Sacred Texts - world religion

SACRED TEXTS (THE WORD OF GOD)

Table of Contents:

SECTION 1: THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK (FAITH AND REASON)

AND THE CONSEQUENCES OF BIBLICAL FUNDAMENTALISM

· FUNDAMENTALISM

· ANTI-MODERNISM

· ANTI-SEMITISM

SECTION 2: SOME KEY BIBLICAL TEXTS

I. On the Divinity of Jesus

II. The Essence of Christianity

III. Major Corpus of Biblical Laws

IV. On Forbidden Food and Dietary Laws

V. Sexual Ethic

VI. Women

VII. Slaves

VIII. Political Theology (attitude toward governments and rulers)

IX. On War and other forms of violence

X. Religion and the Economy (Business Ethic and Social Justice)

XI. Nationalism/Patriotism versus Universalism

XII. Idolatry and Forbidden gods and religions

SECTION 3: TEXTS FROM THE KORAN

SECTION 1: THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

“Man cannot live by the bread of science and politics alone; he also needs the vitamins of ethics and morals, faith and hope, love and security, comfort and attention in the face of death and misfortune, a feeling and experience that as a person he matters infinitely, and assurance that he is not immediately ‘forgotten’ or even annihilated when he dies. These are the elements that religion tries to offer… Religion makes a contribution in man’s search for identity and security... Invisible, unnoticed and even unofficially, the religious traditions of Africa contain the only lasting potentialities for a basis, a foundation and a direction of life for African societies.”

John S. Mbiti, African Religions and Philosophy. London: Heinemann, 1989, 2nd edition; p.270.

But what kind of Religion?

MACHT VERDUMMT

(Power makes you stupid)

(Nietzsche)

Is ours a stupid religion?

“Più Sai Più Sei”

“He who knows one knows none” (Max Müller)

THE DANGER OF ANTHROPOMORPHISM

Mortal men believe that gods are begotten, and that they have the dress, voice,

and body of mortals...

If Oxen, horses, or lions had hands with which to sketch and fashion works of art as men do.

Then horses would draw the forms of gods like horses, oxen like oxen, and they would each make their gods’ bodies similar in frame to the bodies that they themselves possess.

Indeed, the Ethiopians claim that their gods are snub-nosed and black;

the Thracians, that theirs are blue-eyed and red-headed. ...

One god there is! Greatest among gods and humankind,

in no way like mortals in body or in the thought of his mind.

In his entirety, he sees;

in his entirety, he thinks;

in his entirety, he hears.

Always in the same place, he remains, moving not at all; it is not fitting that he should shift about now here and, then, elsewhere. But holding aloof from toil, he sets all things aquiver with the thought of his mind.

(Xenophanes, ca. 560-478 B.C.E.)

Stanley Rosen, ed., The Examined Life: Readings From Western Philosophers From Plato to Kant. (New York: Random House, 2000); pp.6-7.

FAITH AND REASON: THE INDISPENSABLE ROLE OF CRITICAL THINKING

KORAN

The Koran begins (after the Exordium) with the following words:

“This book is not to be doubted. It is a guide for the righteous,

who have faith in the unseen and are steadfast in prayer…

as for the unbelievers… grievous punishment awaits them.”

(Surah 2:2)

THE BIBLE (2Timothy 3,1-17):

“…All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for refutation, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that one who belongs to God may be competent, equipped for every good work.”

· 1Peter 3, 13-17 and 2 Peter 1, 1-11:

“Now who is going to harm you if you are enthusiastic for what is good? ...

Always be ready to give an explanation to anyone who asks you for a reason for your hope, but do it with gentleness and reverence, keeping your conscience clear so that when you are maligned, those who defame your good conduct in Christ may themselves be put to shame.” (1Peter 3, 13-17)

“Make every effort to supplement

your faith with virtue,

virtue with knowledge,

knowledge with self-control,

self-control with endurance,

endurance with devotion,

devotion with mutual affection,

mutual affection with love…”

(2 Peter 1, 1-11)

THE ALLEGORY STRATEGY

IN THE READING OF SACRED TEXTS

Celsus’ critique of Christianity and Judaism

“Christians hold many irrational opinions, and they are upset when a logical investigation of their doctrines shows inconsistencies and difficulties. They simply cannot think critically. They despise philosophy and logic, and claim that their holy scriptures lead them to ultimate truth. Christians believe a myth that God wrote their commandments. Both the Jewish Scriptures and the Christian teachings are full of myths. Their entire scriptures both of law, the prophets, and about Jesus are full of myths. The myth among us that Plato had a virgin birth was rejected by us, realizing that some overly ambitious followers who did not know him created the myth. Greeks do not believe Greek fables, but Jews and Christians believe theirs to be actual history. Against all history and reason, the Christians are determined to believe their myths. The Bible is replete with ludicrous legends and myths that are allegorized by Christians to save face and the embarrassment they give when taken literally. .Many biblical stories are so ridiculous that they take refuge in allegories. All wise men know that the allegory game is an admission of a rather stupid story. Mosaic cosmology is contrary to science. The creation periods of “days” before days existed shows as lack of both logic and science. Christians realize that Moses is incorrect, but hide it by means of allegorical interpretations. Christians believe that the world is not even 10,000 years old because they rely, not on science and logic, but Moses’ books. Neither Jew nor Christian has ever invented anything in science….Like all quacks they (Christians) gather a crowd of slaves, children, women and idlers. I speak bitterly about this because I feel bitterly. When we are invited to the Mysteries the masters use another tone. They say, Come to us you who are of clean hands and pure speech, you who are unstained by crime, who have a good conscience towards God, who have done justly and lived uprightly. The Christians say, Come to us you who are sinners, you who are fools or children, you who are miserable, and you shall enter into the kingdom of Heaven: the rogue, the thief, the burglar, the poisoner, the despoiler of temples and tombs, these are their proselytes... Jesus, they say, was sent to save sinners; was he not sent to help those who have kept themselves free from sin? They pretend that God will save the unjust man if he repents and humbles himself. The just man who has held steady from the cradle in the ways of virtue He will not look upon. He pours scorn upon the exorcists; who were clearly in league with the demons themselves – and upon the excesses of the itinerant and undisciplined prophets who roam through cities and camps and commit to everlasting fire cities and lands and their inhabitants… Above all Christians are disloyal, and every church is an illicit collegium, an insinuation deadly at any time, but especially so under Marcus Aurelius. Why cannot Christians attach themselves to the great philosophic and political authorities of the world? A properly understood worship of gods and demons is quite compatible with a purified monotheism, and they might as well give up the mad idea of winning the authorities over to their faith, or of hoping to attain anything like universal agreement on divine things."

(From Origen’s “Contra Celsum”)

· “Once you have learned how to ask questions - relevant and appropriate and substantial questions - you have learned how to learn and no one can keep you from learning whatever you want or need to know.”

(Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner)

“What is most thought provoking in our thought-provoking time

is that we are still not thinking. We are still not thinking, although the

state of the world is becoming constantly more thought-provoking.”

(Martin Heidegger, Was Heisst Denken?)

It is hard to suppress a certain disgust when contemplating men’s action

upon the world stage. For one finds, in spite of apparent wisdom in detail that

everything, taken as a whole, is interwoven with

stupidity,

childish vanity,

often with childish viciousness

and destructiveness.

In the end, one does not know what kind of conception one should have of

our species which is so conceited about its superior qualities.

(Immanuel Kant, Idea for a Universal History with Cosmopolitan Intent, 1784.

in Carl J. Friedrich , The Philosophy of Kant. Immanuel Kant’s Moral and Political Writings.

New York: The Modern Library, 1993; p.129).

· “Normally persons talk about other people’s religions as they are,

and about their own as it ought to be.”

(Wilfred Cantwell Smith, 1962).

“We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing,

while others judge us by what we have already done.”

(Henry Wadsworth Longfellow)

“THE ONLY THING I KNOW IS THAT I KNOW THAT I DO NOT KNOW.”

(SOCRATES).

“THE UNEXAMINED LIFE IS NOT WORTH LIVING.”

(Socrates in Plato’s The Apology).

“Cogito Ergo Sum” (I think therefore I am)

René Descartes

“Reason is the Substance of the Universe”

Hegel

“THE UNEXAMINED RELIGIONIS NOT WORTH BELIEVING.”

(Mutombo)

· “Uncertainty, in the presence of vivid hopes and fears, is painful, but must be endured if we wish to live without the support of comforting fairy tales. It is not good to forget the questions that philosophy asks, or to persuade ourselves that we have found indubitable answers to them. To teach how to live without certainty, and yet without being paralyzed by hesitation, is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy, in our age, can still do for those who study it.”

(Bertrand Russell).

A succint definition of Philosophy of religion (by Edgar S. Brightman):

“Philosophy of religion is an attempt to discover by rational interpretation of religion

and its relations to other types of experience, the truth of religious beliefs and

the value of religious attitudes and practices.”

5 Tasks of Philosophy of religion according to William J. Abraham

(1) to clarify the central concepts of religion,

(2) to examine the internal consistency of religious concepts,

(3) to scrutinize the philosophical presupposition of faith statements;

(4) to examine the philosophical presuppositions and consistencies of statements

made by apologists or assailants of religion.

(5) to explore the relationship between religion and other areas of life;

Philosophy of religion provides religion with the power of critical thinking

and self-examination.

In so doing it helps religion to become

1. More Credible

2. More Authentic

3. More Meaningful

4. More Religious

(by overcoming Anthropomorphism, and man-made rules)

5. More mature (less childish, less stupid, less tyrannical, less fanatical)

6. Coherent (avoid unnecessary contradictions)

7. Reasonable

8. To distinguish what is essential in religion from superficial paraphernalia

9. To curb fanaticism and religious violence (to make religion more divine and more humane)

10. To Defend the raison d’etre of religion with solid arguments

ONLY ONE WAY OF SALVATION?

A. THE CHRISTIAN PERSPECTIVE

Jesus said to him:

“I am the Way, and the truth, and the life.

No one comes to the Father except through me.

If you know me, you will know my Father also.” (John 14, 6-7)

And Jesus said to his disciples: “Go into the whole world

and proclaim the gospel to every creature.

Whoever believes and is baptised will be saved;

Whoever does not believe will be condemned.” (Mark 16,14-18)

“In Christendom Heresy was prosecuted as a crime that

undermined the religious foundation of society.”

(Paul E. Capetz, God: A Brief History, p.43).

“Do not invoke the names of other gods; do not let them be heard on your lips.”

(Ex.23,13)

“Whoever sacrifices to any god, other than the Lord alone, shall be devoted to destruction.”

(Exodus 22:19, and Deut.13: 1-17)

Deuteronomy 13: 6-11 (on idol worship)

If anyone secretly entices you - even if it is your brother, your father’s son or your mother’s son, or your own son or daughter, or the wife you embrace, or your most intimate friend - saying, “Let us go worship other gods,” whom neither you nor your ancestors have known, any of the gods of the peoples that are around you, whether near you or far away from you, from one end of the earth to the other, you must not yield to or heed any such persons.

Show them no pity or compassion and do not shield them. But you shall surely kill them; your own hand shall be first against them to execute them, and afterwards the and of all the people. Stone them to death for trying to turn you away from the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. Then all Israel shall hear and be afraid, and never again do any such wickedness.

“Then God spoke all these words:

I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery;

you shall have no other gods before me.

You shall not make for yourself an idol,

whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above,

or that is on the earth beneath,

- or that is in the water under the earth.

You shall not bow down to them or worship them;

for I am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents,

to the third and the fourth generation of those who reject me,

but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me

and keep my commandments.”

(Ex.20,1-6).

“The heathen in his blindness bows down to wood and stone.”

Psalms 115:

Why should the nations say, “where is their God?”

Our God is in heaven; whatever God wills is done.

Their idols are silver and gold,

The work of human hands

They have mouths but do not speak,

Eyes but do not see.

They have ears but do not hear,

Noses but do not smell.

They have hands but do not feel,

Feet but do not walk,

And no sound rises from their throats.

Their makers shall be like them, all who trust in them.

The house of Israel trusts in the Lord

Who is their help and shield.

“Because of Jesus Christ, Christianity understands itself as the absolute religion, intended for all men, which cannot recognize any other religion beside itself as of equal right… This pluralism is a greater threat and a reason for greater unrest for Christianity than for any other religion. For no other religion – not even Islam – maintains so absolutely that it is the religion, the one and only valid revelation of the one living God as does the Christian religion. The fact of the pluralism of religions, which endures and still from time to time becomes virulent and even after a history of 2000 years, must therefore be the greatest scandal and the greatest vexation for Christianity.”

(Karl Rahner, “Christianity and the Non-Christian Religions” in Theological Investigations, vol.5.; Baltimore: Helicon, 1966; pp.118,116).

“It has been axiomatic to Christians that Christianity is the true religion, and that others are at best varyingly less true. But this axiom, given the initial perceptual grid, has generated inevitable perplexities in which the Christian theology of religions has become hopelessly entangled. If God is the God of all humanity, why is the true religion, the right approach to God, confined to a single strand of human history, so that it has been unavailable to the great majority of the thousands of millions of human beings who have lived and died from the earliest days until now? If God is the Creator and Father of all, can God have provided true religion only for a chosen minority? Why, within God’s providence, has humanity’s religious life taken the pluralistic form which history shows us?”

John Hick, “Foreword” to Wilfred Cantwell Smith’s “The Meaning and End of Religion” (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1991); pp.v-vii.

B. THE ISLAMIC PERSPECTIVE

“The only true faith in God’s sight is Islam.” (Surah 3:19)

“He that chooses a religion other than Islam, it will not be accepted for him,

and in the world to come he will be one of the lost.” (Surah 3:85)

Qur’an, Surah 9:1-20

Proclaim a woeful punishment to the unbelievers….

When the sacred months are over slay the idolaters wherever you find them.

Arrest them, besiege then, and lie in ambush everywhere for them

For idolaters are ignorant men… evil is what they do…

Do you fear them?

Surely God is more deserving of your fear if you are true believers.

Make war on them: God will chastise them at your hands and humble them…

Those who have embraced the Faith, and left their homes; and fought for God’s cause with their wealth and with their persons, are held in higher regard by God.

Qur’an, Surah 5:24-40

Those that make war against God and his apostle and spread disorder in the land shall be slain or crucified or have their hands and feet cut off on alternate sides, or be banished from the land. They shall be held up to shame in this world and sternly punished in the hereafter: except those that repent before you reduce them. For you must know that God is forgiving and merciful.

Believers, have fear of God and seek the right path to Him. Fight valiantly for His cause, so that you may triumph.

As for the unbelievers…woeful punishment awaits them.

As for the man or woman who is guilty of theft, cut off their hands to punish them for their crimes. That is the punishment enjoined by God. God is mighty and wise…Did you not know that God has sovereignty over the heavens and the earth? He punishes whom He will and forgives whom He pleases. God has power over all things.

ISLAMIC FUNDAMENTALISM

From Farid Esack, Qur’an Liberation and Pluralism:

An Islamic perspective on interreligious

solidarity against oppression.

(Oxford: one world,1997) p.xi.

The Muslim scholar Farid warns us against the distortion of Islam through the imposition of a Christian theological category. However, he points out that there are some tendencies in Islam that have the characteristics of fundamentalism.

He identifies 7 major characteristics of “Islamic Fundamentalism.”

Islamic fundamentalism, as popularized in much of the Western media, represents a stereotype with pejorative and disparaging connotations.

It is often sweeping in its generalization and insensitive to the many nuances in the world of contemporary Islam. However, in contemporary Islamic discourse there is a tendency that can appropriately be described as fundamentalism (and which mutatis mutandis has striking similarities with Christian Fundamentalism).

7 major characteristics of Islamic Fundamentalism:

1. A denial of any virtue in non-Islam;

2. enmity towards all who reject fundamentalist views as people who have chosen Evil against Good;

3. A commitment to the establishment of an Islamic state

wherein the sovereignty of God, juxtaposed against popular sovereignty, would be supreme.

