National Jewish Scholars Project
DRAFT February, 2001
Do Christians and Jews Worship the Same God?
Philip A. Cunningham and Jan Katzew
A chapter from the forthcoming learning resource,
Irreconcilable Differences?:
A Learning Resource for Jews and Christians
Westview Press,
anticipated publish date July, 2001
The question we face presupposes that different Jews worship the same God and that different Christians do likewise. It is a highly problematic presupposition. Two Jews may not believe in the same type of God. One may believe that God wrote the Torah, making it a perfect document. Another may believe that God inspired human beings to write the Torah, making it a holy document. Another may believe that human beings wrote the Torah, making it a historical document. There are similar positions in the Christian world in regard to God and the Bible. As a consequence, there is a diversity of Jewish and Christian beliefs in God, a diversity that makes this essay very personal, even though the word "I" may rarely appear in it. This essay reflects a conversation between a Jew and a Catholic who share an educational premise: we need to learn more about, from, and with each other. Our goal is theological harmony, not homogenization. We seek what we share and acknowledge where we differ. It is written in the spirit of dialogue, a learning tool, certainly for its authors and, we hope, for its readers.
There is a fundamental asymmetry between Jewish and Christian theology. God-belief in Judaism is not the focus of Jewish learning; that distinction belongs to Torah. There is no Jewish counterpart to the creedal statements of the church. Even though eminent teachers of Torah have articulated basic principles of Jewish thought, there is no dogma accepted by all Jews that proclaims the essence of Jewish belief.[1] Christianity, on the other hand, has tended to emphasize the necessity of correct belief in doctrinal statements. Ironically, the central affirmation of God, "Hear, O Israel: YHWH is our God, YHWH is One" (Dt. 6:4), has been interpreted as a point of both divergence and convergence between Judaism and Christianity.
In the second century C.E., a bishop named Marcion tried to persuade other Christians that the God of Israel was a different deity than the God revealed by Jesus Christ. This notion was firmly rejected by Christians, and down to the present day all Christians understand that they worship the One God of Israel.
Jews have understood the oneness of God to refer both to divine unity and to divine uniqueness. Consequently, the debate about God has revolved around the Christian claims of a triune, incarnate deity. Rabbi Abahu, in third-century Cesaria, commented on the verse "I am the first, and I am the Last, and beside Me there is no God" (Is. 44:6) as follows: "'I am the first', for I have no father; 'and I am the last', for I have no son; 'and beside Me there is no God,' for I have no brother" (Ex. R. 29:5). The Jerusalem Talmud (450 C.E.) refutes the claim that three Hebrew names for God, El, Elohim, and YHWH justify a triune understanding of God (Ber. 9:1). This rejection of the Christian claim that God is one but also three led Maimonides, the twelfth-century authoritative commentator, codifier, and philosopher, to hold that Christians practiced idolatry (M. Torah: Hilchot A. Kochavim 9:4, inter alia). As a practical matter, Jews should not enter into business relationships with Christians because they would be required to take an oath to establish the contract. An oath sworn to some other deity would constitute idolatry (B. Sanh. 63b).
