Transcript
ENGEL: I'm going to start with two confessions, very short and a word of assurance. First confession is, I'm not crazy about Paul. Second one is Calvin drives me crazy and I assume from the comments in the last two days that most of you would reverse that. And the word of assurance is I am not going to read this whole paper. I do want to introduce
you to how I got into this topic in this way which is a little different. Quite different from many of the other papers. When I was invited to speak in this symposium I was very interested because I have been interested in the relationship between Judaism and Christianity for a lot of different reasons for a while. And I had begun research into Calvin's understanding of the Jews and Judaism and by the way, that's how
he frames the question. He would not accept the framing of it as the Church and Israel. That is just not his way to put it. So I could not turn my paper, all my comments about Calvin into that focus. I have to say Calvin and the Jews and Judaism. And when I was invited I thought, well, that will be an easy task. I'll just turn to the commentary on Romans 9 to 11 of Calvin and try to make sense out of that and see how I can put that in the sixteenth-century setting.
So I want back and reread it and I had worked on this text, his commentary quite often in terms of the long debate between Lutherans and Calvinists about justification by grace through faith and the law. And so I was not unfamiliar with this text. And yet as I went back to read it with this issue in mind I became more and more and more confused and I reread and I reread and I reread. And I really tried to make sense out it
and I couldn't and it seemed to me that Calvin's commentary on Romans 9 to 11 is just as confusing and contradictory as many of you are saying Paul's own letter in those chapters is. On the one hand let me just give you a couple of examples of how I was confused. On the one hand in this commentary Calvin says both that the Jews have abrogated the covenant. Flat out statement. They've abrogated the covenant
that God made with them and on the other hand that the covenant that God made with them is eternal and cannot be broken. He says both of these things very clearly in the text. And another problem similar but in a slightly different key he says that very clearly in interpreting Paul that the Jews are privileged. They were privileged and they are privileged. On the other hand he will turn around and say their
crime, the greatest crime they were guilty of was their unbelief. Something that Salo Baron quotes. So as I pondered over these and I tried to make sense of what he was saying I got more and more confused. So I turned to some secondary sources to see if I could find help. And I didn't find much help. First of all, not a tremendous amount of people are interested in Calvin on this issue but there are a few. And Calvin Pater for example looks at this text in his article, "Calvin the Jews and the Judaic legacy."
And he says that basically Calvin clung to Paul's position in the Romans without Paul's contradictions and inner conflicts, to say that the Jews, after Christ had been cut off from their legacy. And Salo Baron who wrote a very highly article that is very much quoted and sometime plagiarized on Calvin and the Jews, focuses on this commentary in Romans 9 to 11
by Calvin only to say, well, he does say it is inconclusive but then he focuses on the charge that Calvin makes that their great crime was that of unbelief. So I thought, well, this doesn't really speak to my problem of the confusion on the text. They're reading it a little too neatly. And then as I looked for other secondary sources I found that there are many ways and instances in which people try to make this text too nice. So they go in the other direction. For instance, people
will focus on the fact that Paul makes a major point, that Calvin makes a major point of Paul's great humanity in speaking about the Jews and his fellow feeling and that from the prospective of being humane he brings out all this grief and all this anguish and they present that as a positive reading then of Romans 9 to 11 on the part of Calvin. And it also the case that Calvin leaves open an eschatological hope for all Israel. It's not clear what he means by that
either but he does leave an eschatological hope open in this commentary. And it's also true that in his commentary on Romans 9 to 11 he is, I would say, quite positive on the use of the law. All these things could be argued in Calvin's favor and yet I'm still confused about what finally Calvin means in this text. And there are some
traditional ways in the interpretation of Calvin to deal with his inconclusiveness or what some people will call incoherent. And one of them is simply to say that Calvin was above all a scriptural exegete. And because he is so true to the text he is going to be inconsistent just as Scripture itself is inconsistent. I find that a little bit too easy of a solution to the
