Jewish Objections to Christianity by Jay Dyer

This is an article Jay Dyer published in 2010 concerning Jewish objections to Christianity. The original can be found here. 

Jewish Objections to Christianity

-Jay

A little background. I was raised Protestant, as most of you know, and then went Calvinist, and while I was a Calvinist, I was heavily involved in reconstructionist theology, which lays massive stress on biblical Law. This background prepared me for Catholicism, and I converted in 2003. After 4-5 years of Catholicism I became particularly interested in liturgy and Eastern theology, and it’s contrast with Western theology. Immersed heavily in Thomism and then the Eastern Fathers, I focused on apophatic theology and essence – energy, as many of you know. The last two years, I have become particularly interested in race, Hellenism, and the relationship between Judiasm and Christianity, and that ever-presistent issue of the continuity between Old Testament and New Testament.  Indeed, it even seems to me that the reconstructionists seem to have a thing for Jewish-ish penal sanctions, while the Catholics and Orthodox don’t really care for that, but really dig Jewish-ish liturgical ideas. So the last 8 months or so, I’ve read about 10 books on Jewish theology.

But that’s an oversimplification. I already know all about typology, so we can avoid benign responses such as, “well, it’s a type,” and get to the nitty gritty.  I am asking some questions on a bit more difficult level (though that is related). Again, the first thing that became difficult for me was the Cappadocian conceptions of the Trinity as compared with Augustine and Thomas, which seem more sensible, but also don’t seem to be free from all difficulties. And so I list my difficulties, beginning with theology proper (God) and branching out from there.

 

These are posed for discussion purposes. Keep the hate to a minimum, please. It is also posed for the purpose of getting answers.

1. How is there one ontological will in God, while the Persons appear to do separate actions? For example, the Son does actions in His Incarnation the Father doesn’t do. The Spirit likewise. This seems to require separate willings, but will is not hypostatic, it’s a property of nature. This is why Damascene says there is one will and energy in God, inasmuch as there is one God acting.  Nahmanides makes this same objection, I came to find, that occurred to me.  So how is it the three act differently?  Similarly, is generation not an eternal act? If it’s an eternal action, then it must be of nature and of will. But the Nicene Fathers are adamant the Son is not a product of will in any sense. He is of the Father’s nature. But He and the Spirit share that nature, and thus he is auto-generated. But this makes no sense. Similarly, is spiration also an action? If so, it cannot be hypostatic, it must be of nature, but again, nature is common in the Godhead.  Also, if apophatic theology is true, in a hardcore sense, then there can be no Incarnation, since it is not an energy that became Incarnate, but the divine Son, with His divine nature, as Chalcedon says.

2. This leads to the next issue: the Neo-Platonic doctrine of trinity. A proto-trinitarian doctrine was already taught in Hellenism in Proclus, Plotinus, and others, including a kind of version in Philo. It is hard to accept that the Eastern Fathers were not Hellenistic as the Eastern apologists tell us, when they can’t even seem to figure out if God gave sex and human bodies as a *result of the fall. The threefold power clearly has antecedents in Hellenism and Platonism.  Did God really shift from Jewish monotheism to Greek Hellenism to give the true doctrine?   http://www.iep.utm.edu/neoplato/  And if so, then why is it that Hellenism is the great enemy of the Maccabean period? Remember – the Maccabean books are in our canon. It is Philo from whence the Logos idea comes.

3. Judaism always taught iconoclasm. The Law says not to make alliances with paganism and certainly God forbade paganism as part of His acceptable worship. Yet by the time we are into the second century, pagan basilicas have been converted and are now holy. In fact, Maximus the Confessor, Gregory of Nyssa and Pope Benedict recently, even go so far as to say that the Trinity reconciles Jewish monotheism and pagan polytheism (emphasis). How far is this from the declarations that God is God alone, and to destroy pagan altars?

4. The Law. The Law is said to be eternal. This cannot be typologized into some mystical meaning, inasmuch as God Himself even warned against such an approach (Dt. 13, 17, 18).  In fact, God even says that the Law is near you, even unto your hearts, and is not so mystical and impossible as to need to ascend heaven to grasp it. Yet somehow this is a prophecy of the ascension in St. Paul. God promised blessings and cursings based on how the Jews functioned in that covenant.  When they obeyed, they were blessed, and when they failed, they were cursed. How is it this is turned into a situation where God was for thousands of years “tricking” them, intending the Law to be an impossible task (as Peter says it was), when God said it wasn’t impossible, and it was never intended as a means to merit eternal life?

5. The covenant with Israel is said in several places to be eternal. When this is all spiritualized to mean the Church, it becomes a hermeneutical slippery slope, since the cursing passages are not spiritualized, and are only applied to “flesh Israel.” The hermeneutic appears inconsistent and arbitrary.