This polemic was crystallized in a fourteenth-century text entitled The Refutation of Christian Principles by Hasdai Crescas:
The Christian says God, may He be blessed, has three separate attributes, which he calls Persons, and the Jew denies this; the Christian believes that God, may He be blessed, has an attribute called Son, generated from the Father, and the Jew denies this; the Christian believes that God, may He be blessed, has an attribute which proceeded from the Father and the Son called Spirit, and the Jew denies this. The Christian believes that the Son took on flesh in the womb of the virgin . . . The Jew denies . . . this."[2] However, since the twelfth century, an alternative Jewish theological voice has emerged -- one that tolerates, accepts, and appreciates the Christian claim to worship the God of Israel. Commenting on the same passage in the Babylonian Talmud (Sanhedrin 63b) that led some interpreters to circumscribe relations between Jews and Christians, Rabbi Isaac argued that worship of the trinity was idolatry for Jews, but not for Christians. Concurrently, Rabbi Menachem Ha-Me'iri of Provence concluded that Christians believed in God's existence and, therefore, were not idolaters.[3] In the eighteenth century, Rabbi Yehudah Ashkenazi argued: "In our era . . . when the gentiles in whose midst we dwell . . . [speak of God], their intention is directed toward the One Who made Heaven and Earth, albeit that they associate another personality with God."[4]
Although we acknowledge the history of polemic and the real differences that exist between Jewish and Christian theology, it is in the spirit of Rabbi Ashkenazi that we affirm the claim that Jews and Christians worship the same God. Although not a novel assertion, it is a significant one to make now, as our communities seek to move beyond disputation and debate toward dialogue, and beyond tolerance toward mutual enrichment. We intend to seize this opportunity to learn about, from, and with each other what we share in worship of God. From this starting point, we will consider three questions:
(1) How does God become known?; (2) What kind of God have we come to know?; and (3) How do we respond to this God? In each case we will draw authority and inspiration from sacred texts and commentaries in an attempt to make relevant that which our respective traditions understand to be authoritative.
How Does God Become Known? "I am YHWH your God, who brought you out from the land of Egypt, from a house of serfs. You are not to have any other gods before my presence" (Ex. 20:2-3).[5]
Jews read these verses as the first two of the Ten Commandments, whereas Christians read them as a single commandment. However counted, they represent a singular event, the revelation at Mount Sinai, the most public divine disclosure. Generally in the Bible, God chose an individual to receive an intimate glimpse of the divine -- Abraham, Sarah, Hagar, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Manoah, Hannah, and Solomon. But, according to Jewish tradition, these two verses were directed to the entire people.[6]
This is the essence of revelation, that is, God revealing God. God initiates the process; God searches for us and defines the terms of our relationship. In this theophany, a manifestation of the divine, God's presence was announced with thunder and lightning; a cloud of smoke enveloped Mount Sinai; the mountain itself trembled, and the shofar blasted. All of the senses were engaged in anticipation of the revelation. Other revelatory moments had their own unique character, but on Mount Sinai, God's power over nature, God's supernatural essence, was revealed for all to see, hear, smell, taste, and feel. The opening words of the revelation at Sinai established divine authority. They were not legislative; they were historical and covenantal. The first clear mitsvah, commandment, is the absolute rejection of polytheism. God prescribes loyalty and proscribes idolatry. If the first statement is one of historical context, the second is one of theological content. God is known to us through historical experience, and as a result of that experience, Jews are called to accept that God as the one and only, the foundation for ethical monotheism.
The contents of this revelation make an essential point about our shared religious understanding of God. Our belief in God's existence is not the consequence of philosophical argument, but of historical experience. The first of the Ten Commandments is not really a command at all. It is a statement of relationship, of covenant. We need to accept the authority of the Divine Commander before we can accept the commandments. How many of us can recall the words "because I am your mother" or "because I am your father" in response to a question about why we could or could not do something? Here we have a revelation that effectively begins with the statement, "Because I am your God, you will do what I ask of you."
Even though the revelation at Mount Sinai was public, it was also personal. Each of the people who saw and heard God perceived God uniquely. The Jewish prayer par excellence, the core of every worship service, begins with these words: "Praised are You, Lord our God, and God of our ancestors, God of Abraham, God of Isaac, and God of Jacob, and [some of us add] God of Sarah, God of Rebecca, God of Leah, and God of Rachel . . ." Why, the sages asked, was it necessary to write "God of" in front of each person? The words are necessary, the sages replied, to illustrate the individual nature of a relationship to God. The ancestors worshipped the same deity, but their relationships were private, personal, and unique. So it is with each one of us.
