Chapter 1: The Language of Supersessionism
1
The Language of Supersessionism
Although the repudiation of supersessionism is now widespread among Christians, careful use of the term is not. In an exchange in Commonweal entitled “Getting Past Supersessionism,” Steven Englund referred to Christianity’s “de facto supersession of Judaism,” which he claimed was attested to in “a host of phrases” in Nostra Aetate, including Paul’s teaching in Ephesians that Christ has reconciled Jews and Gentiles into one body.24 John Connelly’s response stated that Nostra Aetate does not “preach supersessionism.”25 Though supersessionism is mentioned throughout the exchange, and Englund even asserts that it would not be hard for Pope Francis to “reconfirm the end to supersessionism as a central presupposition of the Good News,” the term is nowhere defined.
The language of supersessionism seems to dominate theological discourse about what Christians must no longer say concerning the Church’s relationship to the Jewish people. Yet the word often seems to function as a term of abuse. Therefore, the aim of this opening chapter is to take a first step toward clarifying the discussion on whether Aquinas’s theology is supersessionist by tracing the usage of term in order to recover its theological meaning.
1. The History of Supersessionism
Although the term supersessionism is a relative newcomer to the parlance of Christian theology, Christians writing in English have used “supersede” and cognates for two hundred years.26 Specifically, they have done so when describing the relation of Old and New Testaments, and specifically the idea that Christ fulfills God’s purposes for Judaism and the Mosaic Law. Prior to the Second World War, such uses of the term were universally regarded as self-evident and unproblematic. Since the Second World War, however, the use of term has undergone a dramatic change. Increasingly, supersede, as well as supersessionism, has come to be used as labels that identify a theologically inadequate or problematic Christian understanding of Jews and Judaism.
The English term supersessionism is derived from the Latin, supersedere, meaning “to sit upon; to sit above.”27 The earliest usage of the term appears in contexts where scholars describe Christ superseding Jewish Law, circumcision, and “outward ceremonials.” In the Oxford English Dictionary of 1790, William Paley spoke of the “supersession” of the Law that occurred with Christ.28 The third chapter of Thelwall’s 1870 translation of Tertullian’s An Answer to the Jews is entitled, “Of Circumcision and the Supercession of the Old Law.”29 The 1873 translation of F. C. Baur’s Paulus states that “Judaism saw itself superseded by Christianity” in the “one great idea” that “the essence of true religion did not consist in outward ceremonials, connected with a temple service confined to an appointed spot.”30
In each of these early examples, the idea that Christianity has superseded Judaism and Jewish Law carries a positive connotation because it is used to express a complex body of ideas held to be central to the Christian faith: the positive claim that the Law of Moses is fulfilled by the grace and truth that comes through Christ.31 Traditional interpretations of Christ’s fulfillment have assumed that the primary purpose of Judaism and Jewish Law was to prefigure future things, namely Christ’s birth, passion, and resurrection.32 With the coming of Christ, the symbolic purpose of Jewish Law, or what Augustine referred to as the “sacraments of the Old Testament,” have been fulfilled and therefore “discontinued.”33
In the decades after the Shoah, Christian theologians were forced to ask how “an industry of genocide” could have been conceived and carried out in the center of Christian civilization.”34 The common suffering of Jews and Christians under the Nazis had opened channels of communication35 between Jewish and Christian theologians. In emergency meetings of Christians and Jews, such as the International Council of Christians and Jews at Oxford (1946) and Seelisberg (1947), Christians began to consider the possibility that traditional Christian views of Judaism had “formed the deeper wellspring of contempt that made Auschwitz possible.”36 The dominant categories for this post-Holocaust examination of Christian teaching at this time were anti-Judaism37 and anti-Semitism.38 The term supersessionism was not yet widely used.
