Mission to the Jews
As a Jewish mission is called a mission activity of Christians , the Jews to faith in Jesus Christ will bring, that is the Messiah dignity and divine sonship of the Jew Jesus of Nazareth . Jewish missionaries assume that Jews could only attain salvation through Christian baptism . Their attempts at conversion demand the abandonment of the Jewish faith and thus tend towards the abolition of Judaism in the sense of substitution theology .
The mission to the Jews is part of Christian anti-Judaism , from which the major churches have gradually moved away since the Holocaust . Whether and in what form Jewish mission can and should be continued afterwards has been a controversial discussion in Christianity since around 1960.
Early Christianity
The early Christianity saw itself as eschatological salvation Community within Judaism. YHWH's election of all of Israel was ultimately confirmed by Jesus himself through his gift of life ( Mk 14:24 EU ). His followers followed his proclamation of the kingdom of God , which determined his interpretation of the Torah , and initially tried primarily to win other Palestinian Jews to believe in the Son of God, who came to the final salvation of all Israel. They referred to the pre-Easter commission of Jesus ( Mt 10,5f EU ):
"Do not go on the road of the people and do not go to the Samaritan cities, but go to the lost sheep from the house of Israel."
The proclamation of the Kingdom of God to the people of Israel, not a general “mission to the Jews”, was part of the self-image of the early Christians in Israel. But with Jesus' vicarious death on the cross and his resurrection , they saw God's kingdom already broken into this passing world. They believed that the end times had begun and that YHWH's final judgment was imminent. The risen Jesus established the universal missionary mandate for them ( Mt 28 : 19f EU ):
“Therefore go and make successors of all nations; baptize them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit and teach them to keep all that I have commanded you. "
“Peoples” ( ἔθνη , singular ethnos ἔθνος ) in the Gospel according to Matthew, as well as in the NT, always denotes the peoples of the Gentiles ( Goyim ) who, according to biblical tradition, face the chosen people of Israel. This is represented here (approximately in Mt 2,6) by the impoverished rural population ( laos λαός ) from all areas of the whole of Israel. Accordingly, the Israelites and their descendants do not belong to the addressees of the Easter missionary mandate because they were and remained God's chosen people for the early Christians. The early Christians saw their task as being to proclaim God's transfer of power to the Gentile peoples to the Son of Man who had come from Israel and to teach them the Torah as Jesus fulfilled it on behalf of God's people.
Accordingly, Christian baptism in the NT is understood as acceptance into the Israel Covenant, which obliges to follow Jesus . Keeping all commandments , above all love of God and neighbor , is inextricably linked with it. According to Mk 12.29ff EU , Jesus had confirmed this as the central teaching of Judaism and emphasized it according to Mt 7.21 EU :
"Not all who say 'Lord, Lord' to me will come into the kingdom of heaven, but those who do the will of my Father in heaven."
The first sermons of the apostles at the temple in Jerusalem were therefore addressed to other Jews and were the first to offer them God's salvation and forgiveness ( Acts 2,22ff EU ):
“Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth [...] who was given up by the counsel and providence of God, you crucified and killed by the hand of the Gentiles. God raised him [...] So now the whole house of Israel know for certain that God made this Jesus, whom you crucified, Lord and Christ. "
The focus of this message to the Jews in Israel is not accusation and threat, but the assumption of guilt provided by the God of Israel and the wonderful turn from death to life created in this way. Previously it was said (v. 21): Whoever calls on the name of this God will be saved. Nowhere does it say that anyone who does not identify Jesus with this God will be condemned. Also Mk 16:16 EU threatened primarily the disbelief of Christians who are cast as Jesus "demons" to save the damned.
By the time the Gospels were written (around AD 70–130), a majority of the Jewish residents of Israel at the time had already rejected Jesus as their Messiah. Nonetheless, all the original Christians held fast ( Jn 4,22 EU ): Salvation comes from the Jews. In view of the rejection of Jesus by most of his fellow Jews, Paul of Tarsus , the founder of the mission to the nations, affirmed that this was done so that the non-Jews would understand all the more that their salvation rested solely on God's faithfulness to Israel ( Rom 11 : 28f EU ):
“The Savior will come from Zion , he will remove all wickedness from Jacob. This is the covenant I give them when I take away their sins. From the gospel point of view they are enemies of God, and that for your sake; From their election they are loved by God, and that for the sake of the fathers. For the grace and calling granted by God are irrevocable. "
That is why he did not see the hardening of the Jews who were not yet converted to Christ, but the arrogance of the Christians from the peoples towards the people of Israel as the main problem ( Rom. 11:18 EU ):
"But if you boast about them, you should know that it is not you who carry the root, but the root carries you."
He expected that God alone would save all of Israel after the mission of the people ( Rom. 11:32 EU ). That is why Christians should obey the first commandment and proclaim the irrevocable covenant of God with Israel to all the world, which through Jesus Christ, through pure grace , allows the peoples to participate in this covenant ( Rom. 11 : 2ff EU ).
Church fathers
After the destruction of the temple in 70, Jews and Christians separated each other from each other, also because the ruling Romans hardly distinguished them from each other and at times persecuted them together . Around 100 Christianity broke away from the union of Judaism. Gentile Christians now shaped his theology and defined Jewish Christians who adhered to the Torah as heretics . Ignatius wrote at the time that Christians did not become Christians because they believed in Judaism, but because Jews believed in Christianity. Only by giving up their customs, such as the Sabbath , could Jews be Christians.
Jewish Christians justified their observance of Jewish laws with God's permanent election of Israel: their covenant is also our covenant. The Epistle of Barnabas , however represented by 130 the supersessionism (Barn 4.7): "The will is ours; they have definitely lost the will that was received earlier through Moses. ” Justin the Martyr admitted to Jewish Christians around 150 that they were also allowed to obey Jewish regulations as Christians as long as they did not try to persuade their non-Jewish fellow Christians to do the same. But in the same decade Melito von Sardis was already preaching the murder of God for all Jews as the irrevocable reason for their curse and their loss of salvation. This view spread throughout the ancient Church . Jews who became Christians then had to completely give up their affiliation with Judaism, their belief in the election of Israel, their adherence to the Torah, and their Jewish interpretation of the gospel .
Jews had Roman citizenship in the imperial provinces since 212 and enjoyed relative religious freedom as religio licita (permitted religion). As the Church rose , these privileges were gradually withdrawn from them. Constantine I (306–337) allowed Christianity in the Milan Agreement in 313 and promoted it over Judaism. He tried to persuade Jews to convert to the church by offering them protection against attacks by their former co-religionists.
Ever since Christianity became the state religion in 380 , the church has influenced how the authorities deal with Jews. In the 5th century, Christians destroyed synagogues and enforced mass baptisms of Jews. But the Roman state stuck to the traditional tolerance of the Jewish religion. Augustine of Hippo (354–430) provided a theological justification for this, which remained authoritative for a long time: According to this, the Christian missionary mandate initially applies to non-Jews; only after all of them have been converted, at the end of time, will the majority of the Jewish people find faith in Christ. That did not rule out making some of them into Christians beforehand.
middle Ages
Since the Jewish minority did not allow themselves to be integrated into the Church, numerous imperial “Jewish edicts”, which were incorporated into the Corpus iuris civilis, restricted their religious practice. Since the 4th century, Jews in many parts of Europe, including Spain , the Byzantine Empire and the Franconian Empire under the Merovingians , have been marginalized, persecuted, expelled, forcibly baptized or murdered.
The popes banned by Gregory I (540-604) to the Decree of Gratian 1150 forced baptisms of Jews with numerous Sicut-Iudaeis - bulls and allowed Jewish mission only in the form of sermons. At the same time, however, they also forbade the Christian mission of Jews and the conversion of Christians to Judaism. In 938 Pope Leo VII allowed the expulsion of Jews who were not willing to convert. Around 1009, the Catholic bishops forbade Christians to trade with Jews if they would not be baptized and if they performed all Jewish rites.
After a temporary heyday in the 10th century, the crusaders destroyed many of the European Jewish communities in 1096, 1147 and 1189/90 and gave their members the choice between “baptism or death”, which almost always resulted in their extermination. In 1150, church representatives began to force Jews to public disputations about the messianship of Jesus Christ. Jewish Talmud schools soon trained professional disputants who were often argumentatively and rhetorically superior to their Christian opponents. This did not change the fact that Jewish communities could often only choose between submission or the stake.
Since the 13th century, it was mainly the new mendicant orders , especially the Dominicans and Franciscans , who were also commissioned with the Inquisition , to evangelize among the Jews. Converted Jews received material support and more often denounced their former co-religionists ( Castile 1198). The 4th Lateran Council in 1215 ordered a discriminatory dress code for Jews and forbade them to hold public office. From 1222 they were no longer allowed to build synagogues, from 1267 they were only allowed to live in their own Jewish quarters. These regulations promoted the social exclusion of the Jews, introduced their later forced ghettoization and facilitated local pogroms against the Jews .
Because the Talmud was considered to be the reason for its “obduration”, popes or Christian rulers forbade its distribution, and had it confiscated and destroyed (681 Toledo , 1242 Paris ). From the late 13th century onwards, Jewish minorities were increasingly expelled from European countries and regions (1290 England, 1306 France, 1391 southern Spain, 1492 all of Spain, 1497 Portugal). Nevertheless, many baptized Spanish Jews, the so-called marranos (pigs), adhered to their Jewish rites. According to the Synod of Mainz (1310), Christians who converted to Judaism or Jewish Christians who returned to it should be treated like heretics, i.e. killed. During the same period there were also peaceful attempts at converting Jews. In 1230 Raimund von Penyafort founded an ecclesiastical institute for organized Jewish missions in Murcia . Around 1400 Vincent Ferrer was a well-known missionary to the Jews in Italy. In 1415 Pope Gregory XII issued an edict that forced Jews to listen to Christian sermons three times a year.
Raul Hilberg explains the intensified anti-Jewish church policy of the High Middle Ages, among other things, as a reaction to the largely failed mission to the Jews of the previous centuries, and on the other hand as a projection because the Catholic Church felt increasingly threatened by "internal disintegration" at the height of its power.
Despite the regular outbursts of hatred, increasing threats and general hostility of Christianized Europe against Judaism, there were again and again individual Jews in the Middle Ages who became Christians out of sincere conviction. Some rose to leadership positions and then in turn promoted the mission to the Jews: for example Archbishop Paulus von Burgos (1353–1435). In some places the " proselytes " were granted protection and privileges; in England, for example, Richard, Prior of Bermondsey, after complaints from Jews about aggressive poaching , built a Hospital of Converts around 1200 , which was very popular; a similar institute was founded in Oxford . In Germany, however, compulsory baptisms continued.
Reformation time
The Reformation made the Bible, understood as the Word of God , the only standard for the Christian religion ( sola scriptura ). At first, this seemed to allow criticism of anti-Judaist stereotypes and relative tolerance towards Judaism. Martin Luther expressly condemned the church's violent mission in 1523 and stated that it denied the Christian faith, since Israel remained the people chosen by Christ. He wanted to convince the Jews from their own Bible and make amends for their suffering among Christians.
But mission successes among Jews did not materialize in Protestant territories either. There were even isolated cases of Christians converting to Judaism. From around 1526 onwards, Luther saw Judaism more strongly as a threat to the true Christian faith. In his book Von den Juden und their Lügen (1543), he described the Jews as stubborn, incorrigible and satanic with well-known anti-Judaistic clichés. He called on the Protestant princes to destroy the synagogues, to impose forced labor on Jews and, if necessary, to expel them. Nonetheless, he still considered the conversion of individual Jews to Christianity to be possible.
Luther's theological stance on Judaism remained constantly determined by his understanding of law and gospel, despite conflicting political advice. According to the pedagogical use of the law ( usus elenchticus legis ), it should serve exclusively for the knowledge of sin, judgment and the wrath of God, in order to prepare the sinner for the pure gift of grace of the gospel and the reception of the body of Christ. Jews like “ papists ” and “enthusiasts” were slaves to this law for Luther. Their "obstinacy" tempts Christians to fall back into the mistaken belief in self-redemption. She crucify the Son of God daily and stop the kingdom of God. So he saw the very existence of Judaism as a danger to Christianity.