Christians agree with the Jewish experience that God is met in history and that such meetings generate relationship. Roman Catholics and many other Christians hold that God's self-disclosure to human beings is at essence an interactive process. To put it another way, while God is revealed through events in human history and experience, human beings must decide to interpret particular, concrete events as manifestations of the divine. In the words of Pope John Paul II, revelation comes to people "as a gift . . . set within the context of interpersonal communication."[7] Different people can witness or experience the same events or series of occurrences, but only some of them might conclude that God's activity has been revealed. For instance, different people might observe a sunset. Some will take note that this astronomical event indicates a certain time of the day. Other observers might be struck by the beautiful colors and grand vista. Still others might feel a brush with the Transcendent One who sustains all of existence. The same historical phenomenon is witnessed, but only some witnesses conclude that a disclosure of the divine has occurred. Likewise, not everyone who participated in or witnessed the escape of forced laborers from Egypt would conclude that God had chosen these refugees for special purposes; nor would everyone who noticed that a tomb was empty judge that a corpse had been transformed to new life. Revelation is relational. It is a two-way street.
This relational understanding of revelation is visible in Luke 24:28-35, a passage known as the Emmaus story and found in one of the Christian Gospels. In this scene, two disciples of Jesus are returning to their homes in Emmaus. They are grief-stricken and disillusioned after the execution of Jesus. On their way an unknown stranger joins them. He shows them ways of reading the Scriptures of Ancient Israel to explain why Jesus died:
As they came near the village to which they were going, he walked ahead as if he were going on. But they urged him strongly, saying, "Stay with us, because it is almost evening and the day is now nearly over." So he went in to stay with them. When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight. They said to each other, "Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?" That same hour they got up and returned to Jerusalem. They found the eleven and their companions gathered together . . . Then they told what had happened on the road, and how he had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread. (NRSV)
Here, the disciples of Jesus experience a revelation that leads them to conclude that their crucified friend has been raised from death to a new kind of life. They have an extensive conversation with a stranger whom they fail to recognize. Only when they have a meal with him, just as they had eaten numerous fellowship meals with Jesus before, do they come to perceive that it is Jesus who is with them. This story is probably Luke's way of conveying that, especially when they gathered for memorial meals, Jesus' friends felt his abiding presence. Luke also shows that the Jewish followers of Jesus read Israel's scriptures in new ways that explained and confirmed their resurrection experience. Transcendent encounters are mediated through concrete experiences.
One cannot empirically prove that some experience is a manifestation of the divine. It requires a decision to interpret certain occurrences as revelatory. Matthew 28:17 provides another quick example of this. The crucified Jesus is described as manifesting his resurrected self to his disciples: "When they saw him, they worshipped him, though some doubted." Persons confronted with a transcendent experience must choose how they will comprehend it. As the Pontifical Biblical Commission has expressed it, the principle that revelations of God require human affirmation
must be applied in a special way to the resurrection of Christ, which by its very nature cannot be proved in an empirical way . . . [It is not] as if any historian, making use only of scientific investigation, could prove it with certainty as a fact accessible to any observer whatsoever. In this matter there is also needed "the decision of faith" or better "an open heart," so that the mind may be moved to assent.[8]
Conceiving of revelation as relational clarifies why experiences of God cannot be "proven"; this conception of revelation can also be very helpful for understanding the relationship between Judaism and Christianity. Since it is God who initiates interpersonal revelation, it is reasonable to wonder if such disclosures are divinely aimed or targeted. Not only must divine self-disclosure be mediated through the created world and interpreted as such by human beings, but it is conceivable that God selects the recipients of particular disclosures. To use the metaphor of a radio transmission, God's revelatory broadcasts do not have to be omnidirectional. God can choose to reveal Godself only to particular people at particular moments through particular means. This diversity of revelatory experience does not compromise God's oneness. It exalts divine sovereignty. Although it would be a violation of the oneness of God for God to impart contradictory revelations, that does not mean that every act of divine self-disclosure must or could be shared by everyone. Moreover, mortal engagements with the Transcendent One are necessarily only partial glimpses of the divine.