It appears that the first use of supersede in its post WWII sense occurs in English translations of the ground-breaking work of Holocaust survivor and French-Jewish historian, Jules Isaac (1877–1963).39 Isaac was a high-ranking French government official, World War I veteran, and professor of history. After the Nazi occupation of France, he was removed from his post as Inspector General of Education by the Vichy government and began writing a book investigating the roots of anti-Semitism. In 1943, while away from home, his daughter, son-in-law, and several family members were seized and killed by the Nazis.40 While on the run, hiding in farms and at the homes of priests or ministers, Isaac wrote his ground-breaking 600-page study of anti-Semitism in the Christian tradition, Jésus et Israël.41 By means of meticulous historical research, the study unearthed the intellectual underpinnings supporting negative Christian views of Jews and Judaism, such as the deicide charge and the idea that Judaism was a degenerate religion.42
Remarkably, Isaac would go on to shape Jewish-Christian relations in a still more seminal way. Several years after writing Jésus et Israël, Isaac played a crucial role in the push for the declaration now considered the historical turning point in Jewish-Christian relations, Nostra Aetate. On June 13, 1960, Isaac succeeded in obtaining an audience with Pope John XXIII, presented him with a dossier that demonstrated the presence of unjust statements about Jewish people in Christian instruction, such as the idea that diaspora was God’s punishment for Jews rejecting Christ. Isaac argued that such statements did not belong to the true tradition of the Church.43 At the close of the historic meeting, Isaac asked whether he might “take away with him a little hope,” and Pope John replied, “You have reason for more than a little hope.”44 According to John Connelly, “Isaac’s appeal made the difference.”45 Despite the Pope’s awareness of the need to revise Church teaching on the Jews, “he probably would not have requested a statement from the Council had Jules Isaac not made an impassioned plea . . . .”46
Throughout Jésus et Israël, Isaac is determined to identify and challenge a “special kind of exegesis”47 that had not only portrayed Judaism as a degenerate faith but also distorted Christianity. Isaac was adamant that this tradition of exegesis was to be distinguished from true Christian faith: “It must be clearly understood, that to oppose the teaching of contempt is not to oppose a doctrine essential to the Christian faith.”48 For Isaac, it was this “teaching of contempt” that required reexamination, not normative Christian faith: “The object of our attack is a tradition, time-honored and therefore all the more powerful, influential, and destructive, but in no way normative . . . .”49
In his 1962 book L’enseignement du mépris (translated into English in 1964), Isaac is concerned to challenge the normative Christian claim that the coming of Christ entails the abrogation of Jewish Law. It is here, for the first time in English, that an author employs the term “supersede” to indicate a problematic conception of how Christ fulfills the Mosaic Law.
For Isaac, Christian views of Judaism as degenerate are deeply rooted in a tradition of apologetics that claimed the Law was obsolete after Christ and that the Jews were attached to the Law because they were “carnal beings”:50
This contention has its source in the earliest Judeo-Christian controversies over the Torah—the Law of Moses—and its observances. The Christian apologists maintained that with the coming of Christ, the Law had been fulfilled and superseded [accomplie et dépassée]. They taught that the Jews were attached to the letter and not the spirit of the law because they were “carnal” beings, blinded by Satan, incapable of understanding the real meaning of their own Scriptures.51
In Jésus et Israël, Isaac challenges the claim that Christ’s fulfillment of the Law also entails its obsolescence in three different places.52 However, instead of accomplie et dépassée (fulfilled and obsolete) he uses accomplie et périmé (fulfilled and expired). Each time, the term périmé is rendered “superseded” by the English translation. Clearly, “supersede” is not a literal translation of Isaac’s term, périmé.53 Rather, “supersede” is used to capture what Isaac says is the double sens or double meaning of the traditional Christian concept of Christ’s fulfillment of the symbolic aspect of Jewish Law. He uses these formulas to describe this double meaning: “fulfilled and obsolete (dépassée)” or “fulfilled and expired (périmé).”
