Talk:Judeo-Christian

Contents

1 Beliefs considered more important than actions

2 Views of Eastern Orthodoxy

3 Old Testament vs. Tanakh

3.1 Judaism believes others are not damned

4 Pacifism

5 What are the principle beliefs of Judaism?

6 About proselytizing

7 Avoid polemicism; offer more critical material

8 Who uses this term, and why?

9 Common artistic and musical heritage

10 Judeo-Christian-Islamic

11 Is Christianity tritheistic?

12 Removed text

13 Jewish-Christian dialogue

14 announcing policy proposal

15 See Also

Beliefs considered more important than actions

Re: "Christianity teaches that the purpose of Jesus's message in the [[New Testament] is to show that beliefs (such as belief in Jesus as the son of God) held by a person are considered by God to be more important than one's actions." I think that might be more particularly true of Protestantism, but

That is true, and I agree that it should be mentioned in the article. However, Christianity, as the great majority of it has actually has existed for the past 2000 years, has downplayed - or entirely ignored, James's point of view. In practice, Christianity is based indirectly on Jesus' statement's, and directly on Paul's interpretation and amplification of them. Similarly, there are phrases in the Tanach (Hebrew Bible, Old Testament) which might argue for faith over works, but in reality, rabbinic Judaism has not followed this path. Again, this is because Judaism is not the faith of the Bible directly, but rather is based on how the rabbis have interpreted the Bible. RK

Thus, we need to differentiate between biblical quotes, and the theology, dogmas and practices that have in practiced developed from them. We have to do this; discussing what Judaism or Christianty could have developed into would be an interesting exercise in alternate history, which is a legitimate historical endeavour, but its not good for an encyclopaedia entry. RK

I agree that we need to differentiate between biblical quotes and actual practice, but I still think that the emphasis on faith over works is more evident in Protestantism than other varients of Christianity. Also, many variants of Christianity believe that salvation is available to non-Christians (this is official Catholic dotrine these days, if I am not mistaken).

I agree with the first part; the emphasis on faith over works is more evident in many Protestant denominations than Catholicism. (I don't know much about this in Orthodox Christianity). Also, there have been a few mainstream to liberal Protestant groups that have unambiguously stated that salvation is indeed available to non-Christians. Most Protestant groups mildly to vehemently disagree. RK

Unfortunately, I don't have any reference works at my disposal, but it has been my understanding that it is the official position of the Catholic Church that salvation is available to non-Christians, regardless of what some individual Catholics might think. Perhaps we need someone knowledgeable on Catholic theology who can clarify this point.

Its not just "some individual Catholics". The entire official structure of the Church has not yet come to agreement on this issue. Please do some more reading, and I will also try to dig up the specific references that I have read. There is a theological struggle going on in the Church, and the winner is not yet clear. What is clear is that the traditional view has precedence until a new view becomes formally and officialy accepted, and the traditional view for the past 2000 years has been that all people go to Hell (or perhaps limbo) without belief in Jesus. To the best of my knowledge, this is also what the vast majority of Catholic priests teach outside of the US. RK

RK: AFAIK, the official position of the Catholic church is that non-Christians can be saved without belief in Jesus. The dispute is rather over whether they are saved by Jesus, even though they don't believe in him (that is what the conservatives say), or whether they are saved by God not through Jesus (which is what some liberals say). -- SJK

That is true, but is has not been true historically. As late as the 1950s many American Catholics preached that even Protestant Christians were doomed to burn in hell. And to return the favor, most Protestants preached the same about their "heretical" Catholic and Orthodox bretheren. RK 17:49, Apr 12, 2005 (UTC)

Regarding faith and works, it's worth noting that Martin Luther relied heavily on the book of Romans but had no idea what to do with James; I've heard it rumoured that he would have gotten rid of it if he could, as he did the Protestant "Apocrypha", but wasn't able to manage it. Whether that's true or not (can't remember where I heard it), Protestantism definitely emphasizes right faith, as in believing and saying the right "magic words".