Revelatory experiences can be both unshared and complementary. The reality that Jews and Christians have different sets of defining revelatory experiences should not be understood as leading to inevitable conflict between the two traditions and communities. Christian and Jewish experiences of God are distinctive; therefore, they can also be sources of mutual learning, respect, and appreciation.
What Kind of God Have We Come to Know? YHWH came down in a cloud, stood with him there and proclaimed the name YHWH. YHWH passed before him and proclaimed: YHWH! YHWH! A God compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in kindness and faithfulness, extending kindness to the thousandth generation, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin; yet God does not remit all punishment, but visits the iniquity of parents upon children and children's children, upon the third and fourth generations. (Ex. 34:5-8)
This description of God provides an ethical portrait. It also addresses a widespread misconception that the God of the Jews is a God of Justice in contrast to the Christian God of Love. There are passages in the Tanach that speak of a jealous, zealous God, that emphasize the divine pursuit of justice and right. But that perception is incomplete, more of a caricature than a characterization of God. One telling rabbinic anecdote notes that the Torah begins and ends with acts of God's love -- the clothing given to Adam and Eve when they become conscious of their nakedness, and the opportunity for Moses to see the land of promise before his death. With these and other demonstrations of chesed shel emet, true kindness without the hope of recompense, God reveals boundless love. Put succinctly, though not simply, without God's love, we would not exist. These Exodus words of revelation paint a picture of a God who cares about people, whose kindness is infinite, but whose punishment is finite. Jewish tradition interprets these verses as defining thirteen attributes, or qualities of God.[9] Each of these qualities is ethical, and each of them represents an ideal worthy of our inspiration, aspiration, and, above all, our imitation.[10]
The biblical context for these verses helps us understand their significance. The children of Israel had worshipped a molten calf while Moses was on Mount Sinai meeting with God. When Moses returned and witnessed the children of Israel engaging in idolatry, he broke the tablets on which the Ten Commandments were inscribed. After successfully pleading for God to forgive the children of Israel, Moses returned to God to repair the covenant, physically and spiritually. He asked to see the divine presence and learned that "you cannot see My face, for a human may not see Me and live" (Ex.33:21). However, Moses was allowed to see God's goodness, God's ethical presence, that is, divine grace and compassion. God had inscribed the first set of tablets; Moses would carve the second set. The partnership between divine and human was literally set in stone. It is instructive to note that according to rabbinic tradition both the broken tablets and the intact second set were placed in the Holy Ark together. The broken tablets were still holy, a reminder to each of us who may feel that our spirits are "broken." Like the "broken" tablets, each one of us retains an essential sanctity, a reflection of the divine image.
Christians and Jews reading this moving Exodus passage can understand it to be a remarkable synthesis of centuries of ancient Israel's experiences and interactions with God. It is a profound declaration that the God that the children of Israel know is a God of surpassing generosity, compassion, loyalty, and friendship. It was precisely its faith in THIS God that set ancient Israel apart from other peoples. When other cultures worshiped cruel, capricious deities who stood behind despotic and authoritarian leaders, the people of Israel were covenanting with a God who championed the weak, the widow, the orphan, and who insisted that human beings treat one another with dignity and mercy.