The first occurrence of “supersede” appears in a chapter entitled “Proposition 9: Jesus was born and lived ‘under the law.’ Did he intend or announce its abrogation [l’abrogation]? Many writers hold that he did, but their statements exaggerate, distort, or contradict the most important passages in the gospels.” In this chapter, Isaac critically examines modern French interpretation of Christ’s fulfillment of the Law. In particular, Isaac takes issue with traditional claim that the fulfillment of the Law also means that it is périmé or expired:54
Fulfill—what a magnificent vista this verb opens to the theological imagination! . . . “The law will be ‘fulfilled’ [accomplie] in the double meaning of raised to perfection and superseded [double sens d’élevée à la perfection et de périmé],” in the words of F. Ménégoz. Somewhat more cautiously (in style, that is), Father Bonsirven says, “The New Covenant and its economy do not suppress those that came before but ‘fulfill’ them, as does the fruit into which the flower is transformed.”55
A second occurrence is at the end of the chapter, and he refers once again to the double sens of fulfillment:
If Jesus had really been the revolutionary against the Law that he had been called; if he had presented himself as a “destroyer of Judaism”; . . . if he had let it be understood—in any way—that the whole of the Law was “fulfilled” [accomplie] in his person and was thenceforth “superseded” [périmé] in Ménégoz’s phrase, . . . how is it that Jesus’ most intimate disciples . . . and hundreds of thousands of converted Jews made not one allusion to it, seemed to know absolutely nothing about it?56
In the third and last occurrence of which I am aware, Isaac cites the Christian teaching that Jewish Law had expired as a principal cause of the widening gulf between Synagogue and Church in the first century:
It is again an indisputable fact . . . of capital importance for religion and for history that in this same period when the Gospel tradition was put down in writing, a gulf was opening between the Synagogue and its emancipated daughter, the Church. Jews rigorously faithful to the ancient Law and Christians who were breaking away from it, who declared it superseded [périmé], became adversaries, sometimes (the theologians, especially the doctors) mortal enemies.57
The English term supersede is used to translate Isaac’s criticism of what he viewed as the double sens of Christ’s fulfillment of the Law: “fulfilled and obsolete (dépassée)” or “fulfilled and expired (périmé).” Therefore, when “supersede” is first used to designate a problematic Christian view of Judaism in English theology it is used to name a very specific theological concept. With the coming of Christ, Jewish Law is fulfilled according to its inward spiritual intention and therefore expired according to its outer ceremonial form. It is, in short, fulfilled and therefore obsolete.
Perhaps one can only speculate that the translation of Isaac’s work into English was instrumental in moving the term supersede into the conversation, but it seems a reasonable hypothesis. In the years following the translation of L’Enseignement du Mépris and Jésus et Israël into English, one finds more instances of “supersede,” as well as “supersession.” Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik warned that a dialogue with Christians assumed acceptance of the idea of a “continuum of revealed doctrines,” which means “one is ready to acquiesce to the Christian theological claim that Christianity has superseded Judaism.”58 Franklin H. Littell argued, in his 1971 publication, The Crucifixion of the Jews, that “the superseding or displacement myth” was the “cornerstone of Christian Anti-Semitism.”59 In 1973, a group of Christian theologians convened by the Commission on Faith and Order of the National Council of Churches, in collaboration with the Secretariat for Catholic-Jewish Relations of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, published “A Statement to Our Fellow Christians” that declared: “The singular grace of Jesus Christ does not abrogate the covenantal relationship of God with Israel. In Christ the Church shares in Israel’s election without superseding it.”60 The 1986 publication of the second volume of Anti-Judaism in Early Christianity, cites to Justin Martyr’s belief that “his group and its social and cultural worlds . . . supersede” those of Trypho and the Jews as an example of anti-Judaism.61 Numerous churches published formal documents rejecting supersessionism, such as the declaration by the Presbyterian Church (USA): “We believe and testify that [the] theory of supersessionism or replacement is harmful and in need of reconsideration as the church seeks to proclaim God’s saving activity with humankind . . . .”62 Over the last two decades of the twentieth century, the language of supersessionism has become pervasive in theological and biblical scholarship.63 The term is now used in contemporary theology to designate problematic Christian claims about Judaism. “With respect to Judaism,” writes Richard John Neuhaus, “Christians today are exhorted to reject every form of supersessionism, and so we should. To supersede means to nullify, to void, to make obsolete, to displace.”64 Reflecting on the impact of Pope John Paul II’s positive contributions to Jewish-Christian relations, George Weigel commented that the Pope’s teaching “challenged Catholics who had never rid themselves of the last vestiges of the belief that God’s redemptive action in Christ had superseded, indeed abrogated, the covenant with Abraham.”65 The attempt to dismantle supersessionism has even been referred to by the Jewish theologian Peter Ochs as “another reformation.”66 Scholars now stress that Christ and the Church do not supersede Israel. They seek to affirm the ongoing role of the Jewish people in salvation history: “Christ and his Church do not supersede Judaism, but they do continue and fulfill the story which we are both part.”67
However, increased usage of “supersede” has created a context in which confusion and ambiguity is possible. This is in part because the term is no longer clearly connected to the association with the “double sense” of fulfillment that it has in Isaac’s works. The lack of careful attention to the meaning of the term tends to create a vacuum that attracts scholars’ perceptions of “negative Christian views of Judaism.” Mary C. Boys has suggested that the term supersessionism is “alive and well whenever we hear claims such as the following”: the God of the Old Testament is a God of wrath; the God of the New Testament is a God of love; the Jews rejected Jesus as their Messiah; self-righteous and hypocritical Pharisees show how legalistic Judaism had become by Jesus’ day.68 Another scholar has also equated Christian supersessionism to demonization of the State of Israel.69
How can the term supersede be kept from blurring into “negative views of the Jews”? One way is to remain attentive to the fact that the word emerged in the context of Isaac’s criticism of the “double sense” of Christ’s fulfillment of the Law (fulfilled and thenceforth expired). Indeed, the scholar who has undertaken the most careful systematic theological treatment of the concept of supersessionism in the Christian tradition argues that a concept not unlike Isaac’s “double sense” of fulfillment is the “heart of supersessionism.”