6. The LXX has flaws and problems and isn’t the original text. Are we to just trust that Origen is right when he says the evil Jews alterred their own prophets? But Origen was a heretic, and Justin Martyr didn’t even get the Trinity right, so is he any better when he makes this same charge against Trypho?

7. How do we participate in divine nature and remain creatures? It’s a mystery. Yet we say it is pantheism when we deify creatures. If the divine nature is simple, then how do we participate in it and remain creatures? we participate in the energies, not the nature. Ok, do we participate in 7 energies, and not 4? 8 and not 3? And for Catholics, what is the difference between supernatural and natural gifts? Which was it the Spirit gave to Bezaleel to design the temple? At what point does a virtue become supernatural and not natural?

8. Did Moses experience the divine radiance? Yes. But the Incarnation had not happened yet. But theosis is supposed to occur only when the Incarnation occurs. If the response is that Moses was deified because it was Christ there, then the Incarnation wasn’t necessary.

9. If the only way eternal life is restored is through the resurrection of Christ, then why do angels have eternal life, since Hebrews says they do not share in redemption? This means God can grant eternal life without a human sacrifice. Indeed, Anselm’s theory of the Atonement is absurd, but the same objections can be applied to a Neo-platonic or patristic idea that death could not be overcome other than by the Incarnation. Why? God has always been immanent and present in the world as all the theophanies show, and if Moses saw the divine radiance, then why does there have to be an Incarnation or a human sacrifice?

10. God commanded the extermination of the Canaanites. This is hard for 90% of Christians to accept, but denying this leads to absurdities. Acceptance of it means that God was racial. No Christian churches really teach race. In fact, most churches actively work to oppose race. But unless humans totally changed in the first century, men are still pretty much acting like they did 3,000 years ago.  90% of Christians feel the bizarre need to “spiritualize” the Canaanite conquest and extermination, or even outright reject that “God.” That would be Marcionism, of course, but acceptance of that God entails a God who told the Jews they could practice slavery as well as enact usury on Gentiles. So all you conspiracy chaps who bitch about the Jewish bankers have to admit they got this from God.  God also condones slavery. Now, God says over and over how just His law is, and if this is so, then slavery and usury must in some sense be just. So also must death for adultery, homosexuality, etc. But the only Christians who will say this are heretics (reconstructionists) and amount to nothing.  It also doesn’t work to say this was all temporary, since mankind still operates pretty much like he did then, and we are told in Dt. 4 that the wisdom of God’s law and it’s justice are a light to all nations. Did God’s social justice vanish in the New Testament?

11. If the Messiah has come, then why has the Church been full of wars, splits, conquests, and evil men, when the Messianic era is said to be one of peace? It’s a spiritual peace, you will say. The nations are supposed to no longer learn war. Do you notice how everything is constantly getting “spiritualized” when it doesn’t appear to match up? But aren’t we in the time of the reality, and not the type? This brings me to the next big one.

12. If we are experiencing the realities in the New Testament, and the Law was the shadow, then why is it we are still in a state of shadow? The Church building and elements are still considered foreshadowings of heaven. Yet, the Temple was already heaven on earth. It was already the ‘real presence’ of God. So it appears we have moved from OT type –> NT type —> heaven. How many heavenly liturgies are there? There’s one in heaven, we know. But on earth there are a thousand different – some shitty, some pretty. If we read Leviticus, it is hard to see how we get from Nadab and Abihu to the Novus Ordo.  It can be responded that this was necessary as the covenant was opened to the Gentiles, but is the situation as dire as Lev. 10? Indeed, as the fathers argue, it’s far worse, since that’s the real presence. Well, if that’s the case, then we should see far more Uzzahs.

13. Why is the book of Esther in the Christian canon? It specifically condones post-Canaanite genocide and conversion to the supposedly “corrupted Babylonian Judaism.”  From a hardliner trad Catholic or Orthodox perspective, it is hard to see why this is in the canon, as well as the Maccabees. However, once again we will see that the justification will be something along the lines of how it is “spiritualized” or “allegorized.” Again the trend – when in doubt, allegorize it.

14. We condemn “Pharisee tradition” but we rely on that tradition in many places, just like Protestants rely on Catholic tradition.

15. It is hard to see why any Jew would have been expected to convert to the Church of the first 2-3 centuries, since it was so full of bizarre and absurd teachings. For example, denying the death penalty was normative, as well as weird views of sexuality. Can you blame any Jew for not joining this group, when they had been warned in the Deuteronomy passages above to have a healthy skepticism about newly rising movements among them?

16. God made man as a man, yet Catholicism and Orthodoxy want men to live like angels. But God reproved the angels who sought to change their habitation. Why should he expect man to become an angel?

17. David, and most of the fathers of the OT of necessity lived most of their lives in mortal sin, if the moral law is a reflection of Gods essence (as in Catholicism). This is because David had numerous wives, and such an action, if presently a mortal sin, must always have been one, since it is a reflection of God’s essence, which cannot change.

–Many more can be listed, but these should generate a good discussion.