Since he was Jewish, Jesus' relationship to God was shaped by such texts. As Pope John Paul II has noted, "he nourished his mind and heart with them, using them in prayer and as an inspiration for his actions."[11] It is not remarkable, then, to discover the same ethical principles articulated in parables attributed to Jesus in the Christian Gospels:
Then Peter came and said to him, "Lord, if my brother or sister sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?" Jesus said to him, "Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times. For this reason the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his slaves. When he began the reckoning, one who owed him [one huge amount] was brought to him; and, as he could not pay, his lord ordered him to be sold, together with his wife and children and all his possessions, and payment to be made. So the slave fell on his knees before him, saying, 'Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.' And out of pity for him, the lord of that slave released him and forgave him the debt. But that same slave, as he went out, came upon one of his fellow slaves who owed him a hundred [days' wages]; and seizing him by the throat, he said, 'Pay what you owe.' Then his fellow slave fell down and pleaded with him, 'Have patience with me, and I will pay you.' But he refused; then he went and threw him into prison until he would pay the debt. When his fellow slaves saw what had happened, they were greatly distressed, and they went and reported to their lord all that had taken place. Then his lord summoned him and said to him, 'You wicked slave! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. Should you not have had mercy on your fellow slave, as I had mercy on you?' And in anger his lord handed him over to be tortured until he would pay his entire debt. So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart." (Mt. 18:21-35) Parables by definition have a startling twist to them. Here, the astonishing mercy of the lord who pardoned an absolutely astronomical debt is contrasted with the lack of mercy of the one who had been pardoned. Jesus' reply to Peter was that forgiveness should be extended an unlimited number of times. Why? Since the God of Israel was a God of infinite mercy, God's people must imitate this graciousness in their lives.
Not surprisingly, Jesus' teachings are very consistent with Israel's experience of God as generous, merciful, and forgiving. So what is distinctive about Christian understandings of God? How did such distinctiveness originate, and is it utterly antithetical to Jewish understandings?
Specifically "Christian" ideas arose in the aftermath of Jesus' execution. His Jewish friends had religious experiences, subjective revelations, that convinced them God had restored Jesus to transcendent life. This perception of the crucified one as raised is the origin and heart of the singularly Christian religious perspective. The Jews who shared this experience naturally reflected upon and spoke about their unprecedented understandings according to the concepts, texts, and traditions of Israel. Over the next few decades, joined by Gentile allies who came to share their experience of the crucified and raised one, they adapted current Jewish rituals and prayers, most notably by sharing memorial meals to celebrate the ministry, death, and new life of Jesus. They revised songs about the Wisdom of God, who comes into human life to reveal God and is rejected, and they applied them to Jesus. They began to pray to God in the name of Jesus. At some point they began to address Jesus with the divine title of "Lord." These Jews did not understand themselves to be violating their tradition's emphasis on God's holiness and transcendence by concluding that God had been met in the human being, Jesus. They grounded their experience in Israel's equally ancient, if paradoxical, claim that the Transcendent One was encountered in human history.
During the following centuries, an increasingly Gentile church pondered all these things. Church thinkers grappled with the paradox of a God who is both supremely transcendent and yet encountered in the physical life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. They also sought to relate their firm belief in the Oneness of God to their equally firm conviction that this One God could be invoked "in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit" (Mt. 28:19). Using the prevailing Greek philosophical categories of their time and culture, they formulated the Christian doctrine that the One God of Israel is a triune God, a Trinity.
The classical articulation of this doctrine is that in the One God there are three "persons." This formulation can be quite perplexing to people living today, Jew and Christian alike, because we do not think in the same conceptual categories as its authors. In particular, the use of the word "person" has certain connotations in our psychologically minded age. To us "person" means an individual with a self-aware consciousness. When folks today hear about "three persons" in God, they inevitably imagine three individual deities, which is precisely the polytheistic understanding that early Christian thinkers wanted to avoid.
A different, current perspective on what constitutes "personhood" may be helpful. The human person is a unique, unrepeatable, surpassingly precious reality that has been shaped by innumerable relationships with other persons during his or her life. To be human is to engage in relationships. To be unable to relate interpersonally with others is a diminution of one's personhood. The less-than-human behavior of those rare children who were raised in the wild deprived of contact with other human beings, or the tragedies of people who suffer from physical and psychological disorders that inhibit interaction with the outer world, demonstrate how essential human relationships are to the full realization of human potential.
This relational character of personhood lies at the heart of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. Both Israel and the church know God to be a personal God, one with whom their respective faith communities interact personally. The doctrine of the Trinity helps Christians understand that for God to be personal means that God is innately and infinitely relational.
