The Covenant With Israel
by Avery Cardinal Dulles (1918-2008)
Copyright (c) 2005 First Things (November 2005)
 The question of the present status of God’s
covenant with Israel has been extensively discussed in Jewish-Christian
dialogues since the Shoah. Catholics look for an approach that fits in
the framework of Catholic doctrine, much of which has been summarized
by the Second Vatican Council. According to post-conciliar documents,
in interpreting the council, priority should be given to the four great
constitutions, then to the decrees, and finally to the declarations.
The Declaration on Non-Christian Religions, though excellent, is not
exhaustive or sufficient. It needs to be understood in the broader
context of the full teaching of the council.
The Second Vatican Council taught with great
emphasis that there is one mediator between God and men, the man Jesus
Christ. All salvation comes through Christ, and there is no salvation
in any other name. In Christ, the incarnate Son of God, revelation
reaches its unsurpassable fullness. Everyone is in principle required
to believe in Christ as the way, the truth, and the life, and in the
Church he has established as an instrument for the salvation of all.
Anyone who, being aware of this, refuses to enter the Church or remain
in her cannot be saved. On the other hand, persons who “through no
fault of their own do not know the gospel of Christ or His Church, yet
sincerely seek God, and moved by grace, strive by their deeds to do His
will as it is known to them” may attain to everlasting salvation in
some manner known to God.
Christ gave the apostles, and through them
the Church, the solemn commission to preach the saving truth of the
gospel even to the ends of the earth: “The obligation of spreading the
faith is imposed on every disciple of Christ, according to his
ability,” as Lumen Gentium puts it. The Church “prays and
labors in order that the entire world may become the People of God, the
Body of the Lord, and the Temple of the Holy Spirit, and that in
Christ, the Head of all, there may be rendered to the Creator and
Author of the Universe all honor and glory.”
In seeking to spread the faith, Christians
should remember that faith is by its very nature a free response to the
word of God. Moral or physical coercion must therefore be avoided.
While teaching this, the council regretfully admits that at certain
times and places the faith has been propagated in ways that were not in
accord with — or were even opposed to — the spirit of the gospel.
Christian revelation did not come into the
world without a long preparation, beginning with our first parents,
Adam and Eve. Through Abraham, Moses, and the prophets, God taught
Israel “to acknowledge him as the one living and true God, provident
Father and just judge, and to wait for the Savior promised by him,” as
the council’s dogmatic constitution on divine revelation, Dei Verbum,
declares. God “entered into a covenant with Abraham (cf. Gen 15:18)
and, through Moses, with the people of Israel.” “The principal purpose
to which the plan of the Old Covenant was directed was to prepare for
the coming both of Christ, the universal Redeemer, and of the messianic
kingdom.” One and the same God is the inspirer and author of both the
Old and the New Testaments. He “wisely arranged that the New Testament
be hidden in the Old and that the Old be made manifest by the New.”
The people of the new covenant have a special spiritual bond with Abraham’s stock, the council’s Nostra Aetate
insists. The Church gratefully recalls that she received the revelation
of the Old Testament through the people of Israel. She is aware that,
even though Jerusalem did not recognize the time of her visitation, and
the Jews in large numbers have failed to accept the gospel, still,
according to Paul, the Jews still remain most dear to God because of
their fathers.
The Second Vatican Council, while providing a
solid and traditional framework for discussing Jewish-Christian
relations, did not attempt to settle all questions. In particular, it
left open the question whether the Old Covenant remains in force today.
Are there two covenants, one for Jews and one for Christians? If so,
are the two related as phases of a single developing covenant, a single
saving plan of God? May Jews who embrace Christianity continue to
adhere to Jewish covenantal practices?
In the half-century since Vatican II major
contributions to Catholic covenant theology have been made by Pope John
Paul II, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI), Walter
Cardinal Kasper, the Catechism of the Catholic Church, and
the Pontifical Biblical Commission. With these contributions, together
with some less authoritative writings, we may find a path through the
thickets of controversy.
