Salvation is from the Jews (John 4:22): Saving Grace in Judaism and Messianic Hope in ChristianityGrowing up in an ethnic suburb in Cleveland, Aaron Milavec was an impressionable adolescent whose religious and cultural influences made it natural for him to pity, blame, and despise Jews. All of that began to change in 1955 when Mr. Martin, a Jewish merchant, hired Milavec as a stock boy. Milavec's initial anxieties over working for a Jew surprisingly gave way to profound personal admiration. This, in turn, plunged Milavec into a troubling theological dilemma: How could God consign Mr. Martin to eternal hellfire due to his ancestral role in the death of Jesus when it was clear that Mr. Martin would not harm me, a Christian, even in small ways? This book is not for the faint-hearted. Most Christians imagine that the poison of anti-Judaism has been largely eliminated. In contrast, Milavec reveals how this poison has gone underground--disfiguring not only the role of Israel in God's plan of salvation but also horribly twisting the faith, the forgiveness, and the salvation that Christians find through Jesus Christ. This painful realization serves as the necessary first step for our healing. At each step of the way, Milavec's sure hand builds bridges of mutual understanding that enable both Christians and Jews to cross the chasm of distrust and distortion that has infected both church and synagogue over the centuries. In the end, Milavec securely brings his readers to that place where Rabbinic Judaism and Christianity can again be admired as sister religions intimately united to one other in God's drama of salvation. |
From inside the book
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... death of Jesus puts Jews and Judaism at risk . • When and why the church broke its ties with Judaism . How to challenge and replace superficial myths regarding the origins of the church . How the Christian Scriptures retain a firm ...
... death of Jesus I had to believe that God could only condemn those Jews who knowingly and willingly recognized the enormity of the sin and then went ahead and wanted to do it anyway . It was hardly imaginable to me that Mr. Martin was ...
... death of Jesus ; still , what happened in his Passion cannot be blamed upon all the Jews then living , without distinc- tion , nor upon the Jews of today . ( Nostra Aetate 4 ) 3. Dr. Eugene Fisher was appointed to his present post as ...
... death of Jesus.4 The Unfinished Agenda : Whether Jews Find Salvation within Judaism While the defective theology branding Jews as “ Christ - killers ” has been officially abandoned , it still remains deeply lodged within Catholi- cism's ...
... death on the cross is the universal means of salvation , Cardinal Ratzinger cannot imagine that any of the world religions offers any means for salvation " complementary to " or " equivalent to " the sacri- fice of Christ : It would be ...
Contents
1 | |
23 | |
The Story of Salvation | 57 |
Parting of the Ways | 84 |
Jesus as Messiah | 116 |
The Unsavory Odor of Christian Evangelization | 152 |
Reflections on Covenant and Mission | 173 |
Bibliography | 183 |
Index | 196 |