contradictions that I find in Paul. And my own thesis about Calvin is probably more similar to Chris Becker's thesis about Paul than it is to anything else. That I think Calvin is not a systematic theologian the way we have thought that he is. That he has a center of his thought that can be named. Whether it's election or whether it's Christology. I think that's a very unhelpful way to read Calvin. I do, however, think that there is a coherence to his thought. And my own thesis about that
coherence is that it comes from a dual perspective that he brings out. You see everything from the perspective, the eternal perspective of God and then you also see things from the relative perspective of what it means to be human. And you can play that out. And I tried to play that out in this issue, what is going on in his commentary on Romans 9 to 11. Will that thesis about two perspective help? And it doesn't. I wanted it to. I wanted
to impose this on it and I could not make myself. So now I still have the problem. And now, and that is the background for this. Because I'm still stuck with the problem of how to interpret it in Romans 9 to 11 and make sense out of it without imposing a structure, some kind of systematic order on it. What am I going to do? Well, probably what is the most difficult and certainly longest and most circuitous route I could have taken, I decided to go look at his sermons. And Calvin preached virtually
every day of his life in Geneva. So there are a lot of sermons. And I decided that that is the way I would go about this. I would look into the sermons to see if I could find there some help in understanding what his position is. His theological position is on the Jews and Judaism. And I want to talk a little bit more about why I chose the sermons in just a moment. But first I want to make one last comment by way of introduction.
And that is that I think this. To look at Calvin on this issue is an exercise in futility. If we are looking for some kind of theological model that we can emulate or build upon in our own struggle in trying to understand how we as Christians can relate to the Jews today. We're just not going to find that. I prefer to take my cue from what Wando Segundo says about
the scriptures. Although I translate it into what we can do with the tradition. And that is to say we don't look for models, we don't look for examples to emulate but we do look for how these people responded to the issue in their day so that we can learn how to learn. And that is why I think it's not an exercise in futility to look at what John Calvin has done. I think somewhat creatively in his day with the Jews as a rhetorical figure, and I think in trying
to come to some kind of evaluation of what he has done with this trope of the Jews in his sermons. We can begin to understand what some of the problems were and what some of the possibilities are. And that's the best we can do. And also I think we have an obligation to do this because just as sexism takes many different forms throughout the history of Christianity so I think anti-Judaism takes many different forms.
And it is incumbent on us to say exactly what those different forms are before we can really make our repentance or move ahead to a new theological understanding. So that's what I'm trying to be about here. I wanted to look at the sermons to see how Calvin handles this and how we can understand what his particular form of anti-Judaism is about and what it looks like. What form it takes and what are the problems with it and what perhaps we can learn from it. So
let me just say briefly on page four, what I'm trying to do is look at the sermons from the point of view of finding what Calvin has to say about this rhetorical figure of the Jews. And the reason I want to approach it this way is because this is how it comes up in Calvin's text. He talks about the Jews,
he does not talk about Israel in the sermons. In the commentary on Romans he uses Paul's language and he talks about Israel but in the sermons he talks about the Jews and he uses it as a rhetorical figure. And that is why I always place it in quotations. Part of the problem is how are we going to understand what he means by this trope of this figure of the Jews. And that's what I wanted to go after. How is he using this, what does he mean but this. And that raises, for me, a very important point. Methodological point
I'm on page four still here. That I hope we will discuss here and it's a question that you cannot get away from if you look in the sixteenth century and you shouldn't get away from it in any century I think. What is the relationship between anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism? And this has been answered by Reformation scholars in many different ways. We can talk about this later but Marcish's book, recent book on Erasmus and the Jews answers it one way, Hyca Oberman answers it another way.
