I feel like this book is promoting several agendas of the UMJC:
(1) promoting the teaching known as "unrecognized mediation" which essentially states that Yeshua saves Jews whether they like it or not by indwelling them and mediating for them despite the fact that they do not recognize Yeshua as Messiah;
(2) positioning itself as the official, representative institution of Messianic Judaism;
(3) using Vatican II's declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions (Nostra Aetate), which hinted at a link between the Church and the "stock of Abraham",-as leverage to promote to Catholics an Israel-Christology ("unrecognized mediation") which then leads to an Israel-Ecclesiology ("bilateral ecclesiology").
I only spent 5 minutes glancing through the book but came across these sections that explain how unrecognized mediation should inform christology and ecclesiology:
"...Israel-Christology [that] entails a relationship of mutual-indwelling. Just as Jesus dwells among his disciples and they also dwell in him (John 14:20; 15:4-5), so Jesus dwells among the Jewish people and also carries them in himself. Jesus guides and cares for his family as a mediator of divine blessing whose identity remains hidden from them, like that of Joseph providing for his brothers. Embodying genealogical-Israel in his own person, Jesus represents his kin before God and before his gentile disciples."And:
"In the early chapters of this book we presented a form of Israel-Christology that undergirds Israel-ecclesiology while at the same time upholding the irrevocable election of genealogical Israel. The adoption of such an Israel-Christology would better enable the ecclesia to discover her spiritual bond with the Jewish people by probing the depths of her own mystery. In these last two chapters we have considered how that Israel-Christology can also underird an ecclesial-Israelology. This view of genealogical-Israel upholds the enduring theological significance of Jewish religious life and lays a spiritual foundation for the Jewish people to discover its bond to the ecclesia through the resurrected Jew, Jesus the Messiah, who dwells unrecognized in its midst..."Sounds pretty nice, right? It's downright poetic. Only one problem though. Paul seemed to be under the distinct impression that the Jewish People could not be saved unless they heard and ACCEPTED the Gospel message (LINK).
Does it bother anyone else that this guy is representing Messianic Judaism to the Catholic world?
Since most Christians in the world are Catholic and Catholicism represents majority of Christianity, he is going to the core, makes sense. The only issue is in teaching these Christians that despite Judaism denying Yeshua, doesn't matter.
ReplyDeleteIn the excerpts available in this book, Kinzer recognizes that most of the Messianic Jewish world has been affected by Protestant theology, but that he himself is more affected by Catholic theology. Even with a great deal of diversity in Protestantism, and with some problems to be sure--this is disturbing, to say the least.
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