Summary

The relationship between Protestants and Jews is an  emotional one. It shows the ambivalence of a love-hate relationship. On the one hand Protestants feel because of their love for the Old Testament a special attachment to the Jews as ‘the people of the old covenant’. On the other hand they feel resentment, because this same Jewish People does not accept Jesus as the promised Messiah. Most Protestants are convinced that the relationship between Christianity and Judaism lies at the very heart of the Christian faith. Some wholeheartedly choose dialogue, others remain strong advocates of mission to the Jews. In recentdecades Christian-Jewish relations changed tremendously. This article describes a stormy period, with emphasis on the Netherlands.      

       PROTESTANTS AND JEWS: A LOVE – HATE RELATIONSHIP

                                                                                                          Simon Schoon

INTRODUCTION

The relationship between Protestants and Jews is a passionate one, in both the negative and in the positive sense. Not many themes in church and theology have caused such emotional  debates and deep controversies as has the relationship between (Protestant) Christians and Jews, between the Church and the Jewish People, between Christianity and Judaism. Most Protestants firmly believe that in the relationship between Christianity and Judaism the very heart of Christianity is at stake. On the one hand they feel gratitude towards the Jewish People, because from this people Jesus was born, whom Christians regard as the Messiah. They hear this expressed in John 4:22: ‘Salvation is from the Jews’. On the other hand they feel resentment and irritation, because the very same Jewish People rejects Jesus as the promised Messiah. Still more awkwardly, the Jews seem to have good reasons for rejecting Jesus, because the world did not change for the better since his coming. Christians prompted the fiercest brand of anti-Semitism with the accusation that the Jews committed deicide by crucifying Jesus. For many centuries Jews were the persecuted victims, Christians the persecutors. This past makes the relationship between Christians and Jews one of the most complicated and delicate themes in church and theology.
            In the following sections I will describe some aspects of the difficult relationship between Christians, especially Protestants, and Jews, both in the past and in the present. Because of the title of this book ‘The Passion of Protestants’ I have chosen to approach this subject from the psychological aspect and emphasize especially the feelings between the partners in this relationship. The first section is called ‘Passion’, the second ‘Ambivalence’, the third ‘Hate and Love’. The recurring theme running through the first section is ‘passion’, starting from the New Testament and leading to different models and attitudes in the present time. After that, the ‘ambivalence’ in the relationship is described, by mentioning some Protestant theologians and movements in the past. In the third section the present is addressed in looking at newer developments and describing some prospects for the future.
The expression ‘love-hate relationship’ means that a relation is ambivalent: sometimes the love prevails, sometimes the hate. The one sentiment can easily change to the other and vice-versa. The same expression is used in Dutch, but mentions the hate first, not the love. A ‘hate-love relationship’ would be for our theme more adequate, because almost always in history the hatred came first as the strongest feeling, though there were always exceptions. Only the future can show whether the ambivalence in the relationship between Christians can be overcome and the hatred could change into love. 

. PASSION

The question is threatening but inescapable: Is theological anti-Judaism a passion that is an inevitable part of Christian identity? Hence follows the question: Is hatred towards Jews ineradicable in Christianity because, one suspects, the aversion to Jews and Judaism originates from the New Testament itself? Is the source of our faith itself poisoned? For Protestants with their strong emphasis on the sola Scriptura principle these questions seem even more painful than for other Christians. The fact cannot be denied that, in the course of church-history, expressions of anti-Semitism have been supported in many ways by quotations from the New Testament. Is this practice still continued in our modern time? Which models of thinking predominate among Protestant conceptions of Jews and Judaism?