Thus, Christians are in relationship with a God who is experienced simultaneously as continuously creating and sustaining all that exists, as constantly revealing Godself and extending invitations to enter into relationship, and as perpetually empowering the perception, acceptance, and vitality of that relationship. When Christians bless themselves in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, they are testifying that they are immersed in an eternal interaction with One who is eternally sustaining, inviting, and enabling. For Christians, God's constant invitation to relationship is incarnated and experienced in the felt presence of Jesus, a crucified Jew.
Christians do not worship three "Gods." They understand themselves to be linked in relationship, through God's actions in Christ, with the God of Israel -- a God who is infinitely relational both in Godself and in all of God's activities. This relationship imparts to Christians a responsibility for the world that parallels Israel's understanding of its duties before God. Thus, Although Jews and Christians do not conceive of God in the same way, or feel that their encounters with God have been through an identical set of events, their common conclusion is that they must live lives patterned after the same ethical principles. We have come to know God in a variety of ways, but we have come to know the same God.
How Do We Respond to This God? Whereas some Jews believe that divine revelation was limited to the Torah, written and oral, others believe that revelation is ongoing and progressive. In this latter view, Torah is a process, not a completed product of our encounter with God. God addresses us through Torah, and we respond through tefillah, most commonly translated as "prayer." The Psalms contain some of the most sublime examples of human communication with God.
I turn my eyes to the mountains; from where will my help come? My help comes from YHWH, maker of heaven and earth. (Ps. 121:1-2)
YHWH, who may live in Your tent, who may dwell on Your holy mountain? One who lives without blame, who does what is right, whose heart acknowledges the truth; whose tongue is not given to evil, who has never done harm to another, or borne reproach for [actions toward] a neighbor . . . (Ps. 15:1-3)
After the Tanach was completed, the authoritative teachers of Torah, the Rabbis, developed a formula for blessing, called a berachah, which expressed, and continues to express, the essence of the relationship between God and the Jews. This formula makes the ordinary extraordinary and transforms the natural into the supernatural. Within these words lives the heart of Jewish theology -- a heart, according to Jewish tradition, with many chambers.
Baruch atah YHWH Eloheynu Melech ha-Olam asher kidshanu b'mitsvotav v'tsivanu . . . Praised are You YHWH, our God, Ruler of the Universe, who has sanctified us with commandments and commanded
us to . . .Let us examine the different components of this formula.
Baruch -- The opening word of the formula is derived from the Hebrew word for "knee" (berech). It is an immediate reminder that our status is that of a servant to God. As much as we may think we are in control of our lives, when we praise God, we acknowledge that we are all students of the same divine teacher. The blessing formula begins with a prescription for humility. We depend on God.
Atah -- The relationship between a person and God is direct and personal. "You" is written in the singular. This beautifully juxtaposes the ultimate and the intimate. There is no intermediary agent, no honorific title, just a dialogue.
YHWH -- This divine address seeks access to the God who gives and forgives, who loves, who is dominated by mercy and compassion. When Moses sought to know God intimately, face to face, YHWH revealed only goodness to Moses. When we invoke this name of God, we link our petition to that of Moses, and we hope to see a portion of the goodness that he saw.
Eloheynu -- Our God. This word introduces the communal element of the relationship to God. Although we each have a personal connection with the divine, we share a covenant, a contract that binds us to each other and to God. Each individual Jew dances with God as a member of a community that stretches across time and space.
Melech ha-Olam -- Sovereign of the Universe. God is not mine, or even ours. I am God's. We are God's. The universe is God's. God rules everyone and everything, that is, God is transcendent, wholly other. God does not equal all existence. Rather, all that exists is subject to the will of God.
Asher kidshanu -- Who has sanctified us. Jews have a unique, differentiated responsibility in relationship to God. The Jewish experience of God is distinctive, separate, and apart from others, but not elevated above or superior to others. God has made the first move -- separating and sanctifying the Jews -- but like any marriage, the relationship between God and the Jewish people depends on the mutual acceptance of the partners.
