It is impossible to do justice to this weighty and internally diverse book within a short review. Not only does it treat Barth in a variety of ways – whether… Click to show full abstract
It is impossible to do justice to this weighty and internally diverse book within a short review. Not only does it treat Barth in a variety of ways – whether with respect to his theology of Jews and Judaism, its biographical context, or the ‘Jewish’ character of his theology more broadly – but taking inspiration from Barth, it also sets an agenda for ‘post-supersessionist’ Christian theology and for Jewish–Christian dialogue. In terms of its agenda, most of the Christian authors in this volume broadly inhabit the conceptual space of Pope Paul VI’s 1965 Declaration Nostra Aetate. This dates their contributions, some of them being republications of essays written decades earlier (those by Hans Küng, C. E. B. Cranfield and T. F. Torrance). They agree in rejecting ‘replacement’ theology, according to which the Church replaces Israel as the people of God, instead affirming the eternal place of Israel in the purposes of God (Romans 11.28–29). But by and large they retain an old/new contrast, figuring Judaism as ‘old’ (albeit not as superseded). Cranfield and Torrance continue to work with a ‘hermeneutical Jew’, constructing Jews in the image of Christian scriptural self-understanding. There is little evidence of engagement with Jews in their own self-understanding, or with, say, rabbinic Judaism in its own terms. This allows Cranfield, in his reading of Romans 9—11, to retain caricatures (also present in Barth’s reading) such as ‘Israel’s stubborn perverseness’, which would be all but unacceptable if authored today (it is testimony to the robustness of, and trust within, the dialogue hosted by the conference on which the volume was based that such an essay can be included). George Hunsinger’s essay (originally published in 2015) offers a more nuanced version of what he names ‘soft supersessionism’, building on Barth, but in crucial ways moving beyond him. He loses the negative caricatures but retains the old/new contrast, understanding there to be one covenant in two forms: Judaism representing ‘the old form’ and Christianity ‘the new’ (p. 69). Insofar as God wills the Theology 2019, Vol. 122(4) 289–291 ! The Author(s) 2019 Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions DOI: 10.1177/0040571X19843750 journals.sagepub.com/home/tjx
               
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