All I want to say at this point is I think there is a relationship between anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism and we need to think about what kind of a relationship that is. And my focus on Calvin's rhetorical use of the Jews, his use of the trope of the Jews is by no means an attempt to exempt myself from that question or an attempt to excuse Calvin from perpetrating any kind of
anti-Semitism at all in his day. So I wanted to make that clear at the beginning. So I'm using Calvin's sermons and I want to use the sermons in part because of that I understand there to be some kind of relationship that we need to specify between anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism. And I wanted to look at text that ordinary Christians heard day in, day out as Calvin preached. And what they might have understood
about the relationship between Christians and Jews from hearing this trope used in these different ways by Calvin. In other words it had an effect upon their daily life and their daily understanding of themselves as Christians and themselves in relationship to Judaism and to Jews. So that's why I want to look at these sermons and not at some of the other classic texts. I won't bother you with all of my ruminations and hunches about how
he was using different terms. I finally settled in the title for the Jews to work on this puzzle of what is he doing with all this. I had many different hypothesis about did he use the Jews negatively and the Hebrews only positively or the Patriarchs only positively. And my original hunch turned out not to be true. He has a very complex view of, or a complex use of this trope of the Jews and that's what I want to turn to on page 8. I want to talk about the one church as Calvin does, of God's elect.
One of the main clues for understanding Calvin's complicated use of the trope, the Jews, in his sermons is his doctrine of the electing grace of God and the Church. This clue is not a straight forward one. For on the one hand Calvin insists that the covenant God made with the Jews, His election of them as the adopted children and chosen people
cannot be abrogated. Yet on the other hand he insists that the Jews have abrogated that covenant and have been cast out of the household of God permanently. So both claims need to be explored. It's still my puzzle. According to Calvin the people of Israel, the children of Abraham, use his many terms, were chosen to be God's heirs and elected to be a people set apart for the service of God. And when God makes such a promise of inheritage of salvation it is
certain that God will never reject them. Thus he can say that while the nation of Jews tried to annul or destroy their alliance with God by their infidelity, God remained faithful and accomplishes God's promises. And then interpreting Ephesians 2-3 in his sermon he commends Paul for not rejecting the Jews but for considering them in this quality of the elect and special people.
Yet he goes on to make his very familiar theological point concerning election in general that, and including the election of the Jews. That is, individuals and peoples are not chosen because of their merit or their nature which they all share equally with fallen Adam. But because of the sheer good pleasure of God. God chose the Jews to be, quote, "His Church" and to be Father to them out of the liberality of God's grace. In drawing out the lesson from Jacob and Esau's story for his congregants he says God does not
elect us for our beautiful eyes but in God's eternal council and in God's self. And then he explains in another sermon on Ephesians 1, 13 and 14 that in as much as God has chosen the line of Abraham one could judge that they had some natural dignity. But then he counters. He is always countering himself. This is true if we consider the grace of God, the grace that God gave to them that they are indeed to be preferred to the whole rest of the world.
But if we take them as they are in themselves we will find that they are empty of all justice. We need to return to this point that God is neither beholden or obliged to anyone but receive the Jews by gratuitous adoption. Not because they were more valuable than others or because they could glory in themselves as much as they were able. So for this reason because he wants to be clear what is from God and what's from ourselves, those two perspectives, he's very careful to say that he Jews were held
to be redeemed to be the children of God in God's householders. And he calls attention to the fact that Moses often reminded the Jews that it is for God to choose and command what seems good to Him. And that at the same time they are chosen by God, they are also part of the fallen mass of sinful humanity and are not to rely on their own merit. Yet in spite of his distinction between the natural and the spiritual dignity, let's call it,
Calvin does not hesitate to insist on the spiritual dignity of the Jews. He wants to make this distinction very clear but he goes ahead with insistence on the spiritual dignity. God chose the Jews first and they always, for Him, I looked at that very carefully. They always retain this, the dignity of the firstborn. The promise was given to them first and only secondly to the rest of the world making them "the flower of the Church." That is the firstborn in the house of God.
