Did Christianity Inspire The Holocaust?

[WinePusher]

Was Christianity An Influence Of The Holocaust and Adolf Hitler?

Personally, I've seen the people who agree with that statement make two claims. That it was fueled by Roman Catholic Anti-Semiticism, or it was ignited by Martin Luther's replacement theology. I would contend that Christianity was used as a vesel of propoganda that made Hitler's message more potent.

I would dispute the assertion that the Christian God and the Christian Bible inspired/caused the holocaust and motivated Hitler to action. Social Darwinism played much more of a factor in it and the claim that Hitlers was a bible believeing Christian seems to be unfounded.

[Lux]

Here's another similarity: Both were unrestrained by the teachings of Christ or any though of future rewards and punishment. After Hitler's planned removal of the Jews, his intention was to go after the Christians.

Stalin claimed to be an atheist, so presumably he didn't care about Jesus. What about Hitler? In an earlier post I showed that while he told one of his close advisors that he rejected christianity, he told another that he was and would always be a catholic.

About him going after christians in general after he was done with jews, I have no idea where you're getting that from. Hitler killed christians. Christians who helped jews, black christians, christians that opposed him politically... but he didn't target people just because they were christians. The majority of germans (his beloved superior race) were christians at that time.

Not a good comparison.

Which is exactly why I said the witch hunts were a different thing The witch hunts were the crimes of a church, the Holocaust and the victims of communist Russia were the crimes of individuals.

I think in the case of the Salem witch trials 19 died. Stalin at one point was killing 35,000 a week.

Salem is one town. More than 19 people died during witch hunts or in general for suspected heresy.

Only if you take the Bible out of context using verses intended for the Old Testament theocracy of Israel. Jesus harmed nobody, nor did He tell anyone else to.

I never claimed to know what Jesus did or did not do. I said the witch hunts are supportable with Bible verses, and that is true.

[East of Eden]

What about Hitler? In an earlier post I showed that while he told one of his close advisors that he rejected christianity, he told another that he was and would always be a catholic.

So which was it? Given the confusion, I'd say we have to go on his actions, which were the opposite of what Christ taught.

About him going after christians in general after he was done with jews, I have no idea where you're getting that from.

"In 1998 documents were released by Cornell University from the Nuremberg Trials,[48] that revealed Nazi plans to eliminate Christianity entirely. The documents cover the Nuremberg trials of leading Nazis and demonstrate the deliberate genocide of Jews during the Holocaust, in which some six million Jews were killed. One senior member of the U.S. prosecution team, General William Donovan, as part of his work on documenting Nazi war crimes, compiled large amounts of documentation that the Nazis persecuted Christian Churches.[49]

Donovan's documents include almost 150 bound volumes currently stored at Cornell University after his death in 1959; these documents state

"Important leaders of the National Socialist party would have liked to meet this situation [church influence] by complete extirpation of Christianity and the substitution of a purely racial religion," said an OSS report in July 1945. "The best evidence now available as to the existence of an anti-Church plan is to be found in the systematic nature of the persecution itself.

They also show the different steps involved in the persecution,[50] including the campaign to suppress denominational and youth organizations, denominational schools, and the use of defamation against the clergy, orchestrated to start on the same day over the Reich and supported by the press, Nazi Party meetings and by traveling party speakers.[51][52] The documents show that the Nazis early on wanted the churches neutralized because they feared that the Churches would oppose Nazi plans based on racism and aggressive wars. The Nazis planned to infiltrate churches and use defamation, arrest, assault and/or kill pastors, and "re-educate" church congregations. They also suppressed denominational schools and Christian youth organizations."

Wikipedia

Hitler killed christians. Christians who helped jews, black christians, christians that opposed him politically... but he didn't target people just because they were christians.

He targeted the large number of Christians in the Confessing Church movement who opposed him. They didn't just oppose him politically, they opposed him because of their faith.

Which is exactly why I said the witch hunts were a different thing The witch hunts were the crimes of a church, the Holocaust and the victims of communist Russia were the crimes of individuals.

You could just as easily say the witch hunts were the crimes of individuals. What church ran Salem?

I never claimed to know what Jesus did or did not do. I said the witch hunts are supportable with Bible verses, and that is true.

If you take them out of context.

[cnorman18]

What you call 'Replacement Theology' I call Christianity.

This one statement encapsulates why I think that CNorman is tilting at windmills. He is asking the Christians to abandon the essence of Christianity. Christianity, being an exclusive monotheistic religion, is the teaching that Jesus is the only begotten Son of God, through whom anyone who would be redeemed to the one and only God must put their faith. The Jews are not alone in being condemned by the Christians. Those Christians who actually believe what is written in their Bible, believe that everyone who does not have faith in Jesus will be condemned for their sins.

But the Jews have a special place in Christian theology. To the Christians, Jesus is the fulfillment of Jewish theology. He is the universal redeemer of humanity, who was predicted by the Jewish prophets. He is the Son of the God of Abraham, Jacob, Moses and David. Replacement theology is a crucial piece of Christianity and without it, the entire basis for the theological claims of Christianity fall apart.

I don't think that Replacement Theology, also called Supersessionism, is necessarily integral or "crucial" to the Christian faith. I didn't think so when I was a Christian, and neither did ANY of my professors at Perkins School of Theology. It's crucial to a fundamentalist approach to Christianity, but as I've been saying from Day One here, that's not the only kind of Christianity there is.