B'mizvotav -- with commandments. The God of all has separated a few by issuing specific orders, making explicit demands, and holding the Jewish people particularly accountable. By observing commandments, the Jewish people express belief in God.
V'tsivanu -- And commanded us to. These words are typically followed by dedicated actions, and if we recite the words without the accompanying action, it is as though we did not say the words at all, or even worse, that we said the words in vain. Jewish distinctiveness is dependent upon belief that is expressed through action.
The berachah, the blessing formula, epitomizes Jewish theology -- a complex, even seemingly contradictory, symphony of motives that yields the basic contours of Jewish thought and practice. It sets Jews apart from others in the world, yet it requires that Jews be part of the world.
Christianity's debt to the prayer traditions of Israel is plainly seen in the church's central prayer, often called the Lord's Prayer. This is the longer form of the prayer from the Gospel of Matthew (6:9-13):
Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors. And do not bring us to the time of trial,
but rescue us from the evil one. By addressing God as "Father," Christians continue the practice of Jesus and other first-century Jewish holy men and women who prayed to God with the Aramaic, "Abba." This term denotes a very personal relationship, a bond of covenantal love uniting God and the person praying.
The phrases "your kingdom come," "your will be done . . ." and "Give us this day our daily bread" (or
"the bread for the morrow") are all making the same basic petition: O God, may your Reign come to full reality in our world! May the Age to Come dawn! These entreaties indicate humanity's utter dependency on God. They also show the Christian realization that the redemption of the world is not yet fully accomplished, despite how highly Christians exalt what God has done through Christ. Every day Christians pray for the full achievement of God's will. The prayer for the forgiveness of debts is also a pledge that the Christians will seek to imitate God's boundless mercy. But the prayer concludes with a recognition that human beings will fail to live up to God's standards, and so beseeches divine deliverance.Jews and Christians have similar ideas about God's characteristics of love and mercy and about the human requirement to respond to God by pursuing love and justice and forgiveness. These similarities can be seen in the central prayers of both traditions.
Conclusion Do Jews and Christians worship the same God? We realize that some Jews and Christians believe that our differences are unbridgeable, that dialogue is undesirable, and that the definitive answer to this question is "No." We do not share their view. We acknowledge differences in the ways that Jews and Christians have come to know God, in our interpretations of God, and our prayerful relationships with God. Despite our efforts to compose a coherent essay, we not only write differently because we are two different people, we write about God differently because we are a Jew and a Christian. However, we refuse to allow these differences to distract us any longer from our common task of mending the world. We share a belief in One, Good God. That makes us ethical monotheists. The way we describe the qualities of God, the ethical responses that God requires, and the prayers that are central to Judaism and Christianity gives us a shared foundation of belief and action, a hope that differences derive from our limited, mortal perspectives of the Transcendent One.
We conclude with a poem by Judah Halevi, arguably the preeminent medieval Hebrew poet, whose life wrapped around the cusp of the twelfth century (1075-1141), and who died on the way to the land of Israel, where his soul awaited him. His prayerful poetry captures the balance, the rhythm of divine mystery -- the one who is Always Present but Never Fully Seen. Halevi reminds us that God is both intimate and ultimate. God defies human description and human logic -- thank God.
Lord, where shall I find You? Your place is lofty and secret. And where shall I not find you? The whole earth is full of Your glory!
You are found in man's innermost heart, yet You fixed earth's boundaries. You are a strong tower for those who are near, and the trust of those who are far. You are enthroned on the cherubim, yet You dwell in the heights of the heaven. You are praised by Your hosts, but even their praise is not worthy of You. The sphere of heaven cannot contain You; how much less the chambers of the Temple!
Even when you rise above Your hosts on a throne, high and exalted, You are nearer to them than their own bodies and souls. Their mouths attest that they have no Maker except You. Who shall not fear You? All bear the yoke of your kingdom. And who shall not call to You? It is You who give them their food.I have sought to come near You; I have called to You with all my heart; and when I went out towards You, I found You coming towards me. I look upon Your wondrous power with awe. Who can say that he has not seen You? The heavens and their legions proclaim Your dread -- without a sound.