John Calvin emphasized more clearly than Luther the uncancelled covenant of God with the people of Israel: This was already justification by grace alone and eternal salvation. But he sharply separated the biblical people of Israel from post-Christian Judaism: They had excluded themselves from the covenant by rejecting Jesus Christ and were therefore to blame for the wrath of God - realized in church history. Still, God's blessings remain upon him.
The reformers aroused a new interest in Judaism. Many theologians began to study it literarily. Martin Bucer (1491–1551) and Johannes Coccejus (1603–1669) gave him a place in God's plan of salvation. But that did not change the situation of the Jews: They remained the often harassed outsiders, whose only salvation lay in the church and the abandonment of their Jewishness.
In the course of the Counter-Reformation , the Roman Catholic Church increased its efforts to convert Jews again. In 1543, on the initiative of Ignatius von Loyola, a catechumen house for male Jews and in 1562 a monastery for female Jews who were willing to be baptized were built in Rome. Both groups had to leave their families forever. Up until 1798, an average of eleven people were baptized there annually, a total of around 2000 mostly Italian Jews between the ages of 11 and 30 years. After their solemn baptism, often performed by popes and cardinals, they received bonuses.
1584 led Pope Gregory XIII. weekly forced sermons for a third of the members of all Jewish communities in the Papal States. Attendance was checked with lists of names, and failure to do so was fined. Forces armed with rods kept order. However, the decree was only consistently followed in Rome and was soon reduced there to a forced sermon every two months. This decree was reaffirmed by the Vatican in 1749 and 1775, but forced sermons for Jews were only given five times a year by a Dominican preacher after 1823. This remained the norm until 1847.
Pietism
The pietism , the split in Protestantism after the Thirty Years' War came up, made the organized Jewish mission to one of his main concerns. His representative Philipp Jacob Spener (1635–1705) had already studied Hebrew, Arabic and Talmudic studies as a teenager . He not only fought for a revival of the churches, but also for a new relationship to Judaism. Spener spoke of the hope of better times for the Church and already expected in his program Pia Desideria ( Heartfelt Desire) in 1675 an associated conversion of the Jews. He served as biblical evidence in Rom. 11:25, which speaks of the salvation of all Israel . When he received opposition, he collected quotes from church fathers and other recognized theologians of earlier times who had taught an eschatological conversion of the Jews, and from 1678 added them as a collection of documents in an appendix to his Pia Desideria. Because the election continued despite the rejection of Jesus, Spener saw in the Jews the noblest generation in the whole world from the blessed seed of the holy fathers. " Like the young Luther, he deduced from the theological determinations the ethical consequence that Christians with the Jews had to treat them kindly to their presence, they should not be insulted or persecuted. Rather, they should be loved for the sake of the Jew Jesus. Spener explicitly referred to the thoughts of the young Luther and criticized the late Jewish writings. After the Frankfurt Pietist had initially endorsed forced sermons, he declined He later resolutely abandoned any coercion in connection with conversion efforts and urged the pastors he had trained to love the Jews actively; his goal remained their conversion. The eschatological expectations expressed by Spener were broadly developed by other Pietists. The eschatological conversion of the Jews became very concrete describe and term initiated and based on the Holy Scriptures. Friedrich Christoph Oetinger from Württemberg , a student of Bengel and one of the most important theologians of Pietism, awaited the gathering of the Jews in the Holy Land and the return of the ten tribes of Israel who had once been taken into Assyrian captivity, the re-establishment of the temple in Jerusalem and the resurgence of the sacrificial cult. In the millennium he saw the Jews assume a leadership position. The whole world would then be ruled from Jerusalem, where Hebrew would be spoken again. All of this was to become reality around the year 1863 calculated by his teacher Bengel. The expectation of a coming conversion of the Jews became common theological property in the 18th century and encouraged interest in and benevolent dealings with the Jewish people.
In Hamburg founded Esdras Edzardus (1629-1708) a Proselytenhilfswerk , recorded the conversion willing and trained to Jews missionaries. He, too, combined an intensive study of Hebrew and Talmud with the intention of Christian conversion.
Johann Christoph Wagenseil (1633–1705), professor at the University of Altdorf , was the first Protestant to make the renewal of Christianity a condition of a successful mission to the Jews. In numerous writings he campaigned for a credible public Christian life that would remove all obstacles that made it difficult for Jews to believe in Christ. He directed this criticism primarily to the authorities. He was friends with the Amsterdam scholar and Sephardic Rabbi Menasse ben Israel (1604–1657), whose contacts with Oliver Cromwell (1599–1658) enabled the Jews to resettle in England after their expulsion from 1290 onwards.
Johann Heinrich Callenberg , successor to August Hermann Francke (1663–1727), was inspired by him, Edzardus and Wagenseil to found an Institutum Iudaicum for Jewish mission in Halle (Saale) in 1728 . Research into Judaism, Christian preaching and diakonia formed a unit. He sent 20 trained missionaries to Asia Minor, Palestine and Egypt, among others, until the Prussian government dissolved the institute in 1792. Only a few Jews were converted by these "messengers"; But international circles of friends between Jews and Christians developed and a lively exchange. They awakened a new interest in Israel across all Christian denominations, which relativized their differences.
Callenberg's pupil Count Zinzendorf (1700–1760) founded the Moravian Brethren , which operated as a whole mission to Jews, especially among Jews in Bohemia and the Netherlands . In 1741, the intercession for all Jews was included in their Sunday prayer.
However, the beginning of the Enlightenment pulled the ground for Pietism in many cases. Their practical ethics, based on the autonomous knowledge of reason of the individual, was founded on tolerance as a moral principle and thus opposed any zeal for conversion. The Deism tried Judaism and Christianity by a general, non-denominational religion of reason to replace. The interest was now directed more towards the emancipation of Judaism and the legal equality of all citizens . A boom in converts autobiographies and novels between 1760 and 1785, which did not reflect the success of the mission to the Jews, but rather their crisis of legitimation within the discussion about tolerance towards other religions, revealed the difference between the image of oneself and that of others. While the autobiographies were written by converted Jews, the authors of the novels were Christians baptized as children. In the course of Jewish emancipation, therefore, strong differences in the assessment of the mission to the Jews became clear.
19th century
In the 19th century the mission to the Jews experienced its real boom: parallel to the colonialism of the Europeans, mission societies were founded everywhere , which sent their representatives to all parts of the world. They usually did not separate the mission of the Jews and the mission of the people. In many cases, the idea of universalizing Christianity was behind this in order to win over the rest of the Jews in this way. The American revival preacher, Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758), already formulated this sense of mission as follows in 1749:
“By 1800, true religion could have prevailed in the Protestant part of the world; In the next half century the papal empire of the Antichrist would have to be overwhelmed and in the following 50 years the Muslim world would have to be subjugated and the Jewish nation converted. Then there would still be a whole century available to enlighten the entire pagan world in Africa, Asia, America and Australia, to convert to Christ [...] and to exterminate all heresies, schisms, crushes, vices and immorals around the world; afterwards the world will enjoy the holy rest of the Sabbath ... "
As the first European association for Jewish mission, the London Society for Promoting Christianity amongst the Jews began its work in 1809 in the Arab countries of North Africa, Ethiopia , Palestine and Iran . The first translation of the New Testament into Hebrew emerged from it in 1817, and later the entire Bible into Yiddish . The Anglicans first occupied the joint Prussian-Anglican diocese in Jerusalem in 1841, with Michael Solomon Alexander, who had converted from Judaism, as bishop . The British Jews Society followed in 1842 with other countries of the then Empire , including Australia , South Africa and Latin America .
In Germany, on January 18, 1822, at the suggestion of the British Ambassador Sir George Rose, the Society for the Promotion of Christianity among the Jews ( Berlin Israel Mission ) was founded. Its main representatives included Prussian nobles such as Job von Witzleben , Anton zu Stolberg-Wernigerode , Hans Ernst von Kottwitz and the awakening theologian August Tholuck . The society achieved mass baptisms of Jews in Berlin as early as 1824, but the baptized did not turn away from their Jewish traditions. From 1938 she took over the mission to the Jews for the German Evangelical Church (DEK).
Jewish missionary associations were also founded in individual regional churches, such as the Rhenish-Westphalian Association for Israel in 1843 . Franz Delitzsch founded the Evangelical Lutheran Central Association for Mission under Israel in Leipzig in 1871 (today: Evangelical Lutheran Central Association for the Encounter between Christians and Jews ) and translated the NT into Hebrew for its work in 1877. In 1883, Hermann Leberecht Strack founded an Institutum Judaicum in Berlin , which was active in many German cities until its state closure in 1939. National associations for mission to the Jews also came into being in Norway (1844), Sweden (1875), Denmark and Finland (1885). Similar associations in the Netherlands , Switzerland (1830: Association of Friends of Israel in Basel) and Hungary only worked on a national basis.
From the London mission to the Jews, beginning with William Hechler , "Christian Zionism" emerged around 1896 . In contrast to conventional mission theology, this trend emphasized the permanent election of Israel to the people of God, who would ultimately be converted by God himself. Its representatives, for example Ferdinand Wilhelm Becker , contradicted the anti-Semitism of the time , wooed fellow Christians for understanding for Judaism and informed them about its peculiarities. The Protestant theologian Johann Christian Konrad von Hofmann also affirmed the mission to the Jews based on the positive eschatological determination of the Jewish people according to the NT.
During German colonialism (1884 to 1914), German mission theologians and mission societies were consistently nationalistic and anti-Judaistic; with the devaluation of Judaism went hand in hand with the appreciation of one's own nation. The Berlin missiologist Julius Richter declared in 1915: Protestant Germany was the "Evangelist among the peoples" because here "the German spirit and Christian faith were fused into an indissoluble unit". “The German people, who gave the gospel back to the world in the age of the Reformation, certainly have the world calling today to bring Christianity to humanity [...]. [...] German Christianity , that is the true slogan of the national idea in mission. "
Weimar Republic
This attitude remained unbroken in the Weimar Republic . Jewish missionaries like Otto von Harling saw growing anti-Semitism as an opportunity for their concerns in church and society:
“It is therefore advisable to [...] explain how this people who were destined for blessing came under God's wrath and judgment with the rejection of Jesus Christ, so that they themselves became internally and externally peaceable and the peoples were blessed ... There is no other solution than Israel's conversion to its Messiah, through whom alone it can be brought to its destiny ... God has not rejected his people, he [...] is waiting for their conversion; and that means for us that he is waiting for Christianity to make the work of converting Israel its task. "
Representatives of European and, above all, German Jewry spoke out in favor of a Judeo-Christian dialogue and began it. In 1919 Franz Rosenzweig wrote to his evangelical baptized cousin Hans Ehrenberg : “The mission to the Jews is the schiboleth of whether someone has understood the true relationship (between Church and Israel). There will also be further baptisms of Jews, although the pastors should make it as difficult as possible for those who come to them, but there must be no organized mission to the Jews. "
German Jewish mission associations started the dialogue by inviting Jewish theologians to annual "study conferences on the Jewish question ". For example, in 1930 Martin Buber gave a highly acclaimed lecture on “The Focal Points of the Jewish Soul” in Stuttgart, which later evangelical dialogue theologians followed.
As one of the very few theological outsiders, the religious socialist Leonhard Ragaz spoke out in favor of discontinuing traditional mission to the Jews since 1918, because it despises the people of the Jews, who are still chosen by God, and could not possibly give credible witness to Christ.
time of the nationalsocialism
The German Christians declared at its inception in June 1932 in its guidelines: "In the Jewish mission we see a grave danger for our nationality. It is the entrance gate of foreign blood into our national body. Besides the Outer Mission it has no raison d'etre. We reject the mission to the Jews in Germany as long as the Jews have citizenship rights and there is thus the risk of racial veils and bastardization. ”Therefore, in the Prussian church elections in November 1932, they demanded that mission to the Jews be stopped and marriages between“ Germans and Jews ”prohibited. Their attempt to exclude Jewish Christians from the DEK analogous to the state Aryan paragraph (April 7, 1933) sparked the church struggle. In 1934, the Confessing Church (BK) proclaimed Jesus Christ with the Barmen Theological Declaration as the only word of God , which is and remains the only valid standard for Christian life, church structure and church policy. Thesis 3 implicitly contradicted the exclusion of baptized Jews according to the racism elevated to the state ideology :
“The Christian Church is the community of brothers in which Jesus Christ acts in word and sacrament through the Holy Spirit as the Lord present. [...] We reject the wrong doctrine, as if the church were allowed to leave the form of its message and its order to its discretion or to the change of prevailing ideological and political convictions. "
Thesis 5 implicitly contradicted the dictatorship of the Nazi state in that it tied the state task to law and peace for all people. Thesis 6 referred to the preaching mandate “to all people”, which at that time was also understood as an invitation to mission to the Jews.