A place to start is the term “Old Covenant,”
which is sometimes criticized on the ground that the adjective “old”
suggests the idea of being antiquated, even obsolete. Perhaps because I
am no longer young, I find it difficult to share this criticism. When
people speak of the “old country,” for example, they do not imply that
the old no longer exists or is close to dissolution. In any case the
term “Old Covenant” is solidly in place. It appears in writings of Paul
and in much official teaching, including the documents of Vatican II.
Some writers, following the Letter to the Hebrews, may prefer to speak
of the “first” or “prior” covenant. All of these terms, considered in
themselves, leave open the question whether or not the earlier covenant
is still in force.
To judge from the Scriptures, the Old
Covenant itself is multiple. In the Hebrew Bible we read of a whole
series of covenants being established before the coming of Christ,
notably those made with Noah, Abraham, Moses, and David. In Romans,
Paul speaks of the Jews having been given “covenants” in the plural.
The Fourth Eucharistic Prayer in the Roman Missal praises God for having offered covenants to his people “many times” (foedera pluries hominibus obtulisti).
The term “Old Covenant” could be used to refer to the whole series, but
when Paul uses the term in 2 Corinthians 3:14 (compare Galatians
4:24-25), he is evidently referring to the Mosaic Law. And this, I
believe, is the normal practice of Christians. The Old Covenant par
excellence is that of Sinai.
The term “covenant” is the usual translation of the Hebrew b’rith and the Greek diatheke.
Scholars commonly distinguish between two types of covenant, the
covenant grant and the covenant treaty. The covenant grant, modeled on
the free royal decree, is an unconditional divine gift and is usually
understood to be irrevocable. An example would be the covenant of God
with Noah and his descendants in Genesis 9:8-17. God makes an
everlasting promise not to destroy all living creatures by another
flood such as the one that has just subsided. The covenant to make
Abraham the Father of many nations in Genesis 15:5-6 and 17:4-8 and the
promise to David to give an everlasting kingship to his son in 2 Samuel
7:8-16 are gratuitous and unilateral. They are also unconditional and
irrevocable, though only in their deepest meaning.
The prime example of a conditional covenant
is that of Sinai, as interpreted in the Deuteronomic tradition. It
promises blessings on those who observe its conditions and curses on
those who violate them (see, for example, Deuteronomy 30:15-20). The
Israelites almost immediately broke the covenant by worshiping the
golden calf, but after the people’s repentance, God in his mercy
reestablished the covenant. Jeremiah teaches that Israel has broken the
Sinai covenant, but that God will give them a “new covenant,” placing
his law upon their hearts and making them his people (Jeremiah
31:31-34).
The term b’rith is usually
translated “covenant,” but this translation tends to emphasize the
bilateral and conditional character of the engagement. The same word
can also be translated “testament” and was so translated in the Old
Latin version before Jerome composed his Vulgate. The term “testament”
better conveys the idea that God is acting freely, out of sheer
generosity, and that his gift is unconditional. The paradoxical
intertwining of the unilateral and the bilateral, the conditional and
the unconditional, is one of the elements that complicates the question
whether the so-called “Old Covenant” still perdures.
The term “New Covenant” raises an additional
set of questions. The New Testament authors, borrowing the term from
Jeremiah 31:31, interpret it as a prediction of the new dispensation
that would come about with Christ and the Church (Hebrews 8:8-13,
10:16; see also 2 Corinthians 3:3). According to the accounts of the
Last Supper in the Gospel of Luke and in Paul’s First Letter to the
Corinthians, Jesus referred to the chalice as “the new covenant in my
blood” (Luke 22:20; 1 Corinthians 11:25). The Gospels of Matthew and
Mark record only that Jesus spoke of his “blood of the covenant”
(Matthew 26:28, Mark 14:24).
In both versions the mention of blood points
back to the solemnization of the Sinai Covenant, at which Moses
sprinkled the people with the blood of sacrificed animals and poured
the remainder on the altar (Exodus 24:5-8). The Eucharist therefore is
the covenant sacrifice that binds God and his Church to one another.
