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Entry: Is There Conservatism Beyond Christianity? (or how to book a mental vacation in Athens or Valhalla) Link: http://www.takimag.com/site/article/is_there_conservatism_beyond_christianity_or_how_to_book_a_mental_vacation#23189 Post contents: <i>there is a certain essential antagonism, not necessarily between Jews and Christians as people, but between their religions, since it is one of Christianity’s most fundamental claims that Judaism is now obsolete.</i> – craig Nope. Because Protestantism is the laudatory subject, let’s be Protestant, turn to The Bible, and see if there is a “fundamental claim” of an “essential antagonism” between the two faiths, or any sense that Judaism is “obsolete”. 1. Certainly not in Matthew, whose “fundamental claim” is that Christianity is simply <b>fulfilled Judaism</b>, or “radical” Judaism in the literal sense: going to Judaism’s root. “Not one iota” of the Torah will be changed (5:17-20). Our Lord, in good Rabbinical form, strengthens the Commandments (5:21-37), e.g., the Commandment against adultery by forbidding divorce, and to protect the Commandment on the The Name not being taken in vain by forbidding an oath. To do good on the Sabbath is to return to the original idea of the Commandment about the Sabbath: not a religious observance but simple that folks deserve a day off. The Sermon on the Mount is really a Rabbinical treatise; it could fit nicely in the Mishnah. Matthew take Isaiah literally (Isaiah 2:1-4), the pagan astrologers coming to worship the Lord (Matthew 2: 1-12). 2. Nor in John, whose “fundamental claim” is that Christianity is simply <b>transfigured Judaism</b>. Our Lord is always at a Jewish feast in John’s gospel, a feast the meaning of which He deepens and transfigures. 3. Nor Paul, who gives us the ultimate model of Jewish-Christian relations in Romans chap 9-11, what I would call an <b>“incorporation”</b> theology. The ultimate view here is hardly one of antagonism. What is more, for Paul the difference is only on how one “gets in” to the Covenant Community (circumcision vs baptism), not on how one “stays in” (keeping the Torah and the Noahite Covenant with gentiles), as the New Perspectives on Paul school rightly teaches. 4. That James and the authors of Hebrews and Revelation are Judeophilic hardly needs mentioning. 5. That leaves the former God-Fearer and Greek gentile, St. Luke. Luke does indeed have a <b>“replacement”</b> theology, yet even he assume a vast knowledge of the “scriptures”, which for the early church was the Torah, the Prophets, and The Writings (i.e. the “Old” Testament). (Mark doesn’t have time for this theologizing, he writing urgently to a Church under fire – as is the Church today) As for a “fundamental claim”, these writers are certainly the most fundamental, and are especially fundamental for Protestants. There is no “essential” antagonism between Christianity and Judaism in the minds of these sacred writers, nor do they consider Judaism “obsolete”, instead they developing Judaism as fulfilled, transfigured, incorporated, or as an essential heremeutic basis for the Christian faith. Indeed, it is the very “Old” Testament that is the glasses one must but on to read the New (Luke 24:27, 45-47; see also how Peter’s sermon in Act 2 is utterly Old Testament based). And Our Lord’s moral theology is simple an endorsement and elaboration of the Old Testament’s. That certain small minds – who can’t or won’t read – have made for antagonism between the faiths is a sad fact. Mr. Craig says that he abjures <i>The Protocols of the Elders of Zion</i>, and I am glad that he has done so. Does he then turn around and argue for one of its central concepts, that of a putative Jewish conspiracy? I pray not. Sent at: 2008 09 06