See my next post.

[cnorman18]

Point of fact, the vast, vast majority of those carrying out the holocaust were Christians.

Correction; professing Christians.

A profession does not a Christian make:

Matthew 7:16 KJV

Ye shall know them by their fruits.

This is not to say that the Church doesn't bear the full responsibility to confess its complicity in the Holocaust and do everything in its power to change the dialogue with and perception of Jews from within its ranks. It does, and the sooner the better.

But true Christians did not commit those atrocities.

Don't everybody jump on the "no true Scotsman" thing; I'm a Jew, and he's right. By saying that these teachings, let alone these actions, betrayed the spirit of Jesus, I am saying exactly the same thing. It was certainly never Jesus's intent that these horrors should happen.

Where we would differ is in the perception that the guilt belongs to the individual Christian. It didn't, and doesn't; it belongs to the Church, which was the betrayer. The people were carrying out the things they had been taught. Few were being taught what "true Christianity" meant in those days. In some circles, few still are.

Or could it be that few decide to truly implement the teaching? You know, the narrow road vs. the broad road most take.

You use too broad a brush by saying the Church was guilty. There was a large Confessing Church movement opposed to the apostate state church. As early as 1933 6,000 pastors had joined the Confessing Church movement. By 1937 more than 800 Confessing Church pastors and lay leaders were imprisoned or arrested. By 1941 Himmler was trying vigorously to destroy the Confessing Church, and all Confessing Church pastors who had not been drafted were forced to abandon their pastorates and given jobs of "some useful activity". The Gestapo's treatment of pastors at interrogations was pretty much the same as that of criminals.

Himmler as early as 1936 ordered SS members to resign leadership in religous organizations, and he forbade SS musicians from participating in religious services, even out of uniform. He later forbade SS members from attending church services.

According to Einstein, the church was the German institution that did the most to oppose Hitler, far more than the media or academia.

But I'm not only talking about the Holocaust there. Yes, there were Christians who fought against the Nazis, and died for it; there is a wall devoted to their memory at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial in Israel. The Church, even in 1933, was not the same Church as existed in the 5th or 15th century, and we Jews are grateful to the Christians who did NOT betray the teachings of Christ.

But in those earlier years -- as I said, more than a thousand of them -- the teachings of the Blood Libel and the "Christ-Killer" myth were virtually universal in and from the Church, as formal and explicitly written Church doctrines, which were implemented with formal policies of persecution of the very worst kind. The people lived and believed and hated precisely as they were taught from Christian pulpits all over Europe and all over the world. That sort of thing has been quietly dropped, but it has never been aggressively fought by the Church to this very day. It has only been diluted to the position that you hold yourself, which is better, but not by nearly enough. See below for other approaches which are thoroughly Christian and thoroughly Scriptural and are accepted by many Christian denominations today.

Please show me where Jesus ever said that Judaism was the path to destruction. Jesus was a Jew, you know. When, exactly, did he condemn his own people and himself to Hell?

He said anyone who rejected him was on the path to destruction. "I am the way, the truth, and the life, no man cometh unto the Father but through me." "For God so loved the world, that whosoever believeth in Him shall not perish, but shall have eternal life." It was to a very religious Jewish man (Nicodemus), that He said, "You must be born again."

Some Christian thinkers say that those passages might very well mean that Jews will realize that Jesus was their Messiah in the Next Life. Indeed, that’s a rather common interpretation of Romans 11, even among conservative Christians, with several on this very forum. I’m not completely crazy about that view either, but at least it leaves open the legitimacy and possibility of Jews remaining Jews without necessarily being summarily condemned by God for being faithful Jews.

Further, being “born again� doesn’t seem to be the same as “believing in Jesus.“ Many “born again� Christians will tell you that it’s perfectly possible to believe in Jesus and NOT be “born again�; is that not true? And let’s also note that when Jesus spoke to Nicodemus about being “born again,� he was explicitly answering the question, “How does one enter the Kingdom of God?� Factor in that Jesus also said, �My Kingdom is not of this world.� That certainly leaves the possibility of another interpretation, e.g. the one above, open.

YOUR interpretation seems to be that we Jews must all renounce our religion in THIS life -- OR that we don‘t understand our own faith, which is just as objectionable -- OR that we knowingly and pridefully put ourselves above God, which is contemptibly bigoted -- and that no further discussion or any other reading or approach is even possible. I don’t think that any of those are either defensible or true to the teachings or the personal religious practices of Jesus, nor do I think that anyone has the right to claim to speak pontifically and infallibly for God and claim His right to judge, as you are claiming it here.

Paul is rather ambiguous about these issues, but he certainly doesn’t seem to take the opportunity to support your rather extreme views about Jews outright when the possibility to do so comes up:

25 I do not want you to be ignorant of this mystery, brothers and sisters, so that you may not be conceited: Israel has experienced a hardening in part until the full number of the Gentiles has come in,
26 and in this way all Israel will be saved. As it is written:
“The deliverer will come from Zion;
he will turn godlessness away from Jacob.
27 And this is my covenant with them
when I take away their sins.�
28 As far as the gospel is concerned, they are enemies for your sake; but as far as election is concerned, they are loved on account of the patriarchs,
29 for God’s gifts and his call are irrevocable.

