Ponder Anew 1!

David R. Larson            Loma Linda, California 

"Crosses in Auschwitz:  Crisis and Turning" in The Continuing Agony:  From the Carmelite Convent To the Crosses at Auschwitz

"Crosses in Auschwitz: Crisis and Turning" by Jacob Neusner is the fifth chapter in this new book. Professor Neusner, one of our time’s most prolific and profound scholars of religion, sent it to me in response to my review on this web site of the revised edition of his A Rabbi Talks with Jesus, published by McGill-University Press in 2000 with a forward by Donald Harman Akenson.

Both because I am learning much from it, and because I feel honored that he sent it to me, I am grateful for Neusner’s chapter. In what follows I indicate my current thoughts and feelings about what it says. I write from the point of a Christian minister just as Neusner writes from the perspective of a Jewish Rabbi.

Because I have not yet been to Auschwitz, I have no first hand knowledge of the place, a spot made holy by the murderous deeds of the unholy. I gather from what Neusner writes, however, that Christian crosses now mark the graves of many Jewish people who were tortured and murdered there. My reactions: incredulity, perplexity, frustration, sorrow and anger.

How can this be? Surely there must be some mistake!

I hope that the error is in my understanding of what Neusner writes, not in how those burial places are memorialized. If the opposite is the case, as seems likely, irrespective of our religious commitments or lack thereof, all of us can surely agree that these crosses should be removed and replaced with symbols that honor the views and values of those whose remains lie beneath them. "So let them plant their crosses at Auschwitz—especially on Christmas," writes Neusner. "we know what the crosses stand for, which is the crucifixion of the Jewish people."

Neusner is right about the offensive symbolism of these crosses, but perhaps too despairing about what can be done about them. If political, religious and legal entreaties have proven ineffective, has the time come to try a media campaign? How about photographs that can be shown on television programs and described on the radio? What about features on programs like "Sixty Minutes"? Why not try some television commercials with well-known Jews and Christians standing or strolling among the crosses while making the case for more honorable monuments? To respect the loyalties of the men, women and children who were tortured and murdered at Auschwitz just because they were Jews is the least that basic decency requires. The very least.

"The fusion of the ethnic, the religious, the cultural and the political, to the Christian [dialogue] partners presents a woeful confusion," Neusner declares. I agree, but not for the reasons he suggests. According to Neusner, one of these reasons is the Christian conviction that, after the destruction of Jerusalem in the first century of our era, Jewish people should have no state until they change their ways and accept Jesus as the Messiah. Although I do not know how widely this doctrine is held among Christians, I believe it is without merit.

Another reason Neusner mentions for what he calls "Christian hostility to the State of Israel" is the difficulty Christians have in understanding the religious relevance of Israel, a secular state. I see this matter differently in two respects. First, it appears to me that too many conservative Protestants in the United States mistakenly view the establishment of State of Israel as the fulfillment of Biblical prophecy. To my way of thinking, this marriage of American Evangelicalism and secular Zionism was not made in heaven. Second, I experience some tension in Neusner’s chapter between his somber assessments of the inseparability in contemporary Poland of being Polish and being Roman Catholic, on the one hand, and his reluctance to distinguish among the ethnic, religious, cultural and political meanings of Israel, on the other hand.

My own attitudes toward the State of Israel are those of perplexity, disappointment and more perplexity. How could an Israeli nation have found a place to call home without displacing those who were already there? That’s my first perplexity. My disappointment centers upon how the State of Israel and the Palestinians are still treating each other. It is difficult for me to understand the continuing establishment of Israeli settlements in Palestinian territory as anything other than an attempt to rob or ruin what little the Palestinians still possess. It is equally difficult for me to understand the actions of the Palestinian terrorists as anything but dreadful denials of Israel’s ethical and legal rights to flourish within its internationally recognized borders. From my point of view, both of these apparent policies lack moral and pragmatic promise. My additional perplexity concerns what can be done now to foster peace and prosperity throughout the region. I do not know.