1.1. Roots in the New Testament
There is a strong tendency in church and theology to avoid dealing seriously with the provocative question ‘Is the New Testament a well-spring of hatred towards Jews?’ From a historical point of view, the thesis seems inevitable that theological anti-Judaism has created the conditions for various forms of racist anti-Semitism, not only in the 19th and 20th century. Must the truth be faced, as many theologians and historians claim, that the poison of anti-Semitism is already present in the New Testament itself? First and above all this question means an exegetical challenge. It is impossible to deal here with all or even some of the debated texts,[1] but  the passionate ambivalence is clear. On the one hand, the Gospel of John expresses that ‘salvation comes from the Jews’ (John 4:22), on the other hand the collective group of ‘the Jews’ is portrayed as having the devil as their father (John 8:44). In one and the same text Jews can be called by the apostle Paul both ‘enemies of God, for your sake’ and ‘beloved for the sake of their forefathers’ (Rom. 11:28). The anti-Judaism in the New Testament is the other side of a deep kinship with Judaism and of a strong tie with the Jewish People. It is the Christian response to the rejection of Jesus as Messiah by the majority of the Jews.
The texts of the New Testament show a historical context that is totally different from later times in Christian history, but these texts became an indissoluble part of this story of the origins of Christianity. The rejection of Jesus by the majority of the Jewish People could be called the birth-trauma of Christianity. This trauma can be found in many places in the New Testament and is not only to be observed in isolation, in some singular texts. The Jewish minority, which believed in Jesus as the Messiah, had to establish its identity over against the majority of Jewry after the destruction of the temple in the year 70. In this internal Jewish polemic after 70 there were many themes that had to be dealt with, but mainly the identity of the Messiah, the view on the Torah and the attitude towards Gentile believers. Many texts are in their original contexts reducible to historical moments in the painful process of the parting of the ways between Jews, ‘Jesus-believing-Jews’ and Gentile Christians.[2] When the new messianic faith at the end of the first century developed, however, into a mainly Gentile Church, the original internal Jewish polemic was no longer understood, and was perceived and interpreted as anti-Judaism. Part of this development is already discernible in the New Testament itself. So anti-Judaism became part and parcel of the canon of the New Testament.[3]
It is sometimes proposed that the disputed texts be identified and simply deleted in their entirety from the New Testament. But it is no solution to edit out the controversial texts. This type of biblical surgery would not merely concern a number of phrases, but also whole parts, if one were to banish all traces of anti-Judaism. Nor is there any theological or ecclesiastical body which has authority to take such a drastic step. Besides, no religion treats its Holy Scriptures in this way. In Christianity Marcion, who in the second century tried to banish everything in the Bible that could remind one of Jews and Israel, is condemned because of heresy. There are other, more manageable, ways to overcome the ambivalence in Christianity and to counter anti-Judaism. Next to the exegetical task the main challenge should be of a hermeneutical nature. It is necessary to conduct research into what has been done in Church and theology with the anti-Judaic texts in the course of time, that is: into the history of the interpretation of the texts (Auslegungsgeschichte) and into the practical effects of the texts (Wirkungsgeschichte). The most difficult question in our time must be whether and how Christianity can liberate itself from its burdensome inheritance of anti-Judaism.

1.2. Models
To distinguish a number of models in conceptions of Jews and Judaism could be helpful in clarifying Christian ideas and positions in the past and the present. The models cannot always be separated but must certainly be distinguished. Some of them are mainly existing in a  Protestant context, others are present in the whole of Christianity. The most important models are as follows, indicated with keywords:
a. Replacement
This model dominates Church history. Its content is, that after Jesus Christ the Church has taken the place of the People Israel. The task of Israel was only to bring the Messiah and after fulfilling that mission its task in salvation history was finished. In this model the New Covenant replaces the Old Covenant, baptism replaces circumcision, and the Gospel replaces the Law. Often the dispensation of ‘Ancient Israel’ is seen as earthly, the dispensation of the Church as spiritual. 
b. Typology
Although the typological reading of the Bible was already customary in the Qumran community, the Church Fathers are in this type of reading mainly influenced by Philo of Alexandria. In later time also the Reformation interpreted the Bible typologically. Israel in the Old Testament is regarded as typos, pointing to the fulfilment of the typos in the New Testament. This does not necessarily imply replacement of Israel. It means in Calvinism that the ‘shadows’ of the Old Covenant are now seen as clearly lifted in the light of Christ. The present People of Israel is viewed as still living ‘in shadows’.
c. Illustration
In this model the Jews are regarded as an illustration of especially sinful people, or in Calvinist perception as an illustration of all people, because in its opinion all human beings are inclined to do evil. As an obstinate people in the Old Testament and as an unbelieving people in the New Testament the Jews show how disobedient we all are. Their behaviour is paradigmatic and contagious. In Christian sermons the Jews became from the very beginning and are till today the illustration-model par excellence. 
 d. Eschatology
In this model the conviction is expressed, that the eschatological and apocalyptical texts in the  Bible are being fulfilled in our days before our own eyes. Many evangelical Christians look particularly upon the unification of Jerusa­lem in 1967 as the beginning of the end‑time. They see the events around the Jews and the State of Israel as the setting of the stage for the Second Coming of Jesus. They hope to hasten his coming by unconditionally supporting the State of Israel. In their view there is no real place for Palestinians in the Promised Land.
 e. Israel as ‘notion’
Some Protestants like to deal with the biblical concept of  ‘Israel’ as a critical notion both toward the present-day Church and to the modern Jewish People and State. For them the direct self-identification of the Jewish People and the Jewish State with the name ‘Israel’ is objectionable. Biblical Israel is in their view not a ‘nation’, but a ‘notion’ that in our days becomes especially visible among the poor and oppressed in the world. In this view the Jews are often idealized as a wandering people, who have to live in exile.
f. Experiment
In this model the Jews are Gods particular chosen people and the State of Israel is a kind of 'experimental garden', where justice must be done by its inhabitants. They are called to live up to the biblical commandments of peace and justice, as an example for the whole world.
g. A sign of God's faithfulness
In the last decades of the 20th century confessional statements of Protestant churches, especially in Germany and the Netherlands, have called the return of the Jewish People to Israel a sign of God's faithfulness toward his Covenant People. It is stressed that God’s election of the Jewish People is irrevocable.

