Jews don't need jesus: Apostasy in the chuch

[rtwngAvngr]

What's happening?

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2002/131/52.0.html
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops this week released a document titled Reflections on Covenant and Mission, which said Christians should not evangelize Jews. "[The] evangelizing task no longer includes the wish to absorb the Jewish faith into Christianity and so end the distinctive witness of Jews to God in human history," the bishops said. " Thus, while the Catholic Church regards the saving act of Christ as central to the process of human salvation for all, it also acknowledges that Jews already dwell in a saving covenant with God."

What about this?

"I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." (John 14:6)

What do you believe?

 

[Nienna]

Those Catholic bishops are wrong. Christians are to preach the gospel of Jesus to EVERYONE. Jesus was very hard on Jews in scripture. He made no excuses for them. Either accept Jesus or go to Hell. Those are the only two options.

 

[rtwngAvngr]

Those Catholic bishops are wrong. Christians are to preach the gospel of Jesus to EVERYONE. Jesus was very hard on Jews in scripture. He made no excuses for them. Either accept Jesus or go to Hell. Those are the only two options.

:rotflmao:

I like your style!

 

[Nienna]

Jews do NOT dwell in a saving covenant with God. God's covenant with the Jews was that He would remain faithful to them, He would keep the knowledge of Himself alive through them, and bring the Savior of the world through them. But, if they reject that Savior, they will not be saved.

 

[Nienna]

Those bishops are not only disobeying God's commandment to spread the gospel to EVERYONE, but in doing so, they are doing a grave and horrific disservice to the Jewish people.

 

[rtwngAvngr]

Watch. Someone will come on and say we're being antisemitic for not changing christianity "because of the holocaust".

Let the Masonic Dispensationalists do their dance of lies. I'm sticking with Jesus; he most DEFINITELY tried to evangelize the jews.

Up yours, satanic, worldly, powers that be.

 

[Nienna]

Watch. Someone will come on and say we're being antisemitic for not changing christianity "because of the holocaust".

Let the Masonic Dispensationalists do their dance of lies. I'm sticking with Jesus; he most DEFINITELY tried to evangelize the jews.
Up yours, satanic, worldly, powers that be.

How could it possibly be antisemitic to want Jews to not be deceived about their opportunity to avoid Hell?

 

[Joz]

Jews do NOT dwell in a saving covenant with God. .... if they reject that Savior, they will not be saved.

I was just reading in Hosea about Israel (& her sister country) Judah rejecting Christ. God says they commit adultery & whoredom.

(Which, btw, supports divorce for other than the physical act of adultery. It is the breaking of the covenant)

 

[rtwngAvngr]

How could it possibly be antisemitic to want Jews to not be deceived about their opportunity to avoid Hell?

Some hearts are hardened and prefer their traditions to the truth, I suppose. Just like in jesus's day.

 

[Joz]

Some hearts are hardened and prefer their traditions to the truth, I suppose. .....

What about Pharoh? His heart hardened because of his arrogance. Moses' God wasn't gonna tell HIM anything.

 

[rtwngAvngr]

What about Pharoh? His heart hardened because of his arrogance. Moses' God wasn't gonna tell HIM anything.

Yeah. I'd say pharoah was a real douchbag.

 

[5stringJeff]

Those Catholic bishops are wrong. Christians are to preach the gospel of Jesus to EVERYONE. Jesus was very hard on Jews in scripture. He made no excuses for them. Either accept Jesus or go to Hell. Those are the only two options.

Indeed, mo-, I mean, you who until recently were mom4.

 

[jillian]

How could it possibly be antisemitic to want Jews to not be deceived about their opportunity to avoid Hell?

Anti-semitic? Just arrogant and ignorant to think one's beliefs are better than anyone else's.

 

[jillian]

And just so you know, if that sounds harsh, it isn't meant to and I apologize. But I think people should be left alone to believe whatever brings them peace of mind.

I don't want anyone else's beliefs imposed on me or my son. I'll handle his religious training and he'll pick up other things on his own. He doesn't need to be indoctrinated by anyone.