Views of Eastern Orthodoxy

My impression of Eastern Orthodoxy is that works are integrated into the Christian life; our religious life consists of prayer, fasting, almsgiving and repentance; the first two happen chiefly inside the church and at home, the latter two have a broader social impact (or at least they should). Theologically, we believe that there is a synergism between what God does and what we do, and between what happens in the interior of our hearts and minds and what happens in our outwardly visible actions. Thus, a cleaner heart will lead to cleaner actions; however, I shouldn't wait for my heart to get cleaner to do good works, since going through the motions of good works will also make it easier for my thoughts and motives to reform. Naturally, the Orthodox have succeeded at times, and failed at times, both individually and corporately. So have the Jews, and practitioners of any other religion that sets standards for behaviour that is moral, ethical and just.

Old Testament vs. Tanakh

I have modified the section on the Bible to reflect two important points: first, many Jews are offended by the characterization of the Tanach as an "Old" Testament -- moreover, I think it is important to recognize that even when people read the same book, how they read the book and what it means to them may be fundamentally different. Second, I think there are many Jews who accord the Talmud the same status as the Tanach -- SR

Well, a quick search on Google yielded the following article:

http://www.adelaide.catholic.org.au/Communications/News2000/news_22.htm According to this article, Catholic doctrine does say that salvation is available to non-Christians through some sort of "special grace", but it appears the details of this theology are not completely or fully formulated, and the doctrine also suggests that the salvation of non-Catholics is precarious, so their doctrine is somewhat ambiguous. I am sure there are better documents out there that more fully clarify this point--this was just what came back from a quick search. I guess when you claim to be the One True Church as the Catholics do, it is a little hard for them to be particularly tolerant of other religions, since they claim to be instituted by God.

Judaism believes others are not damned

I think the fundamental issue is that Judaism, being a national religion, has no problem with the notion that other nations have their own paths to God (or "salvation"), whereas Christianity, being a universal religion, has a problem with religions that make radically other claims about God and such. I do not mean that Christianity has no way of accomodating such claims, only that Christian theologians have rather more work ot do to make such accomodation, and it is easier for other Christians to reject such accomodations. I think this is a crucial difference between the two religions -- it explains why conversion to Judaism is more like a form of adoption (i.e. becoming a member of the nation, in part by metaphorically becoming a child of Abraham) whereas conversion to Christianity is more a declaration of faith. It also explains why Jews are relatively less interested in the afterlife -- Jewish eschatology is traditionally more concerned with the fate of the nation (or people) than with the problem of individual death. An individual dies, but the people still live. I don't feel comfortqble enough with these issues to write a clear and neutral entry to the article, but I hope someone else can address these points in the article -- SR

Pacifism

Going back to the pacifism issue... while Christians have corporately failed to practice peace, they have fought amongst themselves as well as against non-Christians. The Crusades wound up attacking Eastern Orthodox Christians as well as Muslims, the Reformation led to battles between Lutherans, Catholics, and Calvinists, and both of those groups hunted down and killed the Anabaptists, and of course the later wars between various European countries were fought between ostensibly Christian nations. This is nothing to brag about; kind of like the racist who hates all races equally. As far as teaching, Catholicism has long promoted a Just War theory which many Protestants have also subscribed to and adapted. I think that Eastern Orthodoxy promotes personal pacifism, but also says that governments have a right to use military force to protect their citizens. Some monks have made much stronger statements and followed stricter practices in this regard. In the West, only the Anabaptists (Mennonites, Amish, Hutterites) and Quakers have really called on governments to be pacifist, or encouraged their members to avoid military service. All in all, I don't think it's accurate to suggest that Christians have a double standard, one for inter-Christian disputes and another for non-Christians. --Wesley

What are the principle beliefs of Judaism?