2. The Heart of Supersessionism
R. Kendall Soulen is one of the first to attempt a careful definition and analysis of supersessionism.70 Significantly, Soulen’s analysis coincides with Isaac’s use of the term. Like Isaac, Soulen conceives of supersessionism as entailing a double sense of fulfillment and obsolescence. In fact, this is what he calls the “heart of supersessionism.”
According to Soulen, Christianity’s traditional theology of the Jewish people needs to be seen in the context of its larger understanding of the narrative unity of the Christian canon as a whole. According to this larger narrative, “God chose the Jewish people after the fall of Adam in order to prepare the world for the coming of Jesus Christ, the Savior. After Christ came, however, the special role of the Jewish people came to an end and its place was taken by the church, the new Israel.”71 According to Soulen, supersessionism is most clearly manifested in this narrative framework in two forms, which he calls punitive and economic supersessionism.72 Of these, it is the second that will concern us most directly.
Punitive supersessionism is an approach to the biblical narrative that holds that God has abrogated God’s covenant with Israel on account of Israel’s rejection of Christ and the gospel.73 Because the Jews rejected Christ, God in turn angrily rejected them, and revoked their covenant. “These Christians taught that God’s covenant with the Jews was over, and that henceforth the church alone stood in its place.”74 Soulen points out that supersessionism in this form speaks of God “revoking” the covenant as a punishment for sin.
Like punitive supersessionism, economic supersessionism also teaches that God has replaced Israel with the Church. But unlike it, economic supersessionism does not ascribe that to Jewish disobedience or sin.75 Rather, the Church replaces Israel because Christ’s fulfillment of Jewish ceremonial law renders its continued observance obsolete and indeed damnable. This approach holds that the Mosaic Law prepares humanity for redemption primarily by pointing forward to Christ in “a carnal and prophetic way,” and the New Testament testifies to redemption in Christ in a “definitive and spiritual way.”76 “Circumcision, promises, law, temple, Israel’s history, and so forth all point in various ways toward Christ and the church.”77 With the advent of Christ, the prefiguring function of the carnal ceremonies or sacraments (circumcision) are superseded by new sacraments (baptism): “the prophecies, types, and figures of the Old Testament are fulfilled and superseded by their New Testament equivalents.”78
Both punitive and economic supersessionism are the forms of supersessionism most relevant and helpful for discussing whether Aquinas’s theology is supersessionist. For this reason, it will be helpful to highlight the similarities and differences. Economic supersessionism and punitive supersessionism are similar in that they share the conclusion that the Church replaces the Jews as God’s elect community. Punitive and economic supersessionism, however, do not share the “how” of the replacement. Economic supersessionism assumes the Jews are no longer God’s elect because the Jewish Law is fulfilled and obsolete. Punitive supersessionism assumes the Jews are no longer God’s elect because God is punishing them for rejecting Christ. Both forms of supersessionism result in the replacement of the people of Israel but arrive at this destination via different routes.79
Among these two forms, economic supersessionism is especially notable because it shares key features of Isaac’s rejection of the traditional fulfillment concept, namely the idea of Jewish Law as “fulfilled and obsolete.” Soulen’s concept of economic supersessionism overlaps significantly with at least two of Isaac’s insights: 1) fulfillment carries a “double sense” (fulfilled and thenceforth superseded) in the Christian tradition; 2) fulfillment understood according to this “double sense” inevitably undermines the theological rationale of Jewish existence.
