Substitution theology

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The destruction of Jerusalem by Titus ( Wilhelm von Kaulbach ), 1846.

As supersessionism (from Latin substituere "replace"; also: Redemption , replacement , Ersetzungs- , Enterbungs- or expropriation theology ) is referred to in the strictest sense, the Christian doctrine that was once chosen by God people of Israel no longer the people of his federal but be rejected and cursed by God for all time; furthermore, God's promises to Israel were passed on to the church as God's new people. In a broader sense, substitution theology also describes any Christian doctrine that assigns Judaism a low, provisional or only church-oriented value, in which the Jews should also recognize the “fullness of truth”.

This approach has determined the relationship between Christianity and Judaism in various stages since the patristic era, across all confessional and epochal boundaries. Only since the Holocaust did a rethink gradually begin, which has been reflected in a revision of Christian teachings on the Protestant side since the Second Vatican Council in 1965, the Synodal resolution of the Rhenish Regional Church in 1980. With the talk of the “never-canceled covenant” between God and Israel ( Martin Buber ), they emphasize the lasting value of Judaism.

Classical substitution theology

Allegorical representation of substitution on the gravestone of Pastor Georg Fuchs (1839), Gottsdorf, Lower Bavaria

Substitution theology in the narrow sense, according to which the people of Israel are now rejected and their specific promises canceled, argues with the alleged murder of God or Christ or their stubbornness. This anti-Judaistic doctrine found artistic expression in the motif Ecclesia and Synagogue , which juxtaposes the blindfolded synagogue personified as a woman with the personified church in triumphalistic form. These representations can still be found today on numerous domes, e.g. B. on the prince portal at Bamberg Cathedral . Theology of religion represents a strict exclusivism , according to which salvation can only be found in the church.

variants

Substitution theology has described the relationship of the Church to Judaism in the course of Christian history using various models, which essentially always amount to the abolition or dissolution of Judaism:

  • the substitute model : the church has replaced the people of God Israel since the resurrection of Jesus Christ . They see themselves as the new people of God who have "inherited" the promises of Israel, while Israel is under the curse and wrath of God. Jews could only share in salvation as individuals through Christian baptism. The special way of salvation of the Torah is however ended once and for all, the covenant of God with his people is destroyed. This was the almost universal conception of patristicism since the letter of Barnabas and was later adopted by Martin Luther .
  • The typology model : Here God's people Israel is described as the forerunner of the church up to the work of Jesus Christ, which the church had depicted in advance, but has now been surpassed by its image. For example, Israel's exodus from slavery was interpreted as a symbolic anticipation of the foundation of the church by the Holy Spirit , so that this foundation appeared as a release from the bondage of Jewish law . Thus, a gradation of salvation history and the superiority of Christianity over Judaism were dogmatically asserted. This relation also determines the document Nostra Aetate of the declaration of the Second Vatican Council on non-Christian religions , in which it says: "The Church confesses ... that the salvation of the Church is mysteriously represented in the exodus of the chosen people from bondage."
  • The illustration model : It varies the typology model in that it declares the people of Israel to be the negative film of human existence and history, on the background of which people should recognize their dependence on grace. Judaism thus appears only as a witness and mirror of the judgment and wrath of God, which points to the salvation of Jesus Christ. The church is constantly dependent on this, however, since even the Christians who have already been baptized can only recognize the special gift of grace of salvation again and again through the wrong path of “legal” Judaism. This classification characterizes the Lutheran and existentialist theology of Rudolf Bultmann and his students Ernst Käsemann and Gerhard Ebeling .
  • the subsumption model : Here Israel's special relationship to God is classified in a general foreknowledge of God by all people. Israel's election is thus understood as a mere example of the religiosity and the relationship to God of all human beings and is thus canceled out in this. The Jew Jesus then also appears as the generally religious and therefore human being; his teaching is removed as humane ethics from its embedding in the peculiarities of Judaism. Many liberal, religious-pedagogical and general religious dialogue-oriented drafts follow this path, such as that by Wolfhart Pannenberg .

According to the dialogue theologian Bertold Klappert , all these drafts have in common that they cannot recognize the special covenant of YHWH with this people of the Jews, their destiny to be a blessing ( Gen 12.3  EU ) or light of the peoples ( Isa 42.6  EU ), rather, it must be converted into a definition of the true, absolute or final religion (of Christianity) that is detached from it.

This basic theological attitude also characterized Christian bodies such as the German Evangelical Committee for Service to Israel , which campaigned for a dialogue with Jews and Judaism after 1945 . The historian Gabriele Kammerer wrote:

“The traditional theological view of the Jewish people [...] was: The people from whom Jesus came did not accept him as Messiah, so his rights as the people of God pass to the Church. The security that speaks from this theology of disinheritance is at the same time the panic defense against an existential fear. Christians must ask themselves how can our faith in Jesus as Christ be true if his own people do not share this faith? For centuries, theologians had no other answer to this challenge than this: By rejecting Jesus, Israel disqualifies itself as the people of God, the "new Israel" is the Church. "

Attempts to overcome

All of the more recent models of Christian theologians regarding the relationship between Church and Judaism are based on the “never-revoked covenant” between God and the people of Israel, to which Judaism continuously testifies through its continued existence even after the Holocaust. You are referring to a formulation by the Jewish theologian Martin Buber, who coined it in a conversation with the Christian theologian Karl Ludwig Schmidt on January 14, 1933, referring to biblical passages Isa 54,8  EU ; Jer 31,3  EU and related to the whole of Jewish history.

