Walter Kardinal Kasper:
Juden und Christen –
das eine Volk Gottes.
Freiburg u.a.: Herder 2020, 160 pp.
ISBN: 978-3-451-39619-9
Temple University Philadelphia, USA
This is an
important book. But first some pertinent – and perhaps some may also think,
“impertinent” – background information. Reviewing this “must read” contribution
to Jewish-Christian relations by Cardinal Professor Walter Kasper brings me
back to when I was fortunate enough to be a fellow Professor with three of the
most influential Catholic theologians of the 20th-21st
centuries – when I was Guest Professor of the Pontifical Catholic Theological
Faculty of the University of Tübingen,
Germany, in the early 1970s. Those hyper-influential Catholic theologians are:
Josef Ratzinger (a.k.a. Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI), Professor Hans Küng, and Cardinal Walter Kasper. I beg your, the
reader’s, permission to say a word about my contact with each of them.
I became a close
personal friend of Hans Küng already in 1959
when I was finishing my Licentiate in Sacred Theology (S.T.L.) degree in
Catholic Theology at Tübingen (perhaps the
first Catholic layperson to receive a degree in Catholic theology – ever!), and
Hans was the successor there to my “Doktor Vater,” Professor Heinrich Fries
(who had just moved to the University of Munich). In those early years, Walter
Kasper was an Assistant to Hans, and subsequently became Professor there.
During Vatican Council II, Hans was hired at as the successor to Professor
Fries. A short few years later, Hans was the Dean of the Catholic Theology
Faculty, and hired Josef Ratzinger, with whom he earlier had been a fellow Assistent
in the Catholic Theology faculty of the University of Münster,
and also a colleague at Vatican Council II. Thus, the Catholic Theology Faculty
of the University of Tübingen housed at the
same time three theological world-shapers – and I was privileged to know them
all.
Walter Kasper
was made Cardinal (2001) and the Head of the Pontifical Council for
Promoting Christian Unity for the years 2001-2010. In many ways, this book
is the fruit of his experience then, as well as his continued very active
involvement in Jewish-Christian matters. The reader is the beneficiary of his
manifold decades working in, and helping to shape, the ever-developing
relationship between Catholics and Jews. The fact that Walter is a German
theologian also cannot help but be important – given the Holocaust – during
which all four of us were alive.
This volume will
be an eye-opener for those Christians and Jews, and intelligent outside
observers, e.g., Muslims and Nones, how these two sibling religions –
Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism – came into existence and developed alongside
each other. It is worth the price of the book just to learn of the
family-intertwined relationship of what have come to be called “Rabbinical
Judaism” and “Christianity.” To begin, Jesus (which name is an English
spelling of the Latin Iesus, which is a translation of the New Testament
Greek, Iesous, which is a translation of the Hebrew/Aramaic Yeshua.
The latter was how he in life was named by his friends, and enemies. Also
telling, in this regard, was that he was addressed as “Rabbi,” which means
“Teacher.” The New Testament was written Greek (which was the generally known
language in the Roman Empire of the first century of the Common Era), and
consequently, almost always in its pages Jesus/Yeshua was addressed as Didascalos
, Teacher, which is a translation of the term actually used, Rabbi
(“Teacher”) in Hebrew. So, when we read in English that when he is addressed as
Master, or Lord, he in fact was addressed as Rabbi! What difference in
Christian-Jewish relations might it have made over the centuries if the masses
of illiterate Christians had constantly heard Yeshua addressed as Rabbi!
There were at
least a half dozen Jewish groups contending during Yeshua’s time about what was
the correct way to live as a Jew: 1) Pharisees, 2) Sadducees, 3) Zealots, 4)
Qumranites, 5) Hellenists, 6) “Yeshuites.” The latter, initially, according to
St. Luke’s Acts of the Apostles, called themselves “Followers of the Way”
– Hodos in Greek – of Rabbi Yeshua. It was only many decades after the
death of their Rabbi that they were called “Christians.” Only two groups
survived the devasting three wars with the Roman Empire (64-70; 115-117;
130-135): 1) The Followers of the Pharisees, “Rabbinic Judaism,” and 6) the
Followers of Rabbi Yeshua, later called “Christians.”
Hence,” Christianity
and Judaism are sibling religions, both monotheistic, and both
stemming from the same Hebraic Biblical roots, each with its distinctive
interpretation thereof. It was not that Christianity broke away from and
replaced, or succeeded, Judaism. There was no “Judaism” for “Christianity”
to succeed and replace. There were/are two sibling groups of Israelites
that claimed in the midst of a number of contending groups, that theirs was the
correct interpretation of the only monotheistic religion that had ever existed.
But, this was
only the beginning of the love/hate (unfortunately, more of the latter) of the
two thousand year relationship that Kasper distills and outlines for
contemporary Christians – and for Jews, and Nones. After distilling the first
centuries of the often slow and painful separation and “distillation” of the
two sibling monotheist traditions, which were largely solidified by the end of
the fourth century when, on the one hand, the Jewish Mishnah was
distilled and the Talmud was in final formation on the one hand, and the
New Testament was finally codified, the first Creeds declared, and Christianity
was declared by Emperor Theodosius as the only accepted religion of the Roman Empire
on the other.
Kasper lays out
with clarity the often-grim subsequent history of Jews in medieval Christendom
with its dialectic of murdering, and protecting Jews, depending on the vagaries
of sociological and intellectual movements: e.g., the papacy had a better
record vis a vis the Jews than other medieval institutions – doubtless
surprising to many. Finally, the 18th-century Enlightenment broke
the physical confinement of Jews in Western Europe and burgeoning America,
which produced multiple intellectual giants, like Marx, Freud, Einstein….,
chased by the catastrophic late 19th-century creation of
racist-based Antisemitism, which funneled into the horrific Endlösung, “Final
Solution,,” of Nazi Germany.
Under the
inspiration of Pope St. John XXIII, Vatican Council II (1962-65), in the midst
of a plethora of creative, liberating documents, a rapprochement was created by
the Catholic Church in reaching out to Jews and Judaism in deep regret and
eagerness to build bridges between the two “sisters,” Ecclesia and Synagoga,
who had been depicted in multiple medieval European cathedrals as dual statues of
young women — Ecclesia triumphant, and Synagoga as blindfolded and
with a broken staff. Only, now Synagoga in reality is no longer seen by Ecclesia
as spiritually blinded, but is embraced as Juden und Christen — das eine
Volk Gottes (Jews and Christians – the One People of God). The way
forward in Jewish and Christian dialogue and collaboration beckons with sure
guides like Walter Kasper.
Leonard Swidler,
dialogue@temple.edu
Lizenz: CC
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