The ambivalence of Christianity towards Jews and Judaism is inextricably linked with the origins and history of the Christian community. Christians experience in their identity both kinship with Judaism and estrangement from it. For many centuries, this kinship has been suppressed or even denied, whereas the differences have been strongly emphasized. In response to this development, in modern times the opposite can be found in some circles: kinship is underlined strongly, whereas the differences are pushed into the background. In changing historical contexts different texts from the New Testament are quoted, sometimes to support anti-Judaism, sometimes to support philo-Judaism. This ambivalence has its origins in the New Testament itself. Jews are both, according to the apostle Paul, ‘beloved’ and  ‘enemies’ (Rom.11:28).
            This section starts with a few remarks on the attitude of the Reformers Luther and Calvin towards Jews and Judaism. Then some attention is given to the movements in the Netherlands of the Nadere Reformatie (‘Second Reformation’) in the 17th century and the Réveil (‘Awakening’) in the 19th century. Abraham Kuyper, at the end of the 19th century, will be mentioned, especially his particular view on the Jews. As the founder of the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands he exerted a great influence amongst the Neo-Calvinists. At the end of this section we will mention briefly the opinions of some Dutch theologians before and after the Shoah in the 20th century: Miskotte, Berkouwer and Berkhof.

2.1. Luther and Calvin

Martin Luther is a striking example of the ambivalence in Christian attitudes towards the Jews. In his early years Luther had a few encounters with Jews who exerted some influence upon him, but the leading thread in his views on Judaism must be seen in the light of the centuries-old Adversus Iudaeos tradition. After meeting two Jews in Worms, who showed an open attitude towards his ideas, he wrote in 1523 Dass Jesus Christus ein geborener Jude sei (‘That Jesus Christ was born a Jew’). He hoped that the Jews would join in his new Reformation and accept the new light he had received upon the Bible. But when he heard in his later years that many Christians in Europe converted to Judaism between 1532 and 1539, he directed his full anger against the Jews.
Luther was convinced that he was living in apocalyptic times.[4] He perceived in ‘the signs of the times’ that the end was near. The Turks had approached to the gates of Vienna. The pope was according to his belief the revelation of the Antichrist. He saw the devils prowling around like roaring lions. And the Jews were reincarnations of the devils. Then he gives in his writing Von den Juden und ihren Lügen (‘On the Jews and Their Lies’) in 1543 his infamous advice to the legal authorities, that the synagogues and houses of the Jews should be razed, that their books be confiscated, their safe travel restricted, their usury prohibited, their worship restricted, and that they personally should be subjected to expulsion.[5] Luther advocated that Christian rulers should practise against Jews a ‘sharp mercy’, because the Jewish People had failed to convert after fifteen hundred years of exile.

Unlike Luther, Calvin was not so harsh in his criticism toward Jews, because he did not have much contact with them and they posed no serious threat to his reformation in Geneva. But the reason is also more firmly doctrinal, because of his belief in the unity of the Old and New Testament, his emphasis on the one covenant, and his belief in the continuing use of the law by Christians.[6] Often the Jews are mentioned and used in the Institutes of Calvin to illustrate the terrible failures of the Catholics, whom he refers to as the ‘Romanists’. The Jews of the Old Testament serve as a ‘model of disobedience’ to expose the sins of the ‘Romanists’ of his time: ‘The Romanists, therefore, today make no other pretension than what the Jews once apparently claimed when they were reproved for blindness, ungodliness, and idolatry by the Lord’s prophets’.[7]
John Calvin favoured the term ‘covenant’. His Institutes are built up around this central concept. He believed profoundly in the existence of one covenant, a covenant which began in Old Testament times, and was widened and fulfilled by Jesus Christ. The same salvation, which was revealed in its fullness in the New Testament, was already the salvation of the Old Testament, but there it was only present in ‘shadows’. The Law of the Old Testament is fulfilled, not finished, in the New Testament, and serves not only as a means to reveal sins, but is primarily meant to show believers the way to live according to God’s will, in thankfulness. Calvin mentioned the historical dispensations of the one covenant, which relate in his view to God’s pedagogics in his progressing revelation towards Israel and the Church. The essence or substance of the covenant remains the same in the different dispensations, namely the person of Christ.[8] There is no room at all in his thinking for a dynamic continuation of the covenantal history of Israel after Christ. Except for some remarks in his exegesis of Romans 11 he does not speak on the future of Israel and the Jews. Yet, his emphasis on the one and only covenant and his extensive attention to the Old Testament has given many points of contact for later Calvinist tradition to elaborate on the theological significance of the Jewish People.[9]