There are many ways to read that chapter; but the idea that Jews are all doomed to Hell unless they renounce Judaism and become Christians in this life is not one of them, unless one brings that conviction to this passage and imposes it a priori. You also have to disregard and/or overrule and negate vast stretches of the Old Testament, and declare the eternal covenants with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and Moses too, to be no longer eternal and therefore to declare God to be an Indian giver, a breaker of promises, and a liar.

I quite understand that you disagree with that interpretation; but you have no warrant to call it absolutely and infallibly false. Very many committed Christians disagree with you. With them, we can both claim our rightful place as brothers and servants of the same God, and leave our differences up to Him. You have declared the religion of Jesus himself false and yourself our enemy, and you legitimize hatred and contempt for my people.

You have already agreed with my point, then backed away from that agreement by repeating the Replacement Theology that says that Jews are condemned to Hell unless they renounce their Judaism and become Christians, as you do again here:

Jesus' saying about the 'wide path that leads to destruction' was not aimed at the Jews, but anyone who rejects Him as Lord and Savior.

What you call 'Replacement Theology' I call Christianity.

They are not necessarily the same. “Replacement theology� is, at bottom, the negation of the religion of Jesus himself and a call for its abolition and extinction. “There should be no Jews at all, only Christians.� Jesus never said that nor anything like it. That all should believe in him, yes; but that is not the same thing, as I showed above.

That means Jews who insist on remaining Jews, which is exactly where we have been for two thousand years. Jews could always -- until Hitler -- escape persecution by simply confessing Jesus. Don't you GET this?!? That's the teaching that made the Holocaust possible. "Jews are going to Hell anyway; let's give them a little encouragement to come to Jesus and escape it!" That was the reasoning behind the Inquisition, the pogroms, the exiles -- ALL of it!

I've already condemned that. You don't judge a philosophy by it's misuse.

We’re not talking about a “philosophy,� we’re talking about a religious doctrine. You’ve condemned the actions, but not the doctrines and teachings that made them possible and that never lifted a finger, philosophical or otherwise, to prevent or act against them till modern times. Those, you have confirmed: “God is through with the Jews, and they have no hope as Jews, but only if they become Christians.�

Are you going to blame Christianity for the Muslim Jew-hate going on all over the world too?

Indirectly, yes; I blame Christianity for the Christian documents which are used by Muslims to support their anti-Semitism and have never been denounced or renounced by the Church. John Chrystostom is still a Catholic saint, and Martin Luther is still a Christian hero.

Sorry about that, but once again, you are presuming to define Judaism for Jews and demanding that they renounce their religion -- the religion of Jesus himself -- or go to Hell.

And you presume to judge what true Christianity is in your post 36.

You are not answering my contention, but only posting one of your own -- which is false, as it happens. Here is what I said about Christianity in post 36:

By saying that these teachings, let alone these actions, betrayed the spirit of Jesus, I am saying exactly the same thing. It was certainly never Jesus's intent that these horrors should happen.

Are you saying that it WAS Jesus’s intent that these things should happen? If not, what are you saying?

Back to the remark which you dodged: You are, absolutely and inarguably, either claiming that Judaism requires a belief in a Messiah who does not fulfill the requirements of that office, and thus that we Jews do not understand our own religion; or you are claiming that Judaism has, since the coming of Jesus, been revoked by God and is no longer a valid belief but a false and futile one. In either case: How are you not presuming to define Judaism?

[East of Eden]

What you call 'Replacement Theology' I call Christianity.

This one statement encapsulates why I think that CNorman is tilting at windmills. He is asking the Christians to abandon the essence of Christianity. Christianity, being an exclusive monotheistic religion, is the teaching that Jesus is the only begotten Son of God, through whom anyone who would be redeemed to the one and only God must put their faith. The Jews are not alone in being condemned by the Christians. Those Christians who actually believe what is written in their Bible, believe that everyone who does not have faith in Jesus will be condemned for their sins.

But the Jews have a special place in Christian theology. To the Christians, Jesus is the fulfillment of Jewish theology. He is the universal redeemer of humanity, who was predicted by the Jewish prophets. He is the Son of the God of Abraham, Jacob, Moses and David. Replacement theology is a crucial piece of Christianity and without it, the entire basis for the theological claims of Christianity fall apart.

I don't think that Replacement Theology, also called Supersessionism, is necessarily integral or "crucial" to the Christian faith. I didn't think so when I was a Christian, and neither did ANY of my professors at Perkins School of Theology. It's crucial to a fundamentalist approach to Christianity, but as I've been saying from Day One here, that's not the only kind of Christianity there is.

See my next post.

Did the Perkins School of Theology think Jesus wrong to tell Nicodemus, "You must be born again"?

I prefer the term Bible-believer to fundamentalist, Jesus was one of those. Many evangelicals who would not think Jews are excluded from the Great Commission are not fundamentalists, so from that standpoint your statement is wrong.

[cnorman18]

What you call 'Replacement Theology' I call Christianity.

This one statement encapsulates why I think that CNorman is tilting at windmills. He is asking the Christians to abandon the essence of Christianity. Christianity, being an exclusive monotheistic religion, is the teaching that Jesus is the only begotten Son of God, through whom anyone who would be redeemed to the one and only God must put their faith. The Jews are not alone in being condemned by the Christians. Those Christians who actually believe what is written in their Bible, believe that everyone who does not have faith in Jesus will be condemned for their sins.

