Christian Anti-Semitism Today
“I ask, then, has God rejected his people? By no means!…. For the gifts and the calling of God can never be withdrawn.” (Rom 11:1, 29)
Background
After the atrocities initiating the Hamas-Israel war, I was approached by an ex-missionary about writing a piece on this dreadful conflict. His take was that the wider Protestant Church seemed uninformed about the churches in Palestinian territories, including Gaza, and blinded to the Israeli Messianic congregations facing ongoing hostility from Orthodox Jews (https://ausprayernet.org.au/2024/02/16/israel-has-stopped-issuing-clergy-work-visas/). I was unmoved by the Spirt to write until after attending a conference at Victory Life Centre where the premier speaker was a Christian friend, renowned historian Kelvin Crombie (https://www.heritageresources.com.au/about). His intriguing topic was Christian anti-Semitism. Tragically, this has been a significant ongoing issue for the Church from the second century on. Early Fathers as notable as John Chrysostom and Cyril of Alexandria in the East and Justin Martyr in the West were vehemently anti-Jewish. That “the Jews killed God” became a common refrain. Even worse, Martin Luther, the progenitor of the Protestant Reformation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_and_antisemitism), was virulently antisemitic, and arguably paved the way for Hitler’s holocaust. If things went so wrong historically, only a new vision of Jesus can deliver us from the unbiblical polarisations sweeping the globe today.
Jesus the Only Centre
Since Jesus Christ is “the one Word of God that will Last forever” (Barmen Declaration 1934), the “Spirit of the prophets” (Rev 19:10; 22:6) in me cannot conform to either Christian antisemitism nor Christian Zionism. Undeniably, Jesus of Nazareth was a “circumcised Jew” (Luke 2:21), but few register these bodily marks exist now in heaven, where he constitutes the eternal centre of God’s kingdom. Moreover, since “the Jerusalem above is free, and she is our mother (and)….but (you) have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem…” (Gal 4:26; Heb 12:22 cf. Eph 2:6; Col 3:1-3), the notion that our praying must be only for the peace of an earthly Jerusalem (Ps 122:6) is confused. A biblical Christ-centred focus opposes “supersessionism”/ “replacement theology” but is an affirmation that the fulness “in Christ” is communicated to his ascended Church, Jew and Gentile, on the way to glory (Eph 1:18-23; Col 2:9-10). To label the mainstream Church (Catholic, Anglican, Lutheran, Reformed etc.) as anti-Semitic because they don’t agree with Christian Zionism’s understanding of the place of physical Israel is a fatal stumbling block to “maintaining the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (Eph 4:3). (Yeshua, no matter how many times repeated, is not a code assuring answered prayer and praise but a symptom of our failure to believe in justification through grace by faith alone (Eph 2:8-9). As Luther rightly taught!
The Image of the Scapegoat
The greatest of the old covenant rituals, the Day of Atonement (Lev 16), contains two sacrificial animals, “two goats, one lot for the Lord and the other lot for Azazel/the scapegoat. 9 And Aaron shall present the goat on which the lot fell for the Lord and use it as a sin offering, 10 but the goat on which the lot fell for Azazel/scapegoat shall be presented alive before the Lord to make atonement over it, that it may be sent away into the wilderness to Azazel/the scapegoat.” (Lev 16:8-10). The sacrificial connection between the first goat and Jesus is well-known, but few pay attention to the fate of the second goat. (On this I follow the teaching of T. F. Torrance.) Jesus is the ultimate scapegoat driven into the wilderness by the Spirit to be tempted by the devil (Matt 4:1ff.). Whereas the Church carries the message of the triumph of the cross into history, the ‘Jewish church’ (post 70 A.D.) carries the dark side of the cross into history through its role as the ‘scapegoat’ that is cast out and ‘scattered over the earth’. Because Israel “embodied” the Lord’s presence in her God-ordained hostility to Jesus (Acts 2:23), Israel, as “the womb of the Incarnation” became the scapegoat of the world’s rage against God. Herein, for Torrance, lies “the root of anti-Semitism”; for it is “against Israel itself that we vent our resentment (against God).” This is a far more foundational, and biblical, understanding of the roots of the strange phenomenon of hating Jewish people/Israel than any political, historical or cultural explanation. The Scriptures testify that fallen human beings are at enmity with God (Rom 1:30, Col 1:21), and our dreadful (Christian, or otherwise), antisemitism is a visible sign of this (cf. Rom 1:18ff.).
Satanic Deception
Given that Satan is “the deceiver of the whole world” (Rev 12:9 cf. 1 John 5:19), all anti-Christ attitudes, including denying the end times call of Israel to be saved through jealousy over the Church (Rom 9-11), come from the scheming of the devil (2 Cor 2:11). This includes “Christian antisemitism” as a denial of a God-given missional priority. The “woman’ of Revelation 12 who gives birth to the child who will “rule the nations” must be identified with the Old Testament people of God (Isa 54:1-4; 66:7-13; Mic 5:1-3), Mary (John 1:14), and the Church through the ages. As we approach the very End of the age we must anticipate “the great wrath” of the ancient serpent to come to a head (Rev 12:12). The Israel/Hamas war is the earthly origin of recent antisemitism, but behind it is the struggle with “the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (Eph 6:12). When Benjamin Netanyahu, “You must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our Holy Bible.”, equates present Palestinians with the plot of Haman the Agagite to annihilate the Jews (Esther 3:1, 10; 8:3, 5; 9:4), he makes not only a genealogical error but speaks by “a harmful spirit from the Lord” (1 Sam 16:14?). Equally evil in origin are the assertions of Moslems that the sacrificed favoured son of Abraham was Ishmael, their alleged ancestor, not Isaac (https://www.islamic-awareness.org/quran/contrad/mustrad/sacrifice). Persecuted Middle Eastern believers understandably see Islam as the spirit of antichrist, but the ancient teaching that the antichrist will be a false Jewish Messiah (from the tribe of Dan) is surely a demonic lie in union with early virulent Christian antisemitism. (The antichrist (cf. Luke 21:24; Rev 13:1; 17:15) is almost certainly a Gentile.)
Conclusion
We have become grossly ignorant of the plan of God expounded in Scripture, especially in Romans (9-11) and Revelation. Our lack of insight into the heavenlies in Christ obscures our vision of the glory of the Church compromised equally of Jew and Gentile and sustains our polarisation over the identity and destiny of Israel. This much is surely uncontroversial! Kelvin Crombie rightly exposed Christian antisemitism, even that of the Early Fathers and the pioneering Luther, but was too kind to our spiritual forebears and their descendants. Seeing with Jesus “in the Spirit” (Rev 1:10; 4:1ff) reveals that such sins must be derived from a fallen being whose scope, ingenuity and power far exceeds anything human. The only one who has, and will, conquer him, is our Jesus(1 John 3:8; 4:4). Antisemitism involves a far more serious charge than seeing the rise of contemporary Western pro-Islamic rhetoric, “From the rive to the sea.”, as something as trivial as a mere passing and ordinary historical phenomenon. Our only recourse in these circumstances is unified prayer for another Pentecost!