2.2. Anti-Judaism and Philo-Semitism

Both anti-Judaism, as aversion towards Judaism, and philo-Semitism, as love to the Jews, are expressions of the peculiar love-hate-relationship of Christianity towards Judaism and the Jewish People. This ‘mix’ of anti-Judaism and philo-Semitism is a special Protestant phenomenon. The term ‘philo-Semitism’ is in particular used for the thoughts of individuals and groups in the 17th century, who combined love for Jews with the rejection of Judaism, and  held strong eschatological expectations for the conversion of the Jews and their return to the Promised Land.[10] This line of thought came from the Puritans in England and Scotland to the Reformed Orthodoxy in the Dutch Republic at the other side of the North Sea, like à Brakel, Koel­man, Wit­sius en Lam­pe.[11] Wilhelmus à Brakel (1635-1711) was, certainly, the most important representative of this outlook with his book Redelijke Godsdienst (‘A Rational Religion’), in which he writes on the immutability of God’s promises to Israel, the expectation of the Millennial Kingdom and the Return of the Jews to Zion.[12] In the time that other leading theologians like Gisbertus Voetius and Antonius Hulsius in their writings still maintained their belief in the legend of ritual murder by the Jews, this was a remarkable view. In 1637 Voetius delivered a lecture, in which he spoke of the Jews as condemned by God and described their faith as corrupt and perfidious. He pleaded for the closure of the synagogues and a prohibition of the immigration of Jews.
     Under the influence of the Methodist movement led by Wesley and Whitefield in England, and  Pietism in Germany, in the Netherlands of the 19th century there arose a new interest in mission to the Jews, with strong eschatological overtones. This Réveil Movement found its adherents mainly in higher circles in The Hague, among whom the converted Jews Isaac Da Costa (1798-1860) and Abraham Capadose (1795-1874) were prominent members. Da Costa wrote an influential historical study on the history of the Jews, in which he expressed his belief in God’s glorious design with his covenant-people.[13] In 1846 Capadose established the Society of Friends of Israel, which changed in 1861 to the Association for Israel, which organizations were very active in mission to the Jews. Their expectations were strongly millenarian and they hoped in their own lifetime for the fulfilment of the prophecies of the Old Testament. There is a historical connection between the missionary societies of the 19th century and the Church-and-Israel organizations of the main Protestant churches in the Netherlands in the 20th century. In evangelical circles, inside and outside the main churches, eschatological expectations are still very strong.

The father of neo-Calvinism, Abraham Kuyper (1837-1920), was an influential theologian and statesman who succeeded in mobilizing a following of (economically and socially speaking) ‘little people’ and in giving them their own church, their own university and their own political party. He was of great significance for the emancipation of a large part of the Protestant population in the Netherlands. In this struggle he particularly saw the Jews as his rivals. In 1907 Kuyper wrote on  ‘the Jewish problem’ after a journey through many countries around the Mediterranean. On the one hand he was fascinated by the survival-power and intellectual strength of the Jews; on the other hand he wrote of their ‘love of money’ and eagerness for political and social domination.[14]
Kuyper was adamantly opposed to the philo-Semitic and millenarian current within the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands, thoughts which originated in the Nadere Reformatie and in the Réveil-movement. He succeeded by his personal prestige in pushing through his orthodox doctrine on Jews and Judaism during the Synod of his Reformed Churches in Middelburg (1896). According to his opinion a genuine struggle was to be waged by Christians against Jews, because they rejected Jesus and resisted in this way the breakthrough of God’s kingdom in the world. In the documents of the Synod of 1896 the terms ‘Israel’ and ‘Jewish People’ were avoided; only ‘the Jews’ as individuals were mentioned. The choice for the name ‘Jews’ instead of ‘Israel’, strongly advocated by Kuyper, had a clear ideological intention. 
Kuyper’s approach towards Jews was exclusively missionary and is characterised as ‘a crusade against the Jews’.[15] In his view they were violators of God’s covenant, who should be called on to join the Church. Because he regarded the Church as the only ‘true People of God’, there could be no place for the Jews as a people, as an ethnic group. The first aim of the Church Mission to the Jews was, in the eyes of Kuyper, the fight against Judaism as a false religion. The second aim was ‘to win the Jews for Christ’. His views should be seen in the context of his efforts for the emancipation of the Reformed part of the population. In this struggle he saw the Jews as dangerous adversaries. His conviction was, however, also colored by anti-Jewish conceptions, which were expressed in several of his publications and which exerted considerable influence in the Reformed Churches.  Only after the Second World War did this ‘crusading attitude’ toward the Jews totallydisappear from Reformed Protestant thinking.