But the Jews have a special place in Christian theology. To the Christians, Jesus is the fulfillment of Jewish theology. He is the universal redeemer of humanity, who was predicted by the Jewish prophets. He is the Son of the God of Abraham, Jacob, Moses and David. Replacement theology is a crucial piece of Christianity and without it, the entire basis for the theological claims of Christianity fall apart.

I don't think that Replacement Theology, also called Supersessionism, is necessarily integral or "crucial" to the Christian faith. I didn't think so when I was a Christian, and neither did ANY of my professors at Perkins School of Theology. It's crucial to a fundamentalist approach to Christianity, but as I've been saying from Day One here, that's not the only kind of Christianity there is.

See my next post.

Did the Perkins School of Theology think Jesus wrong to tell Nicodemus, "You must be born again"?

I prefer the term Bible-believer to fundamentalist, Jesus was one of those. Many evangelicals who would not think Jews are excluded from the Great Commission are not fundamentalists, so from that standpoint your statement is wrong.

I would agree that fundamentalists hold that Jews are condemned to Hell, and that from their viewpoint, I am wrong about very, very many things. I disagreed with that point of view when I was a Christian, and I disagree with it now.

It would be nice if fundamentalists would at least concede that other Christians MIGHT, at least, have a point or two.

Jesus himself taught that being "holy" and "doctrinally correct" meant nothing next to actually being actively loving and compassionate; that was the point of the Good Samaritan story. Samaritans were despised and shunned as heretics in his day, sort of like non-fundamentalist Christians are today by believers who hold your position. Funny how rarely that is perceived by fundamentalists.

I'll be very interested in seeing your response to my last post, but I'll be offline till tomorrow, so I'll have to consider it then.

[East of Eden]

What you call 'Replacement Theology' I call Christianity.

This one statement encapsulates why I think that CNorman is tilting at windmills. He is asking the Christians to abandon the essence of Christianity. Christianity, being an exclusive monotheistic religion, is the teaching that Jesus is the only begotten Son of God, through whom anyone who would be redeemed to the one and only God must put their faith. The Jews are not alone in being condemned by the Christians. Those Christians who actually believe what is written in their Bible, believe that everyone who does not have faith in Jesus will be condemned for their sins.

But the Jews have a special place in Christian theology. To the Christians, Jesus is the fulfillment of Jewish theology. He is the universal redeemer of humanity, who was predicted by the Jewish prophets. He is the Son of the God of Abraham, Jacob, Moses and David. Replacement theology is a crucial piece of Christianity and without it, the entire basis for the theological claims of Christianity fall apart.

I don't think that Replacement Theology, also called Supersessionism, is necessarily integral or "crucial" to the Christian faith. I didn't think so when I was a Christian, and neither did ANY of my professors at Perkins School of Theology. It's crucial to a fundamentalist approach to Christianity, but as I've been saying from Day One here, that's not the only kind of Christianity there is.

See my next post.

Did the Perkins School of Theology think Jesus wrong to tell Nicodemus, "You must be born again"?

I prefer the term Bible-believer to fundamentalist, Jesus was one of those. Many evangelicals who would not think Jews are excluded from the Great Commission are not fundamentalists, so from that standpoint your statement is wrong.

I would agree that fundamentalists hold that Jews are condemned to Hell, and that from their viewpoint, I am wrong about very, very many things. I disagreed with that point of view when I was a Christian, and I disagree with it now.

It would be nice if fundamentalists would at least concede that other Christians MIGHT, at least, have a point or two.

Jesus himself taught that being "holy" and "doctrinally correct" meant nothing next to actually being actively loving and compassionate; that was the point of the Good Samaritan story. Samaritans were despised and shunned as heretics in his day, sort of like non-fundamentalist Christians are today by believers who hold your position. Funny how rarely that is perceived by fundamentalists.

Christians don't 'despise and shun' Christians who hold another position, they just think them to be wrong, or do you 'despise and shun' me?

[East of Eden]

But I'm not only talking about the Holocaust there. Yes, there were Christians who fought against the Nazis, and died for it; there is a wall devoted to their memory at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial in Israel. The Church, even in 1933, was not the same Church as existed in the 5th or 15th century, and we Jews are grateful to the Christians who did NOT betray the teachings of Christ.

But in those earlier years -- as I said, more than a thousand of them -- the teachings of the Blood Libel and the "Christ-Killer" myth were virtually universal in and from the Church, as formal and explicitly written Church doctrines, which were implemented with formal policies of persecution of the very worst kind. The people lived and believed and hated precisely as they were taught from Christian pulpits all over Europe and all over the world. That sort of thing has been quietly dropped, but it has never been aggressively fought by the Church to this very day. It has only been diluted to the position that you hold yourself, which is better, but not by nearly enough.

What would you have us do, say the Jews are exempt from the Great Commission so as not to hurt their feelings? It isn't going to happen. "To the Jew first........"

Some Christian thinkers say that those passages might very well mean that Jews will realize that Jesus was their Messiah in the Next Life. Indeed, that’s a rather common interpretation of Romans 11, even among conservative Christians, with several on this very forum. I’m not completely crazy about that view either, but at least it leaves open the legitimacy and possibility of Jews remaining Jews without necessarily being summarily condemned by God for being faithful Jews.

