‘THE NEW PEOPLE OF GOD’
                                                       

A Protestant view

                                                                                                                      dr. Simon Schoon

The Declaration of the Church to Non-Christian Religions, Nostra Aetate (no.4) on Oct. 28, 1965, meant a watershed event in the history of relations between the Church and the Jewish People in particular, and between Christians and Jews in general. When we, forty years later, recall and commemorate this great event, it gives us the opportunity to look back and to look forwards. Time to consider what needs further reflection, further rethinking, or perhaps asks for a deeper repentance.

I read one sentence from Nostra Aetate:
‘Although the Church is the New People of God, the Jews should not be presented as repudiated or cursed by God, as if such views followed from the Holy Scriptures’.
To implement the Conciliar Declaration Nostra Aetate Guidelines and Suggestions followed in 1974, and Notes on the Correct Way to Present the Jews and Judaism in Preaching and Catechesis, in 1985. I will not elaborate on the refining and rewording that took place in the later documents, but will try to give a Protestant reflection on the central theme of the concept ‘People of God’.
   
Is it possible for the Church to repent as Church, and not only to confess the sinful deeds of some members of the Church? As pope John Paul II prayed in a moving ceremony in St. Peter’s Church in Rome on March 12, 2000: ‘We are deeply saddened by the behavior of those who in the course of history caused these children of yours [Jews] to suffer’. 
Is it not possible for the Church to repent as Church? It is not a specific Protestant conviction to confess that the Church is Ecclesia semper reformanda.
Was something like that happening in March 2000, when pope John Paul II approached the Western Wall? For two thousand years, beginning with the Gospels, Christian theology has depended on the destruction of the Temple as a proof for the claims that Jesus was the New Temple and the Church was the New People of God. When the pope devotedly approached the last vestige of the Second Temple, and when he placed in a crevice of that wall a piece of paper containing words of his prayer of March 12, it was more than an apology. The pope created, bending in prayer at the Western Wall, a new future. The Church was honoring the Temple it had denigrated. It was affirming he presence of the Jewish People at home in Jerusalem. Does this brave spiritual deed of the pope require that the confession of Nostra Aetate on the Church as the new People of God should be changed?

Before we enter into this question, first a few words on the relations between Protestants and Jews in the past. This relationship 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. The ambivalence had not yet been overcome in the Protestant-Jewish relationship. This ambivalence comes to the forefront in the discussion on ‘Who is the (true) People of God?’
The relationship between Protestants and Jews could be characterized as a Love-Hate Relationship. 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. Perhaps this order: a ‘hate-love relationship’ would be 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. 
For Protestants the following 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 are perhaps 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. In this context the following questions are for us relevant: Does the New Testament speak about the Church as the (New) People of God? And, if so, has this way of speaking about the Church caused and strengthened Christian anti-Semitism?