This is one reason for my interest in the notion of "cardinal" Jewish beliefs. I appreciate RK's providing the link on Jewish theology. But I still do not understand how he can make a claim for "cardinal" beliefs given that this essay begins with this assertion: "In the same sense as Christianity or Islam, Judaism can not be credited with the possession of Articles of Faith. Many attempts have indeed been made at systematizing and reducing to a fixed phraseology and sequence the contents Of the Jewish religion. But these have always lacked the one essential element: authoritative sanction on the part of a supreme ecclesiastical body. And for this reason they have not been recognized as final or regarded as of universally binding force." It is the notion of "cardinal" itself that I do not accept. . I am unclear as to how you (RK) distinguish between "cardinal" beliefs and non-cardinal beliefs, unless it is a purely statistical measure. Do you mean that "The one belief that all Jewish theologians agree upon is..." This may be more precise than "cardinal," although I am not sure Mordecai Kaplan thought would agree

This is a difficult subject to write about. Christianity has specific beliefs, and you either believe in them or you don't. (Different Churches have different variants of these beliefs). Humanism, Buddhism and Hinduism have no set formal beliefs. In contrast, Judaism has always had beliefs...but it has never one specific formal list of indisputable theological principles. The essay I wrote was meant to prove to Orthodox Jews that their claims about an unambiguous, specific, binding set of beliefs was erroneous. However, I also hold the left-wing Reform view (which holds that Judaism has no beliefs) to be equally wrong. I think a better way to put it is to say that Judaism does have beliefs, but due to both a lack of rabbinic centralization, and no small amount of theological humility, traditional Judaism has perhaps wisely allowed Jews to have a measure of flexibility in this area. This amount of flexibility is large compared to Christianity, and small compared to Humanism and Buddism. I'm trying to be clear, but its not easy to be clear about a situation deliberately left undefined! :) RK

well-put, and I appreciate the response. The lack of Rabbinic centralization is a crucial difference between Judaism and Catholicism -- more important though I think is a tradition not just of theological humility but pluralism (e.g. the Talmud provides both majority and minority and dissenting opinions which later Rabbis can draw on). Anyway, I understand your point, SR

But to respond to Ed Poor, my main concern is that precisely in attempting to compare Judaism and Christianity, and find points of convergence, very important (but perhaps subtle) differences are erased (and usually erased in a way that favors Christian perspectives) -- SR

Good point. How about a separate article entititeled Comparing and Contrasting Judaism and Christianity? --Ed Poor

Again, logical -- and I wouldn't have very strong feelings one way or the other. One could simply re-title this particular article, and include a discussion of "Judeo-Christian tradition" within it. Most of my additions were inspired by the fact that when I first read the article it began with a discussion of problematic aspects of the concept "Judeo-Christian Tradition." It is important to me that whatever happens to this material, any entry of the JC tradition calls attention to how the concept is problematic. And my main point is not just that it is problematic in a kind of logical way (e.g. how much could two different religions have in common any way?), but in a more political way -- that including "Judeo" in "Judeo-Christian" is about as inclusive as including the "Old Testment" in the Christian Bible. SR

I like Judaism and Christianity equally, perhaps because my mother is Jewish and my father is Episcopalian. Of course, I am aware of many differences between the two traditions, and I would not want to see these dismissed, neglected, or glossed over. Ed Poor

I think the creation of a second article, with a link, is a fine solution to the issue you raised.

About proselytizing

Tried to make comments on proselytizing more NPOV; I don't think it's true Baptists are trying to end the Jewish religion; certainly Baptists wouldn't say that. —Eric

The Baptists believe that Jews are damned to burn in Hell, and that the Jewish religion must end; they explicitly teach that all Jews must renounce their faith and convert to Christianity. We might disapprove of their attempts to totally end the existence of the entire Jewish faith, but that is their goal. This should be noted somehow. It seems rather significant. RK

Yep, that is definitely true. They think ALL non-Christians share that fate. --Dmerrill

Yes, and they think I share that fate too, because I'm not a Christian by their definition. But I'd still like to see documentation for saying that "Their stated goal is to end the Jewish religion altogether." It's not the same thing as saying they'd like to see all Jews convert. —Eric

