Be warned! Theology (the study of God) can be dangerous.
This is borne out by the plethora of leading theologians over the centuries who have, inadvertently or not, led Christians and others astray.
In particular, theologians over the years have incited pogroms against the Jewish people, ultimately leading to the Holocaust in which six million of God’s chosen perished.
In a new paper1 published by the Church’s Ministry among Jewish people, Dr Theresa Newell outlines how leaders and thinkers, from the Church Fathers of the early centuries onwards, have stripped Jesus of his Jewishness with very ugly results.
“Just like the biblical Joseph in Pharaoh’s court, Jesus has been clothed over the centuries in Gentile costumes and make-up, rendering him unrecognisable to his own Jewish brothers.
“From the earliest days of the Church, preachers like Marcion, Justin Martyr, John Chrysostom and others denigrated the Jewish people, forgetting and forsaking the Jewish Jesus.”
The Council of Nicaea (AD 325), for example, excluded bishops with Jewish backgrounds, replaced the Sabbath with Sunday worship and distanced Easter from Passover.
As Dr Newell put it, such antisemitic theology led ultimately to the atrocities of the Holocaust as well as the persecutions Jewish people faced in Europe over the centuries.
And now they face a ‘new antisemitism’ labelled anti-Zionism which has led to boycotts and UN resolutions against Israel, “with the Human Rights Commission of the UN populated by the most radical abusers of human rights.”
The ugly truth is that atheist Nazism was backed by leading theologians who openly supported Hitler and opposed the Confessing Church led by Karl Barth and Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
Among them were Gerhard Kittel, editor of the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, who joined the National Socialist Party in 1933, and Paul Althaus, who saw the Third Reich as “the law of God for modern Germany” and regarded the election of the Nazis as “a gift and miracle of God.”
Emanuel Hirsch was convinced “that Hitler was a heaven-sent Christian leader” and yet, like Ethelbert Stauffer who in 1933 published Our Faith and Our History: Towards a Meeting of the Cross and the Swastika, was never prosecuted for furthering Nazi theology.
Most destructive of all, perhaps, in spite of his enormous influence in reforming the true faith of the apostles, was the contribution of Martin Luther who, in later years, heaped the most appalling slurs on God’s people in his book On the Jews and their Lies.
This caused Julius Streicher, one of the Nuremberg defendants, to suggest that Luther himself would be up for trial in post-war Germany if he were alive.
Yet it was from the days of Justin Martyr (AD 100-165) that the Church began referring to itself as ‘the new Israel’ and Jews as ‘Christ-killers.’
It was this ‘replacement theology’ that poisoned much of Christianity and provided excuses for pogroms and persecution of the Jews over succeeding centuries. No wonder so many Jews today regard Christian ‘mission’ as something to be avoided at all costs.
And yet it was thanks to English evangelicals who loved the Jewish people and embraced the Jewishness of Jesus – men like William Wilberforce, Charles Simeon and Lord Shaftesbury (each of whom was part of CMJ’s founding) – that Jewish restoration has begun to take place. They are already back in the land and, slowly but surely, discovering Jesus as their true Messiah.
A former director of CMJ-USA, Dr Newell wrote:
“Our founders believed that Judaism is the root of Christianity and that the unconditional promises to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob stand firm.”
She quoted missiologist Andrew F Walls as saying that to separate the Church from its Jewish roots and Jesus from his Jewish lineage is to leave the Church historically suspended in mid-air. And she added that modern theologies purporting to be Christian, but which remove Jesus from his Jewishness and the Old Testament from the Canon of Scripture, represent another religion altogether.
At a time when we remember all those who sacrificed their lives for freedom, let us also not forget the atrocities suffered by Jews on Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass in 1938) that effectively unleashed the Holocaust for which Christians too were culpable.
Charles Gardner is author of Israel the Chosen, available from Amazon; Peace in Jerusalem, available from olivepresspublisher.com; To the Jew First, A Nation Reborn, and King of the Jews, all available from Christian Publications International.
- Jesus Masked: Anti-Jewish Theologies, an Olive Press Research Paper, published by CMJ UK ↩︎
And how much of the Church Theology has been derived from Greek Roman Mythology…? … it has to turn right back to its Jewish roots… ???? ????
I must absolutely concur with the quote from Andrew Walls. I’ve had to come to this conclusion in my own life as of late. Having struggled with the typical Christian narrative against what I was reading in the scriptures for 30 years, I was exposed to and embraced, as a gentile, the Messianic (TORAH) pursuit of understanding the truth of God. I have been trying to show these things to Christian friends and relatives, but like you said, Mr. Gardner, the replacement theology is dangerous; like a mental poison. I’ve seen how this ‘other’ appeals also to the flesh as it becomes a good enough religion that is comfortable, popular, generally accepted, yet still does not conform to what is presented in ALL the scriptures!
Thank you for the insight.
A conspiracy born out of hell itself. Satan is in full attack and has been since Yeshua rose from the dead. So this is nothing new. Believers in messiah has better start opening their eyes. The attacks, the diversions, the divisions, the secularists that are weaponizing the climate, infanticide, and gender confusion are all in the devils camp seeking to destroy the church. They see that the institutionalizdd church is weak and they have some strength so they are looking for the kill. It is a time of the wheat being separated from the chaff. The SHAKING is here, whom will see it?