 The ‘True People of God’
‘Israel’,  ‘People of God’  and  ‘Holy People’: these are titles the church has thought right to assume for itself, at an early point in its history. In the place of Israel, the Church viewed itself as elected, called and sanctified by God. So Christian theologians conducted a fierce polemical debate with Jewish scholars on the questions, ‘Who is the true people?’ and ‘Whose is the inheritance?’ In other words: who could claim the title of honour ‘a kingdom of priests and a holy nation’ (Exod 19:5)? Quite often the struggle was not decided by words but by brute force. The Church claimed the exclusive right to the title ‘Holy People’ and the ‘People of God’. It held that the original Israel had forfeited this right, on account of its unbelief in the promised and now revealed Saviour Jesus Christ. The Christian aversion toward the Jewish People has its strongest expression in the long-upheld substitution theory: as the new People of God, the Church has taken over, definitively, the place of the old Israel as the ‘Holy People’.
            The Reformers in the 16th  century left the substitution theology unchanged. The ‘Holy People’ was re-defined as the church of the Reformation. They emphasized the holiness of those church members who by faith alone were destined to share in the holiness of Jesus Christ. The Church of the Reformation projected itself retrospectively onto the Old Testament, as far back as the Garden of Eden.[1] The history of the People Israel in the Old Testament age was annexed ecclesiologically.
In the centuries-long struggle where the ‘pure church’ was to be found, much attention had been given to the four notae ecclesiae, the ‘notes’ of the ‘true church’: its unity, its holiness, its catholicity and its apostolicity. The Reformation reduced the four notae of the Church to only two. These were the pure preaching of the Word and the proper administration of the two sacraments, Baptism and Holy Supper, while some parts of Calvinism added a third nota, namely the right application of Church discipline. Little if any thought was given to the connection of the Church to God’s ancient people Israel, let alone that this connection could be seen as a nota ecclesiae. There was not a single theological acknowledgement of the continuing history of the living Jewish People after the coming of Christ. Only in modern times has this debate on the ‘true people’ reached the level of a real dialogue, though not yet in all parts of the world, and not in every part of pluralist Protestant Christianity.
In the context of the Jewish-Christian dialogue it has been proposed more than once that churches of every background and denomination should be ready to drop their self-definition of ‘the Church as God’s (Holy) People’, so as to create a new climate in the Jewish-Christian relationship. Considering the enormous diversity of churches and opinions in Christianity, this is probably unattainable and unrealistic in practice. During the Second Vatican Council (1964-1968), the Roman Catholic Church re-discovered the Church as ‘the People of God on the way’ and favoured this title as a proper correction of the existing sacramental and clerical vision of the Church. Also in the theology of the World Council of Churches, founded in 1948, to which the majority of Protestant and Eastern Orthodox Churches belong, the identification of the Church with ‘God’s People’ has become a popular way of speaking.[2] One must wonder, though, whether a renewal of the relationship between Christians and Jews demands such a radical step as giving up the title ‘Holy People’. Jewish partners in dialogue do not ask for such ‘sacrifices’ and make no such demands on the self-definition of Christians, provided this poses no implicit threat to their own self-understanding and existence. From this viewpoint, the theological challenge for Christians is not so much whether to renounce the term ‘People of God’ for the Church, as to use this term in such a manner that no anti-Jewish responses will result from it.

1 Peter 2:9
The locus classicus for the ‘Church-as-God’s-people’ theology is undoubtedly 1 Pet 2:9. In this oft-quoted text, the Church is crowned with the Old Testament titles of Israel from Exod 19:5-6:  ‘You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people’. In 1 Pet 2:10, with an allusion to Hos 2:23, the author identifies the Church with God’s People. 1 Peter is difficult to date precisely, and could be placed anywhere between 70-100 C.E., written by an unknown writer who stood more or less in the Pauline tradition.[3] Old Testament material plays a very important structural role in 1 Peter.[4] This role is theological: The writer re-reads and re-interprets the authoritative text of the Old Testament from a new perspective, in light of what he regards as the definitive revelation of God in Jesus Christ. The text of 1 Pet 2:9-10 is regarded by commentators as the pivot of 1 Peter. In the preceding verses 2:6-8 the ‘stone’, quoted and ‘lifted’ from Ps 118:22, is christologically applied in a totally new context: ‘Come to him, to that living stone, rejected by men but in God’s regard chosen and precious’, and those who believe in Jesus Christ are called themselves ‘living stones … built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood’. The mentioning of the holy priesthood in this verse is already an allusion to Exod 19:6 and leads in 1 Pet 2:9-10 to the more explicit quotation of Exod 19:5-6, in which the titles of Israel seem to be clearly transferred to the Church.[5]
The biblical theologian Wells states: ‘All the terms and associations of Israel’s election, which were initially attributed to Christ, are now applied to the body of believers in their relationship to Christ. So we find expressed here the themes of holiness – the special status, the special character, the special purpose – focused upon the people of God in Christ’.[6] The emphasis of the author of 1 Peter, however, is not in the first place ecclesiological; he has a much more ethical and missionary purpose. He wants in his letter to encourage Christians, in their situation of estrangement as ‘aliens and exiles’, to live up to the high standard of their election and calling: ‘that you may declare the wonderful deeds of Him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light’ (1 Pet 2:10). In this way, the New Testament canon established a new context for reinterpreting the themes of holiness and peoplehood.[7]
            The conclusion may be that upholding the Church as ‘People of God’ could not be seen merely as a later development, and therefore as a negative outgrowth of the substitution doctrine, but can refer back to various texts of the New Testament. It has been demonstrated that it is also possible to find different emphases in the New Testament and to put forward different nuances. Though in the New Testament the honorary titles for Israel are only seldom entirely transferred to the Church, this happened on a large scale in church history. That this was also the case in Protestantism will be shown below with a number of classical examples. I have to limit myself and will mention only some examples from my own tradition, the Reformed tradition of Protestantism.