4. A belief in the necessity of enforcing the shari’ah

as fundamentalists understand it to have been practised in the Muhammadan era in Medina;

5. A commitment to strict religious practice;

6. A commitment to observance of the text

(literal reading of the Koran)

7. An unhistorical view of Islam as capable of permanently solving all the problems of humankind.

Christian Fundamentalism

"Jesus Christ is the only way of salvation".

Accept the whole Bible as the infallible "word of God".

Fundamentalists tend toward a literalist reading of the Sacred Texts. A survey by the Gallup organization in 1980 found that 40% of the American public claimed to believe that the Bible is the “actual word of God and is to be taken literally, word for word.”

Malise Ruthven, Fundamentalism: The Search for Meaning.

(Oxford University Press, 2004);

“To look at American religion and to overlook Evangelicalism and Fundamentalism would be comparable to scanning the American physical landscape and missing the Rocky Mountains… As extreme and outdated as the Evangelical model of understanding other religions might seem, the Evangelical voice must be heard. What might appear as extreme in this voice flows from a deep concern for what Evangelicals deem to be the heart of Christianity. To dismiss Evangelical attitudes as outdated is simply to ignore the fact that these attitudes do represent a strong, and an increasingly louder, voice within the Christian population.

Paul F. Knitter, No Other Name? A Critical Survey of Christian Attitudes Towards the World Religions. (New York: Orbis Books, 1985)

Because of its belief

in “Manifest Destiny” ideology,

in literal reading of the Bible,

in the Apocalyptic Armageddon war,

and its opposition to science,

and to Women’s right in the Church or in the society at large,

Because of its support to arms industry,

its glorification of the US military and militarism,

and its support of US wars against foreign nations,

and US economic exploitation of poor nations,

Because of its “uncritical” and somehow immature approach to moral values, its love for weapons and war, its impact on the environment, its baleful role in US foreign policy toward other nations,

America’s religiosity is a problem,

a major source of instability and violence in the world.

American fundamentalists are

- a headache, a thorn in the flesh of the bien-pensant liberals,

- the subject of bemused concern to ‘Old Europeans’ who have experienced too many real catastrophes to yearn for Armageddon,

- They inconvenience women, and oppose scientific progress

But they are not a danger only to America, they are also a danger to the whole World and to the planet earth itself.

- On a planetary level they are selfish, greedy, and stupid, damaging the environment by the excessive use of energy and lobbying against environmental controls. What is the point of saving the planet, they argue, if Jesus is arriving tomorrow?

Malise Ruthven, Fundamentalism: The Search for Meaning. (Oxford University Press, 2004); pp. 59; 1-34; 216-217.

THE FUNDAMENTALISM MOVEMENT (1910-2004)

Fundamentalism is reactionary, it is the need to return to the “good old days.”

It is guided by “fear” of loosing control with the rise of governments where secular rulers are independent from the diktat of religious leaders. It stands as a reaction to the rise of democracy, Multiculturalism, individual freedom, technology (industrial revolution, modern science), Marxism, socialism and communism, and feminism or the emancipation of women and sexual revolution.

Some fundamentalists are people who are alienated or excluded from competition in the new world. Others are merely guided by their religious passion, or by the will to power. But others view themselves as the most enlightened and lovers of God.

In the recent decades, fundamentalists have added POLITICAL ACTIVISM to their agendas. They want to rule the world and bring it back to what they regard as “order” and spiritual values, decency, and dignity.

Although associated with the South, the poor and uneducated people, Fundamentalism had its key roots at Princeton Seminary where conservative Presbyterians resistant to the theory of biological evolution and innovations in biblical interpretation defended the literal truth of the Bible and such doctrines as Jesus’s virgin birth and Resurrection.

From England came “dispensational premillennialism,” which divided human history into biblically defined epochs or “dispensations” and anticipated the return of Jesus to inaugurate the millennium, followed by the cataclysmic end of time. These doctrines were spread nationwide by a network of evangelists and Bible institutes centered on Dwight L. Moody (1837-99) and his Chicago institute and, after 1876, through an annual interdenominational conference series at Niagara, New York.

16th century: Protestant reformation and Council of Trent

18th century: collapse of Theocracies, Rise of Democracy and Human rights movements

1776: American Revolution

1789: French Revolution

19th century: Industrial revolution (triumph of modern science) and rise of Evolutionism

1859: Publication of Charles Darwin’s The Evolution of Species

1876-1900: Bible conferences held by many Christian conservatives

throughout the USA

1910: publication of “The Fundamentals” (12 volumes)

1925: The “1925 Scopes trial” (in Dayton, Tennessee).

The “1925 Scopes trial” constitute the most sensational expression of early fundamentalism, in which Fundamentalists successfully but embarrassingly defended a state law outlawing the teaching of evolution in public schools. This occurred in Dayton, Tennessee

The “fundamental beliefs of Protestantism”:

(according to the document “the Fundamentals”):

1. The inerrancy of the Bible

2. Creationism or the direct ex nihilo creation of the world, and humanity (and rejection of the Darwinian theory of Evolution)

3. the authenticity of miracles

4. the virgin birth of Jesus

5. Jesus’ crucifixion

6. Jesus’ bodily resurrection

7. the substitutionary atonement (the doctrine that Christ died to redeem the sins of humanity)

8.(for some but not all believers) Jesus’ imminent return to judge and rule over the world

I must add to this list:

9. LITERALISM: literalistic reading of the Bible , miracles and prophecies.

10. SOLA FIDE

11. SOLA SCRIPTURA

12. EXCLUSIVISM: Salvation only through Christ

(Discrimination, exclusion, elimination)

13. “the arrogance of faith” and delusional “self-righteousness.”

14. LIBIDO DOMINANDI (obsession to control the lives of others)

15. SEXISM AND PATRIARCHY

16. ANTI-MODERNISM, ANTI-INTELLECTUALISM.

17. ANTI-ENVIRONMENTALISM

18. DUALISM AND MANICHEAN VIEW OF THE WORLD

19. THEOCRATIC TENDENCIES (opposition to Democracy and Human Rights)

20. Tendency to support problematic social and political practices:

- Overly patriotic: Jingoism, narrow nationalism, imperialism.

- supports death penalty (while condemning abortion)

- supports militarism and imperialistic wars;

- supports capitalism

FUNDAMENTALISM as a term is a product of Protestantism.

PROTESTANT FUNDAMENTALISM is the original form. Later on it was applied to Catholics, Jews, and recently to Muslims, Hindus, etc.

PROTESTANT FUNDAMENTALISM is opposed to

- MODERNITY

- The rise of Catholics, Jews, women and Minorities

(they think they have lost America)

CATHOLIC FUNDAMENTALISM is a reaction to

- PROTESTANTISM

- MODERNITY

- DEMOCRACY, FRENCH REVOLUTION, AMERICAN REVOLUTION

- VATICAN II (openness to other religions)

- FREEDOM FROM THE HIERARCHY

- LIBERATION THEOLOGY (economically conservative, opposition to the poor)

ANTI-MODERNISM AND CATHOLIC FUNDAMENTALISM

18th - 20th century, until 1965 (from Pius VI to Paul VI)

The Church rejecting Democracy and Human Rights, especially

1) Freedom of conscience,

2) Freedom of thought

3) Religious Freedom

4) Liberty of Press

5) the principle of separation between Church and State

6) Ordination of Women

As 1) Madness

2) False and absurd principle (Error)

3) contrary to Reason

4) contrary to God’s Revelation

5) negation of Truth

6) DANGEROUS ERROR

PUNISHMENT

(Church’s response to “Error”)

1. Excommunication

2. Index

3. Inquisition (Torture, Burning at stake)

Inquisition (12th-17th century - 21st century),

later it was called Holy Office (1908-1965) and finally

Congregation for the doctrine of Faith (since 1965)

4. Persecution of Heretics

5. CRUSADES against non-Christians

6. Burning women (accused of witchcraft)

7. Burning intellectuals, scientists, free-thinkers

ANTI-MODERNISM (18th-20th CENTURY)

The Church’s opposition to Science, Democracy and Human Rights.

Pius VI (1775-1799) condemned the French Declaration of Human Rights

Gregory XVI (1831-1846) condemned the French Declaration of Human Rights

Pope Pius IX (1846-1878) and Pius X (1903-1914): Syllabus Errorum (1864; 1907).

The Vatican condemnations of

* a Syllabus of Errors in 1864,

* Americanism in 1899,

* Modernism in 1907

CONTEXT:

1776: American Revolution and Declaration of Independence

1789: French Revolution and declaration of the rights of man and citizen.

1859: Darwin’s book on Evolution

1870: Infallibility of the Pope proclaimed as a dogma

ANTI-MODERNISM (SYLLABUS OF ERRORS)

The Church condemned the following as “enemies of God, religion, and humanity itself”

- Kantian philosophy: Enlightenment, Rationalism, and criticism,

- separation of church and state in France,

- Democracy,

- Human Rights, especially religious freedom

- Emancipation of women

- Galileo and Modern Science

- and even state-sponsored solutions to poverty.

Before Vatican II, Pius VI (1775-1799) regarded the French declaration of the rights of man and citizens of 1789 as madness and condemned it in 1791.

He declared in his document Quod aliquantum that the principle of liberty as declared by the French charter of human rights was contrary to reason and to God’s Revelation.

Continuing in the same spirit, in 1832, Pope Gregory XVI condemned liberty of conscience as

“the false, absurd, mad principle” (deliramentum), “the most contagious of errors.”

He added: “to this error (liberty of conscience) is attached liberty of press, the most dangerous liberty, an execrable liberty, which can never inspire sufficient horror.”

In his encyclical Mirari vos (in which he condemned the theology professed by Félicité Robert de Lamennais (1782-1854) and other French progressive theologians who asked the church to defend freedom and some principles of French declaration of human rights), Gregory XVI condemned this notion of liberty as

the “evil-smelling spring of indifferentism” from which flowed the erroneous and absurd opinion - or rather, derangement - that freedom of conscience must be asserted and vindicated for everybody.

He added: This most pestilential error opens the door to the complete and immoderate liberty of opinions, which works such widespread harm both in church and state. Some people outrageously maintain that some advantage derives from it for religion.

Pope Pius IX (1846-1878)

In 1864, Pope Pius IX also condemned religious liberty in his Syllabus Errorum as one of the grave errors of modern liberalism.

The Catholic Church was not alone in this opposition to human rights.

As Abba Hillel Silver pointed out, “Religion was not only tardy in championing human rights; at times it was actually retarding and reactionary.” Likewise Eric Weingartner observed that the “Christian church has not historically been in alliance with the pioneers of human rights, whatever their tradition.”

Syllabus

- From “syllabos” meaning, "collection”

· it is the name given to two series of propositions containing

· modern religious errors condemned respectively by

· Pius IX (1864) and Pius X (1907).

Through the Syllabus, the Popes intended to bring together under the form of a Constitution the chief errors of the time and to condemn them.

The Syllabus of Errors (80 theses) Condemned by Pope Pius IX

Table of Contents

The general contents of the Syllabus are summed up in the headings of the ten paragraphs, under which, the 80 theses are grouped.

They are:

1.Pantheism, Naturalism, Absolute Rationalism (1-7);

2. Moderate Rationalism (8-14);

3. Indifferentism and false Tolerance in Religious matters (15-18);

4. Socialism, Communism, Secret Societies, Bible Societies, Liberal Clerical Associations (reference is made to three Encyclicals and two Allocutions of the pope, in which these tendencies are condemned),

5. Errors regarding the Church and its rights (19-38);

6. Errors on the State and its Relation to the Church (39-55);

7. Errors on Natural and Christian Ethics (56-64);

8. Errors on Christian Marriage (65-74);

9. Errors on the Temporal Power of the Pope (75-76);

10. Errors in Connection with Modern Liberalism (77-80).

Here is a sample of what the Catholic Church rejected as “errors.”

1) 15. Every man is free to embrace and profess that religion which, guided by the light of reason, he shall consider true.

(Allocution "Maxima quidem," June 9, 1862; Damnatio "Multiplices inter," June 10, 1851).

2) 16. Man may, in the observance of any religion whatever, find the way of eternal salvation, and arrive at eternal salvation. (Encyclical "Qui pluribus," Nov. 9, 1846).

3) 17. Good hope at least is to be entertained of the eternal salvation of all those who are not at all in the true Church of Christ.

Encyclical "Quanto conficiamur," Aug. 10, 1863, etc.

4) 18. Protestantism is nothing more than another form of the same true Christian religion, in which form it is given to please God equally as in the Catholic Church.

-- Encyclical "Noscitis," Dec. 8, 1849.

5) 24. The Church has not the power of using force, nor has she any temporal power, direct or indirect.

-- Apostolic Letter "Ad Apostolicae," Aug. 22, 1851.

6) 55. The Church ought to be separated from the State, and the State from the Church.

Allocution "Acerbissimum," Sept. 27, 1852.

8) 78. Hence it has been wisely decided by law, in some Catholic countries, that persons coming to reside therein shall enjoy the public exercise of their own peculiar worship.

-- Allocution "Acerbissimum," Sept. 27, 1852.

9) on “Religious Freedom”

79. Moreover, it is false that the civil liberty of every form of worship, and the full power, given to all, of overtly and publicly manifesting any opinions whatsoever and thoughts, conduce more easily to corrupt the morals and minds of the people, and to propagate the pest of indifferentism.

- Allocution "Nunquam fore," Dec. 15, 1856.

CHRISTIANITY AND ANTI-SEMITISM

(The impact of Fundamentalist reading of the Bible on Jews)

WHAT THE NEW TESTAMENT SAYS ABOUT JEWS

1) Rom 11: 28

2) Mt 27, 1-44 (Focus on Mt 27, 1-2 and 27, 22-25)

3) John18, 29-40 and 19, 1-18

4) Acts 2: 22-23

5) Acts 3: 12 - 17

6) Mt 5: 17 (Mt chapters 5, 6, and 7): fulfillment doctrine

7) Mt 23: 1-38: mocking the Jewish religious leaders

8) John 8: 31-59

9) Rom 3: 21-28; Gal 2: 15-21 and Gal 3:10

10) Acts 4: 8-12

Saint John Chrysostom (344-407 A.D.) declared:

“Jews are the  most miserable of all men.... lustful, rapacious, greedy, perfidious bandits.... inveterate murderers, destroyers, men possessed by the devil.... whose debauchery and drunkenness have given them the manners of the pig and the lusty goat. They know only one thing, to satisfy their gullets, get drunk, to kill and maim one another.... They have surpassed the ferocity of wild beasts, for they murder their offspring and immolate them to the devil.” As to Judaism, symbolized by the synagogue, it is: an assembly of criminals... a den of thieves...a cavern of devils, an abyss of perdition.... far from venerating the synagogue because of the books it contains, hold it in hatred and aversion for the same reason.... I hate the synagogue precisely because it has the law and prophets.... I hate the Jews also because they outrage the law.

Saint Agobard (779-840 A.D.):

“Jews are cursed and covered with malediction, as by a cloak. The malediction has penetrated them as water in their entrails and oil in their bones. They are cursed in the city and cursed in the country, cursed is their coming in and their going out. Cursed are the fruits of their loins, of their lands, of their flocks; cursed their cellars, their granaries, their shops, their food, and the crumbs of their tables.

Martin Luther (16th century)

He declared that Jewish syna​gogues should be burned and their books seized, that Jews should be forced to work with their hands, or better still, be expelled by the princes, and added these astonishing words:

“They should be forced to hardest labor as handymen of serfs only; they should not be permitted to hold services; every Christian should be admonished to deal with them in a merciless manner; if you suffer, strike them on the jaw; if I had the power, I would assemble them to prove to us that we Christians do not worship God, under penalty of having their tongues cut out through the backs of their necks.”