Further, being “born again� doesn’t seem to be the same as “believing in Jesus.“ Many “born again� Christians will tell you that it’s perfectly possible to believe in Jesus and NOT be “born again�; is that not true? And let’s also note that when Jesus spoke to Nicodemus about being “born again,� he was explicitly answering the question, “How does one enter the Kingdom of God?� Factor in that Jesus also said, �My Kingdom is not of this world.� That certainly leaves the possibility of another interpretation, e.g. the one above, open.

There are three main interpretations of this phrase 'all Israel':

1. The total number of elect Jews of every generation (equivalent to the "fullness of Israel" in verse 12), which is analogous to the "fullness of the Gentiles".
2. The total number of the elect, both Jews and Gentiles, of every generation.
3. The great majority of Jews of the final generation 'will be saved'. The salvation of the Jews will of course, be on the same basis as anyone's salvation: personal faith in Jesus Christ, crucified and risen from the dead.

YOUR interpretation seems to be that we Jews must all renounce our religion in THIS life -- OR that we don‘t understand our own faith, which is just as objectionable -- OR that we knowingly and pridefully put ourselves above God, which is contemptibly bigoted -- and that no further discussion or any other reading or approach is even possible. I don’t think that any of those are either defensible or true to the teachings or the personal religious practices of Jesus, nor do I think that anyone has the right to claim to speak pontifically and infallibly for God and claim His right to judge, as you are claiming it here.

All Christians on their conversion are called to renounce their former belief system.

There are many ways to read that chapter; but the idea that Jews are all doomed to Hell unless they renounce Judaism and become Christians in this life is not one of them, unless one brings that conviction to this passage and imposes it a priori. You also have to disregard and/or overrule and negate vast stretches of the Old Testament, and declare the eternal covenants with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and Moses too, to be no longer eternal and therefore to declare God to be an Indian giver, a breaker of promises, and a liar.

I never said His covenant with Israel is void, it is not coincidence they survive as a nation thousands of years later despite being surrounded by genocidal maniacs.

I quite understand that you disagree with that interpretation; but you have no warrant to call it absolutely and infallibly false. Very many committed Christians disagree with you. With them, we can both claim our rightful place as brothers and servants of the same God, and leave our differences up to Him.

I'm not forcing anything on you, just stating the opinion of myself and millions of other Christians. We have to come to God in God's way.

You have declared the religion of Jesus himself false and yourself our enemy, and you legitimize hatred and contempt for my people.

Complete baloney. I have no hatred for Jews and support to the utmost the state of Israel. There you go again opining on true Christianity and condemning whole segments of it yet object when we suggest Jews might be wrong.

They are not necessarily the same. “Replacement theology� is, at bottom, the negation of the religion of Jesus himself and a call for its abolition and extinction. “There should be no Jews at all, only Christians.�

No, there should ideally be Jewish Christians.

Jesus never said that nor anything like it.

Wrong. Christianity believes Jesus came, in fulfillment of OT prophecies, to die an atoning death on the cross for our salvation. "Whosoever believeth on Him shall not perish......" Logically, what will happen to those who do not believe on Him?

We’re not talking about a “philosophy,� we’re talking about a religious doctrine. You’ve condemned the actions, but not the doctrines and teachings that made them possible and that never lifted a finger, philosophical or otherwise, to prevent or act against them till modern times. Those, you have confirmed: “God is through with the Jews, and they have no hope as Jews, but only if they become Christians.�

That is a hard saying. As Romans 9 says, quoting Isaiah: "See, I lay in Zion a stone that causes men to stumble, and a rock that makes them fall, and the one who trusts in him will never be put to shame."

Just curious, do you also think Muslims, Hindus, and atheists can remain in their beliefs while calling themselves Christians?

Indirectly, yes; I blame Christianity for the Christian documents which are used by Muslims to support their anti-Semitism and have never been denounced or renounced by the Church.

What documents are you taling about?

John Chrystostom is still a Catholic saint, and Martin Luther is still a Christian hero.

And ML King is a Christian her despite having had affairs. We are both sinners, yet justified.

Sorry about that, but once again, you are presuming to define Judaism for Jews and demanding that they renounce their religion -- the religion of Jesus himself -- or go to Hell.

As Jesus told Nicodemus.

Are you saying that it WAS Jesus’s intent that these things should happen?

Of course not.

Back to the remark which you dodged: You are, absolutely and inarguably, either claiming that Judaism requires a belief in a Messiah who does not fulfill the requirements of that office, and thus that we Jews do not understand our own religion; or you are claiming that Judaism has, since the coming of Jesus, been revoked by God and is no longer a valid belief but a false and futile one. In either case: How are you not presuming to define Judaism?

No dodging going on here, I am simply quoting the Bible, which I believe to be the Word of God. Jews are not infallible, witness the many times in the OT where they rejected God's prophets and fell into apostasy, and were brought back through God's discipline. It was a constant cycle, with the Godly periods being short-lived and exceptional. They often rebelled when God wanted them to go in a new direction, such as leaving Egypt.

Paul states in Roman's that the reason for Israel's rejection of Christ lay in the nature of her disobedience - she failed to obey her own God-given law, which in reality was pointing to Christ. There is no way to sugarcoat that.

[Lux]

So which was it? Given the confusion, I'd say we have to go on his actions, which were the opposite of what Christ taught.

I don't know which one it was, do you? I have not met Hitler personally, therefore I wouldn't make such an assumption that he did what he did because he was "unrestrained by the teachings of Christ or any though of future rewards and punishment". You can't possibly know that he was or wasn't such.

