Winter 1984 - 1985 - Quarterly Review

QUARTERLY REVIEW, WINTER 1984
these experiences in Jerusalem and Germany. It is an individual
crystallization of insights which I received in those years.
Is Christianity in essence anti-Jewish, as maintained by the New
Testament scholar, Gerhard Kittel, editor of the Theological Dictionary
of the New Testament? Kittel, who was a member of Hitler's Nazi party,
wrote that the New Testament was the "most anti-Jewish book in the
whole world." 6
From a diametrically opposite point of view, that of a
sharp critic of the long anti-Jewish history of the church, the American
theologian Rosemary Ruether seems to share this thesis in writing
that anti-Judaism is the left hand of christology. If this is so, can one,
after the Holocaust, remain a Christian in good conscience? And
when one sees the age-long Christian anti-Judaism against the
background of the other records of oppression and persecution in
Christian hstory, e.g., of heretics, of women, of colonized nations,
and of people of different skin color, the question of the intrinsic
moral quality of Christian thinking poses itself: Is Christian thinking
in its very essence authoritarian, absolutistic, and exclusive? And to
the extent that this is so, can that have to do with the origin of
Christianity as a messianic movement that announced that the end of
history had come and claimed to bring the ultimate solution to the
problems inherent in the human condition? An East German writer of
Jewish descent, Stefan Heym, said in his opening address to the 1982
annual convention of the International Council of Christians and Jews
in Berlin:
It seems that whenever the proponents of a doctrine promising
salvation fail to deliver the goods within a reasonable space of time,
they tend to create a rigid hierarchy and impose on their followers
the discipline of rules and dogma in order to keep them in line; and
woe to those who dare deviate from the ordained philosophy and its
officially approved commentaries. 7
He started his address with the words: "In the beginning there was
this false hope," referring to the early Christians awaiting Jesus' fina}
return in their lifetime, expecting the kingdom of Christ to be just
around the corner.
Is Kittel after all right in saying that there are no more irreconcilable
opponents in the world than real Judaism and real Christianity? If I
honestly face the fact that the Jewish people and Judaism consciously
decided not to accept Jesus as the one the church confessed him to be,
can I then as a Christian, i.e., from the depth of my faith-commitment
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