Throughout history, Jews constantly worry about 3 things:

1. Anti-Semitism

2. Intermarriage,

3. Assimilation

TEN PLAGUES OF JEWISH PERSECUTIONS

1. Slavery in Egypt

2. Assyrians and Exile in Babylonia

3. Greek and Roman colonialism

- Antiochus

- 70 C.E: Jerusalem and its temple destroyed

- 135 (Grand Diapora: Jews dispersed in the Roman empire)

4. Homelessness in Europe (135-1948): Ghetto and distinctive badge

5. Radical anti-semitic laws (excluding Jews from education, economic life, and restrictive of their religion)

6. Crusades

7. Persecution in England and France

8.Russian Pogroms

9.Spanish and Portuguese

10. Holocaust

LOCUS OF PERSECUTION (MAJOR EVENTS)

1. Egypt (slavery in Egypt)

2. Assyria and Babylonia (exil, deportation)

3. Hellenistic empire

4. Roman Empire

5. Spain and Portugal

6. Poland

7. France

8. England

9. Russia

10. Germany

A Brief history of Jewish persecution

Homelessness in Europe (135-1948)

- Jewish persecutions under the Byzantines,

- Jewish massacres during the Crusades,

- Jewish expulsions in England (1290),

France (1306),

Spain (1492),

Portugal (1497),

Frankfurt (1614),

and Vienna (1670).

Jewish pogroms in the Ukraine (1648,1768),

Odessa (1871), and throughout Russia, especially after 1881 culminating in Kishinev (1903).

1939-1945: Holocaust (Hitler, Germany)

TEN MAJOR ANTI-SEMITIC ACCUSATIONS

Jews were constantly accused of

1. Deicide

2. Blasphemy and

3. ritual murder.

10 MAJOR ACCUSATIONS :

* 1. Killers of Christ (Deicide people, Christkillers)

They Killed Jesus in the past and continue to kill him in the Eucharist, and they make a mockery of his Church (Christian religion):

a) Desecrating the sacred host (Eucharist)

b) Jews continue to torment Christ by piercing and pounding the sacred bread they steal from Christian churches

* 2. Killers of Christians:

a) “Blood-libel” charge: Jews commit ritual murder of Christians and use their blood (especially the blood of Christian children)in their rituals, especially to bake unleavened bread for their Passover (this medieval charge continued into the 20th century!)

b) During plague period: Jews have poisoned wells of Christians

* 3. Do not respect the Christian God, the Christian religion, nor the Christian people.

* 4. Immoral

* 5. Evil sorcery (because they are the children of the devil)

* 6. Greedy (Jews have 2 Gods: Money and the Devil)

* 7. Violent

* 8. Enemies of the State (bad citizens)

* 9. Enemies of Truth and Love

* 10. They carry diseases (and kill Christians)

In other words, essentially they are

Enemies of

- 1. God (Christ)

- 2. Truth,

- 3. Faith (True Religion)

- 4. Love (by killing the God of Love, they killed Love)

- 5. Decency (decent moral values)

- 6. Peace

- 7. Culture (dietary laws, prohibition of sculpture or art)

- 8. Life

- 9. Humanity

-10. The State (Bad Citizens, traitors)

PUNISHMENT

(How Christians punished Jews for their alleged crimes)

=> => By killing the God of love, by rejecting God (Jesus) they have rejected themselves, and excluded themselves from the realm of love

1. They are cursed by God, and must be cursed by any good Christian; by rejecting the God of Love Jews have rejected themselves.

2. Exclusion from Education and Intellectual life

3. Exclusion from Economic Life

4. Exclusion from Political life (no citizen rights)

5. Exclusion from Legal protection

6. Exclusion from Society (Ghettoization)

7. Exclusion from the realm of religion (burning of Talmud, construction of synagogues prohibited,…)

8. Exclusion from Humanity (enemy of God the Jew is not fully human, and deserves to be exterminated)

20 major historical types of Punishment

1. Forced baptism of Jewish Children, and adult forced to convert to Christian or to live the country

2. Construction of new synagogues prohibited,

3. Burning of the Talmud

4. Jews not permitted to attend schools or universities

5. Jews not permitted to obtain academic degrees.

6. Jews not allowed to hold public office (Synod of Clermont, 535 C.E.); nor to join the Military.

7. Jews not permitted to be plaintiffs or witnesses against Christians in the courts, 3rd Lateran Council, 1179 C/E., Canon 26.

8. Compulsory ghettos

9. The marking of Jewish clothes with a badge,

10. Prohibition to sell or rent real estate to Jews

11. Jews not permitted to withhold inheritance from descendants who had accepted Christianity, 3rd Lateran Council, Canon 26.

12. Prohibition of Sunday work, Synod of Szabolcs, 1092 C.E.

13. Heavy Taxes

14. Seizure of Jewish properties (Jews starved to death)

15. Christians not permitted to patronize Jewish doctors, Trulanic Synod, 692 C.E.

16. Prohibition of intermarriage and of sexual intercourse between Christians and Jews, Synod of Elvira, 306, C.E.

17. Jews and Christians not permitted to eat together, Synod of Elvira, 306 C.E.

18. Mockery

19. Expulsion

20.ELIMINATION, EXTERMINATION:

a) Torture

b) Massacre and various pogroms

c) Holocaust

Anti-Semitism and Western religious thought:

2000 years of a symphony of destruction

The Wise Anti-Semite

(by Jean-Paul Sartre)

“There is a disgust for the Jew, just as there is a disgust for the Chinese or the Negro among certain people…

If a man attributes all or part of his own misfortunes and those of his country to the presence of Jewish elements in the community,

if he proposes to remedy this state of affairs

by depriving the Jews of certain of their rights,

by keeping them out of certain economic and social activities,

by expelling them from the country,

by exterminating all of them,

we say that he has anti-Semitic opinions. But anti-Semitism is more than mere opinion.

“Anti-Semitism is a doctrine that is aimed directly at particular persons and that seeks to suppress their rights or to exterminate them.

Anti-Semitism is a free and total choice of oneself,

a comprehensive attitude that one adopts not only toward Jews but toward men in general, toward history and society;

it is at once and the same time a passion and a conception of the world.”

Contrary to a widespread opinion, it is not the Jewish character that provokes anti-Semitism but, rather, it is the anti-Semite who creates the Jew. The primary phenomenon, therefore, is anti-Semitism, a regressive social force and a conception deriving from the prelogical world.

A man may be a good father and a good husband, a conscientious citizen, highly cultivated, philanthropic, and in addition an anti-Semite. He may like fishing and the pleasures of love, may be tolerant in matters of religion, full of generous notions on the condition of the natives in Central Africa, and in addition detest the Jews. If he does not like them, we do not accept that a gentleman such as he, can possibly be a racist or an anti-Semite. We call him a wise anti-Semite. We think that he is not really anti-Semite, but rather a man who is careful, prudent and cautious. We hasten to justify him in our mind. We say that if he does not like them it is because his experience has shown him that they are bad, because statistics have taught him that they are dangerous, because certain historical factors have influenced his judgment. Thus this opinion seems to be the result of external causes, and those who wish to study it are prone to neglect the personality of the anti-Semite.

But anti-Semitism is not created by the external causes, by the negative characteristics of the Jews. Rather anti-Semitism is something that enters the body from the mind. An anti-Semite person has a “predisposition” to anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism is an involvement of the mind, one so deep-seated and complete that it extends to the physiological realm, as happens in cases of hysteria. This involvement is not caused by experience. Far from experience producing his idea of the Jew, it was the latter which explained his experience. If the Jew did not exist, the anti-Semite would invent him.

That may be so, you will say, but leaving the question of experience to one side, must we not admit that anti-Semitism is explained by certain historical data? For after all it does not come out of the air. It would be easy for me to reply that the history of France tells us nothing about the Jews: they were oppressed right up to 1789…I have questioned a hundred people on the reasons for their anti-Semitism. Most of them have confined themselves to enumerating the defects with which tradition has endowed the Jews. “I detest them because they are selfish, intriguing, persistent, oily, tactless, etc.”

.” A painter said to me: “I am hostile to the Jews because, with their critical habits, they encourage our servants to insubordination.” A young actor without talent insisted that the Jews had kept him from a successful career in the theater by confining him to subordinate roles. A young woman said to me: I have had the most horrible experiences with furriers; they robbed me, they burned the fur I entrusted to them. Well they were all Jews.” But why did she choose to hate Jews rather than furriers? Why Jews or furriers rather than such and such a Jew or such and such a furrier? Because she had in her a predisposition toward anti-Semitism.

A classmate of mine at the lycee told me that Jews “annoy” him because of the thousands of injustices that “Jew-ridden” social organizations commit in their favor. “A Jew passed his aggregation the year I was failed, and you can’t make me believe that that fellow, whose father came from Cracow or Lemberg, understood a poem by Ronsard or an eclogue by Virgil better than I.” But he admitted that he disdained the aggregation as a mere academic exercise, and that he didn’t study for it. Thus, to explain his failure, he made use of two systems of interpretation, like those madmen who, when they are far gone in their madness, pretend to be the King of Hungary but, if questioned sharply, admit to being shoemakers. His thought moved on two planes without his being in the least embarrassed by it. As a matter of fact, he will in time manage to justify his past laziness on the grounds that it really would be too stupid to prepare for an examination in which Jews are passed in preference to good Frenchmen. Actually he ranked twenty-seventh on the official list. There were twenty-six ahead of him, twelve who passed and fourteen who failed. Suppose Jews had been excluded from the competition; would that have done him any good? And even if he had been at the top of the list of unsuccessful candidates, even if by eliminating one of the successful candidates he would have had a chance to pass, why should the Jew Weil have been eliminated rather than the Norman Matthieu or the Breton Arzell? To understand my classmate’s indignation we must recognize that he had adopted in advance a certain idea of the Jew, of his nature and of his role in society. And to be able to decide that among twenty-six competitors who were more successful than himself, it was the Jew who robbed him of his place, he must a priori have given preference in the conduct of his life to reasoning based on passion… Others base their anti-Semitism not on their personal experience, but on history.

Leaving the question of experience to one side, must we not admit, they say, that anti-Semitism is explained by certain historical data? For after all it does not come out of the air. It would be easy for me to reply that the history of France tells us nothing about the Jews: they were oppressed right up to 1789; since then they have participated as best they could in the life of the nation, taking advantage, naturally, of freedom of competition to displace the weak, but no more and no less than other Frenchmen. They have committed no crimes against France, have engaged in no treason, even if people believe there is proof that the number of Jewish soldiers in 1914 was lower than it should have been… People quite easily talk about “Jewish treason” as the cause of contemporary anti-Semitism… Let us take the case of Poland and Russia. In the course of the bloody Polish revolts of the nineteenth century, the Warsaw Jews, whom the czars handled gently for reasons of policy, were very lukewarm toward the rebels. By not taking part in the insurrection they were able to maintain and improve their position in a country ruined by repression. I don’t know whether this is true or not. What is certain is that many Poles believe it, and this “historical fact” contributes not a little to their bitterness against the Jews. But if I examine the matter more closely, I discover a vicious circle: the czars, we are told, treated the Polish Jews well whereas they willingly ordered pogroms against those in Russia. These sharply different courses of action had the same cause. The Russian government considered the Jews in both Russia and Poland to be unassimilable; according to the needs of their policy, they had them massacred at Moscow and Kiev because they were a danger to the Russian empire, but favored them at Warsaw as a means of stirring up discord among the Poles. The latter showed nothing but hate and scorn for the Jews of Poland, but the reason was the same: For them Israel could never become an integral part of the national collectivity. Treated as Jews by the czar and as Jews by the Poles, provided, quite in spite of themselves, with Jewish interests in the midst of a foreign community, is it any wonder that these members of a minority behaved in accordance with the representation made of them?

In short, the essential thing here is not an “historical fact” but the idea that the agents of history formed for themselves of the Jew. When the Poles of today harbor resentment against the Jews for their past conduct, they are incited to it by that same idea. If one is going to reproach little children for the sins of their grandfathers, one must first of all have a very primitive conception of what constitutes responsibility. Furthermore one must form his conception of the children on the basis of what the grandparents have been. One must believe that what the elders did the young are capable of doing. One must convince himself that Jewish character is inherited. Thus the Poles of 1940 treated the Israelites in the community as Jews because their ancestors in 1848 had done the same with their contemporaries… It is therefore the idea of the Jew that one forms for himself which would seem to determine history, not the “historical fact” that produces the idea.

People speak to us also of “social facts.” But if we look at this more closely we shall find the same vicious circle. There are too many Jewish lawyers, someone says. But is there any complaint that there are too many Norman lawyers? Even if all the Bretons were doctors would we say anything more than that “Britanny provides doctors for the whole of France”? Oh, someone will answer, it is not at all the same thing. No doubt, but that is precisely because we consider Normans as Normans and Jews as Jews. Wherever we turn it is the ideas of the Jew which seems to be the essential thing. Anti-Semitism precedes the facts that are supposed to call it forth; it seeks them out to nourish itself upon them; it must even interpret them in a special way so that they may become truly offensive.

Finally there is the religious history. The facts of the problem appear as follows: a concrete historical community is basically national and religious; but the Jewish community, which once was both, has been deprived bit by bit of both these concrete characteristics. Its dispersion implies the breaking up of common traditions. Its twenty centuries of dispersion and political impotence forbid its having a historic past. If it is true, as Hegel says, that a community is historical to the degree that it remembers its history, then the Jewish community is the least historical of all, for it keeps a memory of nothing but a long martyrdom. It is neither their past, their religion, nor their soil that unites the sons of Israel. If they have a common bond, if all of them deserve the name of Jew, it is because they have in common the situation of a Jew, that is they live in a community which takes them for Jews. In a word, the Jew is perfectly assimilable by modern nations, but he is to be defined as one whom these nations do not wish to assimilate. What weighed upon him originally was that he was the assassin of Christ. Have we ever stopped to consider the intolerable situation of men condemned to live in a society that adores the God they have killed? Originally, the Jew was therefore a murderer or the son of a murderer – which in the eyes of a community with a pre-logical concept of responsibility amounts inevitably to the same thing – it was as such that he was taboo. It is evident that we cannot find the explanation for modern anti-Semitism here; but if the anti-Semite has chosen the Jew as the object of his hate, it is because of the religious horror that the latter has always inspired. This horror has had a curious economic effect. If the medieval church tolerated the Jews when she could have assimilated them by force or massacred them, it was because they filled a vital economic function. Accursed, they followed a cursed but indispensable vocation; being unable to own land or serve in the army, they trafficked in money, which a Christian could not undertake without defiling himself. Thus the original curse was soon reinforced by an economic curse, and it is above all the latter that has persisted. Today we reproach the Jews for following unproductive activities, without taking into account the fact that their apparent autonomy within the nation comes from the fact that they were originally forced into these trades by being forbidden all others. Thus it is no exaggeration to say that it is the Christians who have created the Jew in putting an abrupt stop to his assimilation and in providing him, in spite of himself, with a function in which he has since prospered.

But modern society has seized on this memory and has made it the pretext and the base for its anti-Semitism. Thus, to know what the contemporary Jew is, we must ask the Christian conscience. And we must ask, not “What is a Jew?” but “What have you made of the Jews?”

The Jew is one whom other men consider a Jew: that is the simple truth from which we must start. In this sense the democrat is right as against the anti-Semite, for it is the anti-Semite who makes the Jew. But it would be wrong to say that the distrust, the curiosity, the disguised hostility the Israelites find around them are no more than the intermittent demonstrations of a few hotheads. Primarily, anti-Semitism is the expression of a primitive society that, though secret and diffused, remains latent in the legal collectivity. We must not suppose, therefore, that a generous outburst of emotion, a few pretty words, a stroke of the pen will suffice to suppress it. That would be like imagining you could abolish war by denouncing its effects in a book. The Jew no doubt sets a proper value on the sympathy shown him, but it cannot prevent his seeing anti-Semitism as a permanent structure of the community in which he lives.