The “New Covenant” is constitutive of the “New People of God,” or the
“New Israel” — terms that Vatican II uses as designations of the Church
of Christ.
In the Roman canon of the Mass, the Covenant
established by the shedding of Christ’s blood is described as “new and
eternal.” The word “eternal” comes from the Letter to the Hebrews,
which speaks of “the blood of the eternal covenant” by which Jesus
equips the sheep to do God’s will. Vatican II speaks in Dei Verbum
of the Christian dispensation as “the new and definitive covenant.” The
suggestion seems to be that the prior covenant or covenants were not
eternal or definitive, but temporary or preparatory.
The New Testament, in certain passages,
indicates that the Old Law or the Old Covenant has come to an end and
been replaced. Paul in Second Corinthians draws a contrast between the
Old Covenant, carved on stone, which has lost its previous splendor,
and the New Covenant, written on human hearts by the Spirit, which is
permanent and shines brightly. In the third and fourth chapters of
Galatians he draws a sharp contrast between the covenant promises given
to Abraham and the law subsequently given through Moses. The two
covenants, in this passage, are represented by the two sons of Abraham,
Ishmael and Isaac. The law, he says, was our custodian until
Christ came, but it was incapable of giving justification, and loses
its force once Christ has come. Fulfilling the promises given to
Abraham, Christ brings an end to the Old Law.
In Second Corinthians Paul refers to the “old
covenant” as the “dispensation of death,” which has “faded away.” In
Romans he speaks of Christ as “the end of the Law,” apparently meaning
its termination, its goal, or both. The Mosaic Law ceases to bind once
its objective has been attained. The new dispensation may be called the
“law of Christ” (1 Corinthians 9:21; Galatians 6:2) or the “law of the
Spirit” (Romans 8:2). The Letter to the Hebrews contains in chapters
seven to ten a lengthy discussion of the two covenants based on the two
priesthoods, that of Levi and that of Christ, the Mediator of the New
Covenant. The Old Law, with its priesthood and Temple sacrifices, has
been superseded and abolished by the coming of the New.
All these texts, which the Church accepts as
teachings of canonical scripture, have to be reconciled with others,
which seem to point in a different direction. Jesus, in the Sermon on
the Mount, teaches that he has come not to abolish the Law and the
prophets but to fulfill them, even though he is here embarking on a
series of antitheses, in which he both supplements and corrects certain
provisions in the law of Moses. In a passage of great importance, Paul
asserts in Romans that the Jews have only stumbled. They are branches
broken off from the good olive tree, but are capable of being grafted
on again, since they are still beloved by God for the sake of their
forefathers, whose gifts and call are irrevocable. This seems to imply
that the Jewish people, notwithstanding their failure as a group to
accept Christ as the Messiah, still remain in some sort of covenant
relationship with God.
Such is the Church’s respect for Holy
Scripture that Catholic interpreters are not free to reject any of
these New Testament passages as if one contradicted another. Systematic
theology has to seek a way of reconciling and synthesizing them. The
task, I believe, is feasible if we make certain necessary distinctions.
Thomas Aquinas, gathering up a host of patristic and medieval
authorities, distinguished the moral, ceremonial, and judicial precepts
of the Old Law. Inspired in part by his reflections, I find it useful
to distinguish three aspects of the Old Covenant: as law, as promise,
and as interpersonal relation with God. The law, in turn, may be
subdivided into the moral and the ceremonial.
The moral law of the Old Testament is in its
essentials permanent. The Decalogue, given on Sinai, is at its core a
republication of the law of nature, written on all human hearts even
prior to any positive divine legislation. The commandments reflecting
the natural law, reaffirmed in the New Testament, are binding on
Christians. But, as St. Thomas explains in the Summa
(I-II.98.5), the Mosaic Law contains additions in view of the special
vocation and situation of the Jewish people. The Decalogue itself, as
given in Exodus and Deuteronomy, contains some ceremonial prescriptions
together with the moral.