(snipped source for brevity)

He targeted the large number of Christians in the Confessing Church movement who opposed him. They didn't just oppose him politically, they opposed him because of their faith.

Hitler went after the christian churches because they were competitors for power (similar to what Stalin did there), but his intention was not to "go after christians" (your words) the way he went after jews. Like I said, the majority or germans were christians, eliminating them would have been completely opposed to his purpose.

Opposition is opposition, and that is the reason why he eliminated them, not because they were christians. It makes no sense to think that Hitler had any intention of eliminating christians entirely.

You could just as easily say the witch hunts were the crimes of individuals. What church ran Salem?

Why do you keep refereing to Salem? That's not the only place where witch trials occurred, it's just the most famous.

Anyway, I don't see how you can say that those were the crimes of individuals, since witch hunts were endorsed by the Pope.

If you take them out of context.

I disagree, but would rather not go that far off topic. Witch hunts were a crime of the Catholic Church as well as some local governments, and therefore they are not comparable to the Holocaust, as you pointed out yourself.

[cnorman18]

But I'm not only talking about the Holocaust there. Yes, there were Christians who fought against the Nazis, and died for it; there is a wall devoted to their memory at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial in Israel. The Church, even in 1933, was not the same Church as existed in the 5th or 15th century, and we Jews are grateful to the Christians who did NOT betray the teachings of Christ.

But in those earlier years -- as I said, more than a thousand of them -- the teachings of the Blood Libel and the "Christ-Killer" myth were virtually universal in and from the Church, as formal and explicitly written Church doctrines, which were implemented with formal policies of persecution of the very worst kind. The people lived and believed and hated precisely as they were taught from Christian pulpits all over Europe and all over the world. That sort of thing has been quietly dropped, but it has never been aggressively fought by the Church to this very day. It has only been diluted to the position that you hold yourself, which is better, but not by nearly enough.

What would you have us do, say the Jews are exempt from the Great Commission so as not to hurt their feelings? It isn't going to happen. "To the Jew first........"

And yet again, you dodge the question. There’s nothing wrong with proselytizing, which is the command of the Great Commission; but there IS something wrong with claiming that “the Jews murdered Christ and are collectively responsible for that crime to this day,� and that Jews murder children and drink their blood as a sacred religious ritual. Those were formal doctrines and teachings of the Church for centuries on end. Do you stand by those teachings? If not, why are you arguing with me about them?

Further, proselytizing -- offering the Gospel, the “Good News,� to sinners, including Jews, is NOT THE SAME as claiming the right to judge Jews and make the pronouncement that they are all condemned to Hell, which is God’s place alone.

Some Christian thinkers say that those passages might very well mean that Jews will realize that Jesus was their Messiah in the Next Life. Indeed, that’s a rather common interpretation of Romans 11, even among conservative Christians, with several on this very forum. I’m not completely crazy about that view either, but at least it leaves open the legitimacy and possibility of Jews remaining Jews without necessarily being summarily condemned by God for being faithful Jews.

No response to this at all.

Further, being “born again� doesn’t seem to be the same as “believing in Jesus.“ Many “born again� Christians will tell you that it’s perfectly possible to believe in Jesus and NOT be “born again�; is that not true?

No response to this at all.

And let’s also note that when Jesus spoke to Nicodemus about being “born again,� he was explicitly answering the question, “How does one enter the Kingdom of God?� Factor in that Jesus also said, �My Kingdom is not of this world.� That certainly leaves the possibility of another interpretation, e.g. the one above, open.

No response to this at all.

There are three main interpretations of this phrase 'all Israel':

1. The total number of elect Jews of every generation (equivalent to the "fullness of Israel" in verse 12), which is analogous to the "fullness of the Gentiles".
2. The total number of the elect, both Jews and Gentiles, of every generation.
3. The great majority of Jews of the final generation 'will be saved'. The salvation of the Jews will of course, be on the same basis as anyone's salvation: personal faith in Jesus Christ, crucified and risen from the dead.

No, there are FOUR, including the plain literal sense of what Paul himself said: “All Israel will be saved.� He doesn’t say “Some of Israel will be saved.

And Paul also says, “as far as election is concerned, they are loved on account of the patriarchs, for God’s gifts and his call are irrevocable.� He doesn’t say “some are loved,� or “usually� or “mostly irrevocable.�

You claim to read the Bible literally and that you don’t edit it or change the plain, simple meaning of the text. This is apparently an exception.

As I said: When Paul has the opportunity to make YOUR doctrine clear, he rather emphatically does NOT do so. This entire chapter is apparently written to counter the idea that “God has rejected His people,� to which he answers unequivocally, “By no means!� He speaks of the “full inclusion� of the Jews in salvation; and then, too, there is v. 15: “For if their rejection brought reconciliation to the world, what will their acceptance be but life from the dead?� If that doesn’t leave open the possibility, in Christian terms, of a “second chance� to realize that Jesus was the Messiah in the next life, what on Earth would?

I don’t see any way to reconcile Paul’s literal words in the Bible with the Great Commission as it applies to Jews in any other way. Paul teaches that “God gave them a spirit of stupor, eyes that could not see and ears that could not hear, to this very day.� Jews, according to Paul, did not and do not reject Jesus from their own obstinacy, but because God ordered it so that the Gentiles would come to know the love of God. Do you say that God commanded that His Covenant would be revoked and replaced with belief in Jesus? That’s exactly what Paul was teaching against here!

