A principal feature of the Center's goal of fostering original research and scholarship is its annual Scholar in Residence program; on a yearly basis, the Center hosts a scholar for one to several weeks to lecture, study, and engage in dialogue at Sacred Heart University. In the 2003-04 academic year, Dr. Wolfgang Kraus visited and lent his wisdom and expertise to the University, as the Center's scholar in residence. Dr. Kraus hails from the University of Koblenz-Landau in Germany, where he is professor of Old and New Testament Studies. From October 20-25, 2003, Dr. Kraus gave a series of lectures and discussions on the topic: “The People of God: New Testament Ecclesiology Within its Jewish Context.”
Professor Kraus is the editor of fifteen books, has published more than thirty scholarly articles in books and journals and is the author of three internationally acclaimed books in the field of New Testament studies. His research projects include the history of early Christianity, Biblical Theology, Christian-Jewish dialogue, interdisciplinary collaboration of Theology and the human sciences, and the German Septuagint Project.
In five sessions at the Center, Professor Kraus explored the various ways Jewish and Christian identities were formed and shaped over the course of the first century C.E., relying on his original and thought-provoking scholarship on New Testament texts and history. He drew most heavily on the writings of St. Paul, whose pastoral letters to first-century Christian communities around the Mediterranean world provided a powerful Christian interpretation of the person of Jesus, the promises of the Hebrew Scriptures, and the identity of the developing group as it diverged from its Jewish foundations. In his letters, Paul consistently addresses the question of election, of how Christians should understand their relationship with God as a chosen people, and their relationship with the people of Israel, whose covenant with God would be the subject of Christian debate for centuries to come. Professor Kraus' careful dissection of Paul's letters not only elucidates the first-century conflicts during which they were written, but proposes that today, after Vatican II and forty years of Jewish-Christian dialogue, Christians can understand Paul's true beliefs with regard to the Jewish people in a more thorough and positive way than ever before.
Brief summaries of Professor Kraus' talks follow.
Session 1
Church and Israel: An Overview Over the Centuries
In his opening lecture, Dr. Kraus opened with a series of questions about the People of God, the self-understanding of the Jewish people, and the changing views of the Jewish people harbored by Christian believers. “The question of the People of God is a current question for Jews, because it deals with Israel's theological right of existence. Has Judaism been overtaken by Christianity? Did the Church replace Israel as God's people? Or are God's promises irrevocable?” Professor Kraus discussed the 2000 Jewish-authored document Dabru Emet, which deals less with the question of the identity of the messiah than with this very question of the People of God. Nostra Aetate, the Catholic document of the Second Vatican Council, also affirmed a new understanding that God never revoked his promises to Israel. Professor Kraus asked, “If Israel is the People of God, what then is the Church? Dealing with such questions is not something only for flamboyant correctors, but instead, it leads to the core of Christian theology.”
“In the 21st century, the Gentile Christian has for centuries been the normal case. Thus, compared with 1st century Christianity, the situation has been turned upside down. The first Christians all came from the people of Israel. They did not believe they had given up their Judaism; Paul, for example, understood himself to be Jewish, and would probably have protested against being placed into today's Christian categories.” Continuing along this vein, Dr. Kraus described the enormous difficulties faced by early Judeo-Christians, regarding the question of whether Gentiles could or could not be admitted into their community. “The expectation of the Kingdom of God was naturally connected with expectations for the People of God. God's Kingdom and God's People belong together.”
Later, Dr. Kraus explained that New Testament authors and other Christians forgot or ignored, to some extent, the original and essential reliance on Israel's role in the destiny of the People of God. This forgetfulness led to the belief that only Christians, and not the Jewish people who did not accept Jesus as the messiah, were seen to be the chosen people, after the New Testament came into being. Anti-Judaism would soon follow, and it would “pave the way to the most racist, militant anti-Semitism in centuries later.” This is not to assert the New Testament is anti-Semitic. A look at Paul's letters shows that despite what attitudes later arose among Christians about Judaism, the question of the People of God was hardly settled at the time of Paul's writing. “While one could read Galatians and gain the impression that the believers in Jesus were the only People of God, this is unambiguously refuted in Romans: ‘God cannot reject his People, whom he chose before.'” (Romans 11:2)
Session 2
The People of God and the Nations in the Old Testament
Having discussed the parting of the ways between Judaism and the developing Christian community, Dr. Kraus talked about the integration of Gentiles into the People of God as understood by Christians. Dr. Kraus pointed out that the self-understanding of Israel as a chosen people was a fluid concept throughout the times documented in the Hebrew Scriptures. Why Israel was uniquely favored by God was sometimes explained genealogically, sometimes theologically, sometimes morally, and always with difficulty. The role of the nations in history is even less clear; Gentiles do not maintain a strictly negative, nor a strictly positive relationship with Israel and Israel's God throughout the Scriptures. With all these difficulties in view, Professor Kraus moved into the New Testament and the writings of Paul, to examine the competing proposals among early Christians to resolve the problem of Gentile conversion.
“We find in Galatians, as we heard in the last session, an acceptance of Israel's God and the possibility of the nations to worship him, but also a further-reaching equality of Jews and Gentiles in the New Testament People of God,” Professor Kraus maintained.
Paul's theology also includes eschatological innovations, according to Professor Kraus. “Zion becomes the world's holy sanctuary,” in the Christian interpretation of many prophetic texts. Paul understands Isaiah and the prophetic tradition as guardedly affirming an expanded “eschatological relationship” between Israel and the nations, which has suddenly been fulfilled and made possible by God's incarnation in Jesus.