2.3. Before and after the Shoah

Only the names of a few leading thinkers in the Protestant churches in the Netherlands can be mentioned in this context. I have selected the most influential theologians before and after the Shoah: Miskotte, Berkouwer and Berkhof. It took almost forty years for the shock of that terrible ‘earthquake’, the Shoah, to be felt at the grassroots level in the churches. Scholars tried to grasp the consequences for church and theology. Even then, very few theologians, as Miskotte and Berkhof, would venture into this area. Till that time the traditional attitude towards the Jews and the old ideas on Judaism were just confirmed and continued, as if nothing had happened.

Kornelis Heiko Miskotte (1894-1976) was undoubtedly the most important Dutch Reformed (Hervormd) theologian of the 20th century. He was strongly influenced by Karl Barth and Franz Rosenzweig, but also went his own theological way, especially in his study of and confrontation with contemporary Judaism. He experienced the catastrophe of the First World War as a tremendous crisis of culture and political society. In 1932 he wrote, in only six months time, his dissertation Het Wezen der Joodsche Religie (‘The Essence of the Jewish Religion’), in which he presented a description and analysis of the essential ideas of Judaism, mainly on the basis of the great thinkers of the Liberal Judaism of his time.[16] With his interest in and knowledge of Judaism he was a remarkable exception in his time, when it was not done for a Christian theologian to be so thoroughly engaged in Jewish thought. He saw Judaism as the religion of the ethical human being and saw the essence of Judaism in the doctrine of the correlation between God and man. It is rightly questioned whether he has in this way given an authentic picture of Judaism. When he labeled Judaism as ‘titanic humanism’, he was in fact  fighting against the liberal-ethical neo-Protestantism of his time. For many, however, coming to know the work of Miskotte meant the opening up of new horizons in the encounter with an, at that time, almost unknown Judaism and also the rediscovery of the theological significance of the Old Testament.[17]

For many decades Gerrit Berkouwer (1903-1996) was the most influential theologian in the Reformed Churches (Gereformeerde Kerken), the second largest Protestant denomination in the Netherlands. In his volume Divine Election Berkouwer mentions the Jews only when he speaks about their ‘misunderstanding’ of election as a possession which Israel earned as God’s People. In his view this reduced the central element of grace in election.[18] In the many volumes of his Dogmatic Studies, Berkouwer rarelyspeaks on the People of Israel in the Old Testament and mentions the contemporary Jewish People explicitly in just one chapter of his book on eschatology The Second Coming of Christ.[19] He warns his Christian readers against the millenarian views on the People and the State of Israel held by those who saw in the historical events of 1948 the ‘signs of the times’ and especially the signs of the Second Coming of Christ.  All peoples must be reached, in his view, with the name of Jesus Christ, the sole source of salvation, including the Jewish People.

A real pioneer, Hendrikus Berkhof (1914-1995), gave Israel a special place in his theological thinking. In his book Christian Faith he dedicated a specific chapter to ‘Israel’ between the chapter on ‘Creation’ and the chapter on ‘Jesus the Son’.[20] Although this meant a radical departure from the prevailing theological tradition, Berkhof did not, in this approach, give serious theological attention to post-biblical Judaism and the contemporary People of Israel. By ‘Israel’ he did not mean primarily the Jewish People, but by giving a special place to ‘Israel’ in his exposition of Christian doctrine he wanted to deal specifically with the place and significance of the Old Testament. With this intent he tried to trace the footsteps of Calvin, and described the way of Israel in the Old Testament as representing the whole of humanity. In this approach he looks at Israel as being driven into a dead end by its refusal to follow God in his way of salvation with the world. The threatening words of the Old Testament prophets are interpreted by Berkhof as a declaration of bankruptcy towards Israel. In his thought, Israel is a special ‘experimental garden’, where experiences are significant for the rest of the world. He called the Church ‘the first-born of God’s intentions in the world’, but Israel is in his eyes God’s ‘first-born’ among the nations. The Church is, in his view, just like Israel, ‘an experimental garden of a new humanity’.

