The Grey Book: A collection of protests against anti-semitism and the persecution of Jews issued by non-Roman Catholic churches and church leaders during Hitlers rule — John Shaqi
The Grey Book: A collection of protests against anti-semitism and the persecution of Jews issued by non-Roman Catholic churches and church leaders during Hitlers ruleSnoek, Johan M.
Religion
The Grey Book: A collection of protests against anti-semitism and the persecution of Jews issued by non-Roman Catholic churches and church leaders during Hitlers rule
Snoek, Johan M.
Antisemitism; Christianity and other religions -- Judaism; Judaism -- Relations -- Christianity; Protestant churches -- Europe
It was applied to social life by various Church Synods (such as Elvira in 306,
Clermont in 535, Orleans in 538, the Lateran Councils of 1179 and 1215) with
their succession of repressive measures and harassments directed against the
Jews. It culminated under the influence of blood libels in the late Middle
Ages (Andreas of Ryn p. 1462, Simon of Trient 1475) [29], and in Modern
Times (Tisza-Esslar, Korfu, Xanten, Polna, Konitz) - down to the days of
the Third Reich. By using the very pattern of a Collective Guilt, the
Christian projected on to the Jew the frailties common to all human beings.
This mechanism enabled the Christian to see his own weakness reflected in
the Jew so that by persecuting the Jew, moreover by exterminating him, the
Christian could obliterate his own image as a sinner, and cleanse his
conscience from the burden of guilt.
These patterns of thought and conduct, these models of generalization,
projection and prejudice that originally were established by Christianity
with respect to the Jews - to what extent were they now employed by the
Nazi regime against Humanity, as well as against the Church itself
whenever the racial antisemites attacked its ethical Judaic basis?
<XIX>
B. The second group of questions concerns the problems as to whether the
survival of the Jews on the one hand, and their ultimate Christianization
on the other, are both indispensable to Christianity.
Since the promise made to the Jews in the Old Testament (Gen. 22 .18;
II Sam. 7. 12; Isaiah 7.14), will be fulfilled or perhaps superseded by
those of the New Testament (Rom. 9-11) when the Jews return in penitence
and acknowledge Jesus as the Messiah, it seems that the Christian concern
for the fate of the Jews, even in the days of the holocaust, is unavoidably
accompanied by an interest in his salvation. Alas, his salvation is
conceived by the Christian in terms that are unacceptable for the Jew as
long as he wishes to adhere to Judaism as a religion, a people and an
unfulfilled eschatology.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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