Let me ask you this: If the Covenant has been replaced, and believing as a Jew doesn’t matter any more, but only believing in Jesus, why does Paul bother to say these things about the Jews being “loved on account of the Patriarchs� at all? Why does he say “ALL Israel will be saved?� Why does he say that the Jews were INTENDED to reject Jesus till the fullness of the Gentiles have been brought in, at which time we will be “grafted back in�? I don’t see any hint that you’ve ever thought about these things at all, but just gone with what you’ve been taught, that Jews are just heathen unbelievers doomed to Hell like any others. The Bible never says that, and Paul most definitely never says that; but you do.

Again, by editing and changing the intent and the words of Paul, you have left Biblical literalism behind and are imposing your own very debatable and uncertain interpretation on your own Scriptures and are claiming to speak for God -- and refusing to even consider that you might be wrong in doing that!

YOUR interpretation seems to be that we Jews must all renounce our religion in THIS life -- OR that we don‘t understand our own faith, which is just as objectionable -- OR that we knowingly and pridefully put ourselves above God, which is contemptibly bigoted -- and that no further discussion or any other reading or approach is even possible. I don’t think that any of those are either defensible or true to the teachings or the personal religious practices of Jesus, nor do I think that anyone has the right to claim to speak pontifically and infallibly for God and claim His right to judge, as you are claiming it here.

All Christians on their conversion are called to renounce their former belief system.

Jews aren’t. Paul doesn’t say, “I was a Jew.� Neither do any of the other Disciples. Jesus himself never renounced Judaism, and in fact went out of his way to confirm its truth. But that doesn’t count, according to you!

There are many ways to read that chapter; but the idea that Jews are all doomed to Hell unless they renounce Judaism and become Christians in this life is not one of them, unless one brings that conviction to this passage and imposes it a priori. You also have to disregard and/or overrule and negate vast stretches of the Old Testament, and declare the eternal covenants with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and Moses too, to be no longer eternal and therefore to declare God to be an Indian giver, a breaker of promises, and a liar.

I never said His covenant with Israel is void, it is not coincidence they survive as a nation thousands of years later despite being surrounded by genocidal maniacs.

By saying that Jews must abandon Judaism or go to Hell, you absolutely are.

I quite understand that you disagree with that interpretation; but you have no warrant to call it absolutely and infallibly false. Very many committed Christians disagree with you. With them, we can both claim our rightful place as brothers and servants of the same God, and leave our differences up to Him.

I'm not forcing anything on you, just stating the opinion of myself and millions of other Christians. We have to come to God in God's way.

By claiming that YOUR way is “GOD’S way,� you are claiming to speak for God. That’s a bit more emphatic than “stating your opinion.� If you say something is “your opinion,� you are implicitly admitting that you MIGHT be wrong; and I don’t think that’s your intent, now is it?

You have declared the religion of Jesus himself false and yourself our enemy, and you legitimize hatred and contempt for my people.

Complete baloney. I have no hatred for Jews and support to the utmost the state of Israel. There you go again opining on true Christianity and condemning whole segments of it yet object when we suggest Jews might be wrong.

I didn’t say you hated Jews: I said you legitimized hatred and contempt for Jews, and you do. Have you not claimed that Jews refuse to accept Jesus out of obstinacy and stubbornness, as opposed to the honest belief that Jesus did not fulfill the requirements of the Messiah?

Further, there is a difference between “condemning whole segments of Christianity� and disputing a single doctrine, for which dispute I have ample Scriptural support from the NT.

They are not necessarily the same. “Replacement theology� is, at bottom, the negation of the religion of Jesus himself and a call for its abolition and extinction. “There should be no Jews at all, only Christians.�

No, there should ideally be Jewish Christians.

No such thing. A Jew who becomes a Christian is no longer practicing Judaism, and a Christian who believes in Jesus as the Divine Son of God and Savior -- which is not the same thing as the Jewish Messiah -- cannot become a Jew.

Jesus never said that nor anything like it.

Wrong. Christianity believes Jesus came, in fulfillment of OT prophecies, to die an atoning death on the cross for our salvation. "Whosoever believeth on Him shall not perish......" Logically, what will happen to those who do not believe on Him?

According to Paul, if they are Jews, they will be grafted back in on account of the Covenant with the patriarchs, whether in this life or the next. He said, and I quote exactly, “ALL ISRAEL will be saved.�

We’re not talking about a “philosophy,� we’re talking about a religious doctrine. You’ve condemned the actions, but not the doctrines and teachings that made them possible and that never lifted a finger, philosophical or otherwise, to prevent or act against them till modern times. Those, you have confirmed: “God is through with the Jews, and they have no hope as Jews, but only if they become Christians.�

That is a hard saying. As Romans 9 says, quoting Isaiah: "See, I lay in Zion a stone that causes men to stumble, and a rock that makes them fall, and the one who trusts in him will never be put to shame."

Assuming as usual that the OT is all about Jesus. Like I’ve said over and over; you’re entitled to believe what you want, but you’re not entitled to tell Jews what Jews believe. Your own Apostle Paul doesn’t agree with your teaching about Jews.

Just curious, do you also think Muslims, Hindus, and atheists can remain in their beliefs while calling themselves Christians?