For a Jew, conscious and proud of being Jewish, asserting his claim to be a member of the Jewish community without ignoring on that account the bonds which unite him to the national community, there may not be so much difference between the anti-Semite and the democrat. The former wishes to destroy him as a man and leave nothing in him but the Jew, the pariah, the untouchable; the latter wishes to destroy him as a Jew and leaving nothing in him but the man, the abstract and universal subject of the rights of man and the rights of the citizen. Thus there may be detected in the most liberal democrat a tinge of anti-Semitism; he is hostile to the Jew to the extent that the latter thinks of himself as a Jew… The anti-Semite reproaches the Jew with being Jewish; the democrat reproaches him with willfully considering himself a Jew. Between his enemy and his defender, the Jew is in a difficult situation: apparently he can do no more than choose the sauce with which he will be devoured. We must now ask ourselves the question: does the Jew exist? And if he exists, what is he? Is he first a Jew or first a man? Is the solution of the problem to be found in the extermination of all the Israelites or in their total assimilation? But what kind of assimilation? Isn’t assimilation itself another way of killing the Jewishness of the Jew, and therefore another way of exterminating the Jews? Some people think that anti-Semitism will disappear when Jews become fully Frenchmen. Thus they ask Jews to hasten this integration. And some propose drastic means to speed the process of assimilation. Thus some advocate the policy of mixed marriages and a rigorous interdiction against Jewish religious practices – in particular, circumcision. There are even some Jews who suggest that all Jews be forced to change their names. I say quite simply: these measures would be inhumane. No democracy can seek integration of the Jews at such a cost. Such a policy of integration aims at nothing less than the liquidation of the Jewish race. It represents an extreme form of the tendency we have noticed in the democrat, a tendency purely and simply to suppress the Jew for the sake of the man. But the man does not exist; there are Jews, Protestants, Catholics; there are Frenchmen, Englishmen, Germans; there are whites, blacks, yellows. Certainly Jews would wish to integrate themselves in the nation, but as Jews, not as abstract men . All persons who through their work collaborate toward the greatness of a country have the full rights of citizens of that country. What gives them this right is not the possession of a problematic and abstract “human nature,” but their active participation in the life of the society. This means, then, that the Jews – and likewise the Arabs and the Negroes – from the moment that they are participants in the national enterprise, have a right in that enterprise; they are citizens. But they have these rights as Jews, Negroes, or Arabs – that is, as concrete persons. In societies where women vote, they are not asked to change their sex when they enter the voting booth; the vote of a woman is worth just as much as that of a man, but it is as a woman that she votes, with her womanly intuitions and concerns, in her full character of a woman. When it is a question of the legal rights of the Jew, and of the more obscure but equally indispensable rights that are not inscribed in any code, he must enjoy those rights not as a potential Christian but precisely as a French Jew. It is with his character, his customs, his tastes, his religion if he has one, his name, and his physical traits that we must accept him.

What is needed to overcome anti-Semitism is not to appeal to the generosity of the Aryans – with even the best of them, that virtue is in eclipse. What must be done is to point out to each one that the fate of the Jews is his fate. Not one Frenchman will be free so long as the Jews do not enjoy the fullness of their rights. Not one Frenchman will be secure so long as a single Jew – in France or in the world at large – can fear for his life.

(Jean-Paul Sartre, Anti-Semite and Jew . New York: Schocken Books, 1976).

Christian Theology and Anti-Semitism

(A case of epistemic violence and theological terrorism).

No one would disagree with the assessment that Christians, over the centuries, have been guilty of anti-Semitism, sometimes with barbarous results. The real question is not whether individual Christians have been antisemites, but whether anti-Semitism is somehow ingrained in the very roots of Christianity, in its very essence. Rosemary Ruether has declared that anti-Semitism is the “other side of Christology,” the inevitable fallout of placing Jesus at the right hand of the Father.

Here is the way Rosemary Ruether articulated the problem of anti-Semitism in Christian theology:

The examination of the two thousand year old Christian tradition of anti-Judaism; the suggestion that this tradition brought forth the evil fruits of many centuries of victimization and pogroms, and contributed in basic ways to the Nazi “final solution,” raises tremendous anxiety for Christians. It is the subject that remains shrouded in a conspiracy of silence. Christian catechetics from the grade school to the seminary level dutifully repeats its traditions about the Jewish origins of Christian faith, and the supercession of Judaism by Christianity. Christians learn early to love the “good” Old Testament Jews and hate the “bad” New Testament Jews; i.e., scribes, Pharisees, High Priests and simply “the Jews.” But what happened to Jewish Christian relations after that is a blank in Christian education. Facts about the long history of Christian persecution of the Jews, well known to their Jewish neighbors, are unknown to Christians.

As always, the victims remember; the victors forget. Consequently when Christians first begin to absorb some of this hidden history, there is at first a great incredulity. It seems impossible that all this could have happened for so long, and we have never heard of it!

FRIDAY PRAYER FOR THE CONVERSION OF JEWS, PROTESTANTS,

ORTHODOX, PAGANS, ETC.

It is worth noting that the full prayer also calls for the conversion of other groups

- not just Jews - including Protestants, Orthodox, and pagans.

On Monday, February 4, 2008, Pope Benedict XVI made public a revised prayer for the Jews to be used in the "Solemn Prayers" of the traditional Good Friday service. Starting with Good Friday 2008 , the prayer will become a permanent part of the Roman Missal of 1962, used for the celebration of the Traditional Latin Mass .

The pope used Romans 11:24-26 as the basis for the revised prayer.

In July 2007, Pope Benedict XVI, in his motu proprio Summorum Pontificum , restored the Traditional Latin Mass as one of the two approved forms of the Mass. To that mass he now added the revision of "Solemn Prayers" that are prayed on Good Friday . These prayers are offered for the Church and all Catholics, then for non-Catholic Christians, then for the Jews, and finally for pagans. While each prayer is different, the point is the same: to acknowledge that Jesus Christ, by His Death and Resurrection, is the salvation of all mankind. Therefore, the prayers ask that Catholics may be strengthened in their faith; that non-Catholic Christians may come to the fullness of the Catholic Faith; and that Jews and pagans may come to recognize Christ as their savior. In other words, the hope is that all will be saved through faith in Christ.

Most of those who desired the prayers to be changed wanted the prayer for the conversion of the Jews either dropped or changed in such a way that it no longer was a prayer for conversion.

The new text reads, in Latin (the language in which it will be prayed):

Oremus et pro Iudaeis.

Ut Deus et Dominus noster illuminet corda eorum,

ut agnoscant Iesum Christum salvatorem omnium hominum.

Oremus.
Flectamus genua.
Levate.

Omnipotens sempiterne Deus,

qui vis ut omnes homines salvi fiant

et ad agnitionem veritatis veniant, concede propitius,

ut plenitudine gentium in Ecclesiam Tuam intrante omnis Israel salvus fiat.

Per Christum Dominum nostrum. Amen.

ENGLISH TRANSLATION:

"Let us pray also for the Jews that the Lord our God may illuminate their hearts and that they also may acknowledge Our Lord Jesus Christ."

The old Latin text prayed for the conversion of the Jews, calling on God to deliver "that people...from its darkness" and to remove the "blindness" (a term which was adapted from an Epistle of St. Paul).

After the publication of the Motu, which re-introduced the pre-Conciliation Mass, many in the Hebrew world were concerned. The Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem, and spiritual guides of the Sephardic and Aschenazi communities wrote to Pope Benedict XVI to ask that the Good Friday prayer be altered.

Under Pope Pius XII, it was instructed that "pro perfidis judaeis" was meant to refer to "Jews who have no faith." Pius XII also reintroduced the genuflection for that prayer. Under Pope John XXIII, the term "perfidis" was eliminated, along with the succeeding reference to "perfidious Jewery." Kenneth J. Wolfe, a columnist for the traditionalist Catholic newspaper The Remnant, said that traditionalists would have preferred no change at all. Wolfe said that the change "rattles the cage of traditionalists", and would likely make more difficult any rapprochement with traditionalists groups like the Society of St. Pius X, who reject the Second Vatican Council and have appointed their own bishops.

Rabbi David Rosen, director of inter-religious affairs for the American Jewish Committee said that although he was pleased that the offensive terms were removed from the prayer, he still objected to the new prayer because it specified that Jews should find redemption specifically in Christ.

Reaction of Rabbi Walter Homolka (Prominent German Rabbi, executive director of the Abraham Geiger College at the University of Potsdam, Germany):

By promoting this prayer for the conversion of Jews, Pope Benedict XVI indicates that he believes that the path to salvation, even for Jews, can only go through Jesus, the savior. This opens the floodgates for the conversion of Jews. The Internet is already full of comments by conservative, right-wing Catholics who say: "Wonderful, now we finally have the signal to convert the Jews." This kind of signal has an extremely provocative effect on anti-Semitic groups. The Catholic Church does not have its anti-Semitic tendencies under control. The Pope is making, on a central liturgical occasion, namely the Good Friday liturgy, a theological statement that Jews cannot help but perceive as aggressive and crass. Throughout history, Jews have repeatedly been subjected to persecution and death on Good Friday. Christians have often translated the message of Good Friday into the question: "Where are the murderers of Christ?" In 2006, the chairman of the General Rabbinical Council of Germany, Rabbi Henry Brandt, expressed himself in very clear words to (leading German theologian) Cardinal Walter Kasper. He said that any approach to the possibility of a mission by the Church to convert Jews is essentially a hostile act -- a continuation, on a different level, of Hitler's crimes against the Jews. These are strong but honest words. The Catholic Church should acknowledge the fidelity of God, who abides by his choice of the nation of Israel as his chosen people.

HISTORY OF ANTI-SEMITISM IN CHRISTIANITY

From Leonard Swidler, After the Absolute The Dialogical Future of

Religious Pluralism . (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1990); pp.114-117

Chapter 7. JEWISH-CHRISTIAN DIALOGUE

All of the reasons given up until now for Christians entering into dialogue with Jews and Judaism have been fundamentally for the Christian’s sake. There is another reason why Christians must turn toward Jews in dialogue that is only partly for their own sakes, and partly other-directed.

a. Antisemitism and Jewish-Christian Dialogue

I am speaking of our heinous history of hostility and hatred toward Jews and Judaism for two thousand years. Thank God there are a few spaces of light; Jewish culture, learning and life did in fact flourish in Christendom in certain places and at certain times. Particularly some Christian princes and bishops-and often the papacy-supported and defended the Jews. But as can be seen from careful histories of the Jews, as that of the Catholic historian Frederick M. Schweitzer, 1 this was a minor theme in a symphony of destruction. There are whole libraries detailing the ignominy to which Christians have subjected Jews, and consequently with which they have besmirched their own souls.

Let us recall only a tiny number of our most saintly antisemites (I would have thought that such reminders were completely superfluous today with the recent calling to consciousness of the horrors of the Holocaust, but just a short time ago at a Protestant-Catholic clergy retreat I found priests and ministers proclaiming the righteousness of the Church in the history of its relations with the Jews. Is such ignorance, or perversity, possible in present-day Christian clergy? Sadly, it is.)

Recall the words of the “golden-tongued” St. John Chrysostom (344-407 A.D.), which were uttered not among a small gathering of learned clerics, but were flung from the pulpit in Antioch for all Christians to hear, both there in that heavily Jewish city, and also reverberating through all the subsequent centuries of Christian antisemitic preaching. He thundered that

“Jews are the  most miserable of all men.... lustful, rapacious, greedy, perfidious bandits.... inveterate murderers, destroyers, men possessed by the devil.... whose debauchery and drunkenness have given them the manners of the pig and the lusty goat. They know only one thing, to satisfy their gullets, get drunk, to kill and maim one another.... They have surpassed the ferocity of wild beasts, for they murder their offspring and immolate them to the devil.”

As to Judaism, symbolized by the synagogue, it is:

an assembly of criminals... a den of thieves...a cavern of devils, an abyss of perdition.... far from venerating the synagogue because of the books it contains, hold it in hatred and aversion for the same reason.... I hate the synagogue precisely because it has the law and prophets.... I hate the Jews also because they outrage the law.

The early ninth century was the time of the Carolingian Renaissance in Western Christendom, and at the height of it we find St. Agobard (779-840 A.D.), powerful Archbishop of Lyons, and known as “probably the most cultured man of his time.”  St. Agobard’s words about the Jews sound as if he was standing in a St. John Chrysostom echo-chamber:

“Jews are cursed and covered with malediction, as by a cloak. The malediction has penetrated them as water in their entrails and oil in their bones. They are cursed in the city and cursed in the country, cursed is their coming in and their going out. Cursed are the fruits of their loins, of their lands, of their flocks; cursed their cellars, their granaries, their shops, their food, and the crumbs of their tables.

The official Church at the highest level also played out the same role of the antisemite. There was the twelfth Ecumenical Council, Lateran IV (1215 A.D.), which visited a number of disabilities on all Jews, including enjoining them from appearing in public during Eastertime, barring them from holding public office, and declaring a moratorium on crusaders’ debts to Jews. Father Edward Flannery, in his pioneer history of Christian antisemitism, remarks:

Thus far, there was nothing new in these enactments, which merely extended to the universal Church what earlier centuries had applied more locally. The unique and most extra​ordinary measure taken by the Council was the prescription of a distinc​tive dress for Jews and Saracens. (At a later date, heretics, prostitutes, and lepers were included.)

Raul Hilberg in his The Destruction of the European Jews (New York, 1961), pp. 5f., lists twenty-two conciliar or synodal decrees which were severely restrictive of Jews (from the fourth to the fifteenth centuries) and were paralleled by specific Nazi decrees. He states that the list of Church measures was taken in its entirety from J.E. Scherer, Die Rechtsverhältnisse der Juden in den deutsch-österreichischen Länder (Leipzig, 1901), pp. 39-49. The list is as follows (only the first date of each measure is listed):

1) Prohibition of intermarriage and of sexual intercourse between Christians and Jews, Synod of Elvira, 306, C.E.

2) Jews and Christians not permitted to eat together, Synod of Elvira.

3) Jews not allowed to hold public office, Synod of Clermont, 535 C.E.

4) Jews not allowed to employ Christian servants or possess Christian slaves, 3rd Synod of Orleans.

5) Jews not permitted to show themselves in the streets during Passion Week, 3rd Synod of Orleans.

6) Burning of the Talmud and other books, 12th Synod of Toledo, 681 C.E.

7) Christians not permitted to patronize Jewish doctors, Trulanic Synod, 692 C.E.

8) Christians not permitted to live in Jewish homes, Synod of Narbonne, 1050 C.E.

9) Jews obliged to pay taxes for support of the Chruch to the same extent as Christians, Synod of Gerona, 1078 C.E.

10) Prohibition of Sunday work, Synod of Szabolcs, 1092 C.E.

11) Jews not permitted to be plaintiffs or witnesses against Christians in the courts, 3rd Lateran Council, 1179 C/E., Canon 26.

12) Jews not permitted to withhold inheritance from descendants who had accepted Christianity, 3rd Lateran Council, Canon 26.

13) The marking of Jewish clothes with a badge, 4th Lateran Council, 1215 C.E., Canon 68 (copied from the legislation by Caliph Omar II, 643-44 C.E., who had decreed that Christians wear blue belts and Jews yellow belts).

14) Construction of new synagogues prohibited, Council of Oxford, 1222 C.E.

15) Christians not permitted to attend Jewish ceremonies, Synod of Vienna, 1267 C.E.

16) Jews not permitted to dispute with simple Christian people about the tenets of the Catholic religion, Synod of Vienna.

17) Compulsory ghettos, Synod of Breslau, 1227 C.E.

18) Christians not permitted to sell or rent real estate to Jews, Synod of Ofen, 1279 C.E.

19) Adoption by a Christian of the Jewish religion or return by a baptized Jew to the Jewish religion defined as heresy, Synod of Mainz, 1310 C.E.

20) Sale or transfer of Church articles to Jews prohibited, Synod of Lavour, 1368 C.E.

21) Jews not permitted to act as agents in the conclusion of contracts between Christians, especially marriage contracts, Council of Basel, 1432, Sessio XIX.

22) Jews not permitted to obtain academic degrees, Council of Basel, Sessio XIX.