I don't understand how you can separate the two. They teach that all followers of Judaism are damned, and that being damned is bad. Therefore, and I guess they mean this in a nice way, they would like to convert all followers of that religion to their one, in order to save souls. Doesn't this logically entails ending Judaism? If no one is left following it, how can that faith still be extant? RK

I agree; I'm not sure you can separate the two. My concern was that if you say that someone's "stated goal" is XYZ, then XYZ should be what that someone actually says the goal is. To use an analogy, I think it can be conclusively shown that President Bush's "war on terrorism" will inevitably lead to the loss of civilian life. But is that his stated goal? Of course not. When readers see a statement (true in this case) that a Christian denomination has the goal of converting all Jews to a different faith, I think they're smart enough to come to their own conclusions. —Eric

Avoid polemicism; offer more critical material

This article should not only be an anti Christian poke, but would be much better to include a large portion of the material in the comparison article and emphasize the common themes between the two religions - which is what most people who use this phrase are refering to, contrary to the claim that it is often used in politics to assert a consensus. (I actually don't doubt this type of use in political arenas, but it does have another common use.)

This is worth considering, and other points of view are important. Please feel free to make changes in the main article as well as comments here. However, befored doing so I would note this: certain positions stated in the article only seem like a poke at Christianity to you; but many Protestant Christians are proud to have these beliefs. In fact, the leader of one of the main Baptist denominations thundered out loud at a recent national convention, "God Does Not Hear The Prayer of a Jew!", and was rewarded with thunderous applause. Millions of Protestant Christians see Jews as damned to Hell, if not helping Satan outright, and they are publicly happy to preach that their goal is to end Judaism by converting all Jews to their faith. They aren't ashamed of this. Frankly, more than a few of them would look at you with suspicion, for implying that such views make Christianity look bad. This by them is something wonderful, this by Jews is something scary. So I admit that the article can be reworded, but these views seem quite significant. RK

Who uses this term, and why?

My impression of the term Judeo-Christian is that it used by American Christians to emphasize what they say as their spiritual debt to Judaism. For these Christians, the New Testament does not represent a rejection of the Old Testament, but a continuance or furthering. In this sense, Christianity is seen as deriving from Judaism.

I think that various Christian denominations differ in their view of Judaism as a forerunner to Christianity. No doubt there are some which regard Jews as having falsely worshipped all along (but I guess this is a minority view). Most acknowledge at least some debt, however.

The Ten Commandments are generally accepted by Christianity, as are the Psalms and the stories of Noah's Ark and so on; since they derive from Judaism, ecumenical Christians who are grateful to Jews for passing them on, often consider them as a common heritage.

I'd like to find out more from Wesley, SLR and others: to what extent do Christians and/or Jews feel there is some sort of common religious heritage embodied in the term Judeo-Christian? --Ed Poor

Common artistic and musical heritage

There is a somewhat common artistic and musical background among Jews and Christians, is there not? Something might be brought up about this in the article. I know that the early Church borrowed much of their musical modes from the melodies originally sung in the Temple in Jerusalem, and in later centuries Jewish communities indirectly borrowed Church melodies from folk music. RK

Eastern Orthodoxy still uses a system of eight "tones", that might be what you call "modes", in its liturgy. It varies by region, but I wonder whether the Antiochian Orthodox Church still uses those original melodies? There are lots of other things like that that Christianity borrowed from Judaism, such as use of incense, liturgical use of the Psalms, vestments for priests, fasting, almsgiving, and on and on. Perhaps more of these things should go into the Comparing and contrasting Judaism and Christianity article. As for the term Judeo-Christian, I think the article is probably right when it says this was initially done for political reasons. Not only does the term attempt to avoid anti-semitism, but it also attempts to present a united front of Jews and Christians that (supposedly) all support a set of political objectives. Wesley 16:15 Sep 10, 2002 (UTC)

It seems to me most of the content of this article (everything beneath "Dialogue") should be at someplace like Jewish-Christian relations (and that article might subsume Christian anti-Semitism). DanKeshet 20:01 Feb 20, 2003 (UTC)

Judeo-Christian-Islamic

The term "Judeo-Christian-Islamic" has been coined to describe the values shared by the common history of the three religions. This has been ridiculed by the American Christian Right as a term that could only be used by people who believe in "the validity of all cultures".