Many professing Christians were also enthusiastic Hitler supporters and NSDAP voters. With reference to Martin Luther's doctrine of the two kingdoms, they affirmed the racist legislation and the persecution of Jews that had begun and only rejected state encroachments on church self-determination.
Gerhard Jasper , inspector of the Betheler Missionsgesellschaft , saw Judenmission in 1934, as is customary in the BK, as “acceptance of the individual Jewish Christian into the church, out of the Jewish people”: “The mission to the outside world in the Gentile countries will only be successful when Judaism within Christendom has been overcome. ” Siegfried Knak , director of the Berlin Mission , had encouraged the Protestants in 1933 to greet the Third Reich with a“ joyful yes ”and claimed that the German mission in particular teaches“ the importance of nationality for humanity and to know history with compelling power ”. In 1935, as a member of the BK, he sent a word of the mission on the race issue to all German Protestant mission societies in which he wrote about the Jews:
“This people is under special judgment. It is part of this judgment that it so often brings ruin to the peoples among whom it is scattered. […] The state must not shy away from tough measures where it is necessary. [...] A Jew does not become a German through baptism and faith, so the mission has nothing to do with the question of whether Christian Germans and Christian Jews should marry one another, but leaves that to the state. But Jews who believe in Christ are members of the Church of Christ, just as believing people of all peoples belong to Christianity. The mission arose through the unmistakable command of Christ [...], therefore cannot let people dictate limits and times for their work. "
With this, Knak affirmed the Nuremberg Laws enacted at that time and at the same time adhered to the mission to the Jews, since he saw it as part of the mission of the people and this in turn as the care of non-Jewish people. The German Evangelical Mission Council recognized this declaration as its official guideline and sent it to all German Evangelical Mission Societies.
"Out of concern about the deterioration of the race," some regional Protestant churches had stopped funding the central Israel mission in Berlin as early as 1931. Since 1939, on the instructions of Hanns Kerrl , then Reich Minister for Church Affairs , they let her baptize Jews who were ready to convert. Considerations of establishing a special congregation for baptized Jews were rejected. During the Nazi era, 704 Jews were baptized in the Messiaskapelle (Kastanienallee 22). In 1941 the society was banned after its leader, Pastor Otto Mähl , refused to enter the previous religious affiliation in the baptismal register. Now “Jew baptisms” were left to the individual communities. While churches and parishes run by DC representatives had already banned these in 1935, the Nazi authorities continued to allow them, since for them only the religious affiliation of the parents and grandparents determined the race of their children and grandchildren. Therefore baptism did not protect converted “half” or “full Jews” from exclusion and later murder. At most, “half-breeds” that emerged from marriages between “Aryans” and Jews were possibly protected for a time.
From 1938, DC representatives forced the exclusion of baptized Jews from the regional churches and parishes they controlled. DC pastors searched church records for baptized Jews of Jewish descent. Karl Themel, for example, reported over 2,000 of them to the state, thus surrendering them to their state murder. 86 baptized in the Messias Chapel were also deported to extermination camps.
The “Führerdenkschrift” sent to Hitler by the BK from 1936 contradicted this: “If anti-Semitism is imposed on Christians within the framework of the National Socialist worldview, which obliges them to hate Jews, then the commandment to love one's neighbor stands .” But this sentence was used for the pulpit omitted. Only very few Christians concluded from the state persecution of the Jews and their extensive tolerance by the church that missioning to the Jews was now a grave injustice. A woman from Berlin wrote around 1938: "But that there may be people in the Confessing Church who dare to believe that they are entitled or even called upon to proclaim judgment and grace of God to Judaism in today's historical events and in the suffering we are responsible for, is a fact that grips us with cold fear. Since when does the wrongdoer have the right to pass off his wrongdoing as the will of God? "
In Germany, the Grüber office tried, on behalf of the BK, until its dissolution in 1940, primarily to help Jewish Christians to leave the country illegally. The Leipzig Institutum Judaicum Delitzschianum was relocated to Vienna in 1935 and continued to educate people about Judaism and opposition to anti-Semitism until it was banned in 1938. Its leader Hans Kosmala was able to give lectures in the house of the Swedish Israel Mission . After Austria was annexed to the German Reich, more than a thousand Jews were able to leave the country on time with the help of this Israel mission. In the Netherlands , Jewish missionaries were taking part in rescue attempts for Jews in their country during the Nazi era. Kuno Gravemejer , as President of the Hervormde Kerk, called on all parishes in his church to save Jews. For this reason, he and others were arrested by the National Socialists and taken to a concentration camp.
Developments since 1945
Judaism
Since the Nazi era , Jews from all camps have almost unanimously rejected the Christian mission to the Jews for historical, theological and ethical reasons. Some Jewish theologians examined the New Testament after 1945 and emphasized the positive role of Jesus as teacher and prophet in the Gospels: He made Israel's God and the Torah known to non-Jews around the world and thus let them participate in Israel's history of promise. With this they reopened the Judeo-Christian dialogue, for which they had demanded that their Christian interlocutors renounce mission to the Jews since 1960. In this they see the necessary sign for a credible departure of Christians from traditional anti-Judaism and a precondition for the desired renewal of the relationship between the two religions.
Rabbi Lothar Rothschild justified this in 1946:
"The Christological conception of the Jewish question sometimes harshly ignores the persecution of the Jewish soul, because the desire to win means at the same time the desire to extinguish a Jewish existence."
Leo Baeck was one of the very few Holocaust survivors who did not refuse mutual mission attempts between Jews and Christians. In 1953, his student Robert Raphael Geis did not expect Christian theologians to renounce mission to the Jews in principle and therefore argued pragmatically:
“Jews are not very good at changing the Christian dogmatics to which we belong. […] 'I know we belong in your plan of salvation. But first make the goyim of the world into Christians and then we'll talk again. We can abstain from mission to the Jews after your failure, e.g. At the moment Hitler's demand. ' It seems to me that an agreement in time is possible on this line, there will be no permanent solution before the jemej hamaschiach [days of the Messiah]. "
In the course of the rethinking of Christian churches, some representatives of Judaism intensified their rejection of mission to the Jews. In 1964, Geis criticized Christian theologians who only moved away from it for historical reasons. The Israel League, which has not been terminated, leaves no room to accuse Judaism of a lack of theological knowledge. Mission to the Jews remains theologically unjustified even after Christian acknowledgment of guilt and penance .
The Württemberg regional rabbi Joel Berger declared at the German Evangelical Church Congress in 1999 : "For me, mission to the Jews is a continuation of the Holocaust with other means." In 1999, Günther Bernd Ginzel , the Jewish chairman of the Society for Christian-Jewish Cooperation in Cologne , criticized the pietistic mission to the Jews . This continued the anti-Judaism begun about 150 years ago by Christian conservative mission societies “outside of time and beyond theological development”. Since Auschwitz, all official declarations by the EKD and the Vatican have turned away from the substitution theology, according to which Judaism was only a forerunner and preparer for Christianity. Therefore, they could no longer reject the mission to the Jews for historical reasons. Rather, they should finally relativize the claim to absoluteness of Christian teaching itself.
Meinhard Tenné , spokesman for the board of directors of the Israelite religious community Württemberg, declared in 2000 in response to a synodal resolution of the Evangelical Church of Württemberg at the time: Dialogue requires mutual recognition of the other. Where Christians insisted on the superiority of their faith and advocated mission to the Jews, the Judeo-Christian dialogue was over before it could bear fruit in the congregations. Henry G. Brandt , the chairman of the German General Rabbinical Conference, warned Cardinal Walter Kasper, who is responsible for the Catholic-Jewish dialogue in the Vatican, in 2006: “... it must be noted that, especially in Germany, the mission to Jews is a red rag. Here in particular, every idea, every hint of the possibility of a mission to the Jews is quasi a hostile act, a continuation of Hitler's crimes against the Jews on another level. "
Roman Catholic Church
The Roman Catholic Church practiced mission to the Jews for centuries. She declared for the first time in 1965, shortly before the end of the Second Vatican Council in Nostra Aetate , that the mission of the people and the testimony to Christ towards Israel cannot be treated equally, since God's covenant with Israel has not been terminated. Nevertheless, she continued to classify Judaism in the other religions and made it subject to the general missionary mandate.
In 1973 the French Bishops' Conference declared that the Jewish people were “the subject of an everlasting covenant, without which the new covenant could not exist. Far from striving for the disappearance of this community, the church recognizes itself in the search for a living connection with it. ”According to the Bible, the special and lasting vocation of the people of Israel is the sanctification of God's name . Thereby the life and prayer of the Jews become a blessing for all peoples. The Church has her place within this special mission of Israel, in that she, for her part, proclaims the covenant with Israel that has never been revoked and sanctifies his name to the people of God. With these statements, a Catholic body for the first time excluded the mission of Christians to Jews theologically, since Israel's mission to the peoples ( Isa 49.6 EU ) continues and the Church's international mission is part of it.
In 1977, the Vatican issued a by Tommaso Federici wrote study on the issue of mission and witness of the Church in relation to the Jewish people out. Because of the joint mandate of Israel and the Church to “proclaim the name of the one God at all times to all the peoples of the earth”, she dismissed all necessary methods of preaching as “unjust proselytism” and “an expression of discrimination, contempt, and prejudice against the Jewish people ”. Forced conversions of Jews by a Christian majority power are finally over, but the danger that Christians put pressure on Jews persists:
“A 'conversion' cannot be authentic unless it brings about a spiritual deepening in the religious consciousness of the person who generally takes this step after a period of great inner examination. Therefore attempts to found organizations for the 'conversion' of Jews, especially educational or charitable ones, must be rejected. "
In 1992, on the 500th anniversary of the expulsion of the Jews from Spain, the working group for questions about Judaism of the German Bishops' Conference declared that the mission to the Jews was no longer theologically justifiable due to God's unconditional covenant with Israel. It is time to give it up wholeheartedly.
The discussion group Jews and Christians at the Central Committee of German Catholics declared in 2005: The term Jewish mission is historically too burdened to be used further. Curia cardinal Walter Kasper emphasized, however, that the “old covenant” with Israel was so confirmed and fulfilled by Jesus Christ that there was no salvation besides him. This “uniqueness and universality of salvation” is to be attested to Jews in accordance with the mandate for the mission of the people, albeit differently than to “ Gentiles ” due to their prior election . God grant the hope of salvation “also to those who follow his will without being members of the Catholic Church or sharing their faith in Jesus Christ”. What separates Jews and Christians should not be taboo, but should be discussed in their dialogue. Christians could not do without their testimony to Christ, Jews could not do without the Torah, which for them cannot be overtaken.
Pope Benedict XVI In February 2008 introduced a new version of the Good Friday intercession for the Jews for the somewhat expanded Tridentine liturgy : “Let us also pray for the Jews. That our God and Lord enlighten their hearts so that they may recognize Jesus Christ, the Savior of all people. ”The new version sparked a new debate about the mission to the Jews. Representatives of Judaism unanimously reject the request for their "enlightenment" as a devaluation of their religion and an allegation of a deficit. Christian theologians also criticized the new version as a step backwards or even withdrawal of the “substantial further development of Israel theology through the council and since then”. Walter Kasper (Vatican State Secretariat), however, emphasized that the new text agreed with “Nostra Aetate”. The Pope asks for the enlightenment of the Jews only for the end times , so I do not mean any current missionary intent.