Today's exegetes recognize that the New Testament confirms and affirms the uncontrolled Israel Covenant, for example when Paul of Tarsus emphasizes in Rom. 11.2.28  EU : “God did not cast off his people, whom he once chose ... seen from their election are they loved by God, for the sake of the fathers. For grace and calling that God grants are irrevocable. ”Accordingly, the expression“ people of God ”in the NT continues to refer to the people of Israel (e.g. in Rom. 15.4), so that through Jesus Christ Christians “ joint heirs of the Promise ”( Eph 3,6  EU ). According to this, the Church of Jews and Gentiles can in no way replace and replace God's chosen people, but on the contrary is a "grafted branch" of this people out of pure grace of God ( Rom. 11 : 16-21  EU ).

Christian theologians today conclude from this: Only by recognizing the permanent election of Israel can the church receive a share in its history of promise. Christians who regard Judaism as an outdated, superseded or superseded religion have given up their own salvation from this point of view, whether they know it or not.

  • The model of mutual witness : For example, the church historian Karl Kupisch emphasized that the people of God in the dual form of synagogue and church are permanently dependent on each other: “The mystery of Jews and Christians in their God-willed coexistence, togetherness and, as is the case with this declining time will teach, also for one another under the common God ... we are only beginning to open up in our day. ”The theological motto of the non-terminated Israel League understands the coexistence of Judaism and Christianity as God's disposition, which includes a common task: It makes a fundamental special one Solidarity, the togetherness and for one another of both religions in each unmistakable witness service to the world, inevitable.
  • The federal theological complementary model : Karl Barth formulated in his Church Dogmatics Volume II / 2 (1938): Israel and the Church are the one people of God in two forms, with whom God has made his covenant from eternity for the benefit of mankind. Jews themselves are the authoritative living interpreters and witnesses of the Hebrew Bible , especially for Christians. This was the first time that Jewish self-understanding and the Jewish interpretation of the Tanach were recognized as a necessary prerequisite for any Judeo-Christian dialogue .

This dialogue has been practiced since around 1960, especially at the German Evangelical Church Days and the Catholic Days, and made fruitful for joint Bible exegesis . A concrete consequence of this was the ongoing Jewish criticism of religion of every Christian attempt to spiritualize the message of the NT and to detach it from worldly consequences: "Why did God create atheism ?" Asked a disciple. The answer of one of the lights of Hasidism was: So that you do not let the hungry starve by putting them off with the world to come. Or persuade him to trust in God, who will stand by him, instead of you giving him food now. "

  • The messianic complementary model : This variant emphasizes the permanent “excess of promise” of Israelite prophecy, which the Jewish interpretation of the Hebrew Bible makes recognizable. The Jewish Messiah is the one who brings the shalom , ultimate peace and justice especially for the poor and disenfranchised. Theologians like Johann Baptist Metz and Jürgen Moltmann then emphasize that Jesus Christ fulfilled this unfulfilled messianic hope in his actions at the side and for the poor of Israel up to the gift of life on the cross pars pro toto and thus anticipated the kingdom of God . God ultimately confirmed his path through his resurrection and thus renewed and confirmed Israel's hopes for all peoples. Jews and Christians could therefore only testify to this God in common service for world-wide earthly peace and justice.
  • The christological dependence model : This variant emphasizes that Jesus Christ himself contradicts the theology of substitution not only with regard to the advancing Israel League and the unfulfilled messianic hope, but above all with regard to his act of reconciliation on the cross. He had included the peoples in the history of election and hope of Israel precisely through his vicarious suffering of the final judgment - that is, what earlier founded the replacement and rejection of God's first-chosen people. Accordingly, the Jews, who do not recognize Jesus as the Messiah, would not have to be converted and integrated into the church, but the Christians from the peoples (Hebrew Goyim ) would have to recognize that they are only partakers of the election of Israel as “called upon” (Rom. 9 -11). Not only based on their historical origins and common eschatological future, but also and decisively from the history of Jesus Christ himself, the peoples are destined to the common knowledge of the God of Israel - expressed in the promise of the pilgrimage to Zion . The Christian mission to the peoples is therefore not the prerequisite and preliminary stage to the mission to the Jews, but the fulfillment of the promise that the peoples will convert to the God of Israel and listen to his will revealed to Israel. The mission to the Jews will be replaced by a joint witness of peace from the church and synagogue to the people.

See also

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Bertold Klappert: Israel and the Church. Considerations on Karl Barth's teaching on Israel. In: Theological Existence Today No. 207, Christian Kaiser, Munich 1980, ISBN 3459012749 , pp. 14-17
  2. ^ Bertold Klappert: Israel and the Church , Munich 1980, pp. 17-18
  3. ↑ Bertold Klappert: Israel and the Church , Munich 1980, pp. 18-20
  4. ↑ Bertold Klappert: Israel and the Church , Munich 1980, pp. 20–22
  5. ↑ Bertold Klappert: Israel and the Church , Munich 1980, pp. 22–24
  6. ↑ Bertold Klappert: Israel and the Church , Munich 1980, pp. 14–37
  7. ↑ Gabriele Kammerer: Children of God in the land of perpetrators. The Christian-Jewish Dialogue in the Federal Republic of Germany. In: Micha Brumlik and others: Travels through Jewish Germany. DuMont, Cologne 2006, p. 432
  8. ↑ Hans Hermann Henrix: The never denounced covenant. Basis of the Christian-Jewish relationship
  9. ↑ Michael Wyschogrod (Ed.): Church and Israel, Volumes 5-6. Neukirchener Verlag, Neukirchen-Vlyn1990, p. 104; Wolfgang Kraus: The people of God: On the foundation of ecclesiology in Paul. Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 2004, ISBN 3161485386
  10. ↑ Karl Kupisch: Roots of Anti-Semitism , in: Werner Goldschmidt, Hans Joachim Kraus: Der Unekündigte Bund p. 85
  11. ↑ Bertold Klappert: Israel and the Church, p. 112