John Calvin
For Calvin (1509-1564) the Church is chosen by God before the foundation of the world. The holiness of the Church derives from Christ and is effected and preserved in the practical life of the Church by the proclamation of the Word, the administration of the sacraments, and the enforcement of Church discipline.[8] To prove the holiness of the Church, Calvin often refers to 1 Cor 1:30, where Paul writes that the believers are sanctified by Jesus Christ: ‘He is the source of your life, whom God made our wisdom, our righteousness and sanctification, and redemption’. On the one hand, he dissociates himself from the Roman Catholics, whom he accuses of setting up an ideal of the holiness of the Church in it self, apart from Christ. On the other hand, he turns himself against the Anabaptists, who according to him want to establish a Church without any sin and error, in the tradition of the Donatists and Cathars. Because the holy Church cannot be ‘to the dishonor of God … a conspiracy of wicked and abandoned men’, he regards Church discipline as one of the notae ecclesiae that serves ’like a bridle to restrain and tame those who rage against the doctrine of Christ’.[9]
Calvin’s struggle for a ‘holy Church’ and his doctrine of Church discipline must be seen in the context of his time, in which he tried to establish a kind of theocracy in Geneva and saw the Roman Catholic Church as a revelation of the Antichrist. 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’.[10] However, unlike Luther, Calvin was not so harsh in his criticism toward Jews, because he had not much contact with them and they were no serious threat to his reformation in Geneva. There was also a major doctrinal reason: he was convinced of the unity of the Old and New Testament. He emphasized the one covenant, and believed in the continuing use of the law by Christians.[11]
Although Calvin could openly speak about the Church as ‘the (holy) People of God’, a Church which existed for him already in the time of the Old Testament, yet he preferred the term ‘covenant’ to the name ‘holy Church’. His Institutes are built up around this central concept. For him the unity of the one covenant was a very important conviction, a covenant which had started 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 discover 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 pedagogical motives in his revelation to Israel and the Church. The essence or substance of the covenant remains the same in the different dispensations, namely the person of Christ.[12] There is not much room in his christological thinking for a dynamic history of the covenant of Israel during the time of the Old Testament and there is no room at all for an active continuation of the covenantal history of Israel after Christ. Except for some remarks in his exegesis of Rom 11 he does not speak about 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 later Calvinist tradition many points of contact to elaborate on the theological significance of the Jewish People.[13]

Karl Barth
Many Protestants regard the Swiss theologian Karl Barth (1886-1968) as the ‘church-father’ of the 20th century. He wrote extensively on the Jewish People in his Church Dogmatics. As a Reformed theologian - in line with the Reformer Calvin – he took his starting point in the concept of the one covenant. He regarded this covenant, which God had begun with the people Israel, as the basis of God’s plan to reach the whole world. By the universalisation of this covenant through the event of Jesus Christ, the Church became the real partner of the original covenant. The fulfilment of the covenant in Christ was already meant as its deepest intention during the period of the Old Testament. It is Barth’s conviction that the covenant of God with Israel had never been abrogated, though it was undoubtedly fulfilled and confirmed in Jesus Christ. This christological fulfilment is regarded as the anticipation of the coming Kingdom of God.
Yet, in the theology of Barth many remnants of the anti-Jewish ‘teaching of contempt’ of the Christian Church can be found. On the one hand, he introduced a much more dynamic concept of covenant than was common in Christian theology at that time and emphasized strongly the significance of ‘biblical Israel’ as a people of God. On the other hand, he could not - by the very christological concentration of his theological project - give genuine room to the living continuation of the covenant-history of the Jewish People after the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple in the year 70.[14] He regarded Israel as the ‘natural context of Jesus Christ’.[15] So he recognized theologically the concrete ‘Israel after the flesh’, but only in the light of Jesus Christ. He spoke about Israel and the Church as the two figures of the one Community of God in the world, but because of the rejection of Jesus by the synagogue Israel is called by Barth ‘the witness of God’s wrath’ and ‘the mirror of God’s judgment’. In contrast, the Church is described as ‘the witness of God’s grace’.[16] After the crucifixion of Christ the history of Israel should not have been continued in Barth’s opinion, and when it was, it can only be seen by him as ‘unfruitful’, ‘ghostly’ and ‘lacking the true prophecy’.[17] At the consummation of history, the synagogue will find its fulfilment when it will be integrated into the Church.
When Barth speaks about the Church as ‘people of God’, he speaks about the present; when he calls Israel the ‘people of God’, he speaks about the past. For him the Church is ‘holy’ because God has set it apart, decisively, from the surrounding world as a being with its own distinct origin, nature, law, and direction. The holiness of the Church is the reflection of its ‘Head’ Jesus Christ. According to Barth, Christians cannot believe in the Church as they believe in God, because the creed says credo ecclesiam and not credo in ecclesiam.[18]  As long as the Christian community lives in the world, its invisibility is hidden by its visibility. The Church is guilty of failure and error, but it rests on the power of Christ’s promise and cannot therefore perish. In the final volume of his Church Dogmatics he deals with ‘The People of God in the World’ and compares the present position of the Church as the ‘people of God’ with the experiences of Israel as the ‘people of God’ in the time of the Old Testament.[19]  Unlike his friend and pupil the Dutch theologian Miskotte he did not show any interest in living Judaism and rarely engaged in a real dialogue with Jewish thinkers. 