Injunctions that were over and above the
natural law could be modified. The Church, adapting the law to a new
stage in salvation history, was able to transfer the Sabbath observance
from the last day of the week to the first and to cancel the Mosaic
prohibition against images. The New Law, in its moral prescriptions, is
much more than a republication of the Old. The law is broadened insofar
as it is extended to all peoples and all ages, inviting them to enter
into a covenant relationship with God. It is deepened insofar as Christ
interiorizes and radicalizes it, enjoining attitudes and intentions
that were not previously matters of legislation.
Most important, Christ bestows the Holy
Spirit, who writes the New Law upon the hearts of all who receive him.
The Law of the Spirit of life (Romans 8:2) deserves to be called a law,
according to St. Thomas, because the Holy Spirit, poured forth in the
human heart, both enlightens the mind and stably inclines the
affections toward acts of virtue. Although the law of the Spirit is
especially characteristic of those who have entered the Church, St.
Thomas adds the qualification that at all times some have belonged to
the New Covenant. It would be a mistake to imagine that the commandment
of love arose only with the coming of Jesus. Even in the Old Testament,
the love of God and neighbor is seen as a fundamental obligation.
Those who treat the Old Covenant as dead and
superseded are generally thinking of its legal prescriptions,
especially those connected with worship, as treated in the Letters of
Paul and the Letter to the Hebrews. Paul’s strictures on the Mosaic Law
are found especially in Second Corinthians and Galatians, where he
vehemently rejects the position of some Judeo-Christians who were
seeking to impose circumcision on members of the Church. Christians,
Paul insists, are not obliged to observe the rites of the Old Law. The
Letter to the Hebrews, which is essentially a treatise on priesthood,
teaches that with the cessation of the Levitical priesthood and the
Temple sacrifices, the Old Covenant is to that extent superseded: “For
where there is a change in the priesthood, there is necessarily a
change of law as well.” The former commandment is set aside, since a
“better hope” and a “better covenant” have been introduced. Christ
therefore “abolishes the first in order to establish the second.”
The Pontifical Biblical Commission, in The Jewish People and Their Sacred Scriptures in the Christian Bible,
presents a thorough discussion of the Covenant and concludes that Paul
regards the covenant-law of Sinai as provisional and insufficient.
Hebrews, it declares, proclaims that the cultic institutions of the
“first covenant” are now “abrogated to make way for the sacrifice and
priesthood of Christ.”
It took several decades of heated controversy
for the Church to reach a consensus that Christians, especially those
of Gentile origin, were not bound by circumcision and Jewish dietary
laws. Jesus himself, of course, had been circumcised and had kept the
Law in what the Catechism calls “its all-embracing detail,” even though
the Pharisees did not consider him sufficiently observant. With the
help of further revelation, the leaders of the Church decided that
Gentile converts are not bound by Jewish dietary laws (Acts 15). But
even after that decision Paul allowed Timothy to be circumcised,
because he was of Jewish parentage (Acts 16:1-3).
Even with respect to the ceremonial laws and
institutions, the New Covenant is not a simple abolition of the Old,
but rather its fulfillment. According to Christian theology, Christ is
the new Moses, the new Aaron, the new David, and the new Temple. Thomas
Aquinas explains in detail how the sacraments of the New Law fulfill
what is foreshadowed in those of the Old Law. Baptism, as the sacrament
of faith, succeeds circumcision. The Eucharist, he says, is prefigured
under different aspects by different institutions of the Old Law: the
offering of Melchizedek, the day of atonement, the manna, and
especially the paschal Lamb. In another passage St. Thomas lists the
various solemnities of the Old Law and their antitypes in the New. The
Passover, for example, becomes the Paschal triduum. The Jewish
Pentecost, which celebrated the giving of the Old Law, gives way to the
Christian Pentecost, which recalls the gift of the Holy Spirit. The
festivals of the new moons prefigure, and give way to, feasts of the
Blessed Virgin, who reflects the light of the Sun that is Christ.
