Weren't We Just Talking About Religion?
In this morning's New York Times, I rather serendipitously found this article about a document issued jointly by a group of American rabbis and Roman Catholic bishops called "'Reflections on Covenant and Mission,' a document in which the bishops disavowed attempts to convert Jews to Christianity," or "put another way, your road to salvation is as as good as mine." The reactions of some Catholics and other Christians has been predictably foolish:
Jim Sibley, the coordinator of Jewish Ministries for the Southern Baptist Convention, the nation's second-largest Christian religious organization, after the Catholic Church, said that to deny Jews access to evangelization was theological discrimination. "There can be no more extreme form of anti-Semitism," he said...
In turn, "asking Christians to abandon evangelism, even for a single ethnic group, is akin to asking Jews to eat ham and cheese sandwiches," Mr. Sibley said.
Catholic critics weighed in, too. The Catholic News Service quoted comments from the Rev. John Echert, who teaches scripture at St. Thomas Seminary in St. Paul, Minn., calling the document an embarrassment that lacks teaching authority, and even near-apostasy.
But in the end, this is the sort of destabilizing theological movement that leads to religious evolution:
"There's a powerful inconsistency in Catholic theology at this moment," said James Carroll, a former priest and author of "Constantine's Sword: The Church and the Jews." Even as the church affirms that the covenant between Jews and God is valid, it also declares that Jesus is the only mediator between people and God, he said.
Sure enough, a sentence from "Reflections" reflects that ambiguity: "While the Catholic Church regards the saving act of Christ as central to the process of human salvation for all, it also acknowledges that Jews already dwell in a saving covenant with God."
The contradiction does not trouble Mr. Carroll. "This is the way theological change takes place," he said.
What is most significant about the conversion document, he said, "is that it is yet another step away from "triumphalist claims to Jesus as the only way to God."
And that, he said, bodes well for church relations with other believers as well.
This is fascinating stuff to me. Interestingly, the Abrahamic religion most amenable to this sort of ecumenicalism is Islam. The Quran explicitly states in a number of places that pious Jews and Christians following the laws of their respective religions will be accepted into heaven on the same basis as pious Muslims. But that's not something we hear much about just now.
10:45:22 AM 
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