Paul van Buren
In recent decades, some Protestant theologians have explored new theological paths in their approach to the complicated and delicate questions around the themes of ‘Holy People’, ‘People of God’, ‘People Israel’ and ‘the Church as People of God’. I will mention two of them in this context: The American theologian Paul M. van Buren (1924-1996), and the German theologian, Friedrich-Wilhelm Marquardt (1928-2002).

In Van Buren’s view, the Church is not ‘the People of God’, which is the title of Israel, but ‘the Church of God from the nations’. When he writes on the ‘Holy Peoplehood’ of Israel, he emphasizes that Israel is witness to the total claim of God upon the total life of the whole Jewish People.[20] Therefore, he warns of the danger of secularisation in the State of Israel, because Israel should never become a nation like all other nations. Although, according to Van Buren, the empirical evidence in Israel will always be ambiguous, it is a theological judgment that Israel has to live up to the Torah-standard set by its election. Of course, Van Buren realizes that it could be dangerous for a Christian theologian to define the calling of Israel, but for him this is a consequence of his theology.[21] The Gentile Church has not realized its reliance on Israel, when it has called itself ‘the People of God’ and ‘Holy People’. There is in Van Buren’s opinion not ‘The Church of England’ or ‘The Church of Sweden, expressions he regards as ‘remnants of the distortions of “Christendom”’, but only a church in England an a church in Sweden, or in any other nation. He sees Jesus as ‘Israel-for-the-Gentiles’; only through Jesus, the Jew, does the Gentile Church know the God of Israel.[22] Therefore it is an ‘incredible idea’, that the Gentile Church should try to reach the Jewish People with its Gentile mission, by setting up the incoherent phenomenon of a special ‘mission to the Jews’.[23] From a strictly orthodox Protestant and Reformed standpoint, Van Buren’s approach is, of course, labelled as ‘liberal reductionism’[24], but in his own view it is theologically the only radical way-out after almost 2000 years of an anti-Jewish Church and theology, the beginning of a reconciliation between the ‘Church of God’ and the ‘Israel of God’.[25]   

Friedrich-Wilhelm Marquardt
The German theologian Marquardt has chosen a new and provocative path in trying to work for and describe a new relationship between the Church and the Jewish People. He realized that Christian theology after Auschwitz could not simply go on as if nothing has happened. It also could not continue by tinkering with cosmetic changes in its doctrines. Only a revolution in Christian theology could, in his view, be an honest response to the abyss of Auschwitz. Never again should Christians make Israel the object of their theology. Jews can speak as subjects for themselves and should not be made mute in Christian theology. Christian theological reflection must be characterized by a radical Umkehr (‘turn’, ‘repentance’).[26] This can only be realized in a living dialogue with Jews. After Auschwitz the many burning questions must remain open, even the question whether God lives. Only God himself can respond to this question in the eschaton, ‘if He wants and lives’. Christians can not give up their theological and philosophical reflection on God, because only in this way can they find and describe their identity in relation to the People of Israel.[27]
Marquardt does not write much on the doctrine of the Church in his extensive volumes on systematic theology.[28] He prefers a low-profile ecclesiology in contrast with the ecclesiastical triumphalism of the past. Although the Church is founded on Israel, it has become a Church of the Gentiles. The Church is sent to the nations, but should never forget that its way began in Jerusalem and is meant to lead back to Jerusalem. The Church is called to be the representative of God and of His people Israel in the world of the nations. It does not replace Israel amongst the nations, because Israel can speak for itself. But the Church has the role of expressing before the nations the ‘anti-pagan witness of God’ in confrontation with the idols and powers of the world (here he uses the wording of the Dutch theologian Miskotte). Its task is not to boast of its high titles, like ‘People of God’ or ‘Holy People’, but to keep and to preach and to practice God’s Word in the world. So Marquardt can describe the Church with a metaphor, derived from the exodus-story of Israel. He discovers the Church in a not so flattering image, in ‘the riff-raff’ (in Hebrew: èrev rav), the crowd of hangers-on that is following Israel out of the slavery of Egypt on its way to the promised land (Exod 12: 38).[29] In a  more friendly image he describes the Church as ‘maker of hymns’, for him a beloved way to express the essence of the Church.[30] 