Just how I feel.

 

[Annie]

Maybe, just maybe, you all should read the document, rather than taking RWA's rant of the month quite so literally?

http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/research/cjl/Documents/ncs_usccb120802.htm

...ROMAN CATHOLIC REFLECTIONS

Introduction

The gifts brought by the Holy Spirit to the Church through the Second Vatican Council’s declaration Nostra Aetate continue to unfold. The decades since its proclamation in 1965 have witnessed a steady rapprochement between the Roman Catholic Church and the Jewish people. Although controversies and misunderstandings continue to occur, there has nonetheless been a gradual deepening of mutual understanding and common purpose.

Nostra Aetate also inspired a series of magisterial instructions, including three documents prepared by the Pontifical Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews: Guidelines and Suggestions for Implementing the Conciliar Declaration, Nostra Aetate No. 4 (1974); Notes on the Correct Way to Present Jews and Judaism in Preaching and Teaching in the Roman Catholic Church (1985); and We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah (1998). Pope John Paul II has offered many addresses and engaged in several important actions that have furthered Catholic and Jewish amity. Numerous statements concerning Catholic-Jewish relations have also been composed by national conferences of Catholic bishops from around the world. In the United States, the conference of Catholic bishops and its committees have issued many relevant documents, including: Guidelines for Catholic-Jewish Relations (1967, 1985); Criteria for the Evaluation of Dramatizations of the Passion (1988); God's Mercy Endures Forever: Guidelines on the Presentation of Jews and Judaism in Catholic Preaching (1988); and most recently Catholic Teaching on the Shoah: Implementing the Holy See’s We Remember (2001).

A survey of these Catholic statements over the past few decades shows that they have progressively been considering more and more aspects of the complex relationship between Jews and Catholics, together with their impact on the practice of the Catholic faith. This work inspired by Nostra Aetate has involved interfaith dialogue, collaborative educational ventures, and joint theological and historical research by Catholics and Jews. It will continue into the new century.

At the present moment in this process of renewal, the subjects of covenant and mission have come to the forefront. Nostra Aetate initiated this thinking by citing Romans 11:28-29 and describing the Jewish people as "very dear to God, for the sake of the patriarchs, since God does not take back the gifts he bestowed or the choice he made."1 John Paul II has explicitly taught that Jews are "the people of God of the Old Covenant, never revoked by God,"2 "the present-day people of the covenant concluded with Moses,"3 and "partners in a covenant of eternal love which was never revoked."4

The post-Nostra Aetate Catholic recognition of the permanence of the Jewish people’s covenant relationship to God has led to a new positive regard for the post-biblical or rabbinic Jewish tradition that is unprecedented in Christian history. The Vatican’s 1974 Guidelines insisted that Christians "must strive to learn by what essential traits Jews define themselves in the light of their own religious experience."5 The 1985 Vatican Notes praised post-biblical Judaism for carrying "to the whole world a witness-often heroic-of its fidelity to the one God and to ‘exalt Him in the presence of all the living’ (Tobit 13:4)."6 The Notes went on to refer to John Paul II in urging Christians to remember "how the permanence of Israel is accompanied by a continuous spiritual fecundity, in the rabbinical period, in the Middle Ages and in modern times, taking its start from a patrimony which we long shared, so much so that ‘the faith and religious life of the Jewish people as they are professed and practiced still today, can greatly help us to understand better certain aspects of the life of the Church’ (John Paul II, 6 March 1982)."7 This theme has been taken up in statements by the United States Catholic bishops, such as God’s Mercy Endures Forever, which advised preachers to "e free to draw on Jewish sources (rabbinic, medieval, and modern) in expounding the meaning of the Hebrew Scriptures and the apostolic writings."8

Post-biblical Judaism’s "spiritual fecundity" continued in lands in which Jews were a tiny minority. This was true in Christian Europe even though, as Cardinal Edward Idris Cassidy has noted, "from the time of the Emperor Constantine on, Jews were isolated and discriminated against in the Christian world. There were expulsions and forced conversions. Literature propagated stereotypes [and] preaching accused the Jews of every age of deicide."9 This historical summary intensifies the importance of the teaching of the 1985 Vatican Notes that, "The permanence of Israel (while so many ancient peoples have disappeared without trace) is a historic fact and a sign to be interpreted within God's design."10