The institutional mission to the Jews is fundamentally rejected in the declaration of orthodox rabbis on Christianity to do the will of our Father in Heaven: Towards a partnership between Jews and Christians of December 3, 2015. The Good Friday prayers that Pope Benedict had reformulated did not withdraw , but it became clear that the prayer pro conversione Judaeorum is nonsensical. In a declaration by Cardinal Koch , the President of the Commission for Religious Relations with Judaism (Vatican), on December 10, 2015 For irrevocable are grace and calling that God grants (Rom 11:29) becomes the evangelizing mission of the Church in relation to the Judaism clearly stated:
“Specifically, this means that the Catholic Church does not know or support any specific institutional missionary work aimed at Jews. Although there is a fundamental rejection of an institutional mission to the Jews, Christians are nevertheless called to testify to Jews of their faith in Jesus Christ. But they should do this in a humble and sensitive way, in recognition of the fact that the Jews are bearers of the word of God, and especially in view of the great tragedy of the Shoah. "
In December 2015, under Pope Francis , the Catholic Church renounced all attempts to induce Jews to convert to Christianity. In November 2018, Pope emeritus Benedict XVI also distanced himself . expressly from the mission to the Jews. The same is not provided and not necessary.
Ecumenism and WCC member churches
The World Council of Churches (WCC) said at its founding in 1948 in Amsterdam by a reference to the Holocaust is not the mission to the Jews, but the renunciation as a church failure: "Notwithstanding the universality of the order of our Lord and the fact that the first mission of the Church was aimed at the Jewish people, our churches […] were unable to hold on to this missionary task. ”He therefore recommended that his member churches include the Jews in general evangelism work and considered leading international mission to the Jews. For European mission theology, too, the mission order (Mt 28, 14ff.) Continued to include the Jews. Without a mission to the Jews, for example, Göte Hedenquist , head of the Swedish Mission Society in Vienna (1951) [...] saw "the absoluteness of the Christian faith in question."
In contrast, the Dutch Reformed Church in 1949 (for the first time in a Christian confession) differentiated church witness to Jews as “conversation with Israel” from “spreading the gospel” and “working on the Christian penetration of popular life”. Therefore, in 1961, instead of the previous Jewish mission associations, she founded the Council for Church and Israel , which declared: “Paying attention to the people of the covenant” prevented Christians from “doing mission among this people in the same way as one did among the Gentiles in Attacked. ”Because the Bible distinguishes between Israel and the rest of the peoples: The Jews themselves received God's commission to“ give testimony of God's salvation to the rest of the peoples ”. That is why the Church “must not pretend that she is speaking to someone who is ignorant. Such speech is rightly rejected by the Jewish people. It is only fitting for the younger sister to try to start a conversation with the older brother. "
The report commissioned by the WCC, The Church and the Jewish People (“Bristol Report”, 1967) reflected this theological dissent: If the church is understood primarily as the earthly body of Christ, then Jews would be viewed as not belonging and would first have to be individually or corporately Acceptance of Christ. If they are viewed primarily as an added part of God's first chosen people, then their behavior towards the Jews is distinguished from the general mission of the people; the latter then includes advocating the recognition of Israel as mother of the church without expecting Jews to confess the Messiah to Jesus.
Since then, ecumenical initiatives have also been committed to turning away from mission to the Jews in Germany. The German Coordination Council (DKR) of the Societies for Christian-Jewish Cooperation under Nathan Peter Levinson (Jewish), Martin Stöhr (Protestant) and Willehad Paul Eckert (Catholic) formulated in 1971: “Ecumenical encounters without the participation of Jews are incomplete because Christian faith is different without the Jewish root wrongly - because unbiblical - developed. [...] Christian witness finds expression in the joint practical advocacy of Jews and Christians for more justice and more human dignity in the fight against oppression and exploitation. The mission of the Jews contradicts this biblical mandate. ”The European conference on the subject of the Church and the Jewish people in Arnoldshain in 1974 formulated a momentous compromise“ Christians and Jews must learn together why Jews are suspicious of attempted missions, why Christians cannot do without a testimony of their faith. Both mission and dialogue belong to the same inalienable witness of the Church. "
The WCC updated the 1967 Bristol Report in Sigtuna, Sweden, in 1988, preferring the second of the positions it contrasted. In doing so he promoted a new reflection on Judaism and initiated a dialogue between some member churches and Jews in Asia and Africa. The interlocutor of the WCC and many of its member churches on the Jewish side is the International Jewish Committee on Interreligious Consultations, founded in 1970 .
Many European churches have since turned away from mission to the Jews. The Evangelical General Synod in Austria, for example, declared in 1998: "Since the covenant of God with his people Israel consists of pure grace until the end of time, mission among the Jews is not theologically justified and should be rejected as a church program."
Evangelical Church in Germany
Turning away from mission to the Jews
After 1945, the Protestant churches in Germany initially remained unchanged in their mission to the Jews and only gradually reflected on their part in the Holocaust and its prehistory in Christian anti-Judaism. Existing mission associations and the new Evangelical Lutheran Central Association for Mission under Israel (founded in October 1945) combined material aid for Holocaust survivors with intensive attempts at conversion under the motto (according to Paul Gerhard Aring ): “Our guilt towards the Jews in the face of the Holocaust obliges us twice to mission for you; we owe them [...] our Christ. ”In 1948, the BK Reichsbruderrat continued the traditional theology of disinheritance with its word on the Jewish question and interpreted the Holocaust as God's punishment against the Jews.
The German Evangelical Committee for Service to Israel , also founded in 1948 by Karl Heinrich Rengstorf and other Jewish missionaries, held 28 meetings on Christian-Jewish dialogue with Jewish theologians such as Leo Baeck, Martin Buber, Robert Raphael Geis and others until 1982. The initiators avoided the topic of mission to the Jews, so that the Jewish participants saw the dialogue in part as an alibi and secret adherence to a Christian intention to convert.
In 1950, the EKD Synod of Weißensee was the first German church body to move away from the theology of disinheritance: "We believe that God's faithfulness to the people of Israel he had chosen remained in force even after the crucifixion of Jesus Christ." The consequences of this for mission to the Jews became however not drawn. The mission theologian Walter Holsten in 1951 differentiated himself from “ethnopathos” and “folkism” as the basis for peoples' missions, since the community of Jesus Christ is the eschatological people of God from all peoples. But Jesus had discovered the true meaning of the Old Testament as "evasive" (a term used by Rudolf Bultmann ), that is, the transformation of all people into God's spiritual people. Israel's salvation privileges were therefore completely passed over to the church: His name and all other biblical promises "seized the community of Jesus Christ ... for itself". This leaves no room for the election of the Jews to the people of God and "no other way to salvation than the obedience of faith and the incorporation into Christ, in whom there is neither a Jew nor a Greek (Gal. 3:28)." “… To take up the cross and lose your life. In this way nobody is given the right or the duty to torment or extermination, which can indeed be suffered with the will of extreme and at least internal self-assertion, that is, in unbelief and without changing to spiritual Israel. "
In 1953 Gerhard Jasper affirmed the dialogue with Judaism for the first time, so that the church “can get right with God”. But because the church alone is the “true Israel”, there is “no special promise to Israel that does not also belong to the church.” Christianity “has become free from the earthly homeland of Israel”. In 1957, Jasper declared that the earlier persecution of the Jews as "Christ murderers" had made it much more difficult for Jews to understand Jesus Christ as Israel's Messiah. But: "Justice through the blood of Jesus Christ is the innermost contest for the right to exist of the Jewish people as a sacred tribal association." Nonetheless, Jasper held talks with Jewish theologians, the results of which he published in 1958. In it he confessed that Christians were guilty of the persecution of the Jews. However, their story of suffering has nothing to do with the vicarious atonement of Jesus Christ according to Isa 53,1ff EU . The Jewish Messiah hope has since become obsolete. - Bertold Klappert describes this dogmatic limit, which also prevailed after 1945 among Protestants who were willing to engage in dialogue, as "anti-Judaism cleansed of anti-Semitism as the right hand of the mission to the Jews".
Since 1960, some church bodies and Protestant theologians have questioned the continuation of anti-Judaist positions. In view of new anti-Semitic desecrations of Jewish cemeteries, the Provincial Synod Berlin-Brandenburg declared in January 1960:
“The hatred of Jews that breaks through again and again is manifest godlessness. That is why you should develop the biblical knowledge that our salvation cannot be separated from the election of Israel. "
From a “working group for Jews and Christians” at the Protestant Church Congress in Munich in 1959, the Working Group Jews and Christians at the German Protestant Church Congress was created in 1961 . 28 people belonged to it, including the Jews Schalom Ben-Chorin , Robert Raphael Geis, Ernst Ludwig Ehrlich , Eva Gabriele Reichmann and Eleonore Sterling as well as the Christians Helmut Gollwitzer , Hans-Joachim Kraus , Günther Harder and Adolf Freudenberg . They declared when the AG was founded:
“Jews and Christians are inextricably linked. From the denial of this togetherness arose hostility towards Jews in Christianity. It became a major cause of the persecution of the Jews. Jesus of Nazareth will be betrayed when members of the Jewish people to whom he was born are disregarded as Jews. Every form of hostility towards Jews is godless and leads to self-destruction. [...] In contrast to the false assertion that has been widespread in the Church for centuries that God has rejected the people of the Jews, let us reconsider the words of the Apostles: 'God has not cast off his people, whom he saw beforehand' (Rom 11: 2) . "
Günther Harder explained these statements: The mission to the Jews was a matter of pietism, which wanted to convert all people as individuals and thus disregarded the national and community character of Judaism. The Christian mission societies were also given political privileges, since they were expected to "solve the Jewish question ", namely the integration of the Jews into the Christian West. A dialogue, on the other hand, presupposes that you allow yourself to be said of the Jews, meet them with unconditional love and do not first urge them to change.
The declaration provoked fierce opposition in conservative Christian circles. The newspaper Christ und Welt wrote on July 28, 1961, according to which Jesus and the New Testament had no meaning for the Christian faith, the entire history of the church would then be described as the only big wrong way. Another paper wrote that the separation between Christians and non-Christians is absolute for the NT and does not exclude the Jews. Anyone who denies this is committing unauthorized "theological softening of the bones". All press comments agreed that mission to the Jews was the only legitimate form of dialogue with Judaism. For Gollwitzer and Harder, too, there was no question that Jesus was to be witnessed to Jews as the only way to salvation. So they only rejected the traditional Jewish mission: Christians would no longer have the opportunity to do so because of their complicity in the Shoah. Thereupon Robert Raphael Geis temporarily terminated his work in the working group.
After four years of preparatory work by a committee commissioned by the regional synod of the Evangelical Church in the Rhineland , a proponendum was presented to the regional synod in Bad Neuenahr in 1980 and adopted with a large majority. The synodal resolution of the Evangelical Church in the Rhineland on the renewal of the relationship between Christians and Jews contains the following confession:
“We believe that Jews and Christians are each called to be witnesses of God to the world and to one another; That is why we are convinced that the church cannot perceive its witness to the Jewish people as it does its mission to the world of nations. "
The Jew Jesus finally fulfilled the covenant of God with Israel through his vicarious death on the cross and at the same time included all peoples in it.
In 1985, after a five-year discussion process, the Evangelical Lutheran Central Association for Mission under Israel was renamed the Central Association for Witness and Service among Jews and Christians . In 1991 he changed his statutes and refused mission to the Jews in the sense of winning proselytes. As a holistic witness to life, being Christian always means respect for other religions. Christians are inseparable from Jews and Jewish Christians and are connected in a special way.