With respect to the ceremonial law,
therefore, we may say that the Old Covenant is in a sense abolished
while being at the same time fulfilled. The law of Christ gives a
definitive interpretation to the Torah of Moses. Yet the ancient rites
retain their value as signs of what was to come. The priesthood, the
temple, and the sacrifices are not extinct; they survive in a
super-eminent way in Christ and the Church.
St. Augustine, followed by Thomas Aquinas and
many medieval doctors, denied that Jewish rites had any saving
efficacy, even for Jews. The Council of Florence, in its Decree for the
Copts, taught that the legal statutes of ancient Israel, including
circumcision and the Sabbath, ought no longer to be observed after the
promulgation of the gospel, and that converts from Judaism must give up
Jewish ritual practices.
In a letter to Jean-Marie Cardinal Lustiger,
then archbishop of Paris, Michael Wyschogrod pointedly asked what the
cardinal meant when he wrote that in becoming a Christian he had not
ceased to be a Jew and had not run away from the Jewish tradition. For
Wyschogrod, it seems, Jewish identity would require observance of the
Torah and Jewish tradition. By forbidding converted Jews to observe the
Torah, he holds, the Church fell into a supersessionism from which it
is today seeking to extricate itself. If Lustiger had responded he
might have pointed out that according to the teaching of Paul, which is
normative for Christians, circumcision and the Mosaic law have lost
their salvific value, at least for Christians, and in that sense been
“superseded.” But I do not wish to deny that the observance of some of
these prescriptions by Jews who have become Christians could be
permissible or even praiseworthy as a way of recalling the rootedness
of Christianity in the Old Covenant.
Under its second aspect, the Old Covenant is
promise. In itself, this is a point of commonality between Christians
and Jews, since both groups are conscious of awaiting the historical
fulfillment of the messianic age. While Jews still hope for the arrival
of that age, Christians understand it to be already underway, though
awaiting completion at the end-time.
The promise of the land to Abraham refers
literally to the territory of Canaan, where he and his descendants were
to settle, and was historically fulfilled in later centuries. The
kingship promised to the Son of David in 2 Samuel is partially
fulfilled in the reign of Solomon but, in its conditional aspects, was
abrogated because of the sins of the king and the people.
The promises, however, have a deeper,
spiritual meaning that remains intact. In the beatitudes Jesus
reinterprets the “land” promised to Abraham in a spiritual sense to
mean the kingdom of heaven, that is to say, the new earth to be
inhabited by the saints in eternal life. Paul understands the “progeny
of Abraham” to mean all who share the faith of Abraham. The Davidic
kingship becomes, in the New Testament, the glorious reign of the risen
Christ, the son of David. And the New Testament authors see the gift of
the Holy Spirit to the Church as the realization of the “New Covenant”
predicted by Jeremiah.
The Pontifical Biblical Commission draws the
correct conclusion: “The early Christians were conscious of being in
profound continuity with the covenant plan manifested and realized by
the God of Israel in the Old Testament. Israel continues to be in a
covenant relationship with God, because the covenant-promise is
definitive and cannot be abolished. But the early Christians were also
conscious of living in a new phase of that plan, announced by the
prophets and inaugurated by the blood of Jesus, ‘blood of the
covenant,’ because it was shed out of love.”
It could be asked whether there are any
promises to Israel that are not fulfilled in Christ and are waiting to
be fulfilled in some other way. Is Judaism still needed to point to
these further possibilities? Paul replies: “All the promises of God
find their Yes in Him” (2 Corinthians 1:20). There is nothing
incomplete in Christ’s fulfillment of what is promised and foreshadowed
in the Old Testament. It is true, of course, that human beings still
have to enter fully into that fulfillment. God is still leading the
elect toward the fullness of truth and life in Christ. Christians
themselves are still growing into him who is the head of the body
(Ephesians 4:15) and becoming incorporated into God’s holy temple
(Ephesians 2:21-22).
Judaism, in this view, does not point to
possibilities Christ failed to fulfill. But the witness of Jews to
their tradition helps Christians understand the foundations of their
own faith. By providing a living testimony to the hope of Israel and to
the ancient promises, faithful Jews can inspire and strengthen
Christians, who share the same hope and promises, though in a new
modality.