Knowledge of the history of Jewish life in Christendom also causes such biblical texts as Acts 5:33-39 to be read with new eyes. In that passage the Pharisee Gamaliel declares that only undertakings of divine origin can endure. If this New Testament principle is considered by Christians today to be valid for Christianity, then it must logically also hold for post-biblical Judaism. Rabbinic Judaism, which developed after the destruction of the Temple, must also be "of God."

In addition to these theological and historical considerations, in the decades since Nostra Aetate many Catholics have been blessed with the opportunity to experience personally Judaism’s rich religious life and God’s gifts of holiness.

The Mission of the Church: Evangelization

Such reflections on and experiences of the Jewish people’s eternal covenantal life with God raise questions about the Christian task of bearing witness to the gifts of salvation that the Church receives through her "new covenant" in Jesus Christ. The Second Vatican Council summed up the Church’s mission as follows:

While helping the world, and receiving many benefits from it, the Church has a single intention: that God’s kingdom may come, and that the salvation of the whole human race may come to pass. For every benefit which the People of God during its earthly pilgrimage can offer to the human family stems from the fact that the Church is "the universal sacrament of salvation," simultaneously manifesting and exercising the mystery of God’s love for humanity.11

This mission of the Church can be summarized in one word: evangelization. Pope Paul VI gave the classic definition, "The Church appreciates that evangelization means the carrying forth of the good news to every sector of the human race so that by its strength it may enter into the hearts of men and renew the human race."12 Evangelization refers to a complex reality that is sometimes misunderstood by reducing it only to the seeking of new candidates for baptism. It is the Church’s continuation of the mission of Jesus Christ, who embodied the life of the kingdom of God. As Pope John Paul II has explained,

The kingdom is the concern of everyone: individuals, society and the world. Working for the kingdom means acknowledging and promoting God’s activity, which is present in human history and transforms it. Building the kingdom means working for liberation from evil in all its forms. In a word, the kingdom of God is the manifestation and the realization of God’s plan of salvation in all its fullness.13

It should be stressed that evangelization, the Church’s work on behalf of the kingdom of God, cannot be separated from its faith in Jesus Christ in whom Christians find the kingdom "present and fulfilled."14 Evangelization includes the Church’s activities of presence and witness; commitment to social development and human liberation; Christian worship, prayer, and contemplation; interreligious dialogue; and proclamation and catechesis.15

This latter activity of proclamation and catechesis – the "invitation to a commitment of faith in Jesus Christ and to entry through baptism into the community of believers which is the church"16 – is sometimes thought to be synonymous with "evangelization." However, this is a very narrow construal and is indeed only one among many aspects of the Church’s "evangelizing mission" in the service of Gods’ kingdom. Thus, Catholics participating in interreligious dialogue, a mutually enriching sharing of gifts devoid of any intention whatsoever to invite the dialogue partner to baptism, are nonetheless witnessing to their own faith in the kingdom of God embodied in Christ. This is a form of evangelization, a way of engaging in the Church’s mission.

Evangelization and the Jewish People

Christianity has an utterly unique relationship with Judaism because "our two religious communities are connected and closely related at the very level of their respective religious identities."17

The history of salvation makes clear our special relationship with the Jewish people. Jesus belongs to the Jewish people, and he inaugurated his church within the Jewish nation. A great part of the Holy Scriptures, which we Christians read as the word of God, constitute a spiritual patrimony which we share with Jews. Consequently, any negative attitude in their regard must be avoided, since "in order to be a blessing for the world, Jews and Christians need first to be a blessing for each other."18

In the wake of Nostra Aetate, there has been a deepening Catholic appreciation of many aspects of our unique spiritual linkage with Jews. Specifically, the Catholic Church has come to recognize that its mission of preparing for the coming of the kingdom of God is one that is shared with the Jewish people, even if Jews do not conceive of this task christologically as the Church does. Thus, the 1985 Vatican Notes observed:

Attentive to the same God who has spoken, hanging on the same Word, we have to witness to one same memory and one common hope in Him who is the master of history. We must also accept our responsibility to prepare the world for the coming of the Messiah by working together for social justice, respect for the rights of persons and nations and for social and international reconciliation. To this we are driven, Jews and Christians, by the command to love our neighbor, by a common hope for the Kingdom of God and by the great heritage of the Prophets.19

If the Church, therefore, shares a central and defining task with the Jewish people, what are the implications for the Christian proclamation of the Good News of Jesus Christ? Ought Christians to invite Jews to baptism? This is a complex question not only in terms of Christian theological self-definition, but also because of the history of Christians forcibly baptizing Jews.

In a remarkable and still most pertinent study paper presented at the sixth meeting of the International Catholic-Jewish Liaison Committee in Venice twenty-five years ago, Prof. Tommaso Federici examined the missiological implications of Nostra Aetate. He argued on historical and theological grounds that there should be in the Church no organizations of any kind dedicated to the conversion of Jews. This has over the ensuing years been the de facto practice of the Catholic Church.

More recently, Cardinal Walter Kasper, President of the Pontifical Commission for the Religious Relations with the Jews, explained this practice. In a formal statement made first at the seventeenth meeting of the International Catholic-Jewish Liaison Committee in May 2001, and repeated later in the year in Jerusalem, Cardinal Kasper spoke of "mission" in a narrow sense to mean "proclamation" or the invitation to baptism and catechesis. He showed why such initiatives are not appropriately directed at Jews:

The term mission, in its proper sense, refers to conversion from false gods and idols to the true and one God, who revealed himself in the salvation history with His elected people. Thus mission, in this strict sense, cannot be used with regard to Jews, who believe in the true and one God. Therefore, and this is characteristic, there exists dialogue but there does not exist any Catholic missionary organization for Jews.

As we said previously, dialogue is not mere objective information; dialogue involves the whole person. So in dialogue Jews give witness of their faith, witness of what supported them in the dark periods of their history and their life, and Christians give account of the hope they have in Jesus Christ. In doing so, both are far away from any kind of proselytism, but both can learn from each other and enrich each other. We both want to share our deepest concerns to an often -disoriented world that needs such witness and searches for it.20

From the point of view of the Catholic Church, Judaism is a religion that springs from divine revelation. As Cardinal Kasper noted, "God’s grace, which is the grace of Jesus Christ according to our faith, is available to all. Therefore, the Church believes that Judaism, i.e. the faithful response of the Jewish people to God’s irrevocable covenant, is salvific for them, because God is faithful to his promises."21

This statement about God’s saving covenant is quite specific to Judaism. Though the Catholic Church respects all religious traditions and through dialogue with them can discern the workings of the Holy Spirit, and though we believe God's infinite grace is surely available to believers of other faiths, it is only about Israel’s covenant that the Church can speak with the certainty of the biblical witness. This is because Israel’s scriptures form part of our own biblical canon and they have a "perpetual value . . . that has not been canceled by the later interpretation of the New Testament."22

According to Roman Catholic teaching, both the Church and the Jewish people abide in covenant with God. We both therefore have missions before God to undertake in the world. The Church believes that the mission of the Jewish people is not restricted to their historical role as the people of whom Jesus was born "according to the flesh" (Rom 9:5) and from whom the Church’s apostles came. As Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger recently wrote, "God’s providence … has obviously given Israel a particular mission in this ‘time of the Gentiles.’"23 However, only the Jewish people themselves can articulate their mission "in the light of their own religious experience."24

Nonetheless, the Church does perceive that the Jewish people’s mission ad gentes (to the nations) continues. This is a mission that the Church also pursues in her own way according to her understanding of covenant. The command of the Resurrected Jesus in Matthew 28:19 to make disciples "of all nations" (Greek = ethnē, the cognate of the Hebrew = goyim; i.e., the nations other than Israel) means that the Church must bear witness in the world to the Good News of Christ so as to prepare the world for the fullness of the kingdom of God. However, this evangelizing task no longer includes the wish to absorb the Jewish faith into Christianity and so end the distinctive witness of Jews to God in human history.