First, recall that Isaac identified the double sense concept, that the Jewish Law had been “fulfilled and thenceforth expired,” as the root of the Christian view that Judaism was a degenerate religion. Soulen identifies this same concept as “the heart” of economic supersessionism when he describes a “double movement” of “fulfillment and cancellation,”80 or “fulfillment and outer obsolescence.” Soulen appeals to a variety of metaphors to illustrate the point:
The heart of economic supersessionism . . . simply affirms a double movement of inward fulfillment and outer obsolescence, like a butterfly that casts off its chrysalis. The chrysalis is not “revoked” or repudiated, nor is their any violation of the true organic continuity between caterpillar and butterfly. However, the chrysalis is rendered obsolete, and its retention would obviously be a serious mistake. The thought process is different from punitive supersessionism, but the destination is the same, insofar as both evacuate Israel’s observance of the cultic law of positive theological significance.81
The double movement of fulfillment and cancellation can also be understood via the metaphor of a sculptor that sketches a figure on paper before sculpting the actual figure. Although the sculptor intends that the sketch of the figure play a crucial role in bringing about the ultimate aim of the project, the primary purpose of the sketch becomes obsolete with the appearance of the completed sculpture.82 For both Isaac and Soulen, the traditional concept of Christ’s fulfillment of Judaism and Jewish Law carries double meanings. Soulen refers to the concept as “fulfilled and cancelled,” and Isaac identifies it as “fulfilled and thenceforth expired.”
Second, both scholars draw attention to the fact that the traditional double sense of fulfillment inevitably undermines Jewish existence, which can only maintain itself over time through the practice of Judaism. The Christian teaching that Law is obsolete is a theological problem because it ultimately implies that the Jewish people itself is obsolete, that God no longer desires its continuation as a distinct people among the nations.83
However, the idea that the obsolescence of Israel’s existence is a theological problem may not be immediately apparent. One might object that Jews could continue as a mere ethnic group and still be Jews. But this would be a complete misunderstanding of what is most essential and basic about Judaism.84
Judaism is the religion of the Jewish people, which does form a kind of ethnicity—a family descended from Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob that reproduces itself from generation to generation through the practice of ceremonial law and matrilineal descent.
However, Judaism does not form an ethnicity as this term is understood in contemporary English discourse, where it functions as a polite synonym of race and is largely a function of heredity alone. Judaism is essentially religious since it is first and foremost a covenanted people bound to God in part through God’s gift of Torah.
The observance of Torah grows out of Israel’s election. According to Jacob Neusner, those who observe the Torah maintain the covenant. To practice Judaism means “to act out in behavior and belief the key stories that are told in the Torah, . . . the instruction set forth by God to Israel at Mount Sinai.”85 Significantly, the religious practices of Judaism maintain the Jewish people: “What holds some descendants of Abraham and Sarah together as a people is the religion of Torah-observance, and this is true also of the many who do not themselves pay much attention to the mitzvoth.”86
The idea that Jewish Law is obsolete because it has “done its job” by pointing to Christ’s passion is a theological problem because it throws into question God’s desire that Jews exist at all. Since God’s election of the Jewish people is expressed through Torah-observance (including circumcision, dietary laws, and Sabbath) the traditional claim that Christ has discontinued these practices is the equivalent of saying God no longer desires the practice of Judaism. If God no longer desires Torah-observance, God no longer desires for there to be Jews in the world. This is why Isaac and Soulen understand the traditional fulfillment concept (fulfilled and expired; fulfilled and cancelled) to undermine the “very existence of Jewish flesh or carnal Jewish existence.”87
3. The Limitations of the Term
In order to prevent the term supersessionism from blurring with other concepts, such as anti-Semitism, it is important to identify its limitations. First, supersessionism should not be confused with anti-Semitism, which refers to hateful attitudes and actions directed toward the Jewish people because of their perceived ethnicity or race.88 Rather, to supersede refers to the teaching that Jewish Law has been fulfilled and abrogated with the result that the Church replaces Israel. For example, Justin’s Dialogue with Trypho the Jew assumes this sort of relationship between Judaism and Christianity: “the Old Law and covenant have become obsolete and replaced by a new law; the church has now become the verus Israel . . . .’”89
Second, supersessionism should not be confused with anti-Judaism, or “negative Christian views of Judaism,” such as the idea that the God of Israel is evil or a God of wrath. This is certainly a negative view of God, and one shared by Valentinus and Marcion, but it does not amount to supersessionism since there is no claim that Christ fulfilled and cancelled the Law and subsequently replaced Israel with the Church.90
Third, supersessionism should not be used to refer to the idea that Judaism and Christianity are separate and distinct traditions or that they are mutually indifferent. Here, there is once again no claim about the fulfillment of the Law or any replacement of one entity with the other, but only a notion of distinct religions that avoid saying anything about the positive value of the other.
