the rupture and the difference in the true context where they belong: within God’s plan for the salvation of humankind, the spiritual destiny of humanity.

Here we encounter St Paul. The schism, at least initially, was caused by faith in ‘Jesus, the Messiah, the Son of God’, and in equal measure by the question of universalism and the fulfilment of the promises. How can one conceive of the fulfilment of the promises made to Israel and, by extension, to all humanity? Must we await our exit from history through its heavenly fulfilment? Traditional Judaism answers: yes, and that will be the end of time. Christianity shares the same hope. But it believes that history is now inhabited by the hidden presence of the Messiah who died and rose again, who, through his disciples, carries forward the redemption of the world by spreading the Spirit of God in their hearts.

Daniel: It seems to me that you are overlooking the debate about the person of Jesus…

Lustiger: It is eschatology and messianism that remain the key issues. It is there that the point of rupture lies, preventing dialogue and exchange on the very mystery of God, the One, whom Christians worship as the Trinitarian mystery—God who is Love, given to humankind by the Word made flesh. For Christians who share the Jewish eschatological vision of the fulfilment of history, the messianic work has entered history, awaited and promised in the patience and suffering of Israel. It is fulfilled in the person, words and deeds of the One who became the Messiah of Israel to save the world. Jesus, the Messiah, does indeed exhibit certain traits of the Messiah envisaged by some strands of Jewish messianism. Judaism is not a dogmatised religion – there are numerous schools of thought – but it no longer has either a temple or a high priest: the historical centrality that characterised the period prior to the destruction of the Temple is no longer guaranteed. The Jewish perspective is rich and varied; that of Christianity is more fragmented.

Daniel: The debate on salvation and the role of the elect in its fulfilment is a theological and philosophical issue whose consequences are still felt in our secularised world. How would you define it?

Lustiger: These issues have been secularised by the philosophical and theological debate of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The West has derived political and social ideologies from them, the disastrous consequences of which we are now witnessing. Yet these issues are re-emerging with even greater force. Which path leads to salvation? Who paves the way? Only the Jewish people? Are Christians not also part of this, thanks to Israel? These questions will shed clearer light on the difference between the Jewish tradition and Christianity: the continuity will appear more faithful and the rupture more distinct, not out of ill will, nor out of an inability to accept one another. At this point, it would be more accurate to speak not of a rupture (since this evokes the conflict of origins and its consequences), but of a gap (provided one believes that it will be bridged at the end of time).

Daniel: One day, I asked Pope John Paul II whether the Church could truly reserve a place for the Jews. He replied that it could, because it was with them that everything began. But if Christians are nothing more than Pauline Jews, the question remains open for those Jews who refuse to be Pauline.

Lustiger: In its original structure, the Church was composed of Jews, the heirs of the Promise, and of pagans who had no promise but were designated by God to belong to his people, comprising both Jews and pagans. The ‘third man’ is the Christian, a name given by the pagans to the disciples of Jesus Christ in Antioch. ‘Christian’ meant ‘messianic’, and referred to the Jewish and Gentile disciples of Jesus, the majority of whom at the time were Jews. The current challenge for Christianity, in its universalist vocation, is to gain greater clarity regarding its mission through recognition of the Jewish people and their specific vocation. This can only lead Christians to a more accurate understanding of the Gospel. If they wish to understand the Beatitudes, it is not without value for them to consider the fate of the Jewish people over the course of these two millennia. Christians will learn not only to be members of a triumphant religion, but also disciples of the Suffering Servant and of the persecuted prophets. “Blessed are you when people hate you,” reads the last of the Beatitudes. In his apocalyptic discourse, Jesus proclaims: “You will be hated by all”, whilst we must bear witness to the Love that forgives and reconciles.

Daniel: It is to reduce what is fundamental in the rupture. Take this modern figure, Edith Stein, who continued to recite her Jewish prayers even after becoming a Carmelite; who, at the most intense moment of her conversion, felt anguish when she returned home on Friday evening; who observed the Sabbath and asked herself: ‘Is it for some, or is it for everyone?’. She would later utter those terrible words: that she accepted the fate God had in store for her ‘as atonement for the Jewish people’s rejection of the faith’. Atonement? Does that therefore mean that the persecution was a punishment for a sin?

Lustiger: It is precisely this issue that must not be conflated with the tragedy of the Holocaust. The weight of misfortune and persecution is such that Jewish memory is still raw. Even if mutual understanding between Jews and Christians were finally achieved, the divide I spoke of – concerning the nature of God’s salvation – would still remain. Why must the Jewish people wish to be ‘separate’? What price must they pay for their separation? Why do Christians maintain that the Messiah is a suffering Messiah? Why must they, too, for the salvation of the world, share in the Messiah’s suffering? The answers will not necessarily be the same, but neither group can avoid grappling with the question of the world’s destiny, entrusted by God to humankind through the gift of his Word. Jews and Christians, in fact, share the same vision of salvation, one that cannot be separated from history.