He also claims, however, that this eternal unbreakable covenant is conditional. God made the promises on this condition, that they keep the commandments. Thus when the Jews confused natural and spiritual dignity and abused the favor of their chosenness and gift of primogenitor to presume upon the grace of God or flatter themselves, they were rejected by God. His language is clear. I wish it
hadn't been so clear I wouldn't have a problem. His language is clear and His judgment is total. In their apostasies the Jews falsified the promise that had been given to them. They banished themselves from His church even though they carried the title and the name and they glorified themselves with being the elected chosen line. By perverting completely all of His absolute language the service of God. The alienated themselves from all hope of salvation. Deprived themselves of God's gifts, disinherited themselves from the Kingdom.
Through their rejection of Jesus Christ the Jews renounced their dignity and the promise of salvation, deprived themselves of every benefit attributed to them as the race of Abraham. So he says unequivocally that the line of adoption, which he said before, cannot be broken, is broken and the people of Israel are rejected by God. His interpretation of two classic Bible stories of elder and younger brothers supports this view that the covenant has been abrogated. Building on the contrast
between natural and spiritual lineage he reminds us here that Ishmael was the son of Abraham by the flesh yet even though he seemed to have the right of primogenitor he mocked and mocked his younger brother and tried to destroy the promise given to him. God chose to bless Isaac. And likewise Esau, even though a firstborn, was not chosen by God. He does, I never found an instance where he calls the Jews Ishmaelites or Edemites. He does call the Papist Ishmaelites
and Edemites. He will never quite go that far. But the implication is there in his reading of this text. He clearly intends these stories as a serious warning about the Jews, let's say, and to contemporary Christians not to interpret the promise of salvation in natural rather than spiritual terms. Seems to me that if we only took this second part of strand of what we find in Calvin's sermons that the Jews abrogated the covenant
we could build a very tight case in Calvin's theology for supersessionism. But the evidence really does not allow for that for a number or reasons. First, we have to take seriously Calvin's claims for the eternity of the covenant from the perspective of God. The elected God is faithful. Second we have to take seriously the fact that he at times simultaneously, this is what drives me crazy, simultaneously affirms both that the covenant is eternal and that it has been ruptured.
For example noting that although Ruben lost his primogenitor and dignity God retained him among the number of God's people. He concludes that we, like the Jews, are held always in the line of Abraham. It's a very confusing interpretation. And his very careful language in this quote I think reflects that same conjunction of these two ideas which is confusing. When the Jews were banished from this land
it was as if God had thrown them out of His house saying I disavow you, I renounce you. Now this was to put them in despair. On the other hand God had promised to regard them always with fatherly care and always to make them prosper. He never tells you how He is going to put these two together. Skipping down to the next paragraph there, also Calvin stresses that the chosenness of the Jews does not exclude the Gentiles and vice versa.
He repeatedly says that salvation was promised and Jesus Christ appeared, not only to the line of Abraham but also to those who had been, he says, as if. That's as if rejected by God. And he also reverses that. That wouldn't be too surprising but he reverses that quite often to say that the Jews must be joined with the Gentiles. Salvation, in other words, you get the idea in some of Calvin's sermons anyway, that salvation is not by displacement
but it is by extension in both directions. From Jews to Gentiles and Gentiles to Jews. At least the way Calvin exegetes the scriptures. The key theological point for him is that it is God who chooses from which place to begin the extension and to whom to include in the extension without regard for Jew and Gentile. And then finally. This one will take a little longer. Calvin employs scriptural view of the saved remnant and in Augustinian view
I think it's really from Augustine, of the church to hold together those two claims. I don't think it's the best way to hold them together, it's the way he tries. One that the promises of God are eternal and two that they're conditional. In the remnant theory which allows him to distinguish between God's calling to the Jews as a people and to individual Jews pervades his sermons of all the things that I've talked about. This you can find everywhere in his sermons. The election of God which was extended
to the whole people was not sufficient but it was necessary he says, that each individual one participate. All who are of Jacob, according to the flesh are not however true Israelites, that is, the people of God because he has two names. Jacob and Israel. The church descends from the race of Jacob but is not equal to it. For the true church proceeds from the pure grace of God and individuals can abuse
the privilege of their descent. In other words this is how Calvin is going to try to make sense out of the covenant is eternal and it can be broken by using a remnant theory. I don't think it works but that's the way he tries. He uses the one term church ambiguously to refer both to the majority called out by God and to the minority actually saved. The Church refers broadly to the entire nation of Israel, the children of Israel, this Holy seat of Abraham, the chosen people elect and so forth.