In order to prevent the term supersessionism from gradually blurring with “negative views of Judaism,” on the one hand, or vague language about the differences between Judaism and Christianity, it is important to anchor the term to its origin in English theology with special attention to what Isaac and Soulen identified as the double sense of Christ’s fulfillment of Jewish Law. Supersessionism is the Christian claim that with the advent of Christ, Jewish Law is fulfilled and obsolete, with the result that God replaces Israel with the Church.
This discussion of supersessionism is in no way exhaustive but the definition I have suggested affords a way to clarify the discussion over whether Aquinas’s theology is supersessionist since it recognizes the limits of the term while remaining attentive to the “double sense” of Christ’s fulfillment: the teaching that Christ’s fulfillment of Jewish Law also entail its obsolescence or expiration. As I hope to make clear in the next chapter, it is this concept that happens to be the central issue in the scholarly discussion over whether Aquinas’s theology is supersessionist. I now turn to what Matthew Levering has referred to as a theological question of “paramount” significance: the question of supersessionism in Aquinas’s theology.91
24. Englund, “Getting Past Supersessionism,” 17.
25. Ibid., 26.
26. By “language of supersessionism” I mean the related terms “supersessionism,” “supersede,” and “supersessionist.”
27. Soulen, “Supersessionism.”
28. Paley, Horae Paulinae, 167, cited in Donaldson, “Supersessionism in Early Christianity.”
29. Donaldson, “Supersessionism in Early Christianity,” 3.
30. Baur, Paul the Apostle of Jesus Christ, 181. Cited in ibid.
31. Augustine, Against Faustus, 19.7.
32. “Whatever observance God appointed for the former dispensation was a shadow of future things.” Against Faustus, 6.2. “[E]verything in the law that is prophetic of the Savior’s advent, whether in words or in typical actions, became truth in Jesus Christ.” Against Faustus, 19.8.
33. Augustine, Against Faustus, 6.2. “The sacraments of the Old Testament, which were celebrated in obedience to the law, were types of Christ who was to come; and when Christ fulfilled them by His advent they were done away, and were done away because they were fulfilled. For Christ came not to destroy, but to fulfill. And now that the righteousness of faith is revealed, and the children of God are called into liberty, and the yoke of bondage which was required for a carnal and stiff-necked people is taken away, other sacraments are instituted, greater in efficacy, more beneficial in their use, easier in performance, and fewer in number.” Against Faustus 19.13. A second example of how the revelation of the truth abrogates Jewish practice can be found in John Calvin’s comments upon Matthew 5:17: “As regards ceremonies, if we allow that they may be reckoned somewhat incidental, it is only their practice that was abrogated: their significance was actually given more confirmation . . . the truth behind the shadows was revealed, and served to strengthen them; seeing the concrete fact, we recognize that they were not vain or useless.” Calvin, A Harmony of the Gospels, 180.
34. Donaldson, “Supersessionism in Early Christianity,” 3.
35. Connelly, From Enemy to Brother, 176.
36. Ibid.
37. Donaldson rightly points to Gregory Baum, Is the New Testament Anti-Semitic?; Rosemary R. Ruether, Faith and Fratricide; Samuel Sandmel, Anti-Semitism in the New Testament?; John G. Gager, The Origins of Anti-Semitism; George M. Smiga, Pain and Polemic; William R. Farmer, Anti-Judaism and the Gospels; Reimund Bieringer, Anti-Judaism and the Fourth Gospel.
38. Twentieth-century scholarship on Aquinas’s social doctrine of the Jews mirrored these concerns over the question of anti-Semitism in the Christian tradition. Scholars of Aquinas’s view of the Jews have largely been concerned with Aquinas’s policies concerning the Jews of his day and whether these policies can be linked to the increasing anti-Semitism of the fourteenth century. See Hanz Liebeschutz, “Judaism and Jewry in the Social Doctrine of Thomas Aquinas,” 57–81. John Y. B. Hood, Aquinas and the Jews; Robert Chazan, Daggers of Faith. Aquinas’s Epistola ad ducissam Brabantiae can be found in Aquinas, “On the Government of the Jews,” 233. Commentary on Aquinas’s social doctrine of the Jewish people has, for the most part, focused upon Aquinas’s Epistola ad ducissam Brabantiae (often improperly called De regimine Iudaeorum), and the question of forced baptism and tolerance for Jewish worship in Summa theologiae Ia IIae q. 10.12 ad 4; q. 10.11. The picture of Aquinas that emerges from a survey of the secondary literature is largely an apologetic one, with the exception of the work of Jeremy Cohen. Cohen thinks Aquinas’s view of the sin of Jewish unbelief in Christ in general and on Jewish complicity in the crucifixion in particular departs from what he sees as a tolerant Augustinian tradition. Jeremy Cohen, Living Letters of the Law, 372. Cohen extends this argument in Christ Killers. This older conversation about anti-Semitism in Aquinas’s social doctrine pursues a different question than the more theological question of supersessionism, and can be set aside in order to take up what Pim Valkenberg and Schoot have referred to as the “theological side” of Aquinas’s view of the Jews. Valkenberg and Schoot’s “Thomas Aquinas and Judaism,” in Aquinas in Dialogue.