Miskotte in particular won many followers and exercised a deep influence on a whole generation of Dutch theologians. Not that all of them are going in the same direction. At least two schools of thinking in the Dutch theological scene regard themselves as his pupils but have opposed each other fiercely. They hold divergent views on Judaism and on the Jewish People. On one side there is the group which has discovered the self-understanding of the Jewish People and in this new encounter has recognized the biblical name ‘Israel’ in contemporary Judaism and in the setting of the modern State of Israel. The other group from the school of Miskotte prefers to deal with the biblical concept of ‘Israel’ as a critical notion toward both the present-day Church and the modern Jewish People and State. For the latter group the direct self-identification of the Jewish People and the Jewish State with the name ‘Israel’ is objectionable. So they prefer the phrase ‘dialogue between Church and Synagogue’ to the term ‘dialogue between Church and Israel’.

3. LOVE AND HATRED

At the beginning of the 21st century ambivalence still exists in the relationship between Protestants and Jews. Frequently the flames of passion run high. When a controversial book is published on the significance of the Messiahship of Jesus or when some shocking event happens in the Middle East, there are fierce debates in the churches and scores of Readers’ Letters appear in church-periodicals and Christian newspapers. Older church-members are more affected by the Shoah, while younger people are more influenced by the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict. All currents and models of thought[21] of the past are still strong in this passionate relationship between Protestants and Jews: anti-Judaism and philo-Judaism, mission to the Jews and Judaizing tendencies. Views on Jews and on Judaism touch upon all disciplines of theology and often cause wide-ranging discussions. Attitudes towards the modern state of Israel vary greatly, and are frequently defended with biblical arguments. They range from support for the Greater Israel Movement to the conviction that the State of Israel is racist and should disappear as soon as possible. Appalling events in Israel and the Palestinian Territories can suddenly change deep-felt love into hatred, or hatred into love. Only a few of the most striking developments and attitudes can be dealt with in this final section, like the existence of the Dutch Consultative Body of Christians and Jews, changes in the Church Orders on the theme of Jews and Judaism, the ongoing Mission to the Jews, fundamentalist views on the State of Israel, and some rare signs of a reciprocal dialogue.

3.1. Newer developments

Some events can be cited which may indicate that the love-hate relationship is definitely evolving at last into a relationship of trust and friendship. In the 1970’s a peculiar phenomenon appeared on the scene in the Dutch churches and society. It is called Leerhuis in Dutch or Beth ha-Midrash in Hebrew. In those years the euphoric response of many church-members to the stunning victory of Israel in the Six Day War in 1967 reached its peak. Also  the terrible event of the Shoah began at that time to touch the conscience of a wider public.  Christians and Jews came together to study Talmud, Midrash, and also medieval and modern Jewish traditions. Christians, sometimes spurred by guilt about past Christian attitudes towards the Jewish People, sought the Jewish roots of their faith. Jewish teachers were willing to lecture before Christian audiences. Some participants in the Leerhuis enterprise spoke of a kind of ‘Messianic perspective’.[22]  
            In 1981 the Consultative Body of Christians and Jews in the Netherlands (abbreviation in Dutch: OJEC) was established, an organization in which the three major churches - both Catholic and Protestant - , some smaller Protestant churches, and all Jewish religious communities - both Orthodox and Liberal - , were officially represented. The new body became a member of the International Council of Christians and Jews. In the statutes it was explicitly mentioned that the participants would work together without any missionary purpose. In the 1980’s many burning questions were put before churches and political authorities by OJEC and were debated in the media, the newspapers, and by the church-bodies involved. The most important issues were: the controversy around a Carmelite convent in the former concentrationcamp Auschwitz; a test-case in the courts against the anti-Semitic wording in missionary pamphlets of an evangelical couple; the discussion with the major churches to erase from their Church Orders all references towards mission to the Jews; and political discussions with the Dutch Council of   Churches on the recognition of the PLO.[23] The organization survived these stormy debates and controversies, and has arrived now in more quiet waters.
            On the instigation of OJEC the two major Reformed churches changed their Church Orders in 1991. Already in 1951 the Netherlands Reformed Church (Hervormde Kerk) ceased speaking of ‘mission to the Jews’ and formulated the task of the church as ‘dialogue with Israel’. The Reformed Churches in the Netherlands (Gereformeerde Kerken), spoke, till 1991,  of the ‘task of the Church to confess to the Jews, inside and outside Israel, that Jesus is the Christ’. The new Church Order of the Protestant Church in the Netherlands after the reunion in 2004 speaks a very different language. The first article of the Church Order states that the Protestant Church in the Netherlands ‘is reaching out for the coming of the Kingdom of God, sharing in the expectation that is given to Israel’. And article I.9. on the relation between the Church and the People of Israel reads as follows: ‘The Church is called to express its indissoluble bond with the people of Israel. As Christ confessing faith-community the Church is seeking the dialogue with Israel concerning the understanding of the Holy Scripture, in particular on the subject of the coming of the Kingdom of God’.[24] The churches of the Reformed and Lutheran tradition, in the framework of their reciprocal recognition by the Leuenberg Agreement, formulated a consensus on the relationship between the Church and the Jewish people. At the 4th General Assembly in Vienna in 1994 and the 5th Assembly in Belfast new guidelines were accepted, containing the following basic statements: ‘There is an inseparable connection between the election of the church and that of Israel, between the “old” and “new” covenant’ and ‘Their relationship to Israel is for Christians and the Church inseparably bound up with the foundation of their faith.’
            These and other developments could give grounds to expect that the ambivalent  relationship has finally changed into a stable relationship of dialogue and reconciliation.[25] This rosy picture would be too naïve. There are still many remnants of the old ambivalence in the love-hate-relationship between Christians and Jews. Participants in a Leerhuis are often accused of Judaising heresies. The organization of OJEC is losing support and interest both in the churches and in the Jewish community. And the new confessional statements of the Protestant Church in the Netherlands are by no means generally accepted at the grass roots level in the local churches. 