In the last part of this article we seek to answer the following questions: What does it mean for Christian theology to confess that the Jewish People remains ‘God’s People’? Should Christians give only Israel or only the Church the title ‘Holy People’ or ‘People of God’? Or should they rather affirm that both Israel and the Church may  appropriate the title ‘Holy People’ in their own way? Concluding, I would like to defend the thesis that the essence of the Church should not only be expressed by mentioning the four classical notae ecclesiae, but that a new nota should be added, calling the rootedness of the Church in Israel also a nota ecclesiae.
I will consider three possible answers and make my own choice clear.

1. Only Israel the ‘People of God’?
Some Christian scholars, like Van Buren and Marquardt, have drawn the theological consequence from their encounter with the Jewish People and Judaism by calling only Israel the ‘People of God’. They are convinced that if  Christians read the Hebrew Bible in the first place as the Book of Israel, they have to take the self-definition of the Jewish People seriously. They have to accept that the term ‘People of God’ cannot be deduced from a general and  already known ‘Gentile’ or philosophical concept ‘people’, consequently applied to the special case of Israel. The Hebrew name for ‘holy people’ (am or goj qadosj), is actually untranslatable and its meaning can only be outlined and explained in approximate theological terms. Theologians like Van Buren and Marquardt speak of Israel as the ‘People of God’, next to the ‘Church of Christ’. This position does justice to Jewish self-understanding but not to Christian self-understanding.
In the 20th century the Church has re-discovered Israel as ‘God’s Chosen People’. This was formulated in many official statements and messages. The theological consequences of this change of paradigm must still be drawn. In my opinion, the Church should read the Hebrew Bible first as the Book of Israel and secondly as the ‘Old Testament’, i.e. as Book of the Church. Both ways of reading must be accepted as theologically valid for Christians. The Church should listen to the self-understanding of the Jewish People. According to Jewish religious conviction the election of Israel to be God’s People is not a matter of an idea, but a phenomenon in history, connected to the concrete corporeal reality of the Jewish people, as the ‘Body of Faith’.[31] Every trace of gnosticism and spiritualizing is excluded from this reality. The origin of this community is not ‘natural’, but the outcome off God’s goodness and election that is only realized in the physicality and concrete history of the People Israel. Giving up the names ‘People Israel’ and ‘God’s People’ would mean for the Jewish People full assimilation in the world of the nations and therefore the discontinuation of Jewish identity.
    
2 Only the Church the ‘People of God’?
For theologians like Calvin and many others it was absolutely clear that the Church had replaced the People of Israel as Gods elected people and that the Church was the only legal heir of the title ‘People of God’. It has become clear in this article that I reject this position. It is not necessary and certainly not helpful to call the Church ‘Israel’, even not when it is sometimes explicitly emphasized that this choice of name is not meant to ‘expropriate the identity of Israel’ as Church, but only to ‘appropriate the identity of Israel’.[32] Why should the Church appropriate the name ‘Israel’, if the New Testament does not do so? Why this insistence after such a long anti-Jewish and anti-Semitic Wirkungsgeschichte of the use of this title for the Church?[33] There are many other images and metaphors for the Church, which clarify the essence of the Church perhaps even better than the term ‘People of God’, for example the biblical metaphor ‘body of Christ’(cf. 1 Cor 12:12-26) and names like ‘children of God’ (cf. Rom 8:16) and ‘new creation’ (cf. 2 Cor 5:17).[34]