39. Stephen Plant, “Jules Isaac,” 214. See the biographical notes written by Claire Huchet Bishop in Jules Isaac, Has Anti-Semitism Roots in Christianity?, 27–34. Bishop’s biographical notes on Isaac are also in the English translations of Isaac’s most influential work on anti-Semitism in the Christian tradition, The Teaching of Contempt, 3–15; and Jesus and Israel, xi-xvii.
40. Bishop, “A Biographical Introduction to Jules Isaac,” 8.
41. Isaac, Jésus et Israël.
42. Huchet, preface to Jesus and Israel, xiv; “A Biographical Introduction,” 9. Huchet says Isaac completed the manuscript in 1947. Isaac explains that the work was published in 1948. Isaac, Jesus and Israel, xxiv. Isaac’s second work was Genese de l’antisemitisme in 1956. It does not appear to have been translated into English. His third work would be published when he was eighty-five years old, under the title L’Enseignement de Mépris. It was translated into English in 1964 as The Teaching of Contempt. Isaac’s historic rebuttal of anti-Semitic Christian ideas about Jews would become the basis for the 1947 statement now considered the “first fruit” of the new era of Jewish-Christian relations, “Ten Points of Seelisberg.” Connelly, From Enemy to Brother, 176. “Ten Points” was published by the International Council of Christians and Jews. Aitken, “Seelisberg Conference.”
43. John Oesterreicher describes the dossier as follows: “1) A brief for the correction of false and . . . unjust statements about the people of Israel in Christian instruction. 2) An example of such statements: the theological myth that the scattering of Israel was a punishment inflicted by God on the people for the crucifixion of Jesus. 3) An extract from the so-called ‘Catechism of Trent’ which, in its treatment of the Passion, emphasized the guilt of all sinners as the fundamental cause of Christ’s death upon the cross, and thus, in Isaac’s view, proved that the accusation of deicide raised against the Jews did not belong to the true tradition of the Church.” “The Tridentine Catechism was published in 1566, not by the Council of Trent but as one of its fruits, under Pius V, its proper name being Catechismus Romanus . . . it was designed to assist preachers and catechists and to lay down guidelines for authentic instruction in Catholic faith and life.” Isaac actually cited paragraphs of the Catechismus Romanus that emphasized that sin was the principle reason that drove Christ to the cross and that both Gentiles and Jews pushed for Christ’s execution. Oesterreicher, The New Encounter, 105.
44. Ibid., 108.
45. Connelly, From Enemy to Brother, 240.
46. Connelly points out that this is not to say the Pope was uninterested in a statement on the Jews. John XXIII was instrumental in pushing the document onto the agenda of the Council. See ibid. Oesterreicher points out that it was “the measures taken by John XXIII to remove hurtful phrases from liturgical texts that had encouraged Isaac, as he himself acknowledged, to put this requests before the Pope.” Oesterreicher,The New Encounter, 108. The Pope’s request for a statement would be shepherded by Cardinal Bea, Karl Thieme, and John Oesterreicher. See Connelly for the origins of Nostra Aetate, including the crucial tradition of reflection on Judaism undertaken by Catholic anti-Nazi thinkers during and after the war.
47. Simon cited in Isaac, The Teaching of Contempt, 34.
48. Ibid.
49. Ibid., 35.
50. Isaac, L’enseignement du mépris. Isaac argued the “teaching of contempt” was manifested in three main themes in the Christian tradition: 1) the dispersion of the Jews; 2) the degenerate state of Judaism; 3) the crime of deicide.