Then there are the scourging words of the father of the Protestant Reformation, Martin Luther, who shortly before his death wrote a violent diatribe entitled About the Jews and Their Lies, in which among other things he wrote that

Jews “are thirsty bloodhounds and murderers of all Christendom, with full intent ...they had poisoned water and wells, stolen children and hacked them apart, in order to cool their temper secretly with Christian blood.

His conclusion was that their syna​gogues should be burned and their books seized, that they should be forced to work with their hands, or better still, be expelled by the princes. 7

They should be forced to hardest labor as handymen of serfs only; they should not be permitted to hold services; every Christian should be admonished to deal with them in a merciless manner; if you suffer, strike them on the jaw; if I had the power, I would assemble them to prove to us that we Christians do not worship God, under penalty of having their tongues cut out through the backs of their necks.

Is it any wonder that Christians with this long heritage of hatred allowed and even abetted the cataclysmic horrors of the Holocaust, with its choking of the air with the smoke and ash of incinerated living Jewish children? Presumably no readers of this book share a direct responsibility for that Teutonic terror, but-and here let me shift to the first person-all of us Christians share gladly in the Christian heritage that made it possible. We cannot claim only the good of that heritage and make believe that the evil is not also there. That Christian heritage is now our heritage, and therefore our responsibility. There is no way that we can exorcize the demon of anti-Semitism from its past, present and future unless we first become aware of it. We must study it and face it honestly, and then our first response must be repentance. We cannot undo the overwhelming injustices of the past, but we can and we must acknowledge and repudiate them. Then we must go on to make whatever recompense we can in an attempt to redress the imbalance of justice between Christian and Jew-inadequate though this attempt must of necessity be. Moreover, we must not expect the Jews immediately to embrace us, forgiving and forgetting. We Christians have had a two-millennia-long history of tricking and betraying Jews. They are under​standably suspicious about our motives and sincerity. We must be patient and prove ourselves not only with words but also with many deeds. Then perhaps they will turn to us in a dialogue in which there is no hidden Christian agenda of conversion. We will then meet as equal partners, par cum pari, each coming to learn from the other.

Book available online: http://global-dialogue.com/swidlerbooks .

ANTI-SEMITISM IN CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY

(Hegel’s Philosophy of World Religions)

Mainstream Christianity has often built a binary opposition between Christian values and the values of other religions. In so doing it follows a worldview largely prevalent in European intellectual heritage. Hegel captured well this “invention of otherness” in his philosophy of world history and in his demonstration of the superiority of Christianity over Judaism.

Hegel’s philosophy of world history and his reflection on the rationality of Christianity have had a tremendous impact in Christian theology, and especially on missionary theology which shaped the perception of non-Europeans in the world in a decisive way up to this day. Hegel’s exclusion of Africa from history and humanity itself was not only a simple matter of bigotry, but rather an outcome of his rigorous philosophical thinking and his theological conception of Christianity. Well before his statements on Africa, Hegel had applied his philosophy to Judaism.

While the anti-semitism of Martin Heidegger is now a matter of common knowledge and gave way to various publications, Hegel’s anti-semitism has been investigated rather modestly. I will limit myself here to a recent publication by John D. Caputo who made an enlightening comment on the “fears and tears” of Jacques Derrida with regard to what he terms “the terrorism of Hegelianism.”

Meditating on Hegel’s philosophy of religion, Jacques Derrida worried over what becomes of the Jew once Christianity is said to be a representation of the absolute truth. Similarly the main question is “what becomes of the African” once Christianity is said to be the embodiment not only of the absolute truth and revelation but also of goodness and reason. It will become clear that Hegel’s logic which excluded the Jew from the world of true religion, beauty, freedom and goodness was applied to Africa with the same tragic conclusions.

It is worth noting that Hegel supplied a veritable encyclopedia of Christian Europe and a logic of European Christianity, and taking inspiration from Christian theology, he organized his theory around the notion of LOVE. He identified Christianity and love first with the European spirit and secondly with philosophy, itself seen as a proprium of the European mind. For him the truth of Christianity is philosophy and no ontology is possible before the Gospel or outside it. Hegel articulated the most ambitious philosophy of the superiority of Christianity over all other religions and represents the culmination of Western Christianity to put as much metaphysical and theological distance as possible between Christianity and the Jews by attaching attach Christianity as closely as possible to a Greco-European spirit and by detaching it from the Jew, the tendency to view Christianity as spiritually Greek, not Jewish. In Hegel, the history of Christian Europe and the figure of the European Christianity take the form of a philosophy of history and of the Spirit, that is of philosophy itself, an onto-theologization of the Christian spirit of which the Jew is a negative moment. In the history of Christian philosophy, Hegel represents the final triumph of Christian querelle with world religions, initiated by that old dispute between Paul and Peter. Hegel embraced the winner Paul, the Jewish roman citizen, against Peter, the symbol of the legalism of Jerusalem, and articulated his philosophy of religion on Paul’s notion of Pleroma oun nomon he agape (the love which outdoes and perfects the law). Paul’s opposition between Jewish law and Christian Love offers Hegel a ground for the articulation of a philosophy of history which disqualifies not only Jewish religion but also Jewish history and Jewish people.

When it comes to Jews, Hegel does not take any prisoners. As Jacques Derrida pointed out in a careful analysis of Hegel’s philosophy, Hegel painted a very hateful portrait of the Jew as a result of his own understanding of the nature and logic of Christianity as a representation of the absolute truth. Hegel accomplished this on both grounds of theological and philosophical arguments. Following Paul’s notion of Christian love, Hegel undertook a powerful attack upon the Jews, and this, in the very name of love, a hateful defense of the religion of love over and against the hatefulness of the Jews. Hegel used very skillfully that old strategy of Christian polemics: love as weapon against Jewish religion. As Caputo pointed out Love has been Christian’s most cunning and most effective weapon against non-Christian religions. Hegel used it ruthlessly and even brilliantly as the point of departure of his thought and as his first model of the Aufhebung. Using Paul’s notion of the pleroma of love, Hegel like Paul put Jewish law in its place and in so doing he also put the Jewish people in their place, that is in no place, for by making Christian love and Christianity itself the logic of history, of freedom, of the Spirit, Hegel made the Jew historically, philosophically, and theologically a figure of unfreedom and alienation. Stuck in the mud of ritual and literalism, and in the blood of the mohel, the Jew, according to Hegel, understands only the language of force and violence, not the language of love, and politically he becomes a figure of perdition, guilty of the perfidious execution of the Man of Love who came to liberate humankind from alienation. For Hegel, the Jew not only clings to a religion historically dead, replaced by Christianity, and to an old Mosaic law replaced by love but constitutes a philosophical type, the very figure of alienation from love. The Jew is stone cold and heartless, an Abrahamic figure capable of killing whatever he loves, and a legalist and Pharisee, possessing only the outer shell of ethical life. Hegel skillfully turns Jewish monotheism into a caricature. According to him, the Jew despises idols because he is incapable of appreciating the sensuous embodiment of the infinite. And because he is incapable of giving sensible form to the supersensible, of letting the infinite shine with beauty in finite figures, the Jew is incapable of appreciating beauty, for beauty is the way the invisible makes itself visible, palpable, felt. Being incapable to see the infinite in the finite world, the Jew is incapable of meditation for he is ignorant of incarnation. For Hegel, Jesus, the man of freedom as opposed to the spirit of the law, was the becoming un-Jewish of the Spirit, for law is for children not for the grown up. Such is the prototype, the type and the stereotype of Hegel’s metaphysics. The most interesting thing is that Hegel’s anti-Semitism is expressed in a sophisticated philosophical and theological reasoning. The Hegelian metaphysics and rhetoric deconstructs the Jew as the anti-phenomenological thing that the Spirit expels and vomits in its triumphant march toward fulfillment. In Hegel’s system, the Jew stands as everything that the Spirit casts out as un-beautiful, un-reconciled, un-historical, un-harmonized, un-true, or un-phenomenalizable, that is the phenomenological figure, the Gestaltung of a divided, ugly spirit. For Hegel, the Jewishness of Jesus is something for the Spirit to surpass. The empirical actuality of Jesus had to break up, in order to allow the Spirit to flow and leave Jesus behind, letting Christianity become itself, become Greek, beyond Jesus while letting the circumcised bury the circumcised..

Finally Hegel turns the Torah against the Jew and uses it as evidence that the Jew is ignorant of the concept of Human rights. He starts with a definition of law. Law, he says, is not truth, but a command, not the manifestation of the infinite in the finite, but a distant, empty and contentless imperative. Since Jewish society is governed by the Torah, there is no freedom in this world, no spirit, no true polis that embodies political reason, no political subjects with rights who recognize themselves in the whole, but only violence, imperative, the rule of the master over the slave. This, in Hegel’s view, is the difference between Moses and Solon, between the Mosaic law and the democratic laws of Athens. Jewish life is an economy of expropriation, where ownership is cut off and everything is on loan, a system devoid of civil rights and family property and laws of inheritance, which are canceled in the year of the jubilee. One may argue that once Hegel has presented the Jew as the enemy of Human rights, the elimination of the Jew comes as a necessary step for the protection of Human rights in the world. As this analyzis shows, Hegel used a fourfold approach:

- a) absolutization of Christianity as the only religion of truth, love and reason;

- b) the identification of the Christian spirit with European civilization;

- c) the exclusion of non-European cultures from the realm of philosophy, true religion and civilization;

- d) the “elimination of the brute” as a way of saving civilization.

It is exactly this same reasoning that has often been applied to non-Christian people. These people have been defined in mainstream scholarship as the exact opposite of reason, law, morality, and indeed the very antithesis of genuine humanity. Moreover Hegel’s way of thinking about non European people is consonant with the development of Christian theology in its perception of the pagans and savages. Christian theology understands God as a God of history, a God who intervenes in human history, a God who guides the events of world history. This notion is critical to the understanding of Hegel’s vision of world history and the role he assigns to Africa in that history, a role which seems to be the will of God according to the inner logic of Hegel’s thinking.

Major reference: Caputo, John D., The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida: Religion without Religion. (Bloomington: Indiana, University Press, 1997); p.246

Anti-Semitism in Biblical Studies:

the “Kittel scandal” and the Hegelian Paradigm

Once Hegel has presented the Jew as the enemy of the religion of Love, the elimination of the Jew comes as a necessary step for the promotion of love in the world. But to better grasp what I mean here by Hegelian paradigm in Christian theology I shall turn to the case of Gerhard Kittel, an eminent figure in biblical studies.

The role played by Christian ways of theologizing in the rise of anti-Semitism, from Church fathers to Martin Luther has been object of extended studies. I shall limit myself here to a recent prominent case which is enlightening because of the intellectual qualities of the scholar and his work, and also because of his connection with one of the most extreme ideologies of human rights violation, i.e. Nazism. The case of Gerhard Kittel (1888-1948) here is worth mentioning in order to grasp the impact of some theological ways of thinking on anti-Semitism and, subsequently, the role played by Christian theologies in the promotion not only of colonialism, but also in the creation of the idea of a primitive, cursed and evil Africa.The Kittel scandal is particularly interesting because it concerns the sacred texts which are the source of Christian theology.

Gerhard Kittel is an eminent German Evangelical New Testament scholar who stands as a monument in contemporary development of biblical studies. At the same time Kittel entered into world history as a “leading theologian under Hitler.” This expression coined by Robert Ericksen refers to the fact that Kittel became the eminent symbol of the anti-Semitic dimension of Christian theology. His anti-Semitism was so blatant that in 1945, at the close of the second world war, he was arrested at his home in Tübingen by French police for his Nazi membership and his active role in suspect organizations. He was then relieved of his scholarly and academic responsibilities and imprisoned. The eminent Christian biblical scholar William Fox Albright declared that Kittel “became the mouthpiece of the most vicious Nazi anti-Semitism, sharing with Emanuel Hirsch of Göttingen the grim distinction of making extermination of the Jews theologically respectable.” Although many Christian theologians struggled ambiguously with the Jewish question, Kittel, as Albright observed took the position to its extreme conclusion:

In view of the terrible viciousness of his attacks on Judaism and the Jews, which continued at least until 1943, Gerhard Kittel must bear the guilt of having contributed more, perhaps, than any other Christian theologian to the mass murder of Jews by the Nazis.

Kittel did not limit himself to pure scholastic pursuit of knowledge. He clearly considered three options for dealing with German Jews: extermination, deportation to Palestine, and assimilation, and analyzed which option was more efficient. Examining the case of extermination, he argued that

Extirpation of Jewry by violence is not worthy of serious discussion: if the systems of the Spanish Inquisition or the Russian pogroms did not manage it, it will certainly be impossible to achieve in the twentieth century. There is no inner sense in this idea either. A historical state of affairs, as exemplified by this people, can be resolved by the extirpation of the people only in demagogical slogans but never in history itself. The sense of a historical situation always consists in that it sets us a task we have to master. To kill all Jews does not mean, however, to master the situation.

Kittel, who as a good historian, understood the impossibility of these three options rejected them on a pragmatic ground and proposed a system of “apartheid.” He argued that Jews be stripped of their German citizenship and be given the status of guests, and that they live separately from Germany’s Christians. In other words, he argued for the abolition of the emancipation act which had led to the integration of Jews in the German society and the return of Jews to the situation of pre-Enlightenment ghettos. All that for the benefit of the German nation.

The most important point here is not Kittel’s life and choices, but the theological logic he brought to biblical studies. As Max Weinreich pointed out in his book on Hitler’s professors (1946), Kittel not only was a Nazi through and through but also he played a crucial role in the rise of a Anti-Jewish science, thus contributing to legitimizing Nazi anti-Semitism and making it academically and religiously respectable. According to Alan Rosen, Kittel was one of the leading scholars in a Nazi research institute and gave lectures and published articles and books that provided a Christian, religious basis for the policies decreed by the Nazi government. Hence, the scholarship he pursued in biblical studies not only refrained from challenging the status quo but rather worked within and benefited from Nazi institutions. He split his scholarly work during the second world war between Tübingen and the University of Vienna, publishing much of his wartime research under the auspices of the Reichsinstitut für Geschichte des Neuen Deutschlands (Institute for the History of the New Germany). This institute emphasized a study of history based on the category of race, and enjoyed close and amiable relations to the upper echelon of Nazi officials. All this had to do with his understanding of world history and the nature of Christianity, and understanding which found its way in his famous work, the nine-volume Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (Theologisches Wörterbuch zum Neuen Testament). This dictionary enjoys in both Protestant and Catholic Theology such a reputation that it continues to be regarded as a foundational tool for students of biblical texts the world over. And yet this highly scholarly work grew out of a tainted theological atmosphere. It should be noted that Kittel was a man deeply rooted in Christian tradition. His own father Rudolf Kittel was an eminent specialist of the Old Testament, and Gerhard Kittel began his research with an amazing openness to Judaism. According to Alan Rosen, in the 1920s, his work was exceptionally generous to Judaism, in contrast with other Christian scholars of his time. While under the influence of Adolf von Harnack’s The Essence of Christianity, many scholars favored the notion that Christianity drew its inspiration and substance primarily from its Greco-Roman milieu, Kittel, who had become expert in the relationship between the New Testament and the rabbinic literature operated a revolution by emphasizing the Jewish roots of Christianity. Opting for a position which was not popular during his era and bucking the then dominant trend, he argued in his Jesus und die Rubbinen (1914) that most of Jesus’ teaching has its parallel in the Talmud thus challenging what others saw as the distinctive character of Christianity. But Kittel’s discovery was also the beginning of his trouble. Confronted as a Christian with the question of the specificity and uniqueness of Christianity, Kittel moved into a direction which was to lead him to anti-Semitism. Starting with the premise that the distinctive character of Christianity layed not in its teachings, which it shared with Judaism, but rather with the divinity of Jesus, which Judaism had rejected, Kittel turned the notion of rejection into a dominant theological theme. The rejection of Judaism became an indispensable way of affirming the validity of Christianity. And finally the rejection of Judaism as a religion lead to the rejection of the people who reject Jesus, that is to the extermination of the Jews.