His church are the ones to whom God showed great honor among the peoples of the world. Thus he can call the entire nation of Israel before the gospel era the faithful, the poor faithful, the primitive church. The ancient church and the church of the Jews. Very surprising language I find. This church is composed of both the majority of those who prove unfaithful and the minority who prove
faithful, the remnant. The Church also, and this is what's so confusing, the Church also refers in Calvin more narrowly to the saved remnant. The smaller number of elect individual Jews within the elect nation of the Jews. Commenting on the ways the children of Israel perverted the service of God he notes that the Church is immortal and the power of our Lord Jesus Christ and concludes that kin this we see how God has sometime hidden
his church underground, in a manner of speaking. And then it was not known according to the opinion of human beings. But it was enough that God knew it. Some have judged the Church of God was wholly abolished but we see how God safeguarded a small seed. He's a little clearer in this in the commentary on Romans. He will use the words outward calling or common adoption and then he'll talk about the secret council or private election
of God to make this distinction. But in the sermons it's all the word church and the word the elect serve the, both serve a dual purpose for the majority and the minority. With this called nation elect remnant distinction Calvin is able to maintain that God's promise to an election of the whole people of the Jews never changes even after Jesus Christ. That, the unfaithful majority of individuals among this one people abrogated the
covenant by not fulfilling the commandments and that the faithful minority of individuals among this one people enjoys the fulfillment of the promises. And he's also clear with this remnant theory as he uses it, that the contemporary church stands in a line of continuity with both the broader and the narrower meanings of the church or the elect. The church as remnant stretches throughout history and is found in patriarchs, prophets, apostles, minors, contemporary
Christians especially evangelical Christians you might say. But everywhere. From the ancient fathers to the present there has never been but one Church of God. Thus we should not doubt that the promises that God made to God's Church in antiquity are ours or that there is a perpetual order in the Church of God. His refrain highlighting this continuity of the remnant is over and over again in the sermons, the law of the prophets, the gospel.
This insistence on the one church throughout history, both in the broader sense of all those elected to be the chosen people and the narrower sense of the same saved remnant enables Calvin to say that Christians are equal to the Jews as the people of God. That's the way he says it there. They are equal to the Jews as the people of God. They are equally privileged and equally sinful. This insistence also enables him to apply the message of majority minority called nation elect remnant of the ancient church
to his contemporary church. The lesson he draws from the remnant among the Jews of the primitive church, his term, is as follows. Let us learn not to judge whether the Church is there or not by what we see with our eyes. Rather let us renounce this point of view because we have been warned that God often has some small seed hidden. Like the grain that doesn't show up in a large pile of straw since the straw covers the grain which is small in number. Commenting
on the majority of the Jews self-flattery in the small number that tasted the power of the promise of the salvation and the redeemer he concludes, now by this we are admonished that even though the Church is not very evident; nevertheless, God always can serve some seed when it seems that all have perished. And he reassures his contemporary evangelical Christians who are struggling with that Roman Church by teaching them that the condition of the church has from the beginning been one of the unfaithful majority and the faithful
minority and that the promise that the Church would number the stars in the sky is not to be judged according to exterior appearance in which one can see the church triumphant. But according to its spiritual transformation into the image of God. And that particular distinction, I think is crucial to Calvin's whole argument to his fellow evangelical Christians within the broader context of fighting against the Church of Rome and the Church of Rome's claims to their own prime seen
antiquity and primogenitor actually. As St. Paul noted, Calvin says, God was offended by His people and this is His Word. And it comes up about two or three times in the sermons. Exterminated. Many of them. Even those who are circumcised and had this exterior witness that God held them in His Church. So the contemporary church should learn that the exterior witness of baptism, like circumcision