51. Isaac, Teaching of Contempt, 75. [Emphasis added]; L’Enseignement de Mépris, 67.
52. Isaac, Jésus et Israël, 428.
53. L’Enseignement du Mépris was translated into English by Claire Huchet Bishop.
54. Isaac, Jesus and Israel, 49; Jésus et Israël, 96.
55. Isaac, Jesus and Israel, 64; Jésus et Israël, 118.
56. Isaac, Jesus and Israel, 71 [Emphasis added]; Isaac, Jésus et Israël, 125.
57. Isaac, Jesus and Israel, 294. [Emphasis added]
58. Soloveitchik, “Confrontation,” 5–9.
59. Littell, The Crucifixion of the Jews, 2.
60. Statement of the 1987 General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA) in Brockway, The Theology of the Churches.
61. See Anti-Judaism in Early Christianity, cited in Donaldson, “Supersessionism in Early Christianity,” 5.
62. Other church statements that explicitly reject supersessionism are collected in Clark M. Williamson, A Guest in the House of Israel, 37; Helga B. Croner, Stepping Stones to Further Jewish-Christian Relations; More Stepping Stones to Jewish-Christian Relations. See Soulen, God of Israel, 178. Mary C. Boys has assembled a helpful chart listing statements by various Protestant denominations, Vatican statements, Papal statements, and statements by bishops. Boys, Has God Only One Blessing?, 252–3.
63. Donaldson references Donald G. Bloesch, “All Israel Will be Saved: Supersessionism and the Biblical Witness,” 130–42; Robert R. Hann “Supersessionism, Engraftment, and Jewish-Christian Dialogue: Reflections on the Presbyterian Statement on Jewish-Christian Relations,” 327–42; Ronald E. Diprose, Israel in the Development of Christian Thought, 31; John Howard Yoder, The Jewish-Christian Schism Revisited, 213–14, 278; Douglas Harink, Paul Among the Postliberals, 23; Eugene B. Korn and John T. Pawlikowski, eds., Two Faiths, One Covenant?, 3; Vlach, “The Church as a Replacement of Israel.” Donaldson, “Supersessionism in Early Christianity,” 7.
64. Neuhaus, American Babylon, 174–75.
65. Weigel, Witness to Hope, 515.
66. Ochs, Another Reformation.
67. Neuhaus, American Babylon, 175.
68. Boys, Has God only One Blessing? 8.
69. Levenson, “Getting Past Supersessionism,” 22.
70. Soulen, The God of Israel and Christian Theology.
71. Ibid., 2.
72. Ibid., 1. A third form of supersessionism identified by Soulen is “structural.” However, as I explain in a note below, structural supersessionism is more of a consequence of economic supersessionism than a form of supersessionism itself.
73. Ibid., 30.
74. Soulen, “Israel and Church,” 171. This essay is perhaps the best introduction to Soulen’s view of the church and its relationship to traditional supersessionist interpretations of Israel.
75. The term “economy” (Gk. οἰκονομία) refers to the traditional understanding of God’s overarching redemptive work, or management, of two dispensations of the household of creation, Old and New.
76. Soulen, God of Israel, 27.
77. Ibid.
78. Ibid., 28. [Emphasis added]
79. A third form of supersessionism identified by Soulen is “structural.” Structural supersessionism is an approach to the biblical narrative that renders the Old Testament largely indecisive for shaping conclusions about how God’s redemptive purposes in Christ engage creation in universal and enduring ways. Israel’s history is nothing more than a particular prefigurative moment sandwiched between more important, universal, and spiritual aims of God’s creation and redemption of humankind. However, structural supersessionism is more a consequence of supersessionism than supersessionism itself. That Israel’s narrative no longer shapes God’s purposes in engaging creation in a decisive way seems to be a conclusion that follows from the economically supersessionist premise that God’s only purpose for Israel was to foreshadow universal redemption in Christ. After the passion the literal meaning of the narrative of the Old Testament no longer shapes God’s redemption of the world in a decisive way. Ibid., 31–32.
80. Soulen, “Israel and Church,” 47.
81. Personal correspondence. March 2011. [Emphasis added]
82. Paraphrase of Soulen’s metaphor in “Israel and Church,” 171. The image itself is used by several ancient Christian writers, including Melito of Sardis.
83. Soulen, God of Israel, 4.
84. Neusner, Judaism: The Basics.
85. Ibid., 11.
86. Jenson, “Toward a Christian Theology of Judaism,” 9.
87. Soulen, God of Israel, 31.
88. Pawlikowski, “Anti-Semitism,” 22.
89. Cited in Donaldson, “Supersessionism in Early Christianity,” 7. [Emphasis added]
90. Fredriksen, “The Birth of Christianity and the Origins of Anti-Judaism,” 8–30.
91. Levering, Christ’s Fulfillment, 15.