Most of the regional churches followed this with similar declarations: for example the Evangelical Reformed Church in 1992, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Oldenburg in 1993, the Evangelical Church of Westphalia in 1994 and 1999, the Evangelical Lutheran Regional Church of Hanover in 1995, the Evangelical Church of Kurhessen in 1997 Waldeck, 1998 the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bavaria, the Lippe Regional Church and the Evangelical Lutheran Regional Church of Mecklenburg. A little later, some regional churches incorporated new statements about Judaism into their constitutions: for example, the Evangelical Reformed Church in 1988, the Evangelical Church in Hesse and Nassau in 1991, the Evangelical Church of the Palatinate in 1995, the Evangelical Church in the Rhineland and the Evangelical Church in Berlin in 1996 -Brandenburg, 1997 the Pomeranian Evangelical Church and 1998 the Lippe Regional Church. Such new basic statements are above all
- the permanent election of Israel and God's permanent promise to his people
- the continuing solidarity of the church with the Jewish people, mostly as the acceptance of the church into the unique covenant of God with Israel
- the rejection of any kind of hostility towards Jews
- the church's complicity in the Holocaust and shared responsibility for its consequences
- the Jews and Christians shared future expectation of a "new heaven and a new earth" or "the completion of the rule of God"
- listening to God's instruction together, the meaning of the Torah for Christians too.
The Evangelical Church in Berlin-Brandenburg and the Evangelical Church of Westphalia decided in 1990 to expressly reject the mission to the Jews. Their regional synod declared: “Therefore it is our task today to find out how we can testify to Jesus Christ to all without leveling out or negating the unique position of the Jewish people in terms of salvation history. We reject a mission to the Jews. ”The renunciation, this regional church affirmed in 1999, is a“ minimum requirement ”for a“ fruitful coexistence and coexistence of church and synagogue ”. This was followed in 2008 by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bavaria.
In 1995 the societies for Christian-Jewish cooperation demanded a “clear no” from the EKD and its particular churches to the mission to the Jews, which Jews understandably experienced since the Shoah as a “sharp threat to their existence”: Only then would “their fight against anti-Judaism in the church and against any form of anti-Semitism in society is really credible. ”In 1998 the EKD Council in Hanover declared after a conversation with the Central Council of Jews in Germany :“ The members of the EKD delegation emphasize that Christian preaching is public and is addressed to all people and is always an invitation to listen and talk. They affirm that all member churches of the EKD reject a special orientation of this proclamation to Jews, for example in the sense of an organized 'Jewish mission' aimed at conversion, for theological and historical reasons. "In 2000 the EKD declared in its memorandum Christians and Jews III :
“Mission to the Jews - provided that it is understood to be a systematically carried out, personally and institutionally organized activity by Christians with the aim of spreading Christian faith among Jewish people - is no longer one of the fields of work operated or even promoted by the Evangelical Church in Germany and its member churches. Instead, the meeting of Christians and Jews and the open dialogue between them have long been on the agenda of the churches. [...] God has never canceled Israel's covenant. Israel remains God's chosen people, although they have not accepted faith in Jesus as their Messiah. “God has not cast out his people” (Rom 11: 1). This insight lets us - with the apostle Paul - trust that God will let his people see the consummation of their salvation. He does not need our missionary work for this. "
On November 9, 2016, the EKD Synod decided to hold a rally with a “Declaration on Christians and Jews as witnesses of God's faithfulness”. It says: “Christians - regardless of their mission into the world - are not called to show Israel the way to God and his salvation. All efforts to induce Jews to change their religion contradict the confession of faithfulness to God and the election of Israel. "
Theological conflicts
The gradual departure of the EKD from organized mission to the Jews has been accompanied by theological conflicts to this day. On August 3, 1980, 13 theology professors at the University of Bonn approved the Judeo-Christian dialogue, but not the Rhenish Synodal resolution: In the NT one must distinguish between elected and rejected Israelites as well as between biblical Israel and today's Jews. The historical continuity between Abraham and the Jews is theologically irrelevant in the NT. Belonging to the people of Israel therefore does not mean a claim to salvation: the Jew as such has no guarantee of salvation. The biblical land and people promise to Israel no longer plays a role for Jesus and the faith of the early Christians. Jesus does not speak of God's covenant with Israel either. The NT represented the old and the new covenant as exclusive opposites. For Christians, the OT was only valid from the point of view of the Christ message, which liberates from law, sin and death. Because Christ ended the way of salvation of the Torah through his death. Paul reminded the Gentiles of the unbelief of most Jews, in order to impress on them that only their faith in Christ could save them. The salvation of all Israel that he had announced (Rom 11.15f) did not constitute a special path to salvation. Torah Judaism and Christianity are incompatible. Jews and Christians share the same Hebrew Bible and separate its interpretation; otherwise they are equally sinners before God. The National Socialist ideology was anti-Jewish as well as anti-Christian. The complicity of Christians in the Holocaust should not lead to them giving up or belittling these basic truths out of a bad conscience. The church must not renounce the preaching of the gospel to Jews either. It just couldn't ask them to break away from the traditional Jewish community if they became Christians.
On October 29, 1980, 26 theologians from Heidelberg University replied : The Rhenish Synodal Resolution does not want to give up any truths of faith, but rather to make people aware of previously hidden aspects of being a Christian because of the Holocaust. Jews and Christians are not only connected to one another in confession to God the Creator, but also in the hope of messianic redemption and in active witness for justice and peace. It is only because of the Jewish hope for the Messiah that Gentiles could also recognize the Messiah of Israel in Jesus. Despite their diversity, all Jews are members of the people chosen by God and are called to be the light of the peoples; That was the only reason why the Church was sent to the people. This order does not include a mission to the Jews. Rather, their belief in the same God should make the Jews "jealous" (Romans 11:11). Substitution theology should be rejected. Because Israel remains the people of God according to the NT, Gentile Christians could not and should not become Jews. A lot of time-related polemics flowed into the rejection of Pharisaism at the time. The fact that Jews mostly do not believe in Jesus' messiahship is justified, since the redemption of this world claimed by Christians cannot be seen in them. This objection, which was thematized in the NT, must also be allowed to today's Jews, since it helps to overcome anti-Judaism. The church's complicity in the Holocaust is an obvious necessity to rethink previous Christian theology; this process must continue. The Bonn Declaration negated this and thus fell behind the Stuttgart Declaration of Guilt .
In 1999, the EKD approved the Gospel Service for Israel on the 28th Protestant Church Congress in Stuttgart . When this became known in advance, the Israelite Religious Community of Württemberg canceled its participation in the Kirchentag. The working group Jews and Christians took this as an occasion for a public “No to the mission to the Jews” in five points: The NT ( Rom 9.4 EU ) had affirmed God's loyalty to the chosen people of Israel ( Dt 7.9 EU ). This precludes proclaiming Jesus to Jews as the Messiah necessary for their salvation. The New Testament scholar Klaus Wengst explained this:
"What we gain in trust in God through Jesus Christ and what we experience in the forgiveness of sins, in mercy and in justification, Judaism knows and experiences in the past and present even without Jesus."
May God's covenant with Israel open the eyes of Christians to this people's own path with God, which to this day testifies to this in a unique way before the world, also to Christians. Jesus' commission for the mission of the nations did not send Christians to the Jews, but to all other peoples. It includes the transmission of the Jewish Torah to them. According to the NT, non-Jews would not have carried out a mission to the Jews. The history of the Christian mission to the Jews was accompanied by a theological devaluation of Judaism and bloody persecution of Jews. This made the Holocaust possible and made the preaching of the gospel unbelievable. Mission to the Jews is perceived as a threat by the Jewish communities in Germany and endangers the dialogue between Jews and Christians:
“Therefore, any attempt by Christians to approach Jews with missionary intent is forbidden. That is why we contradict all undertakings by Christians to directly pursue conversion attempts towards Jews or to support them indirectly. "
The working group put these points up for discussion on June 17, 1999 at the Kirchentag, but excluded evangelical groups because they were “unable to dialogue”. The declaration was adopted on the same evening with a few abstentions and votes against and handed over to the Kirchentag presidium for further publication.
In the run-up to the meeting, Manfred Kock , at that time chairman of the EKD, canceled his participation in this event: He did not want to intervene in an ongoing discussion and not allow himself to be drawn in for a unilateral declaration against the mission to the Jews. Hermann Barth , theological director of the EKD Church Office, saw "no sound theological reason for Christians - be it in Germany or elsewhere - to keep silent about Jesus Christ to Jews". This put the EKD's previous rejection of the mission to the Jews into question. As a result, representatives of Judaism, including Michel Friedman , did not take part in the Kirchentag.
The former Wuerttemberg regional bishop Theo Sorg contradicted the Kirchentag resolution of June 17, 1999 on the following day: Even the Holocaust did nothing to change “... that Jesus, the Son of God, first came for Israel, that he also died for Israel on the cross and on the third Day is risen again. Jesus is the Savior of the nations and the Messiah of Israel. You have to do violence to the New Testament if you want to hide this biblical line and put it aside. ”This vote raised the“ Werkstatt Pietism ”to its opposing position and justified it biblically as follows: Jesus himself was a Jew (Mt 1,1− 17; Jn 4: 7-9), who saw himself as sent exclusively to the people of Israel during his lifetime (Mt 15: 21-28; Jn 4:22). All of his disciples were Jews (Lk 6: 12-16). After Jesus' death and resurrection, his disciples initially preached the gospel exclusively to the Jews (Acts 2:14, 37, 38; 3:13). It was only when God sent Peter to the Gentiles that he began to preach the Gospel to these peoples (Acts 10) and had to justify himself for it (Acts 11: 1–18). The non-Jewish followers of Jesus were only referred to as Christians by outsiders in Antioch (Acts 11:26). Prelate Rolf Scheffbuch also contradicted the resolution: “It takes a fair amount of ignorance of clear biblical knowledge to eliminate Jesus Christ as the Redeemer and Messiah of the Jews ... It almost borders on mocking the Triune God when the redemptive work of Jesus is an imposition for the Jews is. With his strange understanding of Scripture, Wengst is propagating a two-class society on the way to heavenly salvation. "
On December 14, 1999, the Protestant theological faculty of the University of Tübingen held a study day on the subject of Christian and Jewish faith - two ways to salvation? from. Only Christian theologians and Jewish missionaries were invited as speakers. Regional rabbi Joel Berger criticized this on December 31, 1999: The topic was already questioning Judaism as an independent path to salvation. A dialogue without Jews is hypocrisy. The initiators of the study day left his letter unanswered. The Schwäbisches Tagblatt reported critically and cited printed statements from Tübingen theologians ( Peter Stuhlmacher , Eberhard Jüngel , Dorothea Wendebourg and others) with the conclusion that Tübingen had long been a “theoretical stronghold of the Jewish mission”. The offer of the daily newspaper for a panel discussion with Jewish community members canceled all requested Protestant theology professors. On January 12, 2000 the Tübingen theology professors Bernd Janowski , Hermann Lichtenberger and Stefan Schreiner publicly declared: “We reject mission to the Jews, whatever the garb, we reject, without ifs or buts, for exegetical and theological reasons as well as for historical and moral. The attempt by Gentiles (Christians) to proselytize the people of God is a ludicrous endeavor that has no justification whatsoever in the canonical writings of the Church. Judaism is not a deficit religion; it is no more that today than it has ever been. The Jewish self-image thrives on the God-given assurance of salvation that “all Israel will have a share in the future world” ( Mishnah , treatise Sanhedrin, Chapter 10). Only human hubris can deny this assurance of salvation. […] Jews and Christians are each called in their own way to be witnesses of the One God 'in our world'. When Christians bear this testimony with the psalms of the Hebrew Bible, they do not recite 'baptized psalms', but rather join in Israel's praise for God, in the confession of one God. ”They expected the spring synod of the Württemberg regional church to be“… one Clear rejection of the mission to the Jews and thus set a clear sign of repentance and rethinking, in order to come to an encounter between Christians and Jews after centuries of 'forgiveness', as Martin Buber said, and to enable a new beginning of the conversation between them. "
A report by the Tübingen faculty on the relationship between Jews and Christians from February 23, 2000 recommended that the historically charged term “mission to the Jews” be dispensed with, which makes understanding more difficult. However, universal evangelism also applies unchanged to Jews. This includes "respect for Israel's self-image, to live in the uncancelled covenant and to experience salvation in it". Among other things, the Gospel Service for Israel referred to this at the regional synod in April 2000, while opponents of the mission to the Jews criticized the report as a linguistic cosmetic and hypocrisy. On April 6th, the Synod decided with a narrow majority to reject the mission to the Jews and at the same time emphasized: “In the Christ event, the church believes and testifies to the final, unsurpassable act of God for the people of Israel and the world of nations.” On April 7th, applications for funding followed Jewish missionary works. In the weeks that followed, around 190 Wuerttemberg priests endorsed the mission to the Jews. Among the reasons given in letters to the editor were historical falsifications and anti-Judaist stereotypes : for example, that Jews persecuted Christians much more often than the other way round and that feelings of guilt about Auschwitz should not thwart Christian world missions.