Not fundamentalist Christians, certainly; otherwise, I think that would be up to the Muslims, Hindus and atheists to say, not me and not Christians. I don’t have the right to dictate what their beliefs are, any more than you have the right to tell my what my own are by presuming to dictate what Jews have to believe in Jesus in order to be faithful Jews.

Indirectly, yes; I blame Christianity for the Christian documents which are used by Muslims to support their anti-Semitism and have never been denounced or renounced by the Church.

What documents are you taling about?

The ones by the authors mentioned in my next phrase, among others. They’re not hard to find. The doctrine in Matthew that makes Jews perpetually guilty of the murder of Christ is one of them, too; you’ve renounced polygamy and multiple marriage, stoning disobedient children and burning witches -- why can’t you leave that in the Bible while renouncing that, too?

Do you believe that the death of Jesus is upon the heads of the Jews of his day and on the heads of their children, including me?

If not, why don’t you SAY so? Why don’t you make the renunciation of that doctrine an explicit Christian teaching? You don’t even have to change the Bible: the Church, or you personally, could just say, “That was what THOSE Jews said, but they were wrong�? It’s not like Jesus himself said, “My death is on their heads,� now is it? If I recall correctly, HE said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.� The Church withheld that forgiveness from Jews, on account of that one passage, for more than a thousand years!

John Chrystostom is still a Catholic saint, and Martin Luther is still a Christian hero.

And ML King is a Christian her despite having had affairs. We are both sinners, yet justified.

Dodging the point again. I’m not talking about their personal behavior or their salvation. I’m talking about their teachings, which were embraced and taught by the Church and have never been explicitly renounced. Dr. King never taught that men should cheat on their wives, but Martin Luther DID teach that Jewish books and synagogues and homes should be burned, that Jews should have their property confiscated, and that we should be prevented from finding work and left destitute and homeless -- and those very things were done, time and time again, for centuries. Do you deny those FACTS? Will you find some way to excuse them or pretend that the Church never taught or did those things? Or will you, and the Church, do what Jesus himself said you should do -- confess, repent and turn from your sins?

Sorry about that, but once again, you are presuming to define Judaism for Jews and demanding that they renounce their religion -- the religion of Jesus himself -- or go to Hell.

As Jesus told Nicodemus.

For which I posted an alternate interpretation to which you never responded at all.

Back to the remark which you dodged: You are, absolutely and inarguably, either claiming that Judaism requires a belief in a Messiah who does not fulfill the requirements of that office, and thus that we Jews do not understand our own religion; or you are claiming that Judaism has, since the coming of Jesus, been revoked by God and is no longer a valid belief but a false and futile one. In either case: How are you not presuming to define Judaism?

No dodging going on here, I am simply quoting the Bible, which I believe to be the Word of God.

You are doing much more than “simply quoting the Bible,� as I have shown; you are in places editing the Bible and putting words in Paul’s mouth that he did NOT say, and imposing your own strict interpretation on passages that do not obviously support it.

In any case, you are not, once again, answering the question. Even granting that you’re “simply quoting the Bible,� which you’re not, how are you not presuming to define Judaism?

Jews are not infallible…

As if I ever made that claim.

…witness the many times in the OT where they rejected God's prophets and fell into apostasy, and were brought back through God's discipline. It was a constant cycle, with the Godly periods being short-lived and exceptional. They often rebelled when God wanted them to go in a new direction, such as leaving Egypt.

Paul states in Roman's that the reason for Israel's rejection of Christ lay in the nature of her disobedience - she failed to obey her own God-given law, which in reality was pointing to Christ. There is no way to sugarcoat that.

He also says, unequivocally and clearly, that we were ordained by God to reject Jesus in order that the Gentiles could be brought in, and that “ALL Israel will be saved,� and that we would be “grafted back in,� and that would be “life from the dead.�

You are selecting the words you like, ignoring or adding to the ones you don’t, and rejecting an alternate interpretation that is perfectly reasonable and Scriptural and claiming that it COULD NOT be true.

By your own standards of reading and understanding the plain, literal sense of the Bible’s text, you have gone beyond it and substituted your own beliefs for the Word of God.

To be clear; I am not a Christian. I don’t intend to tell you what to believe; I DO intend to show you that you MIGHT be wrong, and that a more compassionate and charitable doctrine, that does NOT support anti-Semitism and the persecution of Jews, is a very reasonable, Scriptural, and deeply Christian one that is, at least PERHAPS, more in line with Paul’s thought that the merciless and dogmatic one that YOU hold that draws no distinction, as Paul inarguably did, between Jews and other non-Christians.

I realize that it is your intent to show me that I might be wrong, too; and I accept that I might be. Do you accept that YOU might be wrong?

Back to the point of my OP: Do you accept that the Church needs to confess and repent of its sin of explicitly teaching and practicing and encouraging the hatred and persecution of Jews, as an institution and as a religion? The Church has changed, and that is a good thing; but is there not an obligation to ADMIT that it has changed and to EXPLICITLY teach AGAINST those former doctrines and practices, as opposed to pretending that everything has always been just fine and that it was only a few rogue Christians who practiced and taught Jew-hatred, which is a historical and factual falsehood?

If you want to say that that was never “true Christianity,� I’m fine with that; but shouldn’t it be admitted that in that case, the Church did not teach true Christianity, at least in this one thing, for more than a thousand years?