Thus, while the Catholic Church regards the saving act of Christ as central to the process of human salvation for all, it also acknowledges that Jews already dwell in a saving covenant with God. The Catholic Church must always evangelize and will always witness to its faith in the presence of God’s kingdom in Jesus Christ to Jews and to all other people. In so doing, the Catholic Church respects fully the principles of religious freedom and freedom of conscience, so that sincere individual converts from any tradition or people, including the Jewish people, will be welcomed and accepted.

However, it now recognizes that Jews are also called by God to prepare the world for God’s kingdom. Their witness to the kingdom, which did not originate with the Church’s experience of Christ crucified and raised, must not be curtailed by seeking the conversion of the Jewish people to Christianity. The distinctive Jewish witness must be sustained if Catholics and Jews are truly to be, as Pope John Paul II has envisioned, "a blessing to one another."25 This is in accord with the divine promise expressed in the New Testament that Jews are called to "serve God without fear, in holiness and righteousness before God all [their] days" (Luke 1:74-75).

With the Jewish people, the Catholic Church, in the words of Nostra Aetate, "awaits the day, known to God alone, when all peoples will call on God with one voice and serve him shoulder to shoulder (Soph 3:9; see Is 66:23; Ps 65:4; Rom 11:11-32)."26...

 

[Abbey Normal]

Even after reading the article, it sounds to me that the Church is saying that Jews are saved without having to profess belief in Jesus as Messiah.

Especially in these two statements:

Therefore, the Church believes that Judaism, i.e. the faithful response of the Jewish people to God’s irrevocable covenant, is salvific for them,
because God is faithful to his promises."21

and...

Thus, while the Catholic Church regards the saving act of Christ as central to the process of human salvation for all, it also acknowledges that Jews already dwell in a saving covenant with God.

As the poster formerly known as Mom4 said, if you are a bible-believing Christian, it is clear that there is only one way to salvation- through Jesus Christ. I am not sure why the Catholic Church is giving Jews a special pass, but it is definitely not in accordance with Christian biblical dictates.

 

[rtwngAvngr]

Anti-semitic? Just arrogant and ignorant to think one's beliefs are better than anyone else's.

That's the nature of religions Jillian. They have different beliefs.

Jews think christians are idolators. SO what. As long as they don't try to seize the power of government and persecute them, things are ok.

 

[rtwngAvngr]

Maybe, just maybe, you all should read the document, rather than taking RWA's rant of the month quite so literally?

http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/research/cjl/Documents/ncs_usccb120802.htm

Kathianne, many branches of christianity have been infected with wholly nonbiblical dispensationalism.

dispensationalists do NOT believe jews need christ for salvation. It is quite heretical and is another example of the infiltration of jew mind control and propaganda (through the masons) in yet another one of our institutions.

 

[5stringJeff]

I don't believe the document to be theologically correct. The bishops make the statement that "Jews are 'the people of God of the Old Covenant, never revoked by God.'" Yet, the New Testament states that Christ's death and ressurection established a New Covenant, one that is better than the old covenant of Jewish Law (read Hebrews 7-8 for more detail). The old covenant has been replaced by a better one, with Christ being the guarantor. Therefore, to say that the old covenant is still valid for the salvific works of the Jews is incorrect.

 

[rtwngAvngr]

I don't believe the document to be theologically correct. The bishops make the statement that "Jews are 'the people of God of the Old Covenant, never revoked by God.'" Yet, the New Testament states that Christ's death and ressurection established a New Covenant, one that is better than the old covenant of Jewish Law (read Hebrews 7-8 for more detail). The old covenant has been replaced by a better one, with Christ being the guarantor. Therefore, to say that the old covenant is still valid for the salvific works of the Jews is incorrect.

(I like "salvific", i'm gonna try to use that one more often)