In the EKD there were still fierce controversies about how to deal with groups that affirm and carry out mission to the Jews. The Ecumenical Kirchentag 2003 did not allow some Jewish missionary associations to participate. In 2003 EKD representatives criticized the fact that such groups legitimized solidarity with Israel's settlement policy directly with biblical statements and thereby ignored both the Christian-Jewish dialogue and the rights of the Palestinians. Nikolaus Schneider repeatedly clearly rejected the mission of the Jews, for example in 2009 as President of the Rhenish Regional Church and in 2012 as Council Chairman of the EKD.
Representative of the mission to the Jews
The Evangelicalism advocates and supports the mission to the Jews to this day as Bible-based duty. Evangelical Christians interpret Joh 14,6 EU ("I am the way, the truth and the life. Nobody comes to the Father except through me ...") in such a way that even Jews could not attain salvation without express recognition of Jesus' sonship. Mt 28: 19f. understand it as a missionary order that includes Jews not only possibly in contemporary history, but also currently unconditionally.
The non-denominational evangelical Lausanne movement regularly deals with Jewish missions at its international congresses for world evangelization . The signatories of the Lausanne Commitment of 1974 were “determined to obey the commission of Jesus Christ by proclaiming His salvation to all humanity in order to make disciples of all peoples”. Because Jesus Christ is the only mediator between God and man. The Lausanne Consultation on Jewish Evangelism (LCJE) working group, established in Thailand in 1980, regards mission to the Jews as a test of the willingness of its members to evangelize all peoples. The Manila Manifesto (1989) reiterated under the heading "The uniqueness of Jesus Christ," the mission to the Jews was necessary because the Jew Jesus, like all people recognize as their Messiah would: "It would be a form of anti-Semitism as well as infidelity to Christ to deviate from the New Testament pattern of bringing the gospel 'to the Jews first'. We therefore reject the claim that the Jews have their own covenant, which makes faith in Jesus unnecessary. ”In 2010 in Cape Town , the Lausanne Movement and the World Evangelical Alliance (WEA) jointly emphasized :
“We affirm that, contrary to how Paul describes the Gentiles, the Jewish people, knowing the covenants and promises of God, still needed reconciliation with God through the Messiah Jesus Christ. There is no distinction between Jews and Gentiles in sin or salvation. Only in and through the cross can both come to God the Father through the one Spirit. [...] Therefore we will continue to explain that the whole church must share the good news of Jesus as the Messiah, Lord and Savior, with the Jewish people. And in the spirit of Romans 14-15, we ask Gentile believers to accept, encourage, and pray for Messianic Jewish believers as they testify among their own people. "
The WEA's 2008 “Berlin Declaration on the Uniqueness of Christ and Evangelism among Jews in Europe Today” repeated this position: The shame that many people feel because of the Shoah should not lead them to carry out the “direct gospel” for Jews replace dialogue with them. Because God calls all Christians to preach the gospel worldwide, the people of Israel must also hear it.
Some German evangelical groups also continue the mission to the Jews against the EKD position. On February 22, 1980, the Conference of Confessing Communities in the EKD responded to the Rhenish synodal resolution: “Our Lord Jesus Christ tells us that we owe the gospel to all people, but especially to Israel (Matt. 24:14; 28:19 ; Acts 1,8; Rom. 1,14-16). Not to bear witness to Christ to the Jews would be an offense against the King of Israel (Jn. 1,49) and his people. ”The persecution of the Jews“ under the far-reaching silence of the Church ”will not be forgotten. The Stuttgart declaration of guilt of 1945 initiated a new beginning (their silence on the Holocaust was not mentioned). Israel mission is testimony to the messiahship of Jesus of Nazareth in front of Jews, in order to induce them to accept the saving act of Jesus on the cross in faith "without pressure or temptation" and thus to reinstate the covenant of grace without works of fulfilling the law. Christians should not give up messiahship, sonship, exaltation, second coming of Jesus and the Trinity of God in religious dialogue: This would justify the condemnation of Jesus by Israel's leaders after the fact and lead to an anti-Christian image of Jesus. Only the promised conversion of all of Israel ( Rom 11.26f EU ) will bring the redemption of Jews and Christians.
“ Messianic Jews ”, who recognize Jesus of Nazareth as the Messiah and cling to elements of the Jewish tradition, have been courting “contingent refugees” from the former Soviet Union who have hardly any contact with their Jewish tradition. They do missionary work not only in the Diaspora , but also in Israel itself. Organizations in Germany that they have founded or are closely related to are:
- Working Group for the Testimony to Israel (AMZI)
- Beit Sar Shalom - Evangeliumsdienst eV (Berlin, Duisburg) (BSSE)
- Beit Hesed eV (Düsseldorf)
- Messianic Aid Service (Munich)
- Gospel Service for Israel (EDI, Ostfildern ): The EDI supports independent Messianic Jewish congregations.
- “Trumpet of the Salvation of Israel” eV under Jakob Damkani
- Jews for Jesus (founded in 1973 in the USA)
- Chosen People Ministries (founded 1984 in New York City ). BSSE is your German branch.
These groups were often founded by immigrants from Eastern Europe and are funded by German and American evangelical groups close to them. Your missionaries are trained in the United States. They acquire land and set up day care centers for children and young people, organize “Jewish evenings”, concerts and group services. Sometimes they advertise with brochures directly in front of synagogues. The German Evangelical Alliance works closely with the AMZI and the BSSE and offers its mission to the Jews a common theological platform.
The EKD and representatives of Judaism in Germany sharply criticize the goals and methods of these groups: They held on to theologically untenable positions, exploited ignorance and advertising with material advantages. In 1999 the EKD and Central Council of Jews countered the messianic Jews' claim to sole representation with a joint declaration. Then the EKD gives Russian-speaking Jews the addresses of the legally recognized Jewish communities in Germany.
literature
Overview
- Paul Gerhard Aring : Mission to the Jews. Article in: Theological Real Encyclopedia . 4th edition. Volume 17, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1988, ISBN 3-11-011506-9 .
- Arnulf Baumann : mission to the Jews. Article in: Evangelisches Kirchenlexikon . 3. Edition. Göttingen 1986, Volume 2, Sp. 854-857, ISBN 3-52-550144-7 .
- B. Pernow: Mission to the Jews. Article in: Religion Past and Present . 3. Edition. Mohr-Siebeck, Tübingen 1959, Volume 3, Sp. 976-978.
- Christian Wiese : Mission to the Jews. In: Dan Diner (Ed.): Encyclopedia of Jewish History and Culture (EJGK). Volume 3: He-Lu. Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2012, ISBN 978-3-476-02503-6 , pp. 233-236.
Early Christianity
- Otto Betz : Israel's role in salvation history for Paul. In: Otto Betz: Jesus, Lord of the Church. Essays on Biblical Theology II. Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 1990, ISBN 3-16-145505-3 , pp. 312-340.
- Wolfgang Reinbold: Propaganda and Mission in the oldest Christianity: An investigation into the modalities of the expansion of the early Church. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2000, ISBN 3-525-53872-3 .
middle Ages
- Peter Browe : The mission to the Jews in the Middle Ages and the Popes. (1st edition 1942). Pontificia Gregorian University, 1973, ISBN 88-7652-432-0 .
reformation
- Heinz Kremers (ed.); Leonore Siegele-Wenschkewitz , Bertold Klappert: The Jews and Martin Luther - Martin Luther and the Jews: history, impact history, challenge. Neukirchener Verlag, 2nd edition. Neukirchen-Vluyn 1987, ISBN 3-7887-0751-8 .
Pietism
- Christoph Rymatzki: Halle Pietism and Mission to the Jews: Johann Heinrich Callenberg's Institutum Judaicum and its Circle of Friends (1728–1736). Max Niemeyer, 2004, ISBN 3-931479-37-4 .
- Johannes Graf: baptisms of Jews in the literature of the late Enlightenment. In: International Archive for the Social History of German Literature. (IASL), Vol. 22.1, Walter de Gruyter, 1997, ISSN 0340-4528 . Retrieved September 24, 2011.
19th century
Historical representations
- Bernhard Felsenthal : Critique of Christian missions: in particular the “mission to the Jews.” E. Bühler, 1869.
- Ferdinand Christian Ewald: A life picture from the more recent mission to the Jews: Johannes Friedrich Alexander de Le Roi. C. Bertelsmann, 1896. ( digitized version )
- Gustaf Dalman , Adolf Schulze: Zinzendorf and Lieberkühn: Studies on the history of the mission to the Jews. 1st edition: JC Hinrichs, 1903. (Reprinted by Harvard University, 2006)
Newer representations
- Julia Männchen: Gustaf Dalman's life and work in the Brethren, for the Jewish mission and at the University of Leipzig, 1855–1902. Harrassowitz, 1987, ISBN 3-447-02750-9 .
- Klaus Beckmann: The foreign root. Old Testament and Judaism in Protestant Theology of the 19th Century. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2002, ISBN 3-525-55193-2 .
- Thomas Küttler: Controversial Jewish Mission: The Leipzig Central Association for Mission under Israel from Franz Delitzsch to Otto v. Harling. Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2009, ISBN 978-3-374-02710-1 .
Nazi era
- Jochen-Christoph Kaiser: Evangelical mission to Jews in the Third Reich. In: Jochen-Christoph Kaiser , Martin Greschat (Hrsg.): The Holocaust and the Protestants: Analyzes of an entanglement. Athenäum-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1988, ISBN 3-610-08503-7 .
After the holocaust
Affirmative
- Alfred Burchartz: Christian Witness for Israel Today. In: Alfred Burchartz, Baruch Maoz: Israel - our love. Contributions to the current discussion about a renewal of the relationship between Christians and Jews. Gospel Ministry for Israel, Leinfelden, undated, pp. 10-14.
- Roy H. Schoeman : Salvation comes from the Jews. God's plan for his people. St. Ulrich Verlag, Augsburg 2007, ISBN 978-3-936484-16-8 ( Review by Markus Himmelbauer: New Agenda: Judenmission? ( Memento from October 29, 2007 in the Internet Archive ))
- Tuvya Zaretsky (Ed.): The Gospel - also for Jews. Brunnen-Verlag, 2006, ISBN 3-7655-1373-3 .
Critical
- Paul Gerhard Aring: Christian mission to the Jews. Their history and problems are presented and examined using the example of the Protestant Rhineland. Neukirchen-Vluyn 1980, ISBN 3-7887-0617-1 .
- Martin A. Cohen: Christian Mission-Jewish Mission (Studies in Judaism and Christianity), Paulist Press International, USA 1983, ISBN 0-8091-2475-0 . (English)
- Eva Fleischner : Judaism in German Christian theology since 1945: Christianity and Israel considered in terms of mission . Foreword by Krister Stendahl . Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1975. Ph. D. Marquette University 1972
- Heinz Kremers , Erich Lubahn (ed.): Mission to Israel from a salvation-historical perspective. Neukirchen-Vluyn 1985
- Paul Gerhard Aring: Christians and Jews today, and the “mission to the Jews”? History and theology of Protestant mission to the Jews in Germany, presented and examined using the example of Protestantism in central Germany. Haag + Herchen, 1987, ISBN 3-89228-037-1 .
- Siegfried von Kortzfleisch, Ralf Meister-Karanikas (ed.): Clear away the stones: Contributions to the rejection of the mission to the Jews. EB-Verlag, 1997, ISBN 3-930826-32-1 .
- Heinz Kremers: Mission to the Jews today? From mission to the Jews to fraternal solidarity and ecumenical dialogue. Neukirchener Verlag, Neukirchen-Vluyn 1979, ISBN 3-7887-0599-X .