I hope that Professor Neusner and others like him increasingly will reconsider their hesitancy to distinguish among the ethnic, cultural, religious and political meanings of Israel without separating them, let alone putting them at odds with each other. People like me need a way to support most of these without signing a blank check for all of them, particularly the political. I cannot imagine that Professor Neusner would expect us to approve all the current actions of the State of Israel. That price is too high.  However, please see the postscript at the end of these remarks.

Neusner’s analysis of Jewish and Christian views regarding divine incarnation intrigues me. "For the faithful Jew," he asks, "is the conception of God Incarnate beyond all reason? ridiculous? absurd?" His answer: "Not at all." If I understand it correctly, Neusner’s answer does not mean that a genuine Jew can affirm Jesus of Nazareth as the Messiah, an option that remains open to my way of thinking. His point is that the more general idea of divine incarnation is not alien to Judaism.

Christians usually hold that God can be incarnate in human life, and that in Jesus of Nazareth this took place in a way that makes him the Messiah. Although Neusner rejects the second claim, he accepts the first. What’s more, beginning with Genesis, he marshals evidence from Jewish scripture and tradition that supports his position. "The representation of God Incarnate will not have surprised the authors of a variety of Judaic documents, beginning with the compilers of the Pentateuch," he writes.

I value Neusner’s development of this theme because it eliminates one of the occasions for misunderstanding between Jews and Christians. Some may say that it removes a pebble from the path between the two religions. I think it removes a boulder, a sizable one at that. We Christians sometimes feel frustrated because on occasion the idea that God is incarnate as the Messiah in Jesus of Nazareth cannot even be understood, let alone rejected, because the entire notion of divine incarnation is excluded at the outset. Neusner’s interpretation of Judaism gives Christianity a chance to be heard, something for which I am grateful.

Neusner’s analysis of divine incarnation in Judaism is also beneficial because it helps Jews and Christians pinpoint more precisely their disagreements. We often hear that genuine disagreements are rare and valuable. Neusner enables us to experience a true difference of conviction, not as to whether God can be incarnate, but as to whether God is incarnate as the Messiah in Jesus of Nazareth. This is a genuine disagreement, one that should be respected and treasured by both Jews and Christians.

Neusner’s discussion also helps those of us who are Christians to clarify our own thoughts about what we take to be God’s incarnation in Jesus. This is an area in which it is easy for us to fail in our attempts to articulate what we believe. On the one hand, we are persuaded that there is a sense in which God is incarnate in every life throughout the entire universe as the supreme presence, power and person who nurtures health and healing in all circumstances (Romans 8). If we begin with this conviction, we run the risk of neglecting the uniqueness of God’s incarnation in Jesus. On the other hand, we also hold that God is incarnate in Jesus as no where else (John 1). If we begin with this belief, we run the risk of neglecting the incarnation of God in every moment of every life, thereby making God’s incarnation in Jesus appear like an inexplicable oddity. Which risk should we take?

Neusner’s survey of Judaism’s relevant literature confirms the conviction that we Christians should begin by establishing, as well as we can, that incarnation is God’s primary way of relating to the whole universe and to all its citizens, human and non-human alike. This is step one.

Step two, the one that too often may be skipped, is the claim that the way in which God is incarnate in every life varies. That God was incarnate in the life of Prophet Amos, in the lives of the sheep he tended, and in the lives of the sycamore trees he dressed is agreed; specifically how God was incarnate in all three differed qualitatively, however.

These differences occur within as well as between different types of living organisms. That God was incarnate in the lives of both Prophet Samuel and King David is again agreed; nevertheless, how this was so differed according to their different histories, circumstances, opportunities, roles, responsibilities and divinely intended vocations. Again, such differences are qualitative, not merely quantitative.

