Thoughts on Salvation is from the Jews

For many reasons, Salvation is from the Jews is a book I wish I had read years ago. In fact, had I read it years ago, I would have already quoted it in four essays; Schoeman has something valuable to say on almost everything. It's no wonder Mary wanted him Catholic. For example, commenting on the first chapter of Genesis, Schoeman states:

It is almost as though God, knowing in advance that in the latter days the theory of evolution would appear, wanted to nip the false and pernicious theory in the bud, by emphasizing that when He created each different type of plant or animal life, He gave it the property of reproducing only within its own kind; that the faculty of producing seed resulting only in reproduction truly "according to its own kind" is intrinsic in the very nature of life itself.¹

Amen. Let's hope this observation catches on among Catholic exegetes, and that this information reaches the masses of Catholic faithful, whose contact with Scripture is obstructed by the NAB, which not surprisingly eliminates this emphasis on "reproduction according to kind" in its translation.

Another of Schoeman's observations which I pray takes deep root among the Catholic faithful concerns the nature of pagan deities: they are demons. Schoeman is to be applauded for boldly affirming this traditional, biblical and Catholic position:

The "gods" that the pagans worshiped truly existed and truly fulfilled the role of gods to their adherents--that is, in return for adoration, reverence, and sacrifice they returned services to their adherents. However, rather than being 'God' in the meaning of the uncreated creator of all that is, they were merely spirits, in fact, fallen angels (otherwise known as demons or devils)... [He then quotes Deut 32:16-17; Josh 24:15; Psalm 82:1-8; 95:3; 96:5; Baruch 4:6-8 in support] ...The underlying Hebrew word that is here translated "demons" is "shadim". It has the same root consonants as a word that means destruction, violence, havoc, or devastation, which is appropriate, for that is what the demons are--agents of destruction and devastation. And that is what the pagans, then and now, serve as "gods", whether they are aware of it or not.²

This is a courageous stance, and I would be fascinated to know, in light of this, what Schoeman thinks of the Assisi prayer gatherings. In John Paul II's eyes the pagans were all praying to the true God.³ Also courageous is Schoeman's commitment to biblical inerrancy, which causes him to defend the divine commands recorded in the Old Testament for the Jews to exterminate pagan nations such as Amalek. His reading of these passages is much more Catholic than that of the U.S. Bishops' official Bible, the NAB. And to praise one last instance of Schoeman's biblical traditionalism, he teaches that the Jews have always prayed the Psalms as hymns of adoration to the Messiah.⁴

As evident in the above, Roy Schoeman is not afraid to travel against the grain in the service of truth. This is evident as well in his willingness to openly disagree with other Jewish converts such as David Moss and the Association of Hebrew Catholics, and state that God does not wish the Jews to continue to observe Jewish festivals following their conversion to Christianity, and that Jews should disappear into the Church like yeast into dough:

The first reason for Jews to continue as a distinct community within the Church is the belief that God still wishes Jews to follow the Jewish laws and festivals, even after they become Christian. This view, however, must be rejected by Jews who enter the Catholic Church as inconsistent with Church doctrine as well as with a number of passages in the New Testament, including Mark 7:19, Acts 10:15, Corinthians 10:27, and Galatians 5:6... The fact that the Jews have a special role to play until the Second Coming does not necessarily imply that Jews who convert should avoid "disappearing" into the Church. It is useful to consider the parallel with yeast and bread. For yeast to do any good in making bread, it must be kept separate from the other ingredients until it is time to use it. But at that point in the process one must take some of the yeast away from where it has been kept separate and mix it in with the other ingredients until it becomes indistinguishable from the rest of the dough. Perhaps that is the case with the Jews. God gave them unique qualities which have a needed leavening effect on the entire Church. But for those qualities to have their effect, when God grants the grace of conversion to the Jew, He separates him from the rest of the "yeast" and mixes him in with the "dough"; that is, removes him from the Jewish community and mixes him into the Church. Just as the yeast does not lose its importance in disappearing into the dough but rather achieves it, so might the Jewish charism realize its unique importance in "disappearing" into the Church.⁵

Given that Penn State Students for Life is currently being resuscitated by a Jewish Catholic, I readily believe it.

