Posts
Ann Coulter has raised a huge ruckus for defending traditional understandings of Christian origins and Christian evangelism. Talk show host Donny Deutsch (whom I’d never heard of before) became outraged when Ms Coulter said that the world would be a better place if everyone were Christian. He accused her of wanting to wipe Jews off the earth, to which she replied, "No, we think – we just want Jews to be perfected, as they say." Mr Deutsch called her statements “absurd”, “offensive”, “hateful”, and accused her of ignorance and anti-Semitism. Other commentators soon piled on.
The critics are the ignorant ones, for what Ms Coulter said comes straight out of the New Testament. See, for example, St Paul’s discussion of the relationship between Christians and Jews in chapters 9-11 of his letter to the Romans.
N.T. (Tom) Wright, perhaps the leading New Testament scholar writing today, has argued that St Paul believed it arrogant of Christians to exclude Jews from evangelisation efforts. These passages come from Bishop Wright’s 1991 book The Climax of the Covenant: Christ and the Law in Pauline Theology.
Many Christians have come to agree with most Jews that, since the Holocaust, the church has no right to engage in evangelism towards Jews, since to say that Jesus is the true Messiah for Jews as well as for Gentiles is to be implicitly antisemitic or at least antiJudaic, hinting that Judaism is somehow incomplete. Within scholarly circles, this concern has emerged particularly as the 'two-covenant' theory, which suggests that God has on the one hand maintained his covenant with ethnic Israel intact, and on the other hand has inaugurated the Christian 'covenant' as his regular way of saving Gentiles. In this scheme, Paul is sometimes cast as the hero who anticipated two-covenant theology, sometimes as the villain against whom it makes its vital point.
. . .
[I]t is against Christian arrogance—specifically, gentile Christian arrogance—that Romans 9-11 is explicitly directed. Paul is writing, with all the weight of eleven chapters of theology behind him, in order to say that 'gentile Christians' have not 'replaced' Jews as the true people of God. The church has not become an exclusively gentile possession. Precisely because the gospel stands athwart all ethnic claims, the church cannot erect a new racial boundary. The irony of this is that the late twentieth century, in order to avoid antisemitism, has advocated a position (the non-evangelization of Jews) which Paul regards precisely as antisemitic. The two-covenant position says precisely what Paul here forbids the church to say, namely that Christianity is for non-Jews. To this extent, it actually agrees in form with the German Christian theology of the 1930s—while of course disagreeing in substance, because it denies that Christianity is the only way of salvation.
Paul holds that a deliberate policy of refusing to evangelise Jews is anti-Semitic.
Many other passages in the New Testament are relevant here; I'll cite only two. After he was raised, Jesus instructed the disciples to “go and make disciples of all nations”. St Paul called the gospel “the power of God to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek”.
In saying that Christians are perfected Jews and encouraging Jews to become so perfected, Ann Coulter was only repeating orthodox Christian theology. If Donny Deutsch wants intelligently to engage other religions, he should first learn something about their teachings.
You can watch the exchange here.
Recommended commentary:
- Like Ann Coulter, All Faithful Christians Believe "Jews Need to be Perfected" — John-Henry Westen, LifeSite
- On Coulter, Christians, And Jews — Steven M. Warshawsky, American Thinker
Source of Tom Wright quotation: The Climax of the Covenant: Christ and the Law in Pauline Theology. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, first paperback edition, 1993, p. 253.
I watched the clip, and basically, she is right, but I’m afraid she seemed insensitive. Deutch took it personally. I prefer to say that Christianity is “fulfilled” Judaism, rather than that “Christians are perfected Jews.” This removes the seeming arrogance of the word, “perfected” and it also makes it clear that we are talking about systems of thought (Christianity vs Judaism) rather than people (Christians vs Jews).
Thanks, John. I would agree that Coulter could have phrased her statement less personally. At the same time, I didn’t see her as purposefully insensitive. I think she was genuinely taken aback by Duetsch’s outraged reaction and tried to speak more circumspectly after he flipped his lid. Usually, Coulter tosses off her little zingers with a smirk, knowing she is being deliberately provocative. I didn’t see that here.
Still, as you say, if she had been more careful from the outset, this might not have gotten out of hand. (Unless Deutsch was looking for a pretext to be insulted. Who knows?)
Well, both your theology and Coulter’s are clearly and inalterably in error. As one of many Christian’s who do not believe in the notion that it is simply through faith alone in Christ that one gets to heaven, I must comment that you repeat grevious doctrinal error. You are simply selling some Evangelical Plenary Indugence that is as much bunk as the Medieval church’s.
This is not “Orthodox” Christianity. It is an ancient and faulty elaboration of Paul’s thinking that has been discredited by many over the last 1000 years.
I might also point out that all who are not of Paul’s Church in Rome are not going anywhere. The current position of The Church which included Paul in the New Testament in the first place is that all who are not of The Church in Rome, while they may be associated with “Christian Communities”, are in essence unchurched.
Aaron
“The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned.”
Yes. He would have been insulted in any case.
Aaron, If you have any evidence to substantiate your assertions, let’s hear it.
Aaron,
Although your post avoids the issue being discussed entirely, I do feel it necessary to mention that the Church is not Paul’s any more than it is Peter’s or James’ or that of any other human. The Church belongs to Jesus Christ; in fact it is his body here on earth.
I wonder if it could be pointed out Biblically why the church in Rome should have had any more authority than the church in Jerusalem, or Antioch, or Ephesus, or Alexandria, or Constantinople, or any other early church, many of which were established before Rome. I realize that the Roman Catholic church claims Peter as its first bishop, but that is tradition only. There is, as far as I know, no real evidence for it, or that Peter even saw Rome, for that matter.
True believers in Jesus Christ are to be found in all these and many other churches, and it is they who comprise the true Church, the true Body of Christ.
Take Care