We can move to step three only after we have successfully completed steps one and two. This is the claim that God is uniquely incarnate as the Messiah in Jesus of Nazareth. Christians usually agree that in some sense God was incarnate in the lives of both John the Baptist and Jesus of Nazareth, for instance; however, in the first case the divinely intended result was the forerunner of the Messiah, in the second it was the Messiah himself. 

Thus, there is a sense in which God’s incarnation in Jesus is continuous with God’s incarnation in all living things. Yet there is another sense in which God is incarnate in Jesus in an incomparable way. Because in God's Incarnation, as Neusner calls it, the general is always specific, and the specific is always general, these two senses are congruent even though they are qualitatively diverse.

I presume that Neusner can take steps one and two. I accept that he cannot and will not take step three, and I understand at least some of the reasons why. My purpose is not to try to persuade him to do so, but to demonstrate how his understanding of the notion God's Incarnation in Judaism makes a positive contribution to a Christian understanding of divine incarnation as the Messiah in Jesus of Nazareth. Thank you, Professor Neusner!

Neusner contends that Judaism, Christianity and Islam need to develop more adequate theological understandings of each other. When one considers how much these movements have in common, beginning with their worship of the same God, and yet how much needless suffering and death they cause each other, it is clear that he is right. 

As evidenced by the efforts of scholars like Krister Stendahl, Clark Williamson and Paul M. Van Buren, however, Christianity is making at least some contributions in this area. Also, although I do not know about them, this is probably the case in Judaism and Islam as well. Nevertheless, we can hardly doubt that much remains to be done.

I wince at some of the things Neusner reports Christian leaders saying. He quotes Karl Ludwig Schmidt declaring in Germany on January 14, 1933 that "God has willed all this; Jesus the Messiah rejected by his people, prophesied the destruction of Jerusalem. Jerusalem has been destroyed, so that it will never again come under Jewish rule." Schmidt also offered "brotherhood" to the Jews "but only as sons of a Germany united through the Christian conception of the Church as the spiritual Israel." 

Neusner also reports that in 1966 at Harvard Divinity School he heard Wolfhart Pannenberg declare that the only question worth discussing in this regard is why the Jews still do not accept Jesus as the Messiah. He also cites Pannenberg writing, "With the message of the resurrection…the foundations of the Jewish religion collapsed."

Neusner identifies the core of the issue when he writes that "Christianity may concede that we retain our covenanted relationship with God, but it cannot then admit that converts to Judaism have taken the right route to salvation. So all that Christianity concedes is that Judaism is all right for Jews, a concession to be sure, but not of vast consequence." Taken literally and applied universally, however, it is truly impossible for Christianity, or any other religion, to grant that converts to Judaism take the right path to salvation because to do so would be to discredit its own legitimacy and efficacy.

The context of Neusner’s comment convinces me that he did not intend to set up a win/lose dilemma of this sort. Let us therefore reword his question without forfeiting its force: Can Christianity concede that a convert to Judaism takes a right path to salvation? Let us also reverse this question’s direction: Can Judaism concede that a convert to Christianity takes a right route to salvation? Let us include Islam as well: Can it concede that a convert to Judaism or Christianity takes a right route to salvation?

My view is that it is not possible to answer these questions in satisfactory ways apart from Jewish, Christian and Islamic theologies of all the religions, not just these three. Exclusivism is unconvincing. But so is inclusivism, at least the kind that depicts religions so abstractly that important differences among them fade from view, as in the writings of John Hick. 

It seems more promising to begin with Neusner’s account of divine incarnation in Jewish thought and with the declarations of Paul of Tarsus to some philosophers at Athens that "God is not far from each one of us," that God is the One in whom we "live and move and have our being." (Acts 17)

This starting place enables and encourages us to acknowledge with joy and gladness that God fosters health and healing in all religions, in all of life, in ways that take into account the unique achievements and opportunities of each individual and group. Does God have a continuing covenant with Israel? Yes! Yet God also has other covenants with other people that are as significant for them as is God’s continuing covenant with Israel. 