But can God really dwell among men? Their foundations as dust -- what can they conceive of God? Yet You, O Holy One, make Your home where they sing Your praises and Your glory. The living creatures, standing on the summit of the world, praise Your wonders. Your throne is above their heads, yet it is You who carry them all![12]
Discussion Questions 1. Is belief in God integral to being Jewish? Why/why not? Is belief in God integral to being Christian? Why/why not?
2. How does the core revelation of God in your religious tradition come alive for you today? What does it mean for your life and daily actions?
3. How does being in a relationship with God distinguish you from someone who is not?
4. What can those in relationship with God expect from God? Does God have any obligations?
5. How do you understand the relationship between the Jewish (and Christian) claim that God is revealed in history, especially in the history of the People of Israel, and the Christian belief that God is embodied in Jesus, a particular first-century Jew?
6. The authors write, "While we have come to know God in a variety of ways, we have come to know the same God." Do you agree that Jews and Christians worship the same God, the God of Israel?
7. Jews tend to emphasize the utter uniqueness and otherness of God even though God is met in human history. Christians, with their Trinitarian understanding, prefer to think of God as close at hand, seeking relationship with people, even though they acknowledge God's transcendence. How would you describe these views? Contradictory? Contrasting? Complementary? How does your own view of God relate to these views?
8. In the light of the previous questions, do you think it is possible for Jews and Christians to share meaningful prayer experiences together?
Endnotes
[1]See, for example, Solomon Schechter, Some Aspects of Rabbinic Theology (New York: Schocken Books, 1969).
[2]Hasdai Crescas, The Refutation of Christian Principles, translated, with an introduction and notes, by Daniel Lasker (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999), 25. Cf. David Ellenson, "A Jewish View of the Christian God: Some Cautionary and Hopeful Remarks" in Christianity in Jewish Terms, ed. Tikva Frymer-Kensky, David Novak, Peter Ochs, Michael Signer, and David Fox Sandmel (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 2000), 72-74.
[3]See Ellenson, "A Jewish View of the Christian God."
[4]Ibid., 74.
[5]Everett Fox, The Five Books of Moses (New York: Schocken Books Inc., 1983, 1986, 1990, 1995).
[6]In Hebrew, the letters in the alphabet, or alephbet, represent numbers. The letters in the word Torah -- Tav-Vav-Resh-Hey -- add up to 611. There are 613 mitsvot, or commandments, in the Torah. How can we explain the discrepancy? Six hundred eleven commandments were given through Moses to the people of Israel. The other two were revealed directly to the people -- "I am YHWH your God, who brought you from the land of Egypt, from a house of serfs. You are not to have any other gods before my presence."
[7]Pope John Paul II, Fides et Ratio, 13, in Origins 28/19 (October 22, 1998): 317-348.
[8]Pontifical Biblical Commission, "Bible and Christology," 1.2.6.2., in Joseph A. Fitzmeyer, Scripture and Christology (New York/Mahwah: Paulist Press, 1986).
[9]Nahum Sarna, Exodus: the traditional Hebrew text with the new JPS translation (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1991), 216; Tosafot to B RH 17b; also S. D. Luzzato, Commentary on the Pentateuch (Hebrew) (Tel Aviv: Dvir, 1965), 386-387.
[10]"You shall be holy for I, YHWH, am holy" (Lev. 19:2). Our ultimate ethical aim is imitation of the divine. For example, "Just as God is compassionate, so should you be compassionate," Sifra on Leviticus 19:2; Baruch Levine, Leviticus: The Traditional Hebrew Text with the New JPS Translation (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1989), 256-257.
[11]Address to the Pontifical Biblical Commission, April 11, 1997.
[12]T. Carmi, editor and translator, The Penguin Book of Hebrew Verse (New York: Viking Press, 1981), 338.National Jewish Scholars Project Main Page
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