The Old Covenant has been understood
predominantly in terms of the Law and the promises it contains. But in
the light of modern personalism, another dimension is becoming more
evident: the covenant as an interpersonal relationship between God and
his elect people. In his Many Religions — One Covenant,
Cardinal Ratzinger remarked: “In asking about the covenant, we are
asking whether there can be a relationship between God and man, and
what kind of relationship it might be.” At the heart of all the laws
and promises is a loving relationship that the Scriptures do not
hesitate to describe quite simply as a “marriage” (Hosea 2 and 11;
Ezekiel 16). In this marriage God remains faithful to his partner even
in the face of human infidelity.
At the heart of the covenant lies the
promise: “You shall be my people, and I will be your God” (Ezekiel
36:28, Leviticus 26:12, Jeremiah 7:23, etc.). Under Christianity, the
Church understands herself to be the New People of God (1 Peter 2:9-10,
Revelation 21:3). But this claim does not settle the status of the Old
Israel, the People of the First Covenant. Does Israel cease to be the
People of God?
For an answer to this question the key text
would seem to be, for Christians, chapters nine through eleven of
Romans. Paul’s thought in these chapters is exceedingly complex and has
given rise to a variety of interpretations. Perhaps Paul himself
intended to leave some questions open. He ends the section with an
exclamation of awe-filled humility before the incomprehensible ways of
God: “O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How
unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable are his ways!”
Without any pretense of giving a final
solution I shall try to indicate some elements of a tenable Catholic
position. Paul in this passage clearly teaches that God has not
rejected His People, for His gifts and call are irrevocable. As regards
election, they are unceasingly beloved for the sake of their
forefathers. “If they do not persist in their unbelief,” he says, the
children of Israel “will be grafted in” to the olive tree from which
they have been cut off. He predicts that in the end “all Israel will be
saved” and that their reconciliation and full inclusion will mean life
from the dead. God’s continuing love and fidelity to his promises
indicate that the Old Covenant is still in force in one of its most
important aspects — God’s gracious predilection for His Chosen People.
Pope John Paul II, whose theology was deeply
affected by personalism, spoke of the Jews as a covenant people. In an
address in Rome on October 31, 1997, he discussed the act of divine
election that brought this people into existence: “This people is
assembled and led by Yahweh, creator of heaven and of earth. Its
existence is therefore not purely a fact of nature or of culture in the
sense that the resourcefulness proper to one’s nature is expressed in
culture. It is a supernatural fact. This people perseveres despite
everything because it is the people of the covenant, and despite human
infidelities, Yahweh is faithful to his covenant. To ignore this most
basic principle is to adopt a Marcionism against which the church
immediately and vigorously reacted, conscious of a vital link with the
Old Testament, without which the New Testament itself is emptied of
meaning.”
Vatican II brought out the profound truth
that the mystery of Israel and the mystery of the Church are
permanently intertwined: “As this sacred people searches into the
mystery of the Church, it recalls the spiritual bond linking the people
of the New Covenant to Abraham’s stock.” The Church is conscious that
she is a branch grafted onto the olive tree of Israel. Pope John Paul
II was deeply conscious of this affinity. Speaking at the synagogue of
Rome on April 13, 1986, he made the point: “The Jewish religion is not
‘extrinsic’ to us, but in a certain way is ‘intrinsic’ to our own
religion. With Judaism, therefore, we have a relationship which we do
not have with any other religion. You are our dearly beloved brothers
and, in a certain way, it could be said that you are our elder
brothers.”
In continuity with Vatican II and earlier
Catholic tradition, John Paul II saw the two covenants as intrinsically
related. The Old is a preview and promise of the New; the New is the
unveiling and fulfillment of the Old. “The New Covenant,” he declared,
“serves to fulfill all that is rooted in the vocation of Abraham, in
God’s covenant with Israel at Sinai, and in the whole rich heritage of
the inspired Prophets who, hundreds of years before that fulfillment,
pointed in the Sacred Scriptures to the One whom God would send in the
‘fullness of time.’”
