Winter 1984 - 1985 - Quarterly Review

JEWISH "NO" AND CHRISTIAN "YES"
been a source of renewal of the church in Germany, although the
relationship with the official, largely bureaucratic church structure is
rather tense. One of the significant things in this working group was
that Christians with the help of a small number of the Jews who had
remained in Germany, or settled here after the War, became engaged
in serious efforts to come to grips with the terrible recent past in the
relations between Christians and Jews. Christians confronted
themselves with this past not in isolation, alone with their guilt, but
face-to-face with Jewish dialogue partners who helped them to face
this past and thus to set foot on the way to a new future. Christians
engaged in this process have experienced this as liberation and as
inspiration for new Christian thinking. On the Catholic side in
Germany a similar process has taken place in the lay movement led by
the Central Committee of German Catholics, which organizes the
so-called Katholikentag, an event similar to the Protestant Kirchentag.
As a result of this Christian-Jewish dialogue against the background of
a horrible past, creative theological thinking has taken place on the
Christian side, which took its point of departure in the reflection on
the relation between the church and the Jewish people but also
affected other areas of theology. It became very clear that by dealing
with Christian-Jewish relations one had to deal with the foundations
of the Christian faith.
Others received the opportunity to get acquainted with the research
on Jewish tradition and history in the State of Israel, where Jewish
scholars could examine the past of the Jewish people, especially those
crucial centuries of the Second Temple period, at the end of which
Christianity emerged, with far less apologetics and defensiveness
than was the case in the Diaspora. Christians who had the chance to
study at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and other universities in
Israel became deeply impressed by this scholarship, which had a great
impact on their theological thinking.
I am writing this essay as one of those Christians: for thirteen years,
from 1967 to 1980, I lived in Jerusalem as representative of the
Netherlands Reformed Church especially assigned for Christian-
Jewish relations. Since 1980, when I was appointed General Secretary
of the International Council of Christians and Jews which has its seat
in the former residence of Martin Buber in Heppenheim in West
Germany, I have come in close contact with the before-mentioned
circles in Germany which with the help of Jewish friends engaged in
serious re-examination of their Christian thinking. In this essay I put
into words my own Christian thinking as it has been influenced by
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