In 1933, allying the word and the world, Kittel who was the professor of New Testament at the University of Tübingen, joined the Nazi pary and welcomed National Socialism as “a renewal movement based on a Christian moral foundation” and regarded this Nazi Parti as an antidote to the decadence and immorality of the Weimar republic. But the most important point here is his use of biblical scholarship to justify the persecution of Jews. In 1933, on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the German Student Union in Tübingen, he delivered a public lecture on Die Judenfrage (“The Jewish Question”), in which he defended Hitler’s anti-Semitic legislation, on the ground, among other things, that the Scripture themselves teach the rejection of the Jews because “by rejecting Christ the Jews had themselves incurred rejection.” Kittel who started his research with the appreciation of rabbinic influences on Christianity moved progressively in the opposite direction. The need to define the uniqueness of Christianity will lead him and his team to the need for the “purification of Christianity from Jewish influences” and more concretely to the problematic movement of the “Dejudification” of the Christianity and the German Church so well promoted by the Institut zur Erforschung des jüdischen Einflusses auf das deutsche kirchliche Leben (The Institute for Research on the Jewish Influence on German Church Life). With regard to the worldview of the Dictionary, Kittel who assumed its editorship from 1929 to 1945 authorized the publication of articles which were clearly anti-Semitic and gave voice to authors who were even more anti-Semitic than himself. This is for instance the case of Walter Grundmann and G. Bertram who contributed thirty-nine articles to the first four volumes and who embodied the problematic worldview of the Dictionary. Grundmann and Bertram were both members of the Institute for Research on the Jewish Influence on German Church Life whose goal was the Dejudification of the Christian Church and theology. Grundmann connected this “defense” of Christianity with the patriotic struggle for the protection of the Christian German nation. Such a protection required the conceptualization of the Jew as the enemy of both Christ and the German people. He made it clear that to achieve its goal of dejudification, the institute intended to lead a war against Jews and Judaism. In 1943 he explicitly wrote that “In the fateful battle of the Greater Germany which is a fateful battle against World Jewry and against all destructive and nihilistic forces, the work of the institute gives the tools for the overthrow of all religious foreignness... and serves the belief of the Reich. clearly wrote that the goal of the institute.” The scholarly task of dejudification led by this institute comprised the radical separation of the New Testament and the Old Testament and the attempt to demonstrate that Jesus was not a Jew. In the article “Megas” (Greatness) he published in the Dictionary, Grundmann articulated a reflection reminiscent of Hegel. In his need to explain the uniqueness of the Gospel’s message he built a binary opposition by contrasting Jesus and the Scribes. After noting that while the teaching of Jesus is the greatest commandment of love, the scribes focus on the law, he concludes that this difference carries with it “the radical overthrow of Jewish nomism and in some sense of Judaism itself as a religion.”

It would be simplistic to regard Kittel as a vulgar anti-Semite. His understanding of the biblical view of the Jews was part of a long tradition of Christian theology. As Kittel’s collusion with Nazism shows, Christian theology of the “fulfillment of the mosaic law by Jesus” leads to anti-Semitism. What happened with regard to Jews, women, native Americans and many other so-called “savage pagans” happened also to Africans. Although Kittel and his colleagues had other reasons for their anti-Semitism, what is interesting for African studies is the inner logic of biblical studies, specifically the notion of the fulfillment of the Mosaic law which stands at the core of New Testament scholarship and its notion of the uniqueness of Christianity. Kittel and his team sensed the need for the “purification” of Christianity from Judaism. In Africa the battle was waged against traditional religion and ways of worship. To become Christian the African had to renounce his history and spiritual legacy. Although the case of Jewish holocaust is unique, in Africa the civilizing mission of Christianity led to collaboration with the colonial regime which often perpetrated genocides. The fact that many Belgian Catholic missionaries kept silence on the genocide of King Leopold which exterminated almost half of the Congolese population remains a puzzle pregnant of some serious questions. In both cases of Hegel and Kittel, what is important to examine is the logic which theologizes the worth of non-European people and non-Christians. Kittel’s biblical studies and Hegel’s philosophy of religion indicate that the notion of Christianity as the perfect and superior religion, the embodiment of love and rationality, leads to some problematic consequences in human rights matters. The ideology of the “uniqueness of Christianity” justifies Eboussi’s observation that the Christian concept of Revelation functions as a tool of domination which enabled Europe to colonize and exploit non-European people around the world.

References

Montagu, Ashley, Man’s Most Dangerous Myth: The Fallacy of Race (Walnut Creek, London: Alta Mira Press, 1997)

Rosen, Alan, “‘Familiarly known as Kittel’: The Moral Politics of the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament” in Harrowitz, Nancy A., ed., Tainted Greatness: Anti-Semitism and Cultural Heroes. (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994)

“The smooth functioning of Society… is in no way impaired by the fact that that same “society” puts to death or (but failing to help someone in distress accounts for only a minor difference) allows to die of hunger and disease tens of millions of children… without any moral or legal tribunal ever being considered competent to judge such a sacrifice, the sacrifice of others to avoid being sacrificed oneself. Not only is it true that such a society participate in this incalculable sacrifice, it actually organizes it. The smooth functioning of its economic, political, and legal affairs, the smooth functioning of its moral discourse and good conscience presupposes the permanent operation of this sacrifice.”

(Jacques Derrida, the Gift of Death)

“The full story of religion is not rose-colored; often it is crude. Wisdom and charity are intermittent, and the net result is profoundly ambiguous. A balanced view of religion would include human sacrifice and scapegoating, fanaticism and persecution, the Christian Crusades and the holy wars of Islam. It would include witch hunts in Massachusetts, monkey trials in Tennessee, and snake worship in the Ozarks. The list would have no end.”

(Huston Smith, The World’s Religions. HarperSanFrancisco, 1991; p.4)

RELIGION AS THE IDEA OF THE DOMINANT RULING CLASS.

“The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e., the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it. The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships, the dominant material relationships grasped as ideas; hence of the relationships which make the one class the ruling one, therefore, the ideas of its dominance.”

(Karl Marx, The German Ideology, part.I)

Religious or magical behavior or thinking must not be set apart from the range of everyday purposive conduct, particularly since even the ends of the religious and magical actions are predominantly economic... People pursue their interests. Among the weapons people use in their struggle are ideas, and among ideas are religions as a system of ideas that justify self interests…When a man who is happy compares his position with that of one who is unhappy, he is not content with the fact of his happiness, but desires something more, namely the right to this happiness, the consciousness that he has earned his good fortune, in contrast to the unfortunate one who must equally have earned his misfortune. Our everyday experience proves that there exists just such a psychological need for reassurance as to the legitimacy or deservedness of one’s happiness, whether this involves political success, superior economic status, or anything else. What the privileged classes require of religion, if anything at all, is this psychological reassurance of legitimacy.”

(Max Weber, The Sociology of Religion . Boston: Beacon Press, 1993; p.107).

“Colonization may indeed be a very complex affair, but one thing is certain: You do not walk in, seize the land, the person, the history of another, and then sit back and compose hymns of praise in his honor. To do that would amount to calling yourself a bandit. So what do you do? You construct very elaborate excuses for your action. You say, for instance, that the man in question is worthless and quite unfit to manage himself and his affairs. If there are valuable things like gold or diamonds which you are carting away from his territory, you proceed to prove that he doesn’t own them in the

real sense of the word – that he and they just happened to be lying around the same place when you arrived. Finally, if worse comes to the worst, you will be prepared to question whether such as he can be, like you, fully human.”

Chinua Achebe in African Commentary, vol.1, n0.2, Nov.1989.

“Three major figures, from the fifteenth century to the end of the nineteenth, determined modalities and the pace of mastering, colonizing, and transforming the “Dark Continent”: the explorer, the soldier, and the missionary… Of all “these bearers of the African burden,” the missionary was, paradoxically, the best symbol of the colonial enterprise. He devoted himself sincerely to the ideals of colonialism: the expansion of Civilization, the dissemination of Christianity, and the advance of Progress. With equal enthusiasm, he served as an agent of a political empire, a representative of a civilization, and an envoy of God… As A.J. Christopher rightly observed “missionaries, possibly more than members of other branches of the colonial establishment, aimed at the radical transformation of indigenous society… They therefore sought, whether consciously or unconsciously, the destruction of pre-colonial societies and their replacement by new Christian societies in the image of Europe.”…

The missionary played an essential role in the general process of expropriation and, subsequently, exploitation of all the “new found lands” upon the earth. As G. Williams puts it, if in many areas his presence “helped to soften the harshness of European impact on the indigenous peoples whose lands were invaded and exploited,” his “fervour was allied, rather than opposed to commercial motive.” The scramble for Africa in the nineteenth century took place in an atmosphere of Christian revival: the age of Enlightenment and its criticism of religion had ended…

The more carefully one studies the history of missions in Africa, the more difficult it becomes not to identify it with cultural propaganda, patriotic motivations, and commercial interests, since the missions’ program is indeed more complex than the simple transmission of the Christian faith. From the sixteenth century to the eighteenth, missionaries were, through all the “new worlds,” part of the political process of creating and extending the right of European sovereignty over “newly discovered lands. In doing so, they obeyed the “sacred instructions” of Pope Alexander VI in his bull Inter Caetera (1493): to overthrow paganism and establish the Christian faith in all barbarous nations. The bulls of Nicholas V – Dum Diversas (1452) and Romanus Pontifex (1455) – had indeed already given the kings of Portugal the right to dispossess and eternally enslave Mahometans, pagans, and black peoples in general. Dum Diversas clearly stipulates this right to invade, conquer, expel, and fight Muslims, pagans, and other enemies of Christ wherever they may be. Christian kings, following the Pope’s decisions could occupy pagan kingdoms, principalities, lordships, possessions and dispossess them of their personal property, land, and whatever they might have. The king and his successors have the power and right to put these peoples into perpetual slavery. The missionaries, preceding or following a European flag, not only helped their home country to acquire new lands but also accomplished a “divine” mission ordered by the Holy Father, Dominator Dominus . It was in God’s name that the Pope considered the planet his franchise and established the basic principles of terra nullius (nobody’s land), which denies non-Christian natives the right to an autonomous political existence and the right to own or to transfer ownership.

V.Y. Mudimbe, The Invention of Africa. Gnosis, Philosophy, and the order of knowledge. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988); pp.45-47.

Spain: Patriotism, Conquest, Genocide and Evangelization

At the time of the so-called discovery of America, a time dominated by Catholic kings of Spain and Portugal, Spain had just completed its liberation from Islam by expelling in 1492 from its territory both the remnants of the Muslim occupation that had lasted almost seven hundred years, and the Jewish community. The ‘discovery’ of America completed the glory of Spain, then regarded as ‘the country where the sun never sets.’

Spanish patriotic fever reached its highest level. The sense of being God’s special country, the bastion and bulwark of a triumphant Christendom was confirmed by the Pope who declared the kings of Spain the most Christian kings and gave them the divine right to conquer, dispossess and enslave the enemies of Christ. Thus Spain combined its dream of possessing the land of the Golden Fleece (gold, silver, and all kinds of wealth), its quest for glory, power, and wealth, with the “glorious Crusade” spirit of its militaristic patriotism, and its self-image and self-definition as the chosen people. Conquest came to be viewed as Spain’s divine mission, its “mandate from heaven.” But how could a Christian and healthy mind preach a God of love and peace, while engaging in the violent conquest of foreign lands and genocide? Spaniards with a conscience could not avoid this question. However as the case of conquistador Hernan Cortes shows, an elaborated justification of war and looting was well articulated through the demonization of Native Americans and their religions. This was made possible by the dogmatic understanding of Christianity as the only true religion.

Speaking about his own experience, Hernan Cortes, one of the early and most famous ‘conquistadores’ explained in his own words how Spaniards managed to reconcile Christianity, Conquest, and the genocide of Native Americans:

“Many times I have played in my thoughts with such difficulties [the war with the Aztec people] and I must confess that sometimes I felt quite restless in my thoughts. But, looking at it from other angles, there are many things that give me courage and satisfaction. In the first place, the dignity and holiness of our cause, because we fight for the cause of Christ when we fight against idol worshippers who, as such, are enemies of Christ since they worship demons instead of the God of kindness and omnipotence, and we wage war both to punish those who persist in their idolatry and to open to those who have accepted the authority of Christians and of our King… But other thoughts come also to my mind: that is, the benefits that we can obtain if we come out victorious, because there are many other reasons for fighting these wars… There are some who fight for land and things, others for power and glory… And many times find satisfaction for their ambitions when, having defeated their enemies, they control the lands and the cities… But it is not only one of these causes but all of them at the same time that move and constrain us to continue this war.”

(These words by Hernan Cortes are quoted by Gines de Sepulveda in his Cronica Indiana)

Jose Miguez Bonino, “Theology of Latin America” in John Parratt, ed., An Introduction to Third World Theologies. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004); p.17.

FAITH AND REASON

=> Jesus and Hebrew Prophets as paradigmatic philosophers of religion

(Via Christi-Via Socratica)

CHRISTIANITY IS NOT A RELIGION

· It calls for transcending religion

· Move beyond rituals and the letter of the law: grasp the spirit!

· Move beyond man-made customs, rules and regulations

· Move beyond anthropomorphism, beyond a God made in the image of man

· Critique of religion itself: Denouncing pseudo-religiosity

Jesus was accused of blasphemy/atheism for his critical thinking

· Critique of religion

· religious laws and regulations (Mt chaps.5-7)

· Critique of religious practices and fake devotion/worship

· Critique of religious leaders (Luke 20: 45-47; Mt 23)

· Rejection of Fideism, Fundamentalism, Fanaticism, Superstition

· The religions are a gesture of man towards God;

Revelation is the witness of gesture of God towards man.

The religions are creations of human genius;

they witness to the value of exalted religious personalities,

such as Buddha, Zoroaster, Orpheus.

But they also have the defects of what is human.

Revelation is the work of God alone.

Religion expresses man’s desire for God.

Revelation witnesses that God has responded to that desire.

Religion does not save; Jesus Christ grants salvation.

Jean Daniélou, “Christianisme et religions non-chrétiennes” in Etudes 321 (1964), pp.323-336.

cited by Sullivan, Francis A., Salvation outside the Church?: Tracing the History of the Catholic Response. (New York, Mahwah: Paulist Press, 1992); p.187.

FAITH, REASON, AND FREEDOM

=> Jesus and Hebrew Prophets as paradigmatic philosophers of religion

(Via Christi-Via Socratica)

· Critical Thinking Corpus

BIBLICAL AND CHRISTOLOGICAL FOUNDATION OF CRITICAL THINKING

· 1Peter 3, 13-17 and 2 Peter 1, 1-11 > < 2Timothy 3,1-17:

· Mt, chaps 5; 6; 7; 19; Mt 22,15-40; 25,31-46: Critique of religious laws and practices

· Mt 18,1-14; Mt 20, 20-28; Mt 23 : Jesus criticizes Religious Leaders

· "Where the spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom"(2 Cor.3 : 17)

· Freedom from the letter of the Law (Romans 7: 1-6)

"Now we have been released from the law - for we have died to what bound us –

and we serve in the new spirit, not the antiquated letter" (7:6)

· "The written law (letter) kills, but the spirit gives life" (2 Cor.3:6)

· How was the Bible written? (the divine and the human touch)

· Luke 1, 1-4

· John 20, 30-31

· John 21, 24-25

COMPARE

Genealogy of Jesus: Matthew 1,1-17; Luke 3, 23-38; Mark 1,1

Beatitudes: Mt 5, 1-11 and Luke 6, 17-27

Resurrection: Mt 28, 1-2; John 20, 1-12; Mk 16, 1-5; Luke 24, 1-4

Mission to evangelize the whole world: Mark 16, 14-20 and Matthew 28, 18-20

Creation story: Genesis chap. 1 and Chap.2

The commissioning of the Twelve: Mt 10, 1-15; Luke 9, 1-6 and 10, 1-12

Sola Fide: Justification through faith alone? Rom 3, 9-31; Gal 5, 1-6; James 2, 1-26

Via Christi-Via Socratica

- “Fides Quaerens Intellectum”

(Faith Seeking Understanding)

- “Credo ut intelligam”

(I believe so that I may understand)

Biblical Foundation of Critical Thinking:

1. Intellect as an essential component of human nature (Imago Dei):

Genesis 1, 26-27; Genesis 2, 7-8

2. Critical thinking as a categorical imperative of faith

1Peter 3, 13-17:

“Now who is going to harm you if you are enthusiastic for what is good? But even if you should suffer because of righteousness, blessed are you. Do not be afraid or terrified with fear of them, but sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts. Always be ready to give an explanation to anyone who asks you for a reason for your hope, but do it with gentleness and reverence, keeping your conscience clear so that when you are maligned, those who defame your good conduct in Christ may themselves be put to shame.”

