Jews and Christians Together. A. Christian van Gorder

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ in intentional choices that make each of us responsible for our own actions and choices. Because individuals are made in God’s image, they brim with the potential for loving acts of kindness (gemilut chasadim [גמילות חסדים]). Any moral act imitates God’s righteous behavior. Just as God covered Adam and Eve after their sin in the Garden of Eden, so should we graciously clothe those who sin with a heart of acceptance and forgiveness. In contrast, some Christians claim that we can do no acts to please God until our basic sin-nature is transformed by Christ.

      The two most familiar Hebrew words used to describe what some conservative Christians call “sin” in the Bible are the terms chet (חטא) and avon (עון). The first term speaks of a mistake (Exod 34:7); the second term might better be translated as a “transgression.” Such actions affect our relationship with God and bring dishonor to the divine name.

      Obviously, both faiths recognize that evil exists in our world filled with suffering and woe. A traditional Jewish view that humanity is inherently good, however, provides a safeguard against any claim that God is responsible for human evil. God has given all of us free moral agency and a mission in life to be moral and every moment of life offers one the opportunity to practice tikkun olam (תקון עולם)—repairing the world—and to fulfill the mission of being “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (mamlechet kohanim v’goy kadosh [ממלכת כהנים וגוי קדוש]; Exod 19:6).

      Judaism’s ritual calendar reinforces the need to repent for past mistakes and strives to be virtuous in words and actions. Whenever a person repents (teshuvah [תשובה]), they are seeking, in a life-long process, to enter God’s “gates of repentance,” which are always open to those who are sincere and open-hearted. Repentance for mistakes and moral sins is at the heart of the commemoration of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. Worshippers ask a God of grace and mercy to forgive them from misdeeds (avon), for deliberate acts of rebellion (pesha [פשע], literally a “crime”), and for mistakes that may have been inadvertent (chet [חטא]).

      The experience of forgiveness is also different based on the nature of a specific sin. For those sins that are bein adam l’makom (בין אדם למקום)—“between humans and God”—, such as ritual transgressions or omissions, a person prays directly to God. For sins that are bein adam l’chaveiro (בין אדם לחברו)—“between fellow humans”—however, (such as gossip, theft, etc.), the tradition is that Jews should directly entreat those they have offended before they can proceed to God in worship.

      In Judaism, individual sins are usually framed within a communal context of a shared responsibility. The prophets Amos, Hosea, and Isaiah speak of the rottenness of sin in a communitarian sense (see Hos 5:1; Isa 1:15). God judged the entire people of Israel for individual acts of transgression. Such a view dramatically affects any ideas about the role of the Levitical priesthood and teachings about national atonement through sacrifice. Yet, the Bible does not create an artificial barrier between “sin” and “sinners.” Nor is it accurate, as one conservative Christian claimed, that “traditional Judaism has lost” an “essential insight” into the true “sinfulness of sin.”51 The view that sin is both individual and corporate has been consistent throughout Jewish theological interpretation. Professor Jacob Neusner teaches: “Corporate Israel forms a whole that exceeds the sum of its parts. The parts, the individuals, attain individuation only on the terms dictated by the whole, all Israel viewed from God’s perspective.”52

      The entire world waits for God’s saving work of redemption (Isa 11:6–11; Hab 2:14). This is also a New Testament theme (see Rom 8:18–25; Eph 1:9–11) that is often de-emphasized by those who stress the individual nature of the sinner before God Almighty. The New Testament passages that affirm these ideas borrow heavily from Genesis 3. It is not accurate, however, for Christians to dismiss the communal dimension of Jewish views about sin as a mere “typological understanding.”53

      A Jewish response to those who embrace the concept of original sin as the basis for thinking about interactions between God and humanity is that such a view puts an undue focus on sin instead of ethical and moral obligations to honor God through right living. It must be stressed, however, that those Christians who fixate on sin at the expense of ethical obligation contrast noticeably with other Christians (such as Orthodox and Anabaptist Christians) who note that the Bible says that death—and not sin—was the universal result of Adam’s action (Rom 5:12). This is not a minor distinction. Indeed, the inevitability of our death, according to Orthodoxy, is the reason why people ultimately fall into sin in the first place. Most Evangelicals would agree with Michael Lotker: “Jesus came to solve a singular problem in a singular way. The problem was original sin.”54 This idea also explains, understandably, why Catholicism puts an emphasis on infant baptism. The Catholic tradition sees baptism as essential to the cleansing of sins before God (Rom 6:3–11), and if all children are born affected by original sin then it needs dealing with through baptism. All camps of Christians agree that after we are forgiven of our sins, a person should continue to seek forgiveness for their mistakes (see Matt 5:23–25; Deut 30:1-3). All forgiveness is ultimately rooted in Christ, who offers forgiveness to anyone, even a tax-collector willing to give everything away (see Luke 19:1–10) or a woman caught amid her sin (John 8:1–11).

      I (Fuller) have taught that the Jewish tradition considers all sins to be actions, not simply thoughts or ideas. Of course, people often act on malicious thoughts, but many conservative Christians go one step further and claim that such thoughts confirm that people are evil at the core of their identity. An exploration of these distinctions can generate constructive discussions between Jews and Christians about basic ideas regarding human nature. Some conservative Christians, for example, look to the anguished statement attributed to King David: “In sin did my mother conceive me” (Ps 51:7) to show that the Bible reveals our inherent sin nature. Jewish commentators, in contrast, often reduce this passage to simply being a declaration of frustration on the part of David and not a general statement about the basic condition of human nature.

      A Jewish Satan?

      Aside from the biblical book of Job, Jewish legends are largely bereft of a “Satan” figure who represents an oppositional power to God. The heavens are not filled with two competing supernatural rivals. Instead of locating evil in a separate satanic being, each person has the capacity within themselves to be either good or evil (see Gen 6:5). A mythological Satan does appear in Jewish legends but he does not have supernatural powers. In the book of Job, “The Satan” (literally, The Adversary) is presented as a being who is a prosecutor and an accuser, whose task was to test those who challenged God. Christian mythology, in contrast, sees a Satan figure in the Garden of Eden story in the form of a conniving serpent who misleads our first ancestors into sin. Jewish renderings of this serpent show a being that has been made by God and sent to Eden to tempt humanity to rebel against the commands of God and not specifically a rebellious fallen angel named Satan.

      There is a story in Genesis (6:1–4) in which it states that the “sons of God” had sexual relations with some of the women of the earth. Some rabbis have concluded that this passage refers to “fallen angels” forced to leave the heavenly realms because of carnal instincts. Over time, both Jewish and Christian scholars began to speak more of a Satan who had once been an archangel, but now has the function of tempting people in the world to be disobedient in rebellion to God. Legends in Aggadic writings (and a few times in Halachic writings) spoke of an evil fallen angel who had many underlings, or demons, which did his evil bidding. This creature was said to live in the underworld and cause harm to people who succumbed to various temptations.

      This angel of death may well have had more connection with medieval Christian notions of Satan than to historic Jewish teachings. Some scholars have noted that the biblical word satan simply means “adversary” (1 Sam 29:4; 2 Sam 19:23) and that it is possible that God has created Satan to test us as an adversary for our souls. The Bible, some note, also speaks of an angel who is sent by God to obstruct the travels of the prophet Balaam (Num 22:32). Later Jewish literature СКАЧАТЬ