Session 3
The People of God and the Nations in Early Jewish Writings
In this session, Dr. Kraus explored several important early Jewish religious texts, in search of clues about the expectations for the fate of the Gentiles. The Essenes in particular, the eremitic sect that gathered at Qumran, wrestled at length and in depth with questions about God's plan for all humanity.
“Found in Cave 11, a scroll from the 2nd century B.C.E. presents a new concept of the Temple cult. The scroll excludes all foreign influence on Temple life, including the customary courtyard for Gentiles, and even foreign construction materials,” Dr. Kraus explained. Even those who have converted to Judaism are in some ways excluded, for several generations, from full participation in Jewish temple rituals. But these texts are clearly in opposition to other more moderate and widely-accepted authorities on the role of Gentiles.
“In the writings from within Qumran influence, two tendencies with regard to Gentile status are obvious: the majority of texts demand a clear separation, sometimes even exclusion. Next to these, some texts emphasize a more positive attitude toward the nations. The Book of Enoch, for example, asserts that eschatologically, Israel and the nations will in some way be equal in the sight of God. Nonetheless, ritual purity and adherence to the Torah remain the most basic standards, regardless of how much or how little possibility exists for Gentiles to enter into God's people and Torah obedience.” Certain currents within Judaism that questioned circumcision's necessity for conversion, Professor Kraus said, “contained the ‘dynamite' for Paul's ecclesiology and for early Christianity.”
Session 4
Basic Structures of Paul's Ecclesiology
Paul regularly uses the Greek term ekklesia to refer to the Christian community, and develops from it a theory of what the Church is, an ecclesiology. Dr. Kraus suggested that Paul's ecclesiology is less a pure innovation than an amalgamation of many existing Jewish traditions and expectations regarding the Gentiles, such as those Essene texts that reflect an openness to Gentile participation in God's plan for the world.
According to Paul, the ‘new' People of God need not supplant the existing community, the people of Israel. It needs only to extend that concept. The First Letter to the Thessalonians is rife with explorations of ecclesiology based on chosen-ness; and to be chosen is to be sanctified, and this idea is certainly not new. Early Christians naturally experienced themselves to be sanctified within a special relationship with the God of Israel, and spurred by this experience, Paul found a way to explain how this could be, in light of the history of Israel and the promises God had made.
Dr. Kraus explained, “The believers are God's sons, Abraham's offspring according to the prophets. Belonging to Abraham's offspring is a consequence, for Paul, of belonging to Christ. If they are sons, they are also heirs,” and therefore become part of Israel's covenant with God. This is Paul's ecclesiological understanding of the community of believers in Christ, and its relationship to Israel. “But for Paul, does the Church participate in continuity with Israel, or does it substitute for Israel in God's relationship with humanity? Of course, the second formulation has held primacy throughout most Christian ecclesiology, until the twentieth century. But Israel's continuing election remains essential to Paul's theory of God's people, and we are now prepared to discuss it.”
Sessions 5 and 6
“For Christians, the authentic interpretation of the Gospel of Jesus hinges on correctly interpreting God's righteousness and faithfulness to His people.” This is Professor Kraus' main thesis; that through reading Paul, Christians' self-identity can benefit from a clearer understanding of their own relationship to God's originally chosen people, the Jewish people. He continued, “The Letter to the Romans has the most theological importance of Paul's writings. He claims that Israel is still to be regarded as God's People even after having rejected Jesus as the Messiah.” When Paul lists the gifts bestowed upon Israel, including the Messiah, “he assumes that God's promises are real, and are more real than can be seen. He assumes that the present discrepancy between God's promises and salvation through faith in Jesus Christ will be resolved, eventually, in a way that ultimately fulfills all of the promises to Israel. Paul describes Israel as acting subjectively out of zeal for God, but objectively in error in rejecting Jesus as the Messiah. This paradox gives rise to many of the classic Pauline images, such as the wild olive branches grafted onto the tree, which give pause to those who would fail to see Israel as primarily and originally, God's People.”
“Jews and Gentiles are God's People as far as they both share the faith of Abraham. Jews who do not accept Jesus as the Messiah are God's People by right of God's unquestionable promises…. The union of Jews and Gentiles in Christ at the end of time does not substitute for Israel, nor does it blur Christian ecclesiology as Paul develops it,” Professor Kraus maintained. “Of course, we are not united as God's People. Jews and Christians are, I would say, two forms of God's People who will be united in the end. God's promises to Israel are reliable, and Christians simply believe that through Christ the promises were extended to everyone.”
Dr. Kraus' scholarship provides a stimulating and intellectually sound framework for interpreting Paul, in a way that affirms the natural kinship between Christians and Jews – in the first century C.E. and today. Christians can understand that the eschatological unity Paul anticipates will be brought about by God, whose promises to Israel and to the Church will prove reliable. The scriptural scholarship Dr. Kraus brought to the CCJU is a step-stone from mutual hostility toward the natural friendship that the earliest Christians believed necessary to build with their Jewish kin. As the interpretation of Paul's writings move from ambiguity and uncertainty towards a complete affirmation of Israel's continuing election, Christians today can gain a fuller understanding of their own faith through Paul's articulation of Christianity's place within God's larger plan for humanity. The CCJU is grateful for the opportunity to host Dr. Kraus as its 2003-04 Scholar in Residence, whose ideas and scholarship contain the seeds for a new engagement with fundamental texts and beliefs, an engagement that will carry Jewish-Christian dialogue forward with the intellectual and theological vibrancy it requires.
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