is not sufficient without the internal transformation give to those only who are the remnant. I want to make a couple comments here. First the one I just mentioned, this is one of Calvin's ways to try to hold together, I think, the two claims, that covenant is eternal and it is breakable. Or you might say divine determinism and human responsibility and freedom. And keeps those intention. I don't think it finally will work
but it is his way. He does allow in this double claim that, and especially with the remnants here, that there is a tension between divine predestination and human responsibility and freedom. Many people won't even grant him, I think we have to. And then thirdly, page 16, Calvin unlike so many other clearly supersessionist Christian theologians does not use the one term Israel for the chosen people
before the gospel era and then claim that this old Israel is replaced by the new Israel of the Christian Church. Instead he uses this other language altogether of the children of God the people of God or that term the church to refer to all of God's chosen. Both the broad and narrow senses. Whether they are pre-circa or post Gospel era. Now I think you can make an argument that that too is another form of Christian imperialism especially because
Calvin is very clear in his sermons. It doesn't come up everywhere. He's very clear that that one church was always founded on Jesus Christ the pre-existent Christ. And I think you could make an argument that it is still an imperialistic form of theology and it's not very helpful to us. But I think it is still important to note he does not use old Israel, new Israel and he does not play into that kind of language for supersessionism. He's got something else going on there. And the other point that this Augustinian view of the church,
the church that appears as both a mixture of good and bad to the external I and an unfaithful majority and faithful minority that's spiritual I enables him to use the trope of the Jews to further his own argument for the legitimacy of the Evangelical Church that split off from that church in antiquity in Rome or as Rome claimed itself to be. Specific that's what I want to turn to
in just brief time that we have left is to show how he uses this trope of the Jews, both broadly and then narrowly to argue for the truth in Christianity and the church reconstructed from an Evangelical point of view. So page 17, the middle of the page there, he uses the Jews as teaching examples. And for me, one of the most important places to start with that is to say
that with this broad view of the church as the one-called people that contains both unfaithful and faithful persons, Calvin is able to focus on how this trope now, of the Jews, are like Christians -- are like Christians -- both in their faithfulness and in their unfaithfulness. In other words for Calvin at least on one level, it's not the only level, it is the whole history
of the Jews in its entirety as the primitive church that serves as an example mirror witness painting in which contemporary Christians see the future and past and which enables them to use the scripture to their profit. Now skipping to page 18, first full paragraph there. I want to highlight three different ways. So the Jews in their entirety, unfaithful and faithful, are an example. I want to just briefly highlight these three ways that he can use this trope for Christians
in general. The Jews are for him wholly, good examples. When he focuses on the Jews as wholly good examples to be emulated by contemporary Christians he has in mind, however, a particular group of Jews. He has in mind the faithful remnant of the chosen in the pre-gospel era. That is not the whole mix people of Israel but the ancient fathers, the holy. These words come up over and over and over again. And all those unnamed persons
among the people of Israel who follow them. His specification of these fathers is critical since antiquity alone for him is no guarantee of faithfulness. There is a diversity of our fathers, those who resisted the Holy Spirit and provoked God's wrath, need to be distinguished from those who are exalted by God. The ancient fathers, the holy patriarchs, the true children of God. And a distinction needs to be made between the promise made to the whole people of Israel whom God chose and adopted and the hypocrites that under cover of God's name flatter themselves
that they were the children of Abraham. So everywhere you see he has continual praise. You know, unqualified praise for all the patriarchs in spite of all their mistakes which he dually notes that they are witnesses of total pure mirrors of total purity. That's one way he uses this trope in that particular sense. There's another way. The Jews as this trope is also used as a wholly bad example for Christians.