3.2. Continuity in ambivalence

The ambivalence had not yet been overcome in the Protestant-Jewish relationship. Beside the development of a new relationship between Jews and Christians, particularly in the Leerhuis-movement, there is also the ‘other side of the coin’. ‘Hatred’ is much too strong a word to define some current attitudes of Christians towards Jews, but there is certainly a lot of suspicion and mixed feelings. Only a few examples can be mentioned in this context.
The Christian Mission to the Jews has not yet totally disappeared.  In the 18th century, the pioneers of the organizations for Mission to the Jews were also forerunners in their love for the Jewish People, fighting against the ever-present Christian anti-Semitism in church and theology. By the turn of the 20th century the defenders of mission to the Jews in the mainline churches are fighting a rearguard action against the majority opinion that regards Judaism as a living religion and therefore wishes to abolish all forms of mission to the Jews. But in large parts of the growing evangelical movement, which has a strong impact on the Reformed churches,  the mission to the Jews is still seen as a high priority. In a declaration of the evangelical Lausanne Movement it was stated that the discrimination and suffering that has been done to the Jews in the name of Jesus Christ, is deplored. But at the same time it is emphasized: ‘If the bygone history is used to make the church keep silent in its witness to the Jewish People, we must protest; it would be an act of grave discrimination to withhold the Gospel from the Jewish People.’[26] The combination of anti-Judaism and mission to the Jews cannot be called a phenomenon of the past. There is nothing that for Jews casts so much doubt on the officially expressed readiness by Christians to encounter living Judaism than the activities of mission to the Jews. From a Jewish point of view this mission is the final underlining of the definitely broken relationship with Christianity because it does not leave Jews room to choose their own destiny. It is regarded by the Jewish ‘targets’ of this mission as one of the most severe expressions of the Christian neurosis towards Judaism and an expression of Christian triumphalism.
Recently a leading Reformed theologian in the Netherlands, A. van de Beek, published a book[27] in which he repeated the old standpoint on mission to the Jews and defended this mission as a biblical commandment and an urgent Christian task towards Jews. On the one hand he reiterates many times that he rejects the old substitution theory, which advocates that the Church has definitely replaced Israel. He holds the Jewish People in high esteem as a people elected by God Himself. On the other hand he claims to know as a Christian theologian exactly how the situation of the Jewish People is, better than they know it themselves. In his view they form the wider circle around the suffering Messiah and are therefore destined to suffer with Jesus in their history. He regards the Jews as a disobedient people towards God, because they do not accept the fulfillment of God’s promises in Christ and reject the new ontological reality created by the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus. They are blindfolded, so that they cannot discover the real significance of their own Scriptures. These views are also still dominant in the Calvinist churches in North-America, which were founded in the 19th century by Dutch immigrants. A quotation from an Old Testament scholar at Calvin Theological Seminary could illustrate this: ‘Real anti-Semitism is found with those who for a variety of reasons believe there is no need today to preach the gospel of Jesus the Messiah to the Jewish people. Not to do so is to withhold from them the greatest treasure on earth.’[28]
            Much debated among Christians is the significance of the State of Israel. Is it a normal state like all other states, with good and bad policies, with successes and failures? Or should it be regarded as ‘God’s own miracle in our time’? Or should it be measured by the standards of justice that are laid down in the Bible? Very different positions, sometimes diametrically opposed to each other, are propounded. In evangelical and orthodox Reformed circles many still foster the thoughts of the Nadere Reformatie and the Réveil-movement, in which convictions they feel strengthened by many modern fundamentalist-Christian, mainly American, writings on Israel and the Middle East conflict. They combine Old Testament prophecies with current political events and see God’s ancient promises fulfilled before their own eyes. They ask the churches to support unconditionally the State of Israel and the policies of the Israeli government, because they are convinced that only in this way will God’s design be fulfilled and the Second Coming of Jesus be realised soon.[29] In the State of Israel they find their natural allies among the Orthodox and the ultra-nationalist. Quite often they see Messianic Jews, who believe in Jesus, as the anticipation of what soon will happen to all Jews.[30] At the other end of the church’s religious-political spectrum, the ‘eschatological’ model is rejected. There the guiding principle is that ‘biblical Israel’ as ‘model’ or ‘notion’ stands for all the poor and oppressed in the world. Those of the latter conviction are more inclined to listen to the voices of Palestinian Christians, who feel themselves oppressed by the Israeli occupiers.[31] They support the demand that Israel leave immediately all occupied Palestinian territory and advocate the establishment of an independent Palestinian State. These differences in the standpoints of Christians, based on opposing models of thinking, seem totally irreconcilable.  

