Christianity has been marked by hostility toward Jews. I won’t rehearse the history. I’ll simply propose a thesis: Christian animus toward Jews across the centuries arises in large part out of a rarely acknowledged but deeply felt spiritual distress. If those chosen by God in Abraham and commissioned as his people at Sinai reject Jesus, then isn’t their rejection evidence that claims about Jesus as the Messiah are false? If the people immersed in the Old Testament don’t recognize Jesus as its fulfillment, doesn’t that suggest that Christians are mistaken? The enduring reality of Jewish unbelief can easily seem to undermine the credibility of the cross, instilling in those who confess Jesus as Lord the terrible suspicion that God’s word has returned empty.
The scandal of Jewish unbelief has gnawed at Christianity from the beginning. St. Paul addresses this issue in an extended meditation in his Letter to the Romans, chapters 9 through 11. His reasoning is complex and speculative.
Paul begins on a personal note. He expresses “great sorrow and unceasing anguish” over the failure of the gospel to convince “my brethren, my kinsmen by race.” Paul’s anguish does not arise from ethnic loyalty. He has a profound theological reason to feel sorrow. His kinsmen are Israelites, and the Scriptures are clear: “To them belong the sonship, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises, to them belong the patriarchs, and of their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ.” Plainly, the unbelief of the children of Abraham runs counter to expectations. It is as if God himself had run into a roadblock.
Paul pivots to reassure his readers, and perhaps himself: “But it is not as though the word of God has failed.” He goes on to formulate a definition of the Israelites to whom belong the sonship and the glory and the covenant. Paul distinguishes between “children of the flesh” and “children of the promise.” The patriarch Isaac has two sons, one who inherits the promises, and another who does not. From this biblical episode, Paul derives the conclusion that God is not bound to rules of blood. He can have mercy on some and not on others, all in accord with his own purposes.
But why? Is God arbitrary? Paul chastises us for raising the question. It is presumptuous to second-guess God’s decisions! But he immediately shifts gears, seeking to answer these questions with speculation about God’s purpose. He searches the Scriptures, fixing on the episode in Exodus in which God hardens Pharaoh’s heart. The analogy seems apt. Pharaoh was unable to recognize Moses as God’s emissary, just as Jewish hearts in Paul’s day were hardened against the gospel. And why did God plunge Pharaoh into spiritual blindness? So that he could show his loving kindness by orchestrating the liberation of the Israelites: Great is the affliction; greater still is the deliverance.
To use Paul’s words: “What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience the vessels of wrath made for destruction, in order to make known the riches of his glory for the vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory?” If this is the biblical pattern, then Jewish unbelief plays a divinely appointed role, as did Pharaoh’s hardened heart.
Paul proceeds to explain the nature of Jewish unbelief, and he documents its prediction in various prophecies. He also cites Hosea: “Those who were not my people I will call ‘my people,’” a prophecy that is taken to foretell the emergence of the Gentile-dominated Church.
Pharaoh is an entirely negative figure in the Bible. He may have been used to good purposes by God, but as soon as the Israelites are liberated, the Egyptian tyrant and his army are destroyed, drowned in the Red Sea. Had Paul wrapped up his speculations with this episode as the controlling biblical figure, the verses at the end of chapter 9 and most of chapter 10 might justly be read as outlining what theologians call “replacement theology.” The covenant was given to the Israelites. They play a necessary role as custodians of the law and prophets. But now, because of their failure to believe in Jesus as the promised messiah, God has taken away the covenant and given it to those who confess that Jesus is Lord.
Yet, as chapter 11 opens, Paul challenges this line of reasoning. “I ask, then, has God rejected his people?” His answer is unequivocal: “By no means!”
How can this be? Paul has called unbelieving Jews “vessels of wrath made for destruction,” and the plain sense of the biblical figure of Pharaoh clearly seems to indicate that unbelieving Jews will be cast aside (“rejected”) after their appointed time in salvation history has ended. But, no, they are not rejected.
In chapter 11, the apostle struggles to understand how his kinsmen remain beloved by God, even though they are blind to Christ. He returns to the leitmotif of hardening for the sake of showing the riches of God’s glory. He speculates that Jewish unbelief is willed by God to delay the consummation of history, which would have occurred had all of Israel acknowledged Jesus as the fulfillment of the law and prophets. The Jewish paraptóma (“trespass” in some translations, but better understood as “false step” or “deviation”) has opened the way of salvation for the Gentiles. Their failure to believe, therefore, “means riches for the world.” Until God sounds the final gong, “a hardening has come upon part of Israel, until the full number of the Gentiles come in.” Jewish unbelief brings blessings to all, unexpectedly fulfilling the prophecy that Israel will be as a light unto the nations with a form of spiritual darkness.