If our fathers, the Jews, understood as the faithful remnant are a positive example for all contemporary Christians, especially for Reformed or evangelical Christians, our fathers, the Jews understood as the unfaithful majority are a negative example for all contemporary Christians and especially they serve for him to condemn the papists but we can take the time to get into that today. To the former they serve as a reminder for potential for slipping away that is always present in the Church because we all belong
to this fallen mass in Adam. And to the latter they serve as a warning of and judgment upon what happens to those who have slipped away. In light of traditional negative stereotypes, Christian stereotypes of the Jews I think it's important to take special care in investigating exactly how Calvin uses the trope as unfaithful majority as a negative example for Christians. Let me just quickly summarize this. And make the major point is that in Calvin's theology there are two major sins and
his own theological agenda really shows up here and I think does not suppress his use of traditional Christian stereotypes of Jews totally but it does, how should I say this, it does override them in the sense that is much more prominent, a way for him to look at the unfaithfulness. That's the primary sin is of unfaithfulness for him is ingratitude.
That's what he accuses the Jews of this as the unfaithful majority. What were they guilty of? Ingratitude. And the second major sin for him is pride. This failure to distinguish between the spiritual and the natural dignity, the dignity that came to them because of God's free mercy and the dignity that they claim from themselves as a possession. He does
use other more easily identifiable classic stereotypes as Jews as greedy and carnal and so for but you don't see these come up nearly the same way that you do in Erasmus or you do in Luther. He does mention Jews periodically in the sermons although not in the expected places, commentaries or sermons on Isaiah 53 for instance.
He refers them as Christ killers and he talks about their enormous crime and that is what made them wholly destroy. I mean this unqualified language. They wholly destroyed the grace of God in their rejection of Jesus Christ. That for him is clearly the ultimate test of their covenantal loyalty which they failed. They failed utterly in that ultimate test. And then, as I say on page 22 that by this act of rejection of the gospel and Jesus Christ
they cut themselves totally out from the house of God, and tried in as much as they were able to abolish God's truth. And here it seems to me that especially when you get to this interpretation and you see the trope used as a negative example for Christians it's very clear that he has a displacement theory operating. He says --
I'm in the middle of page 22. Now since the Jews alienated themselves from the house of God and His Church and did not accept the grace offered to them their place remained empty and we entered there. Because God banished them in order to make a new house. I mean that couldn't be a clearer statement from my point of view of a displacement theory. So here, especially here in the negative example use is a seemingly irreparable rupture in the covenant when the Jews no longer enjoy
the privilege they once did. They forfeited that to the whole world without any difference. So we have two kinds of theories here. An extension theory and a displacement theory. Let me just mention briefly on the way to making some final conclusions here that the one final part of this that it gets even more confusing. Not only does he have an extension theory and then a displacement theory he also muddies the waters even more because
he has many, many passages in which he will say on the one hand the Jews are clearly more privileged than we are today. Even still today and yet he turns that around and says but we are really more privileged than the Jews are. And he has it both ways and it's impossible for me to decide which is the true Calvin on this point. He says both things very clearly. As he likes to be clear and brief usually. And he is clear but confusing.
So that muddies the waters, it seems to me, even more when he says not only is the covenant eternal and the covenant is broken, has been broken but also relative kinds of judgments, they still are more privileged in degree and yet they are less privileged in degree. He says both of these things. Well, let me say a couple words of conclusion here. It's very difficult to draw a conclusion from these texts.