2 Peter 1, 1-11:

“… make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue,

virtue with knowledge, knowledge with self-control,

self-control with endurance, endurance with devotion,

devotion with mutual affection, mutual affection with love…”

C. Ot

3. Jesus’ challenge to Pseudo-Religiosity

(Via Socratica – Via Christi)

Genuine Faith requires a certain dose of Rationality:

Questioning Faith: Jesus as an example

A. Mt 23, 1-39: Challenge to Religious Authorities

B. Mt, chap.5,6,7: A new approach to Divine Laws and Devotion.

C. Jesus’ philosophical answer to questions on

· His authority (Mt 21, 23-27)

· Taxes (Mt 22, 15-22)

· Marriage after death (Mt. 22, 23-33)

SECTION 2: SOME KEY BIBLICAL TEXTS

I. JUDEO-CHRISTIAN IDEA OF GOD

A. ON THE DIVINITY OF JESUS (GOD OR HUMAN?)

B. POLYTHEISM AND GODDESS WORSHIP

A. ON THE DIVINITY OF JESUS

1)Mark 8, 27-30

2) Matthew 1, 1-25 (Genealogy of Jesus)

3) Mark 10:18

4) Mt 26, 31-48

5) Mt 27, 46

6) Mt 24, 1-44

7) Mt 15, 21-28:

8) Mt 10, 5-15:

9) Mark 11, 12-14,

10) Mark 6, 14-16

11) John 14, 1-31

B. MONOTHEISM OR POLYTHEISM (THE OTHER FACE OF JUDAISM)

· 1. POLYTHEISM?

· 2. GODDESS WORSHIP? (Queen of Heaven?)

Some key texts on these issues:

· Deuteronomy 32: 8-9

· Psalm 82: 1-4

· Jer.44:15-18 and Jer.7:18 (The Queen of Heaven)

In his reflection on the Noahide laws, Robert M. Seltzer pointed out that

the rabbis were convinced that “monotheism is a necessary precondition for righteousness.”

Robert M. Seltzer, Jewish People, Jewish Thought. (New York: Macmillan, 1980); p.286.

1. POLYTHEISM?

But was Judaism really monotheistic? Did the Israelites, ordinary people, abandon polytheism completely?

One God or a “divine council”? a divine court? Divine princes?

God as merely the leader of a Divine Council?

Deuteronomy 32: 8-9 and Psalm 82: 1-4

God’s assistants (surround his throne and praise God’s holiness)

· Cherubim (Ezekiel 1:10)

· Seraphim (Isaiah 6),

· John’s “four living creatures”(Rev.4:6-9)

Cherubim: hybrid creatures combining the features of humans, animals, and birds

KEY TEXT AND ITS VARIOUS TRANSLATIONS (Deut. 32: 8-9):

When the Most High (Elyon) gave the nations their inheritance,

When he divided the sons of men,

He fixed their bounds according to the number of the sons of God;

But Yahweh’s portion was his people,

Jacob his share of inheritance

THE NEW REVISED STANDARD VERSION translation

“according to the number of the gods (plural!)” (based on the oldest biblical manuscripts, the Dead Sea Scrolls.”

When the Most High apportioned the nations,

When he divided humankind,

He fixed the boundaries of the peoples

According to the number of the gods;

The Lord’s own portion was his people,

Jacob his allotted share.

In the footnotes, this version of the Bible writes:

“Most High, or Elyon, is the title of El, the senior god who sat at the head of the divine council in the Ugaritic literature of ancient Canaan. The Bible applies El’s title to Israel’s God (Gen 14.18-22; Num 24.16; Ps46.4; 47.2; esp.78.35. Gods, the lesser gods who make up the divine council (Ps 82.1; 89.6-7), to each of whom Elyon here assigns a foreign nation. The Lord’s own portion, NRSV has added ‘own’ in order to identify Yahweh with Elyon and avoid the impression that Yahweh is merely a member of the pantheon.”

Coogan, Michael D., ed., The New Oxford Annotated Bible: New Revised Standard Version with the Apocrypha. An ecumenical Study Bible. Third Edition (Oxford University Press: 2001); p.301

2. GODDESS

Goddess Asherah and the unnamed “Queen of Heaven” worshipped in Israel

Goddess Asherah (the wife of the Cananean God EL) becomes also the wife of Yahweh or the Hebrew EL, Elohim.

Asherah’s sacred emblems were even in the Jerusalem Temple (2 Kings 23:6, 14-15)

Out of all the kings of Israel, only 3 (As, Hezekiah, and Josiah) are praised because they tore down Asherah’s sacred emblems, including those in the Jerusalem Temple.

The Queen of Heaven (Jer.44:15-18 and Jer.7:18)

A few biblical writers have ascribed feminine qualities to Yahweh, using maternal imagery:

1) Numbers 11:12 describes Yahweh as having conceived, given birth to, and nursed Israel as if it were “a baby at the breast.”

2) God speaking like a woman (Isa.49:15): “Does a woman forget her baby or fail to cherish the son of her womb?... I will never forget you.”

3) Yahweh is “the God who gave you birth (Deut.32:18; Ps.90:2)

Many Israelite women worshiped a goddess known as the “Queen of Heaven.”

Jeremiah spent his life fighting against this type of religiosity, denouncing Judean women who baked “cakes” for her.

In a rare example of allowing women’s voice to be heard, the editor of Jeremiah’s oracles reports that the women vigorously defended their goddess, insisting that when Judeans honored her “we had food in plenty then, we lived well, we suffered no disasters. But since we gave up offering incense to the Queen of Heaven and pouring libations in her honor, we have been destitute and have perished either by sword or by famine.” (Jer. 44:15-18)

Harris, Stephen L., Understanding the Bible (McGraw Hill:2011), chapter 15.

II. THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY

The essence of Christianity

(using the following texts articulate in 10 or 20 points the fundamental characteristics of a genuine Christian faith)

I.

1Peter 3, 13-17 and 2 Peter 1, 1-11

2 Cor.3 : 17; 2 Cor.3:6; and Romans 7: 1-6

Galatians, all the 5 chapters, and Romans chaps 2-14.

Mt 23; Mt 9:9-13; Mt 11:18-19, and Mt 6 and 7

II.

Genesis 1: 26-31; The book of Wisdom 11: 20-26; and 12:1; Psalm 8

Rom 12: 1-21; 1Cor 12

Gal 3: 26-28, Philippians chap.2 and Mt 18,1-5; Mt 20,20-28; Lk22,24-27

Luke 10:25-37; Mt 12:46-50; Mt 10: 34-42; Mt 8:5-12

III. Luke 4, 14-22; Mt 25:31-46; Luke 6:17-27; Psalm 15

Isaiah chaps.1 and 5; Amos, 5: 21-24; Isaiah 58: 6-7; and Jeremiah 7, 1-15

Money and Wealth (Christian perspective on Capitalism)

Acts 4:32-36 and 5:1-11; Mt 6:24 and Luke 16:13; Mt 19:16-26;

1Timothy 6:10;

Luke 16: 19-31 and Mt 19:21-24; Luke 20:45-47 and Luke 21:1-4

IV.

Gal 2:15-21 and Rom chapters 2-8

1 John 4: 7-8; 1John 4: 20-21; Mt 7:12; 1Timothy 1:3-11;

1 Cor 13:1-13; Mt 7:21-23, and James 2, 14-26

V.

Matthew, chapters 5, 6, and 7; Isaiah 11: 1-9 and Isaiah 9: 1-6

Exodus 20, 1-17 and Deuteronomy 5, 1-25.

Mt 22, 34-40; Mark 12, 28-34; John 13, 31-35

Gal 5, 19-23

VI. Acts 5:29; and Acts 4:18-20; Mt 10:28.

VII.

Gal 5, 1-6 and Acts, chapters 10, 11 and 15

Leviticus: chapters 11, 17 and 19; and Deuteronomy: chap.14.

Christian perspective:

1) Acts, chapters 10, 11 and 15 6) Mark 7, 1-23;

2) Colossians 2, 4-23; 7) Matthew 15, 10-20;

3) 1 Cor 6, 12-20; 8) 1 Timothy 4, 1-8;

4) 1 Cor 8, 1-13; 9) Romans 14, 1-22;

5) 1 Cor 10, 23-31

A. Basic Principles of Christianity

Fulfillment theory: Matthew 5, 17-20; 23, 1-39.

· Jesus defines his mission: Luke 4, 14-22

· Imitatio Dei: Mt 5:48 (Be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect)

· Love your enemies (Mt 5, 44-47)

· Decalogue: Exodus 20, 1-17 and Deuteronomy 5, 1-25.

· The Greatest commandment Mt 22: 34-40; Mt 19:16-25

· Golden Rule : Mt 7, 12 –27

· Last Judgment: Matthew 25, 31-46

· Purity of intent: Mt 5, 27-28; Mt 6, 1-8

· Beatitudes (Mt 5, 1-11 and Luke 6, 17-27), and Mt 6 and Mt7.

· Love: 1 Cor 13, 4-8; 1 John 4:7-8; 1 John 4:20-21; James 2:14-26; 1 Timothy 1:3-11

Mt 7:12; Mt 7:21-23; Acts 4:32-36; Acts 5:1-11

· Seven fruits of the holy spirit and evil spirit (Gal 5, 19-23)

· Faith without works is dead: James, chap2;

· Peace/Jesus’s charter of non violence (Mt 5:21-48; and Mt 5:1-11)

Non-violence: “all who take the sword will perish by the sword.” (Mt 26,47-54)

· Rejection of hypocrisy and the religious arrogance of puritanism

(Mt 5:37; Mt 6: 1-7,16-18; and Mt 9:9-13; Mt 15:1-20; Mt 23:1-39)

· Kenosis: Philippians, chap.2.

· Unity and Equality: Wisdom 11: 20-26; and 12:1; Genesis 1: 26-31 (Imago Dei);

Eph.4: 1-6; Gal 3, 26-28 (No Greek or Jew, master or slave, male or female…)

· Servanthood and “true greatness” (Mt 18,1-5; Mt 20,20-28; Lk22,24-27)

=>B. THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIAN FAITH

· 1. Reason (Faith and Reason; Critical Thinking)

· 2. Freedom

· 3. Equality/Unity (Belief in Creation)

· 4. Imitatio Dei/Imitatio Christi (High moral standards)

· 5. Faith in a God of Love and Justice (Heaven and Hell)

· 6. Love is greater than faith

· 7. Deeds (faith without works is dead)

· 8. God (Love God)

· 9. Neighbor (Love your neighbour)

· 10. Enemies (Love your enemies)

· 11. Poor (Love the poor and the oppressed)

· 12. Social Justice as the best spiritual worship

· 13. Forgiveness

· 14. Do not judge

· 15. Do not be hypocritical

· 16. Purity of intention (have a pure heart, be like a child)

· 17. Non-violence (Peace)

· 18. Kenosis: be humble (Philippians 2)

· 19. Servanthood and child trope

· 20. Following God’s commandments and the golden rule

· C. SOCIAL JUSTICE AND BUSINESS ETHIC=TRUE SPIRITUAL WORSHIP

Do not rob the poor; Do not oppress the poor, the weak, the marginalized

Warning to tyrants, oppressive governments and those who exploit others

· 1) Luke 4:14-22 (Jesus defines his mission)

· 2) Criteria for entering the kingdom of God):

· Mt 25: 31-46

· Luke 6:17-27 (Beatitudes)

· Luke 10: 25-37(Good Samaritan)

· 3) Isaiah

· Isaiah 1: 10-20;

· Isaiah 5:8-30 “Ah, you who join house to house…”

· Isaiah 10: 1-4

· Isaiah 11: 1-9 (Peaceful kingdom)

· Isaiah 58: 6-7;

· 4) Jeremiah 7, 1-15

· 6) Amos

· Amos 4, 1-3;

· Amos 5, 4-24;

· Amos 8

· 6) Habakkuk 2 and

· 7) Micah, chap 2 and 3

· 8) Social Justice decalogue (Ps15; Exodus 22:21-25 and 23:1-9)

The broader Decalogue corpus (Ex. Chapters 20-23)

· 9) Seizure of Naboth’s Vineyard (1King 21,1-29)

· 10) ON MONEY (WEALTH AND PRIVATE PROPERTY)

· - 1. John 2: 12-18 and Mark 11: 15-18 (Do not turn God’s Temple into a Marketplace)

· - 2. Acts 4:32: “the community of believers… had everything in common.”

· - 3. Ps15,5 ( Ex 22, 25; Lev 25, 35-37): “do not lend money at usury

· - 4. You can’t worship God and Money! (In God/Gold? We Trust)

“No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and Wealth.” (Mt 6:24 and Luke 16:13; and Mt 19:16-26; Mark 10: 17-31)

· - 5. The Love of money is the root of all evil…” (1Timothy 6:10)

· - 6. Parable of the rich man and Lazarus (Luke 16: 19-31)

· - 7. Jesus said to him, “If you wish to be perfect, go, sell your possessions, and give the money to the poor; then come, follow me” (Mt 19:21)

· - 8. It is difficult for a rich to enter the Kingdom of Heaven:

Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Truly I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” (Mt 19:23-24)

6)the small gift of the poor old lady is better than the huge gift of the rich (Luke20:45-47 and Luke 21:1-4)

III. MAJOR CORPUS OF BIBLICAL LAWS

DECALOGUE (TEN COMMANDMENTS):

· Deuteronomy 5: 6-18.

· Exodus 20 : 1-17.

· Exodus 34:1-28 (New Tables of the law with the word “Ten commandments” 34:28)

Jesus’ version of ten commandments:

· Mt 19:16-25 (Rich young man: 6 commandments)

· Mt 22:34-40 and Mark 12:28-34 (Decalogue reduced to 2 commandments)

· Mt 7:12 (Golden rule)

JESUS’ NEW TORAH

· Mt chaps. 5-7

· Mt 15: 1-20

· Mt chaps. 18-20

· Mt 25: 31-46

OTHER BIBLICAL LAWS

· Exodus, chap.20-23 (Torah, major Corpus of Mosaic laws, including Decalogue):

· Deuteronomy (27, 9-26): Major Biblical Curses

· Deuteronomy (chapters 5 - 8, 13, 17, 26, 27, 32, 33)

· Leviticus chapters 12, 15, 17-26

· Leviticus 17-26 (Code of Legal Holiness)

· Leviticus 19 (Various rules of Conduct)

· Leviticus 20 (Penal Code for Various sins: death!)

· Leviticus 25

· Leviticus 12: 1-8; and 15: 19-31 (impurity of women)

Special topics

The Bible has laws pertaining to some specific issues such as:

1. Penal Code for various sins (Death Penalty)

2. War and Violence (other nations as enemies)

3. Peace and Non-Violence

4. Poverty and Social Justice

5. Property, Money, wealth

6. Slaves

7. Women

8. Codes of Sexual Sanctity

9. Food

10. Government and rulers

IV. ON FORBIDDEN FOOD AND DIETARY LAWS

* Judaism: Leviticus chap.11; 17 and 19; Deut. chap.14.