“The gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable,” Paul writes as he draws his explanation of the mystery of Jewish unbelief to a close. He underscores his unequivocal denial that God has cast aside the people of Israel. “As regards election, they are beloved for the sake of their forefathers,” he writes. Jews are not replaced by those who confess Jesus as Lord. Nor does Paul suggest what theologians call a “dual covenant.” God does not sustain Jews in an “old” Mosaic covenant, while establishing a new and different one for Christians. Jews, like Christians, are enrolled in the selfsame covenant, sealed on Sinai and fulfilled in Christ. Yet, even as both Jews and Christians are “in” the covenant, their roles are different.
In Paul’s thinking, Jews have an ongoing vocation in God’s plan of salvation, which has been sealed in Christ. Paul ends by deepening his account of the blessing of Jewish unbelief. Those of his kinsmen who do not believe in Christ (the great majority) are at once “enemies” and agents of his mercy (“You have received mercy because of their disobedience”). With this paradoxical formulation, Paul is repeating the spiritual logic of the initial verses of chapter 9. There, he reported the anguish that he feels over Jewish unbelief. It is so great that he wishes he would be “accursed and cut off from Christ”—in effect, an unbeliever—if such a fate would cause all of Israel to believe. Thus, as chapter 11 draws to a close, Paul transforms his personal willingness to sacrifice the inestimable spiritual blessings of faith into a corporate vocation, assigning to Jews the role he is willing to bear. To put it plainly: Paul is willing to reject Christ for the sake of those who follow the Torah; Jews reject Christ so that God can show mercy to those who believe in Christ crucified and risen.
The driving motivation for Paul’s extended reflections in Romans 9–11 is the scandal of Jewish unbelief. A profound theological question haunts him: What are God’s purposes in forestalling what the Scriptures would lead us to believe should be the outcome of sending his only begotten Son—belief in Christ among God’s chosen people? He concludes with a remarkable answer. Jewish unbelief not only “makes room” for God to expand the scope of his mercy (“until the full number of the Gentiles come in”); it also prepares them for their own salvation. Here is how Paul describes the consummation of the mystery of Jewish unbelief: “They have now been disobedient in order that by the mercy shown to you they also may receive mercy. For God has consigned all men to disobedience, that he may have mercy upon all.” It’s a stunning reversal. In the final outworking of God’s plan, the Jewish people will be rewarded for their unbelief—with mercy, not wrath.
Paul himself is aware of the magnitude of this paradox. What more can be said? Paul ends with praise and exaltation: “O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!”
Christians have never settled on a consensus about Judaism. Though much has been said by Christians about Jews, neither Protestants nor Catholics nor Orthodox have authoritative theologies of Judaism. There is no doctrine of the Elder Brother.
Perhaps the lack of consensus is to be expected. Paul’s long reflections on Judaism’s corporate refusal of the gospel are disorienting. It seems strange, unexpected, even offensive to hold that, even today, the Christian proclamation needs Jews to prosper, as Paul suggests. They don’t believe the promises of Christ! How can rejection fuel the triumph of affirmation? How can Jewish unbelief be consonant with their being beloved by God, as Paul insists?
Reactions to the scandal of the cross of Christ follow the same “How can?” pattern, as Paul outlines in 1 Corinthians 1:20–31. Jewish unbelief motivates these famous verses as well. Readers should give special attention to verse 28, in which Paul speaks of God’s election of “things that are not” as an instrument of salvation, which I read as a reference to the Son of God’s descent into the abyss of sin and death. How can God show his power and glory by becoming on the cross a “vessel of wrath”?
Note, too, that though there are ecumenical doctrines of creation and the Trinity, as well as other important matters, there is no settled doctrine of the cross. When contemplating Christ crucified, the eyes of faith are blinded by what St. Bonaventure calls the vision’s “super-luminous darkness.” Something similar happened when St. Paul grappled with the mystery of Jewish unbelief. I suspect it is for this reason that one cannot distill from Romans 9–11 an ecumenical doctrine of the Elder Brother.
The Christian distress over Jewish unbelief is real. The ongoing failure of Israel to believe calls into question God’s promises. Jewish unbelief threatens to overturn salvation history, which is why the dispensationalist schemes put forward by some Protestant theologians are felt to be so necessary and urgent. We can ease our spiritual anxiety with modern doctrines of tolerance—and we should. Better still, we should draw from Paul’s speculations two principles. The first is that God has not broken his covenant with Paul’s kinsmen. The second is that Jewish unbelief, which is ongoing to this day, is ordained by God so that he might have mercy on us all. It is the second principle that contains the great mystery, for it seems to embrace a rejection of the gospel for the sake of the gospel. Contemplating that mystery, I find myself thinking of the old spiritual that encourages us to put ourselves at the foot of the cross. Its refrain is haunting: “It causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble.”
