Winter 1984 - 1985 - Quarterly Review

JEWISH "NO" AND CHRISTIAN "YES"
messianic age had arrived and that they were a community standing
at the consummation of history and that the kingdom of God was just
around the corner. A part of the early Christian community believed
that in the light of the approaching divine revolution new rules were
required with regard to the Gentiles. Now in order for the Gentiles to
join the covenant of God with Israel and thus enter the world to come
(as a rabbinic saying has it: the whole of Israel has a share in the world
to come) and be saved from the Last Judgment, it was no longer
necessary to join the covenant of Sinai involving circumcision and the
observance of the "613 commandments" of the Torah, but they could
enter the covenant with the God of Israel through incorporation into
the "body of Christ" and in this way get a share in the world to come.
This understanding of the Resurrection as the eschatological act of
God bringing about the new order of justice, peace, and joy led the
disciples of Jesus to call him "messiah." The majority of the Jewish
community, however, did not perceive that what had happened to
Jesus was the decisive turning point in history and did not share the
conclusions drawn from it by the early Christian community, nor
were they convinced that Jesus was the messiah, since in no way was
the new order coming about.
Now after 1950 years the plain fact is that the divine revolution on
which the early Christian community counted has not materialized.
The church had to abandon the thought that it stood at the end of
history. It continued to live within history, but by doing so it claimed
to continue the history of Israel, to replace the Jewish people as God's
people and to be the "true" or the "new" Israel. Jesus, now
designated with the name "messiah," remained the central figure of
this community, but no longer as the eschatological figure who fulfills
the Torah, but as the normative figure who replaces the Torah, so that
the Torah was no longer the norm, but Jesus Christ became the norm
of thought and action. Although the church maintains that Jesus has
fulfilled the Torah, in reality the Torah remains unfulfilled, because
the new world order of doing justice, loving kindness, and being
humble in going with God has not yet come to humanity.
At this point we meet the Jewish "no" to the claims made by the
church for Jesus. As Friedrich-Wilhelm Marquardt has pointed out,
this Jewish "no" is an expression of Jewish faithfulness to the Torah,
to its God-given calling. This is the dignity of the Jewish "no" to Jesus.
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