Some Christians, in their eagerness to reject
a crude supersessionism, give independent validity to the Old Covenant.
They depict the Old and New Covenants as two ‘separate but equal’
parallel paths to salvation, the one intended for Jews, the other for
gentiles. The commentator Roy H. Schoeman correctly remarks this thesis
“has been presented as though it were the only logical alternative to
supersessionism, despite the fact that it is utterly irreconcilable
with both the core beliefs of Christianity and with the words of Jesus
himself in the New Testament.” Joseph Fitzmyer, in his scholarly
commentary on Romans, likewise opposes the theory of two separate ways
of salvation: “It is difficult to see how Paul would envisage two
different kinds of salvation, one brought about by God apart from
Christ for Jews, and one by Christ for Gentiles and believing Jews.
That would seem to militate against his whole thesis of justification
and salvation by grace for all who believe in the gospel of
Christ Jesus (1:16). For Paul the only basis for membership in the new
people of God is faith in Christ Jesus.”
It is unthinkable that in these chapters of
Romans Paul would be proposing salvation for Jews apart from Christ. He
spent much of his ministry seeking to evangelize his fellow Jews. In
the very passage in which he speaks of God’s abiding love for Israel,
he confesses his great sorrow and anguish at Israel’s unbelief. He
would be ready, he says, to be accursed and cut off from Christ for the
sake of his brethren, his kinsmen by race, who have not accepted Jesus
as Messiah.
The Catholic Church clearly teaches that no
one will be condemned for unbelief, or for incomplete belief, without
having sinned against the light. Those who with good will follow the
movements of God’s grace in their own lives are on the road to
salvation. They are not required to profess belief in Christ unless or
until they are in a position to recognize him as Messiah and Lord. The
fact that Jews and Christians have honest differences about this point
is a powerful incentive for dialogue between them.
John Paul II was not content to let Judaism
and Christianity go their separate ways. Speaking at Mainz in 1980, he
called for ongoing dialogue “between the people of God of the Old
Covenant, never revoked by God, and that of the New Covenant.” He
expressed hope for an eventual reconciliation in the fullness of truth.
In Crossing the Threshold of Hope (1994) he wrote of Judaism:
“This extraordinary people continues to bear signs of its divine
election. . . . The insights which inspired the Declaration Nostra Aetate
are finding concrete expression in various ways. Thus the two great
moments of divine election — the Old and New Covenants — are drawing
closer together. . . . The time when the people of the Old Covenant
will be able to see themselves as part of the New is, naturally, a
question left to the Holy Spirit. We, as human beings, try only not to
put obstacles in the way.”
The last word should perhaps be left to Pope
Benedict XVI. In a set of interviews from the late 1990s, published
under the title God and the World, he recognizes that there
is “an enormous variety of theories” about the extent to which Judaism
remains a valid way of life since the coming of Christ. As Christians,
he says, we are convinced that the Old Testament is directed toward
Christ, and that Christianity, instead of being a new religion, is
simply the Old Testament read anew in Christ. We can be certain that
Israel has a special place in God’s plans and a special mission to
accomplish today. The Jews “still stand within the faithful covenant of
God,” and, we believe, “they will in the end be together with us in
Christ.” “We are waiting for the moment when Israel, too, will say Yes
to Christ,” but until that moment comes all of us, Jews and Christians,
“stand within the patience of God,” of whose faithfulness we can rest
assured.
Believing that the Son of God has lived among
us, Christians will wish to make him known, loved, praised, confessed,
and obeyed by as many people as possible. They will want the whole
world to profit from Christ’s teaching and to enjoy the fullness of
sacramental life. But they will also strive to be patient in awaiting
the appointed time. All of us, Jews and Christians alike, depend on
God’s patience as we strive to be faithful to the covenant and enter
into its deepest meaning.
Avery Cardinal Dulles, S.J. (1918-2008), held the Laurence J. McGinley Chair in Religion and Society at Fordham University.
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