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The Bridge, edited by John M. Oesterreicher
- Abstract
Traditionally the Christian Church has had an ambivalent attitude towards Judaism. On the one hand, the Jews were the people who, being singled out by grace to have the Messiah born into their midst, were yet so blind as to reject him. On the other hand, the Jews were, after all, the Chosen People, the descendants, if only in the flesh, of that Israel to whom the Sinaitic Covenant had been vouchsafed, custodians of the Law which is accepted by the Church as “the schoolmaster leading unto Christ.” Hence the special position of the Jews in the divine scheme of things could not be gainsaid-at any rate, not as long as Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection were understood as the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies. The day would surely come when the eyes of the unbelieving Jew would be opened, and when, at long last accepting their true Messiah, the Israel of the flesh would again become part of the Israel of the spirit. The Jews are, in the words of one of the contributors to this volume, the Christians’ “elder brother,” and they must be treated with “the deference due pioneers, believers whose very downfall stems from zeal.”
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