This implies that the "American Christian Right" does not recognize that Islam has something in common, historically and in religious approach, with both Christianity and Judaism. Who coined the term? Who is the "American Christian Right"? Who is it specifically who makes this specific statement? How is the party referred to representative of the group as a whole? What is this comment supposed to describe: an analogy to "Judeo-Christian"? the tendency to coin terms? the tendency for some groups to object to these terms? the tendency of the "American Christian Right" to be out of step with minters of inclusive terminology? or what? Should the new sentences be removed, or should more information be provided? Mkmcconn 21:14 3 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I've hopefully clarified my amendment. I added a link to the source as well. If this is not adequate, please feel free to revise, edit, or delete. Theanthrope 18:47 4 Jun 2003 (UTC)

That was helpful. Thank you, Theanthrope. I did make a few changes, which I submit for your criticism. Mkmcconn 20:52 4 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Well done. Looks very good to me. Theanthrope 23:21 4 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I have done some editing on this section:

I have clarified (I hope) the reasoning behind rejecting the inclusive term in general and than put the allegations by the AFA behind that, as they are not mere criticism but also allegations about motives.

I also removed the "cultural relativism is one of the key concepts of modern anthropology" clause. Though it's probably a correct statement about the subject mentioned, it is of no relevance to this article - except maybe to tell the AFA that they are wrongheaded in their scoffing. Maybe, maybe not, but it is POV and not relevant to the discussion of the term. (If we should make "relativism" the basis for this, the whole concept and with it this entry falls apart, we'd need a Judeo-Christian-Islamic-Buddhist-Hindu-Taoist-Shinto-Animist-Atheist... entry - sorry, if I forgot anyone.)

Str1977 17:50, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Is Christianity tritheistic?

From the 2nd para "fundamental doctrines such as monotheism;"; I suggest that this doesn't belong. Christianiaty is mostly tritheistic, except from the POV of the Christian apologists. As this article is discussing what Christianity took from Judaism, from the Judaism POV, Christianity didn't take monotheism, but rather replaced it with tritheism. 66.44.102.237 19:39, 27 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Most scholars of religion do not see Christians as polythesists or tritheists. Even most Jews, who are strict monotheists, do not see Christians in this way. See Jewish views of religious pluralism. Mormons, however, are often viewed as polytheists, as they believe in millions of Gods (even if they only worship one of these gods.) RK 17:55, Apr 12, 2005 (UTC)

Removed text

I have removed this sentence. I don't believe that the first part of it is accurate. RK 17:55, Apr 12, 2005 (UTC)

The term was used in the United States of America in an attempt to create a non-denominational religious consensus or civil religion that by embracing Judaism avoids the appearance of anti-Semitism. The original uses of the term have faded and now usually refers to a general western religious background and the term is commonly used by historians and academics as a shorthand for the predominant religious influences upon Western culture.

I believe it is accurate; look at the new links provided. Jayjg ^(talk) 19:19, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Jewish-Christian dialogue

Why is this section in the article? What does it have to do with the topic? Jayjg ^(talk) 22:16, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

See also comment by DanKeshet above from 2 years ago. Jayjg ^(talk) 22:17, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

In fact, isn't this material already at Christian-Jewish reconciliation? Jayjg ^(talk) 22:20, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

announcing policy proposal

This is just to inform people that I want Wikipedia to accept a general policy that BC and AD represent a Christian Point of View and should be used only when they are appropriate, that is, in the context of expressing or providing an account of a Christian point of view. In other contexts, I argue that they violate our NPOV policy and we should use BCE and CE instead. See Wikipedia:Neutral point of view/BCE-CE Debate for the detailed proposal. Slrubenstein | Talk 22:55, 15 May 2005 (UTC)