3.3. Prospects

It is difficult to write anything on the prospects for the future of the relations between the Church and the Jewish People. It cannot be foreseen, whether the change in theological thinking that started because of the shock of the Shoah, will be continued in the 21st century, when the living memories of that event will slowly fade and become part of history. Only the future will reveal, whether Judaism will be respected by church and theology as a living tradition, and whether the theological significance of the existence of the Jewish People will be recognized. This would need a paradigm shift in church and theology. There are only a few signs that point at this direction. As examples of a new relationship between Christians and Jews perhaps the Leerhuis-phenomenon, a few academic study centres[32] and other places of learning[33] could be mentioned. But these signs are still weak and hesitant.
There is not much reciprocity in the dialogue, because interest on the Jewish side remains slight,[34] and on the Christian side the ambivalence is still strong. There is the danger of the extremes in the love-hate relationship of Christians towards Jews. Often there is too much love and too much hatred. Jews are regarded as ‘devils’ or as  ‘angels’.  In the past they were quite often seen in God’s design as the ‘devils’, as the prime movers of history but in the wrong direction. In the present time Jews are sometimes viewed as ‘angels’, as the main ‘players’ on the platform of history and therefore responsible for the final coming of the kingdom of God. Both positions are myths and are very dangerous for the existing Jewish People. Jews are in neither extreme  accepted as they view themselves, but only as serving Christian aims and as executors of Christian eschatological expectations. All Christian systematic theological thinking on Israel and Judaism can become risky and sometimes even life threatening for Jews.[35]
The challenge to reflect in a radically new way upon the theological significance of the Jewish-Christian relationship has only been taken up recently, by relatively few Christian thinkers.[36] The great challenge lies in taking up the question whether Church and theology after Auschwitz are capable of overcoming the ambivalence that often has turned into hatred towards Jews and the Jewish People, and whether Christians can learn to live with the duality of kinship and distinction. Many scholars tend to overemphasize the ‘back to the roots’ concept. This could turn out to be a superficial slogan and runs the risk of serving fundamentalist goals. The New Testament situation in all its diversity cannot be revived and reintroduced. A history of almost 2000 years has left its marks on the present situation. Hermeneutical choices are therefore unavoidable. When the subject of Jews and Judaism comes up in the teaching and preaching of the church, difficult hermeneutical choices will have to be made continuously.
There is also the challenge of accepting and theologically evaluating our own Gentile-Christian position.[37] How could we honour our Gentile-Christian background, without falling again into the trap of anti-Semitism? How do we read the Scriptures, first given to the Jewish People, as our own Scriptures, without disowning again the first addresseesof these books? Many more pressing questions might be taken up. Therefore the consequences of the new Christian-Jewish encounter have to be taken seriously by all disciplines of Christian theology.[38] But perhaps the most important challenge for churches and Christians is to start a new practice in relation to Jews in general and in the Jewish-Christian dialogue in particular, as it is, for example, lived in the Christian project Nes Ammim in Israel. This project was started in 1960 by some Dutch and Swiss Christians to turn a new page in the book of Christian-Jewish relations.[39] In the present time it facilitates also peace-work for Jews and Palestinians and offers them a place to meet together. But it is, like some other projects of dialogue and reconciliation, a very small sign of renewal. There is still a long way to go before Christians and Jews will have developed an adult and fruitful relationship of dialogue and reciprocal respect.

[1] See for example: R. Bieringer, D. Pollefeyt, F. Vandecasteele-Vanneuville (eds), Anti-Judaism and the Fourth Gospel. Papers of the Leuven Colloquium, 2000, Assen 2001.