- Heinz Kremers: The wrong way of the Christian mission to the Jews. In: Adam Weyer, Thomas Kremers-Sper (ed.): Heinz Kremers, love and justice. Collected Posts. Neukirchener Verlagsanstalt, Neunkirchen-Vluyn 1990, ISBN 3-7887-1324-0 , pp. 73-84.
- Robert Brandau: Inner-Biblical Dialogue and Dialogical Mission: The Jewish Mission as a Theological Problem. Neukirchener Verlag, Neukirchen-Vluyn 2006, ISBN 3-7887-2167-7 .
Web links
- literature
- Jewish positions
- HaGalil / Jews and Judaism: An action against the mission to the Jews (links to the history, methods, sponsors and target groups of the Christian mission to the Jews)
- Jews for Judaism: Handbook against Mission ( Memento from June 26, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
- Statement from Orthodox Rabbis
- Christian non-denominational positions
- Society for Christian-Jewish Cooperation e. V. in Hamburg, February 28, 1995: Rejection of the mission to the Jews
- Conference of regional church working groups “Christians and Jews” 1996: Rejection of the mission to the Jews. Judaism is not a foreign religion for Christians
- evangelical positions
- Heinrich Treblin (Bibelwelt.de): Jesus: Image of God's love for Jews and non-Jews (1999)
- EKD: Christians and Jews I – III (2002)
- Melanchthon Academy: Cologne's No to Mission to the Jews (2007; PDF; 3.1 MB)
- Robert Brandau: The Theological Problem of Mission to the Jews (Junge Kirche 2008)
- Advent Zacchaeus Congregation Shop Church: Christians and Jews. On the question of the "mission to the Jews" (Berlin 2010; PDF; 447 kB)
- Catholic positions
- Consultation of the National Council of Synagogues and the Episcopal Committee for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs: Reflection on Covenant and Mission (August 12, 2002)
- For grace and calling are irrevocable
- non-denominational positions
- Ulrike Heitmüller: Jewish missionary groups and the Protestant Church. Christian End Times and Jews, Part 5, Telepolis , January 17, 2016
- To Do Our Heavenly Father's Will (2015)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Georg Eichholz: The term "people" in the New Testament. In: Georg Eichholz: Tradition and Interpretation , Theologische Bücherei 29, 1965, pp. 78–84.
- ↑ on the early Christian mission: Christians and Jews I – III. The studies of the Evangelical Church in Germany 1975–2000. Gütersloher Verlagshaus, Gütersloh 2002, pp. 156–162.
- ^ Bertold Klappert: Treatise for Israel (Romans 9-11). The Pauline determination of the relationship between Israel and the Church as a criterion for New Testament statements about the Jews. Part II: Attempt to interpret Romans 9-11 in a critical way. In: Martin Stöhr (ed.): Jewish existence and the renewal of Christian theology , Christian Kaiser Verlag, Munich 1981, pp. 72–86.
- ↑ Heinz Kremers: Mission to the Jews today? Neukirchen-Vluyn 1979, p. 72.
- ↑ Heinz Kremers: Mission to the Jews today? Neukirchen-Vluyn 1979, pp. 12-23 and others; see also Georg Strecker: Judenchristentum. In: Theologische Realenzyklopädie, Volume 17, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1988, pp. 319–323.
- ↑ Bernhard Blumenkranz: Augustine's sermon to the Jews. A contribution to the history of Judeo-Christian relations in the first centuries. (Reprint of the first edition from 1946) Paris, Études Augustiniennes, 1973
- ^ Marianne Awerbuch : Christian-Jewish encounter in the age of early scholasticism. Christian Kaiser Verlag, Munich 1980, p. 17.
- ↑ Elias H. Füllenbach, Dominican Order. In: Handbook of Antisemitism. Anti-Semitism in Past and Present , Vol. 5: Organizations, Institutions, Movements , ed. by Wolfgang Benz, Berlin / Boston 2012, pp. 215–221. See now also the other / Gianfranco Miletto (ed.), Dominicans and Jews. People, Conflicts and Perspectives from the 13th to the 20th Century / Dominicans and Jews. Personalities, Conflicts, and Perspectives from the 13th to the 20th Century , Berlin / Munich / Boston 2015 (= Sources and Research on the History of the Dominican Order, New Series, Vol. 14).
- ^ Markus Thurau, Franciscan Order. In: Handbook of Antisemitism. Anti-Semitism in Past and Present , Vol. 5: Organizations, Institutions, Movements , ed. by Wolfgang Benz, Berlin / Boston 2012, pp. 254–257.
- ↑ Karlheinz Deschner, Horst Herrmann: Der Antikatechismus: 200 reasons against the churches and for the world. 2nd edition 2015, Tectum Wissenschaftsverlag, ISBN 3828835465 , p. 155
- ↑ Kurt Schubert: Jewish history. Beck, Munich 2017, ISBN 3406449182 , p. 34
- ↑ František Graus : Pest - Geissler - Murder of Jews. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1987, ISBN 3525356226 , p. 190, fn. 136
- ↑ EL Dietrich: Judentum II: Up to the modern age. In: The religion in past and present , Volume 3, 3rd edition. Tübingen 1959, column 986-991; John T. Pawliskowski: Judaism and Christianity. In: Theologische Realenzyklopädie Volume 17, p. 389.
- ^ Raul Hilberg: The annihilation of the European Jews. The Complete History of the Holocaust. 2nd edition, Olle & Wolter, Berlin 1982, p. 16.
- ↑ Licenciat Fiebig: Judenmission. In: The religion in past and present , Volume 3, 1st edition. Tübingen 1912, column 801f
- ^ Raul Hilberg: The annihilation of the European Jews. The Complete History of the Holocaust. Berlin 1982, p. 11ff.
- ↑ B. Pernow: Judenmission. In: The religion in past and present , Volume 3, 3rd edition. Tübingen 1959, column 976
- ↑ Theological Real Encyclopedia , Part 1; de Gruyter, 1993, p. 326.
- ↑ all information of this part after aul Gerhard Aring: Judenmission. Article in: Theological Real Encyclopedia. 4th edition. Volume 17, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1988, ISBN 3-11-011506-9 , pp. 325f.
- ↑ Thomas Brechenmacher: The Vatican and the Jews. CH Beck, Munich 2005, pp. 105-113.
- ↑ Martin H. Jung: Christians and Jews. The history of their relationships . Darmstadt 2008, ISBN 978-3-534-19133-8 , pp. 168-169 .
- ↑ all information of this part according to Paul Gerhard Aring, article Judenmission , Theologische Realenzyklopädie Volume 17, 1988, p. 326ff.
- ↑ Johannes Graf: Baptism of Jews . Retrieved September 24, 2011.
- ^ Paul Gerhard Aring: Christliche Judenmission: their history and problems presented and examined using the example of the Evangelical Rhineland. Neukirchener Verlag, Neukirchen-Vluyn 1980, ISBN 3788706171 , p. 27.
- ^ Paul Gerhard Aring, article Judenmission , Theologische Realenzyklopädie Volume 17, 1988, p. 328f.
- ^ Peter Maser: Hans Ernst von Kottwitz. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1990, ISBN 3-525-56439-2 , p. 167 ( online excerpt )
- ^ Paul Gerhard Aring, article Judenmission , Theologische Realenzyklopädie Volume 17, 1988, p. 329 f.
- ↑ Heinz Kremers: Mission to the Jews today? Neukirchen-Vluyn 1979, p. 30.
- ↑ Klaus Beckmann: The foreign root. Old Testament and Judaism in Protestant Theology of the 19th Century. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2002, p. 300ff.
- ↑ Bertold Klappert: Co-heirs of the promise. Contributions to the Judeo-Christian dialogue. Neukirchener Verlag, Neukirchen-Vluyn 2000, ISBN 3-7887-1760-2 , p. 432.
- ^ Paul Gerhard Aring: Christian mission to the Jews. Neukirchen-Vluyn 1980, p. 12f.
- ↑ Franz Rosenzweig: Man and His Work: Collected Writings. Letters and Diaries, Volume 2, 1918–1929. Springer VS, Wiesbaden 1979, ISBN 978-94-017-0958-3 , p. 1076
- ↑ Dominique Bourel: Martin Buber: What it means to be a person. Biography. Gütersloher Verlagshaus, Gütersloh 2017, ISBN 978-3-641-20056-5 , p. 376 and p. 494
- ↑ Heinz Kremers: Mission to the Jews today? P. 11, note 5
- ↑ Oliver Arnhold, Hartmut Lenhard: Church without Jews: Christian anti-Semitism 1933-1945. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2015, ISBN 352577687X , p. 16
- ↑ Georg Plasger, Matthias Freudenberg (ed.): Reformed Confession Papers. A selection from the beginning to the present. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2004, ISBN 3-525-56702-2 , p. 243.
- ↑ Martin Honecker: Grundriss der Sozialethik. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 1995, ISBN 3110144743 , p. 70
- ^ Ernst Klee (Die Zeit 46, November 10, 1989): Persecution as a mission. The Confessing Church accepted Hitler's racial ideology
- ↑ Paul Gerhard Aring: Christliche Judenmission , p. 27 and fn. 11
- ↑ JC Hoekendijk: church and people in the German mission science. Munich 1967, p. 127f.
- ^ Paul Gerhard Aring: Christian mission to the Jews. P. 15.
- ↑ Tanja Hetzer: Judenmission. In: Wolfgang Benz (Hrsg.): Handbuch des Antisemitismus, Volume 3: Terms, Theories, Ideologies. De Gruyter / Saur, Berlin 2010, p. 155
- ^ Manfred Gallus: Church administrative assistance. The Church and the Persecution of the Jews in the Third Reich. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2008, ISBN 3525553404 , pp. 82-98
- ↑ Ulrich Gutmair: Protestants of Jewish origin in the Nazi era: Displaced Jews mission. taz, June 20, 2008
- ^ Hans-Walter Krumwiede: Church history of Lower Saxony. First and Second Part Volume. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2001, ISBN 3525554346 , [1] ; Manfred Gailus: Elisabeth Schmitz and her memorandum against the persecution of the Jews. Outlines of a forgotten biography (1893–1977). Wichern-Verlag, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-88981-243-8 , p. 211.
- ↑ Benno Kosmala: Hans Kosmala (1903 - 1981) ( Memento from October 29, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ Heinz Kremers: Mission to the Jews today? P. 16f.
- ↑ Heinz Kremers: Mission to the Jews today? P. 12f.
- ↑ Lothar Rothschild: The 'Jewish question' from a Jewish perspective. In: Judaica 2/1946, p. 330.
- ^ Robert Raphael Geis: Letter to Kurt Wilhelm from August 10, 1953. Leiden 1953, p. 314; quoted from Heinz Kremers: Mission to the Jews today? P. 13.
- ↑ Robert Raphael Geis: Judenmission. A Purim contemplation for the Week of Fraternity. General weekly newspaper of Jews in Germany XVIII / 49, 1964, p. 19f. Reprinted in: Dietrich Goldschmidt, Ingrid Ueberschär (ed.): Suffering from the unredeemed world. Robert Raphael Geis 1906–1972. Letters, speeches, essays. Christian Kaiser Verlag, Munich 1984, pp. 242–247.
- ↑ Ulrich Laepple (ed.): Messianic Jews - a provocation. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2016, ISBN 3788730552 , p. 109
- ↑ Anke Schwarzer: Christian messages. Jungle World, October 27, 1999
- ^ Johann Michael Schmidt: The St. Matthew Passion by Johann Sebastian Bach. On the history of their religious and political perception and impact. 2nd edition, Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 2014, ISBN 3170263684 , p. 88
- ↑ Declaration “No to the mission to the Jews - Yes to the dialogue between Jews and Christians”. Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn , March 9, 2009, accessed December 10, 2018.
- ↑ reported in Bertold Klappert: Dialogue with Israel and Mission among the Nations (1998), in: Miterbe der Verheißung , p. 410.
- ↑ quoted from Hans Hermann Henrix: Dialogue, not Proselytenmacherei. On the question of the mission to the Jews
- ↑ Hans Hermann Henrix (ed.): 500 years of expulsion of the Jews of Spain. Aachen 1992, p. 128.