The one thing I want to say is that in my conclusion whatever I can't say and whatever the awkwardness of my own conclusion, I am trying to steer between two kinds of interpretations of Calvin. There are many interpretations of, or, let me say there are interpretations of Calvin which I think just go out of their way to excuse him. And I think
Calvin Pater's article, Calvin the Jews and the Judaic legacy is one of those. He will say, you know, in Romans 9 to 11, he rejects. He says the Jews are rejected but then he goes on to make a series of statements that advantages. He even says that advantages accrued to the Jews because of the Reformation because the reformers sniped at Rome rather than the Jews. So he kind of puts the whole thing on in terms of the rhetoric about the papists. Which
I don't think is a helpful argument. And he also says that Calvin's view of the law was very positive. This is a classic argument to say that therefore Calvin's attitude to Judaism in general is a very positive one and what I'm trying to say by looking at the sermons is if you only take the evidence about what he says about this theological locus of the law, maybe you can come up with that statement. But there's a lot more that needs to be considered. And he ends up, Pater ends up saying
in attempting to establish equity between the Old and the New Testament Calvin's theology was the least inequitable or anti-Judaic of the major classical theological systems. Well, I think that is one excuse after the other which really doesn't deal with the nitty gritty of this puzzle in the text that Calvin has it both ways. They are displaced and our salvation is also by an extension for grafting into the one church and the church of the Jews.
I think Costelo Barons highly influential article also is a little too one sided. He says Calvin goes out of his way to only say negative things about the Jews, both ancient Jews and contemporary Jews and I think the evidence is a little more complicated than that. What's interesting to me is that Christian historians and theologians who have made use of that argument
of his essay, Calvin and the Jews, only pick up on the very few positive things he says about Calvin's relationship to the Jews and repeat those only except for one instance in Paters. So I think we need to take both of these things seriously. I'm finally on page 38. That Calvin uses the Jews in may positive ways. He stresses the continuity of the one church in history as composed of both unfaithful and faithful Jews and unfaithful
and faithful Christians. And because of this it's difficult to conclude simply, or let's say uncritically, that he was an enemy of the Jews. He refused, at least on the one hand, to split the people of God into those bad Jews and us or we good Christians. And he failed to project all the sinfulness onto the Jews in order to create the image of a pure and spotless Christianity
and he uses extension language for the theory of salvation. All of which I think do speak in his favor. Including this recurrent theme that nobody should presume on the grace of God. Even Christians in relation to post-gospel Jews and he picks up on Paul there that if the Christians are going around saying we're really better than you that's a sin of pride, and they run the risk of being rejected totally by God for that kind of attitude. But that has to be placed alongside
with all the other evidence. I think we have to take that other evidence into account that Calvin does pass on and therefore perpetuate many of the traditional negative stereotypes of the Jews. Much of the traditional abuse of rhetoric about the Jews. He calls them accursed scum in certain places and so forth. And that he has virtually nothing positive to say about his contemporary Jews. He mainly gets that contemporary Jews, he ignores them for the most
part. When he gets at them he gets at them in terms of those rabbinical, you know, in exegeses in the Scripture who don't really know how to interpret their own Scripture. And I think that you can make a lot of other observations to tone down this second part and the displacement theory that's operating in him. That he doesn't dwell on the Jews as carnal, that he doesn't dwell on the Jews as Christ murderers like Lutheran Erasmus. That when he castigates the Jews it is usually
using this trope as an argument against the papists who are the true enemies of God. But I think finally we are left with the fact that what Calvin bequeaths to us in the history of Christianities' relationship with Judaism is a very ambiguous heritage. I don't think we can claim him because of his view of the law or the continuity of the two Testaments as a wonderful arrival upon the scene for Christianities relationship to Judaism. And on the other hand
I think we need to be careful as we condemn him for the kinds of things he did pass on. That it is a very complex picture that we see in him and that may be part of the problem is that it is so complex and my question still remains for me is with all that complexity coming up day in and day out in his sermons, what did those people in Geneva finally hear him say about the Jews and how they were then to go about making policies or continuing policies in relationship to the Jews,
and for that question I don't have an answer. Let me just conclude with maybe a summary from Calvin's own words in the commentary Romans 9 to 11. He says about Paul, "Paul was trying to do two things. To grant the Jews their privileges in such a way that he does not detract from Christ in any respect."
I think that's a very good summary of Calvin too and therein lies all the tension, all the contradiction and all the ambiguity of the legacy toward the Jews that he has bequeathed to us.