* Islam: Surah 5: 1-20; 87-96 and Surah 6:131-151

· Christian perspective:

1) Acts, chapters 10, 11 and 15

2) Matthew 15, 10-20;

3) Mark 7, 1-23;

4) Colossians 2, 4-23;

5) 1 Timothy 4, 1-8;

6) 1 Cor 6, 12-20;

7) 1 Cor 8, 1-13;

8) 1 Cor 10, 23-31

9) Romans 14, 1-22;

10) On Fasting: Mt 6, 16-18 and Mt 9, 14-17

11) Circumcision rejected: Gal 5, 1-6; Col 2: 4-23; and Acts, chapters 10, 11 and 15

V. SEXUAL ETHIC IN THE BIBLE

(including homosexuality, sexual immorality and punishment; marriage and celibacy)

Leviticus chaps.18-20 (Codes of Sexual sanctity)

Focus on 1) Lev. 18, 22 and 20,13

2) Leviticus 19 (penalties for sin)

Romans, chap. 1 (Focus on Rom 1, 25-27)

I Cor.Chap.5-7(Focus on 1 Cor 5,1-13; 6,9-10)

Mt 19, 1-12

Decalogue: Exodus 20 : 1-14; Deuteronomy 5: 6-18

Lev.19,28: “Do not tattoo yourselves.”

VI. GOD’S WILL ON WOMEN (?)

Leviticus, 12, 1-8; and 15, 19-31.

1 Corinthians 11, 1-16

1 Timothy 2, 1-14

Ephesians 5, 22-33

Divorce: Mt 5, 31-32

Polygamy:

- 1 Kings 11,1-7: Solomon had 700 official wives and 300 concubines

- Genesis (Chap. 29 and 30): Jacob the husband of Leah, Zilpah, Bilhad, and

Rachel (and father of 12 sons)

On Mixed marriages

Nehemiah 13:23-31

Ezra, chap. 9 and 10

(> < Numbers 12:1-16; Genesis 16:1-16; 1 Kings 3:1; 9:16; 11:1)

VII. God’s Will on Slaves:

1) *Leviticus 25, 39-46*

2) Ephesians 6, 5-8

3) Colossians 3, 22-25

4) 1 Timothy 6, 1-6

5) Titus 2, 9-10

6) 1 Peter 2, 13-20

7) Exodus chapter 21 (“Rights of Slaves”?)

8) Genesis chap. 9 and 10: Divine curse?

AFRICANS IN THE BIBLE

1) Acts 7:22 and Exodus 2; 1-10 , Moses educated in Egypt

2) Mt 2: 13-23 (Jesus in Egypt)

3) Numbers 12: 1-15

4) Genesis, chapters 46 and 47

5) 1 Kings 3:1; 9:16; 11:1

6) 2 Chronicles 8: 1- 9:29; and 1 kings 10

7) Is. 19:25

8) Ez 29: 13-16

VIII. POLITICAL THEOLOGY

(Attitude toward governments and rulers)

· **Rom 13, 1-7** Titus 3, 1-3

· 1 Timothy 2, 1-6 1 Peter 2, 13-20

· Acts 5, 29: “We must obey God rather than Men.”

IX. On War and other forms of Violence

(other nations, ethnicities and religions as enemies)

Violence in the Bible (Hebrew Bible)

· 1) Numbers 13-15; and Numbers 33:50-55

· 2) Deuteronomy (chapters 6, 7, 8, 13, 17, 26, 32, 33)

· 3) Genesis (chapters 11 and 12)

· 4) Exodus (Chapters 7-15; and 20-23; 31-32; 34)

· 5) Leviticus (Chap. 12-15; 19-20; 25)

· 6) 1 Samuel 14:47-52 and 15:1-35: God angry because Saul refuses his command to exterminate his enemies!

2 Samuel 22 (David’s Song of Thanksgiving)

· 7) Judges 5 (Canticle of Deborah); Judges 7 (Warrior God in charge)

· 8) The entire “Book of Joshua” (and Judges and 1,2 Kings) are about wars of conquest)

· 9) Psalms 109; 135; 136; Ps 139, 17-24

(and Ex 15, 1-26: Praising God for killing Egyptians

· 10) Isaiah 60:11-12

· 11) Exodus 7,7-12,40 (Ten Plagues of Egypt).

· 12) Judges 11, 1-40 (Human Sacrifice: the daughter of Jephtah)

· 13) Deuteronomy 32, 1-35 (Golden Calf and the persecution of heretics).

· 14) Leviticus 20 (Penal Code for Various sins)

· 15) Exodus 21: 22-25 (Lex Talionis)

=> Critical Texts on Theology of Conquest:

Isaiah 60:11-12

Judges 11, 1-40; Deut. 6; Deut 7 and Deut 8

Deuteronomy 26, 5-10; 33,1-5.

NEW TESTAMENT

· 11) Romans 13,1-7 (The Violence of rulers is ordained by God)

· 12) Acts 4:32-36; 5:1-11 (Peter’s Curse that kills Ananais and Sapphira)

· 13) Mt 10:11-15 (Curse the city that refuses to receive the disciples of Jesus)

· 14) Mt 10: 32-37(the one who loves mother more than me)

· 15) Mt 11:12 (the Kingdom of Heaven to the violent!)

X. RELIGION AND THE ECONOMY

(BUSINESS ETHIC AND SOCIAL JUSTICE)

“Do not rob the poor.”

(see II. Essence of Christianity: use the Section on Social Justice)

XI. NATIONALISM VERSUS UNIVERSALISM

(The danger of religious Patriotism)

A. a “universal election”

Wisdom 11, 21-12,2

Isaiah 19,19-24

Mark 3, 31-35: The True Kindred of Jesus

Who is my neighbor? (Good Samaritan parable

B. Nationalistic election and its consequences; God’s will on other nations

Genesis 11, 31-32; 12,1-2.

Deuteronomy 7, 6-8; 26, 5-10; 6, 1-25; 7, 1-5

Mt 10, 5-15: “I came only for the lost sheep of Israel”?

Mt 15, 21-28: answer to the Canaanite woman (food of children to the dogs)

C. Fulfillment theory: Matthew 5, 17-20; 23, 1-39.

D. Rethinking ethnocentrism

Numbers 12: 1-16

1Kings (chapters 3, 9,10 and 11): Solomon (Egyptian wife and Queen of Sheba)

(1Kings 3:1-2; 9:15-24; 11:1-3; and 1Kings10:1-13 Queen of Sheba)

Song of Songs, chap.1 and 2

Genesis 16:1-16

Acts 7:20-22

XII. Idolatry and Forbidden gods and religions

(Attitude toward other religions and religious freedom)

John 3, 16; 14, 6-7; Mt 28, 18-20; Mk 16, 14-18 (Jesus the only way)

Eph 5,5;

1 Cor 10, 14- 22; 1 Cor 8, 1-7

Ex 22, 20; Ex 23,13; Ex 20,1-6; Ex. 22,20; Ex 22, 17.

Deut 7, 1-7; Deut. 17,1-5;

Jeremiah 7, 1-34; and 10, 1-16

Leviticus chap. 19.

- A plea for tolerance (God’s spirit works outside the circle of the chosen group):

Mk 9, 38-41 (who is not against us, is for us)

Nm11,24-30

- A positive attitude toward “pagans”:

Paul:

* Rom. 2: 14-15: The Gentiles have a conscience and they follow the law written by God in their heart.

* Rom. 1:18-21: Even the Gentiles know God, because God has revealed himself to all Humanity and all nations through his creation (cosmic revelation)

* Acts17: 22-31 Paul’s speech at Athens.

He praises the religious spirit of the Greeks,

refers to “the one God who made the world and everything in it, who gives to all human being life and breath and everything,

who “from one made every nation to live on the face of the earth

Paul insists on God’s proximity to each people: “he is not far from each one of us,”

And Paul illustrates this by using the words of the Greek poet Epimenides (6th century BC): “in him we live and move and have our being.”

Johannine theology

John 1:1 (Prologue). The Logos-Wisdom theology of John embodies the universal self-manifestation of God throughout history, offers the widest New Testament perspective on God’s universal involvement with humankind. It is this universal and continuous involvement of God in human history that allows for a positive approach to the religions of the world (Dupuis, p.51)

Holy and Spiritual people found outside Christianity or Judaism, before and after the creation of these religions

JOB (Job 1:1 and 29:14: that man was blameless and upright, one who feared God

* CYRUS (Is. 44:28 – 45:1): the pagan conqueror celebrated as the “anointed” of God

* Cornelius the Roman Centurion (who followed pagan spirituality): Acts 10, 1-4)

Luke’s Acts of the Apostle (Acts, chapters 10 and 11; focus on Acts 10:34-35)

God recognizes and accepts the holiness and spirituality of members of other religions outside Christianity or Judaism; the spirit of God also works outside the walls of Judaism and Christian churches. God revealed himself to the world before the creation of Judaism and Christianity (Cosmic revelation) and made a covenant with the entire humanity; this covenant and God’s revelation to the whole world are not abolished by his revelation to Jews nor his later revelation to Christians through Jesus. The spirit of God continues to work in other churches and even in human outside any church or organized religion.

1986: in the encyclical on the Holy Spirit “Dominum et Vivificantem” (18 May 1986), pope John Paul II articulated explicitly the doctrine of “universal activity of the Holy Spirit before the time of Christian dispensation and today outside the Church.”

Jacques Dupuis, Toward a Christian Theology of Religious Pluralism.

Maryknoll: Orbis, 2001; p.176

1986: in a discourse to the members of the Roman Curia (December 22), in explaining the meaning of the Assisi meeting with members of different religions for the WORLD DAY OF PRAYER FOR PEACE (21 October 1986) as a continuation of the spirit of Vatican II, the Pope spoke more clearly than any of the Vatican II council documents on the active presence of the Holy Spirit in the religious life of the members of other religious traditions.

Jacques Dupuis, Toward a Christian Theology of Religious Pluralism.

Maryknoll: Orbis, 2001; p.175

1990: Pope John-Paul II explicitly proclaims that the Spirit of God works not only within Christianity or the Catholic Church, but also outside, in individuals, cultures and other religious traditions (Encyclical Redemptoris Missio, 7 December 1990):

“The Spirit manifests himself in a special way in the Church and her members. Nevertheless, his presence and activity are universal, limited neither by space nor time… The Spirit… is at the very source of the human person’s existential and religious questioning which is occasioned not only by contingent situations but by the very structure of its being. The Spirit’s presence and activity affect not only individuals but also society and history, peoples, cultures and religions.”

Jacques Dupuis, Toward a Christian Theology of Religious Pluralism.

Maryknoll: Orbis, 2001; pp.176-177

1990: the Catholic theologian Schillebeeckx proclaims:

“even in the Christian self-understanding the multiplicity of religions is not an evil which needs to be removed, but rather a wealth which is to be welcomed and enjoyed by all… The unity, identity and uniqueness of Christianity over against the other religions… lies in the fact that Christianity is a religion which associates relationship to God with a historical and thus a very specific and therefore limited particularity: Jesus of Nazareth. This is the uniqueness and identity of Christianity, but at the same time its unavoidable historical limitation. It becomes clear here that … the God of Jesus is a symbol of openness, not of closedness. Here Christianity has a positive relationship to other religions, but at the same time its uniqueness is nevertheless maintained, and ultimately at the same time the loyal Christian affirmation of the positive nature of other world religions is honoured.”

Edward Schillebeeckx, Church: The Human Story of God (London: SCM Press, 1990), p.167

Cited in Jacques Dupuis, Toward a Christian Theology of Religious Pluralism.Maryknoll: Orbis, 2001; pp.386-387.

1997: Jacques Dupuis (Catholic, Jesuit theologian) proclaims:

“On what foundation, then, can the affirmation of a religious pluralism ‘of principle,’ or de jure, be made to rest? I did affirm that the faith in a plurality of persons in the one God is in itself no sufficient foundation for religious pluralism…. If, however, religion has its original source in a divine self-manifestation to human beings, as we have shown, the principle of plurality will be made to rest primarily on the superabundant richness and diversity of God’s self-manifestations to humankind. The divine plan for humanity is one, but multifaceted. That God spoke ‘in many and various ways’ before speaking through his son (Heb 1:1) is not incidental; nor is the plural character of God’s self-manifestation merely a thing of the past. For the decisiveness of the Son’s advent in the flesh in Jesus Christ does not cancel the universal presence and action of the Word and the Spirit. Religious pluralism in principle rests on the immensity of a God who is love.”

Jacques Dupuis, Toward a Christian Theology of Religious Pluralism.Maryknoll: Orbis, 2001; p.387. (I quote the edition of 2001, but the book was first published in 1997)

SECTION 3: THE KORAN: SOME KEY TEXTS

THE QURAN IS A SMALL BOOK

In size the text of the Quran is about four-fiths (4/5) that of the New Testament

It consists of114 surahs (or chapters), six thousand ayas (verses),

arranged not chronologically, but rather in terms of length

The Qur’an is not organized chronological nor thematically

The Surahs are arranged in order of decreasing length (the long ones at the beginning

and the short at the end):

Surah 2 (286 verses); Surah 3 (200 verses); Surah 114 (6 verses only).

The words of the Koran came to Muhammad over 23 years through the voice of Angel Gabriel (beginning in 610)

The Koran begins (after the Exordium) with the following words:

“This book is not to be doubted. It is a guide for the righteous,

who have faith in the unseen and are steadfast in prayer…

as for the unbelievers… grievous punishment awaits them.”

SOME KEY TEXTS

1. On Mary (Surah 19)

2. On Women (Surah 2, 4 and 24)

3. On Jesus (Surah 5

4. On God

5. On other religions:

- Jews and Christians

- Idol worshipers (Koran 8 and 9)

6. Moral values: Islamic Decalogue

7. Dietary Laws( Surah 5: 1-20;87-96 and 6:131-151)

8. On Violence, War, Jihad, and Killing

9. On sexuality, Marriage and family life

10. On the afterlife and resurrection of the body.

ON WOMEN

Mary (Surah 19)

1. Polygamy (Qur’an 4:3)

2. Does God permit men beat their wives? Qur’an 4:34

3. Marriage to non-believers (prohibited):

Surah 2, 221 (Surah 2, 220-233: other issues)

4. Marriage and inheritance regulations: Surah 4, 1-22, 34-39

5. Rules concerning Divorce: Surah 2 and Surah 65

6. Rules concerning Adultery, Modesty and Veil: Surah 24, 1-32

Islamic attitude toward Jews, Christians and the “Unbelievers.”

Koran 5:48-49 Koran 2: 257

Koran 8 and 9 (Idolatry, idolaters, infidels, enemies of God)

Koran 2, 190-194: “slay the idolaters”

JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY IN THE KORAN

Surah 19 (on Mary) Surah 10

Surah 4 Surah 8

Surah 9, 1-7 Surah 3, 38-50

Surah 2, 111-121 and 132-137

Surah 5, 44-74 (the people of the book)

VIOLENCE, JIHAD, WAR AND KILLINGS

Koran 2:190-192 Koran 3:157

Koran 4: 95-96 Koran 22: 39-41

Koran 8 and 9: violence against the “infidels” or enemies of God

Non-Violence

Koran 5: 31-32 Koran 5:48-49 Koran 2: 257

On Prayer, Fasting and Alms (including times and places)

Surah 2 Surah 11

Surah 5 Surah 17

Surah 7 Surah 62

Alms: Surah 107 and 9, 53-60.

The Fast: Surah 2, 183-186.

Pilgrimage: Surah 2, 124-130, 196-199; 106.

Islamic concept of Humanity

(Human nature and the problem of Good and Evil)

The Fall of Iblis and the Temptation of Adam:

Surah 2 and Surah 7

Depictions of Human Nature:

Surah 67 Surah 76 Surah 70

The Islamic Concept of God

Allah as Creator of the Heavens and the Earth: Surah 7; 16; 57.

Other characteristics of Allah: Surah 1; 2; 42; 56

· God’s compassion and Mercy are cited 192 times in the Koran,

against 17 references to his wrath and vengeance.

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