- ↑ quoted from the State Secretariat of the Vatican of February 4, 2008: Note regarding the new guidelines of the Holy Father: Benedict XVI. for the Good Friday Prayer
- ↑ Examples: Micha Brumlik, July 1, 2008: “. . . so that they may know Jesus Christ ”: The new Good Friday Intercession for the Jews ; Good Friday request and mission to the Jews: Christian-Jewish working group calls for a statement from the bishops of the Catholic Church in German-speaking Switzerland (August 2008) ( Memento from January 31, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 107 kB)
- ↑ Protest by rabbis: "The Catholic Church has no control over its anti-Semitic tendencies" . In: Spiegel Online . March 20, 2008 ( spiegel.de [accessed January 27, 2018]).
- ↑ Heinz-Günther Schöttler, University of Regensburg: "... so that they recognize Jesus Christ". The New Good Friday Prayer for the Jews (July 1, 2008)
- ↑ Jan-Heiner Tück: Siblings who had drifted apart. Neue Zürcher Zeitung from December 12, 2015, accessed on December 10, 2018
- ^ Tilmann Kleinjung: No to the mission to the Jews. Deutschlandfunk from December 11, 2015
- ↑ 'A mission of the Jews is not planned and not necessary.' kath.net from November 26, 2018
- ↑ quoted from Bertold Klappert: “This people - it will herald my glory.” Consequences of forgetting Israel in mission and ecumenism before and after Auschwitz. (1999) In: Bertold Klappert: Miterbe der Verheißung , pp. 441f.
- ↑ quoted from Paul Gerhard Aring: Christliche Judenmission. , Pp. 253f.
- ↑ Heinz Kremers: Mission to the Jews today? P. 13f.
- ^ Council for the Relationship between Church and Israel: Israel and the Church, a study commissioned by the General Synod of the Dutch Reformed Church. EVZ-Verlag, Zurich 1961, pp. 41–43; quoted from Heinz Kremers: Mission to the Jews today? P. 13f.
- ↑ Rolf Rendttorff, Hans Hermann Henrix (ed.): The churches and Judaism. Documents from 1945–1985. 3. Edition. 2001, p. 359f.
- ↑ quoted from Christoph Münz, Rudolf W. Sirsch: If not me, who? If not now, when? The socio-political significance of the German Coordination Council of Societies for Christian-Jewish Cooperation. Lit-Verlag, 1st edition. 2004, ISBN 3-8258-8165-2 , p. 106
- ↑ quoted from Rolf Rendttorff, Hans Hermann Henrix (Ed.): The Churches and Judaism. Documents from 1945–1985. 3. Edition. 2001, p. 370.
- ↑ Wolfgang Kraus, Hans Hermann Henrix (Ed.): The Churches and Judaism Volume 2: Documents from 1986 to 2000. Bonifatius, 2001, ISBN 3897101483 , p. 453
- ^ Christine Lienemann-Perrin: Mission and interreligious dialogue (Ecumenical study books). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1999, ISBN 3525871856 , p. 171, footnote 276
- ↑ Jakob J. Petuchowski: When Jews and Christians Meet. State University of New York Press, 1988, ISBN 0887066313 , p. 11
- ↑ quoted from Harald Uhl (2000): The unclaimed Bund. 40 years of Jewish-Christian dialogue at the German Evangelical Church Congress
- ^ Paul Gerhard Aring: Christian mission to the Jews. P. 235.
- ^ Freiburg circular
- ↑ Heinz Kremers: Mission to the Jews today? P. 18.
- ↑ quoted from Christoph M. Raisig: Ways of Renewal - Christians and Jews: Der Rheinische Synodalbeschluss. Potsdam 2002, p. 226.
- ↑ Walter Holsten: The kerygma and man. Theological Library Volume 13/1, Munich 1953; quoted from Bertold Klappert: co-heirs of the promise p. 442f.
- ↑ Gerhard Jasper: The community of Jesus and the people of Israel according to the end-historical testimony of the New Testament (1953), quoted from Paul Gerhard Aring: Christliche Judenmission pp. 11–28.
- ↑ Gerhard Jasper: Is there a mission from the Church to Israel? Pastoral Blätter 7 + 8, 1957, pp. 1-8.
- ↑ Gerhard Jasper: Voices from new religious Judaism in its position on Christianity and on Jesus. Hamburg 1958
- ↑ Bertold Klappert: "This people - it will herald my glory." Consequences of the oblivion to Israel in mission and ecumenism before and after Auschwitz. (1999) In: Bertold Klappert: Miterbe der Verheißung , p. 439.
- ↑ quoted from Christoph M. Raisig: Ways of Renewal - Christians and Jews: Der Rheinische Synodalbeschluss. Potsdam 2002, p. 228.
- ↑ Heinz Kremers: Mission to the Jews today? P. 18f.
- ↑ Heinz Kremers: Mission to the Jews today? P. 20.
- ↑ Press coverage in: Dieter Goldschmidt, Hans Joachim Kraus: The non-terminated covenant. Kreuz Verlag, Stuttgart 1963, pp. 161-181.
- ↑ Heinz Kremers: Mission to the Jews today? P. 22.
- ↑ quoted from Paul Gerhard Aring, article Judenmission , Theologische Realenzyklopädie Volume 17, 1988, p. 330.
- ↑ Arnulf Baumann (ed.): On the way to Christian-Jewish conversation. 125 years of the Evangelical Lutheran Central Association for Witness and Service among Jews and Christians. Münster Judaic Studies, LIT-Verlag, Münster 1998, ISBN 3-8258-3688-6 , pp. 86–119; see also Heinrich Grosse, Hans Otte, Joachim Perels (eds.): Preserving without confessing? The Hanoverian regional church under National Socialism. Lutherisches Verlagshaus, Hannover 1996, p. 447
- ↑ Wolfgang Kraus, Hans Hermann Henrix (Ed.): The Churches and Judaism, Volume 2: Documents from 1945 to 1985. Bonifatius-Druckerei, 2001, ISBN 3897101483 , p. 596
- ↑ Harry Wassmann: Christian and Jewish Faith - Two Paths to Salvation? Voices and moods from Tübingen on the controversy over the “mission to the Jews”.
- ↑ State Synod of Bavaria: Word of all church governing bodies on the development of the Christian-Jewish relationship, adopted at the synodal conference in Straubing in November 2008.
- ^ Society for Christian-Jewish Cooperation (Hamburg 1995): Rejection of the Jewish mission
- ↑ Gabriele Kammerer: In the hair, in the arms: 40 years working group “Jews and Christians” at the German Evangelical Church Congress. Christian Kaiser, Gütersloher Verlagshaus, Munich 2001, ISBN 3579053221 , p. 155.
- ↑ EKD: Christians and Jews III, 2000 ( Memento from September 5, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ rally of the 12th Synod of the Evangelical Church in Germany on November 9, 2016: "... the faithfulness endures forever." (Psalm 146.6) - A Statement on Christians and Jews as witnesses of God's faithfulness .
- ↑ lecture by Christoph M. Raisig: ways of renewal - Christians and Jews: The Rheinische Synodalbeschluss. P. 275ff.
- ↑ lecture by Christoph M. Raisig: ways of renewal - Christians and Jews: The Rheinische Synodalbeschluss. P. 279ff.
- ^ Jewish News: Mission and Anti-Judaism. Retrieved January 27, 2018 .
- ↑ solidariankirche.de ( Memento from September 10, 2012 in the web archive archive.today )
- ↑ Declaration by the “Jews and Christians” working group at the German Evangelical Church Congress, Stuttgart, June 17, 1999: No to mission to the Jews - Yes to partnership and inner-Biblical dialogue
- ↑ Der Spiegel, June 16, 1999: Kirchentag: controversy “Jewish mission” ; Achim Bahnen: Completely unsaved. Should German Protestants conduct “mission to the Jews”? A dispute not only in Württemberg (FAZ, February 4, 2000, p. 45)
- ^ Theo Sorg, Lebendige Gemeinde 3/99, special issue for the Stuttgart Kirchentag 1999, Korntal-Münchingen 1999; quoted in Christian Mission among Jews
- ↑ Timo Roller: Unique Israel , Hänssler / SCM-Verlag, Holzgerlingen 2008
- ↑ Christian B. Schäffler, Adventist Press Service Switzerland, July 11, 1999: Comments on the Stuttgart Church Congress (Part I) ( Memento from November 22, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ a b c Harry Wassmann: Christian and Jewish Faith - Two Paths to Salvation? Voices and moods from Tübingen on the controversy about "mission to the Jews"
- ↑ Psychoanalysis of the mission to the Jews (from: ChristIn und SozialistIn Heft 3/2000)
- ↑ Hagalil, July 10, 2001: For example Berlin: How the Evangelical Church (EKiBB) supports the mission of the Jews ; German Coordination Council for Christian-Jewish Cooperation (DKR): Is the EKD again representing the mission to the Jews? May 16, 2008
- ^ Lutz Lemhöfer: Christian Fundamentalists as Israel's Friends? , Evangelische Zeitung, issue 3/2003
- ↑ Nikolaus Schneider, October 31, 2009: No to the mission to the Jews!
- ↑ R. Mayer: “I am the way, the truth and the life.” An attempt on the Gospel of John on the occasion of the newly awakened debate on the mission to the Jews. In: Stefan Schreiber, Alois Stimpfle (Ed.): Johannes aenigmaticus. Studies on the Gospel of John for Herbert Leroy. Pustet, Regensburg 2001, ISBN 3791717464 , pp. 183-195
- ↑ Peter Stuhlmacher: Biblical Theology and Gospel: Collected Essays. Mohr / Siebeck, Tübingen 2002, ISBN 3161477685 , p. 94f.
- ^ Frank Hinkelmann: Churches, Free Churches and Christian Communities in Austria: Handbuch der Konfessionskunde. Böhlau, Vienna 2016, ISBN 320520400X , p. 514
- ↑ Stefanie Pfister: Messianic Jews in Germany: A historical and religious sociological investigation. Lit Verlag, Münster 2008, ISBN 3825812901 , p. 94
- ^ Lausanne Movement: Manila Manifesto ( Memento from January 31, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 79 kB), p. 12.
- ↑ Peter Hirschberg: Messianic Jews: Danger or Opportunity for Christian-Jewish Dialogue? In: Ulrich Laepple (ed.): Messianic Jews - a provocation. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2016, ISBN 3788730552 , p. 86
- ↑ a b Oda Lambrecht, Christian Baars: Mission of God's Kingdom - Fundamentalist Christians in Germany. 2nd edition, Christian Links, Berlin 2009, ISBN 3861535661 , p. 166
- ↑ Christoph M. Raisig: Ways of Renewal - Christians and Jews: The Rheinische Synodalbeschluss. Potsdam 2002, pp. 272f.
- ↑ Gerhard Stephan, Heinz Sproll (ed.): Encounter and Dialogue: Ludwigsburg Contributions to Israeli-German and Christian-Jewish Conversations. Ludwigsburg University of Education, 1987, ISBN 3924080054 , p. 74
- ↑ Toby Axelrod: appropriation instead of dialogue: the front line in the struggle for the Jewish soul lies in Berlin-Lichterfelde. In: Y Michal Bodemann, Micha Brumlik (eds.): Jews in Germany - Germany in the Jews: New perspectives. Wallstein, Göttingen 2010, ISBN 3835307800 , p. 124ff.
- ↑ Stefanie Pfister: Messianic Jews in Germany: A historical and religious sociological investigation. 2008, p. 124
- ^ Esther Braunwarth: Intercultural cooperation in Germany using the example of societies for Christian-Jewish cooperation. Herbert Utz, 2011, ISBN 3831640874 , p. 137f. ; HaGalil, 2001: Strategies and Concepts of Mission to the Jews ; Rabbi Dr. Chaim Z. Rozwaski: "Messianic Judaism": poison in chocolate candy. HaGalil, Berlin 2010
- ^ Y Michal Bodemann, Micha Brumlik (ed.): Jews in Germany - Germany in the Jews: New Perspectives. Göttingen 2010, p. 128