Perhaps Prophet Amos had something like this in mind when he declared, "Are you not like the Ethiopians to me, O people of Israel? says the Lord. Did I not bring Israel up from the land of Egypt, and the Philistines from Caphtor and the Arameans from Kir?" (Amos 9). As I understand him, Amos does not deny God’s covenant with Israel. He affirms God's covenants with other people too.  Some approach along these lines strikes me as the way forward.

If this is so, the question before us is not whether to participate in the life of the covenanted community, but rather in which one to situate oneself. Although there are Scriptural and other serious matters to weigh very carefully, any answer to this question is inescapably complex and intensely personal. 

Much depends upon specific circumstances, particularly upon the integrity and vitality of the covenanted communities that are actually available at some time and place. Painful though it can be, affirming the legitimacy and efficacy of a convert’s move from one covenanted community to another is something we must all be prepared to do, however. Thankfully, this is not the end of the story.

Perhaps I can suggest how the story might continue by acknowledging that, even though I have never met him, and even though he is a Jew and I am a Christian, I experience considerable admiration for Jacob Neusner and his scholarship. His writings seem to honor the New Testament’s invitation to "speak the truth in love." As an author he takes seriously both his religion and those of his readers. He understands that here and now the issues we are discussing are matters of life and death. At least in the publications that I have read, he writes with appropriate gravity without allowing himself to become morose. From this great distance he appears to be a "fellow traveler," better yet a "pathfinder."

From an apocalyptic point of view, this is not entirely surprising. Realignment across traditional boundaries is one of the things apocalyptic literature teaches us to expect. This literature depicts powerful struggles between the forces of good and the forces of evil that color the whole of life. Nevertheless, as the judgment scene in Matthew 25 suggests, customary ways of looking at things are not always reliable indicators of who is on what side. In that apocalyptic scenario, some thought to be sheep turn out to be goats and vice versa! 

The Apocalyptic scene in Matthew 25 does not envision massive numbers of conversions in any direction, though other portions of Scripture do.  This passages suggests that, despite their remaining and important religious differences, at the more basic level of ethical practice some people will come to have more in common than they now realize. This prompts me to suppose that Jews and Christians who are learning to live together can enjoy increasingly satisfying forms of mutual understanding and mutual support without necessarily leaving their respective communities of faith.

Despite all their remaining and important religious differences, which they should respect and value, at least some Jews and some Christians, along with some from other communities of faith, perhaps a literal "remnant," eventually may even discover that at the more basic level of ethical practice they have more in common with each other than they do with some members of their own synagogues, churches or temples. No one can guarantee that this will happen. But if it does, those whose anticipations are informed by apocalyptic literature need not be surprised!

Postscript:  June 30, 2002

After reading these remarks, Professor Neusner graciously directed my attention to a book he published almost a decade ago:  Telling Tales:  Making Sense of Christian and Judaic Nonsense:  The Urgency and Basis for Judeo-Christian Dialogue.  Forward by Martin E. Marty (Westminster/John Knox Press:  1993.  vi + 170 pages).  In it he answers my question in the following helpful way (158):

"In this context it is demeaning to say that I do not confuse religious dialogue with political expediency.  I make no claim that for the sake of dialogue, the Christian partner must then approve every decision of the most current Israeli government.  Religious dialogue on religious concerns, defined in a mutually comprehensive sense of the word 'religious,' surely is to be attained.  But I do think  that Christians who hold Israel, the state, to that higher, and unattainable, standard or condemn the state of Israel in vile and hateful language--looking for every chance to compare Israeli policy to German National Socialist policy or to invoke 'the Holocaust' in criticizing Israeli actions--have no place in dialogue with self-respecting Jews.  These people are little more than anti-Semites."

For a review of this entire book, please click here.