3 Both Israel and the Church ‘People of God’
In the beginning of this lecture, the question was asked: Should churches be ready to drop their self-definition as ‘the Church as God’s People’? Would such a move be helpful in the context of Jewish-Christian dialogue to overcome the centuries-long love-hate relationship between Christians and Jews? Or does the use of this concept for the Church in the New Testament and the long tradition of Christianity make such a radical change impossible? There is in my opinion no need to try to stop the Christian use of this concept, as long as it is not combined with anti-Jewish and anti-Semitic doctrine and rhetoric. It is not easy to erase all remnants of anti-Judaism from the Christian doctrine on the Church, which is shown, for example, in the dogmatic volumes of Karl Barth, where Israel is called ‘the witness of God’s wrath’ and ‘the mirror of God’s judgment’. In the classical conception, which still exists, the People Israel only in the time of the Old Testament have the role of ‘foreshadowing’ the coming of the ‘Holy Church’ in the time of the fulfillment in Christ. However, in a very different context, for example, in the practice of many churches in the Third World, the concept ‘People of God’ can be used as a liberating term for the poor and oppressed, without any anti-Jewish connotation.
The best option would be in my opinion, to speak of Israel as the first-chosen People of God and of the Church as the also-chosen ecumenical People of God from all the Nations (so Bertold Klappert[35]). The Dutch-Reformed theologian Berkhof calls the church the ‘first-born’ and ‘forerunner’ of the Kingdom of God, names which he also applies to the People of Israel.[36] The American-Lutheran theologian Stanley Hauerwas has a special preference for the term ‘resident aliens’ to refer to the diaspora-existence of the Church in post-modern times, borrowed from Israel in the Old Testament but also used for the Church in 1 Peter, a term with which he wants to mark a radical break with the age-long triumphalism of church history.[37]
Why should we not choose a name the New Testament used for the first followers of Jesus: ‘people of the Way’ (Acts 9:2; 19:9,23; 22:4; 24:14)? Perhaps there is a feeling that this name is too pretentious after the practice of almost 2000 years of Christianity? Then one could opt for the modest metaphor for the Church, chosen by Marquardt from Exod 12:38, when he compares the Church with the ‘mixed multitude’ (èrev rav) that follows Israel in the desert out of the house of slavery on its way to freedom. 
The conclusion could be that the Church may be called also - as one of many different names and metaphors - ‘People of God’, when the Church is ready to acknowledge that it is not the first and not the only one to be chosen as God’s People. When the Church is ready as Church to repent! The Church is not the People of God, but a People of God, as is mentioned in Acts 15:14: ‘God first visited the Gentiles, to take out of them a people for his name’. The Church as ekklesia represents the eschatological people of God as they are gathered in worship and as they witness to the hope for the coming kingdom of God.

Nota ecclesiae
In my dissertation in 1982, I proposed to call the ‘rootedness of the Church in (the People of) Israel’ one of the notae ecclesiae.[38] This is not a totally new attempt, because several theologians have tried to add new notae to the four classical notae ecclesiae.[39] I would like to confirm and to qualify my earlier position by stating that Christian theology has to develop and to reformulate its christology and ecclesiology on the basis of the criterion: ‘Salvation comes from the Jews’ (John 4:22). Or, in the words of the apostle Paul to the Gentile Christians in Rome: ‘Remember it is not you that support the root, but the root that supports you’ (Rom 11:18). From the side of the Church there should be a clear confession of solidarity towards the Jewish People, which is grounded in God’s election, a solidarity that does not exclude others. This relation of solidarity between Christians and Jews will always include an irreducible element of dispute and even rivalry, because of the fact that the ‘joint heirs of the promises’ interpret these promises of God differently. Both communities call themselves ‘holy’ in their self-definition and both regard themselves called to be ‘holy’ by God. In the Protestant view, the ‘holy Church’ is holy when it is a Church of metanoia, of repentance, because the Church must be semper reformanda, ‘always reforming’. After a long and dreadful history, the Church and the Jewish People could perhaps, on their different ways to the kingdom of God, join forces in a ‘competition for holiness’ to work for the ‘restoration of the world’, separately and together.    

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, but these signs are still weak and hesitant.
There is not much reciprocity in the dialogue, because interest on the Jewish side remains slight,[40] 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.[41]
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.
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.[42] 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.