Next, Schoeman's chapter on the occult roots of Nazism is fascinating and deeply valuable. Indeed, I wish I had read Salvation is from the Jews prior to bringing the Genocide Awareness Project to Penn State. GAP consists in a large visual display which compares abortion to various acts of genocide in recent history, including the Holocaust, and when it came to Penn State, the enraged director of the local chapter of Hillel, one Tuvia Abramson, railed against us that we could not use the memory of Jews murdered by Christians to promote a Christian cause. But as Schoeman demonstrates, the Nazis were anything but Christian. On the contrary, Nazism has its ideological roots in the pseudo-scientific racist ideology known as Eugenics, and an occult, neo-pagan religion tracing its development through Hinduism, Theosophy, and Wotanism by means of secret societies such as the Armenenschaft and the Thule Society. An especially valuable revelation is that Hitler himself was an avid reader of the occultic journal Ostara, and traced the beginnings of his virulent anti-Semitism to the years he spent in Vienna under the influence of that journal, and its publisher Adolf Lanz.⁶

Yet another reason to wish I had read Salvation is from the Jews a long time ago is the chapter on the Messianic idea in Judaism. In addition to adducing the usual Scriptural arguments to prove that Jesus Christ is the Jewish Messiah, Schoeman also calls forth a good deal of hostile testimony from the Talmud and Moses Maimonides. This information, too, will come as a revelation to most, as it deeply undercuts many common Jewish arguments against Christianity. For instance, Moses Maimonides, basing himself on "the ancient sages", made a distinction between the Messianic age and the final redemption, much like the Christian distinction between the first and second comings of Christ, which modern Jews reject. We also learn that the Talmud and Christianity see the same apparent contradiction between biblical descriptions of a Messiah who suffers and dies and a Messiah who comes in power and glory. Christianity of course solves this problem with the two comings of Christ. Modern Jews deny the suffering Messiah altogether, but their fore bearers posited two Messiahs: the suffering servant Messiah ben Joseph and the glorious Messiah ben David. In fact, the Talmudic sages applied some of the same biblical passages to the Messiah ben Joseph as Christians apply to Christ, such as Zechariah 12:10.⁷ This is devastating to much of modern Jewish anti-missionary apologetics.

Salvation is from the Jews also contains a number of beautiful and inspiring stories of Jewish conversions: of St. Alphonse Ratisbonne, the Lehmann brothers, St. Edith Stein, Eugenio Zolli, Charlie Rich, and of course the author himself. St. Edith Stein's witness is especially valuable as a paradigm for a proper theological understanding of the Holocaust. Shoeman quotes Stein: "This is the shadow of the cross that falls upon my people! Oh, if they would only realize! That is the fulfillment of the curse which my people have called down upon themselves!"⁸ More kudos to Schoeman: quoting that line takes chutzpah. For St. Edith Stein, it was the responsibility of Christian Jews, those who understood the Cross, to bear it on behalf of all Jews, to offer their suffering and death to God in Christ as a redemptive sacrifice for the salvation of their nation. "May the Lord accept my life and death... for the Jewish people, that the Lord may be received by His own and His Kingdom come in glory."⁹ St. Edith Stein is as stark a contrast as possible with Elie Wiesel, who has responded to the Holocaust by pouring forth a torrent of revolting blasphemies. Again, thanks are due to Schoeman for documenting this. Lastly, Schoeman recounts a story of a non-Christian Jew who bore the Holocaust with trustful abandonment to divine providence, much like St. Edith Stein. Hopefully he was in invincible ignorance, and thus his sacrifice had some redemptive efficacy as well.

But all these nice things having been said about Salvation is from the Jews, I have some serious reservations about much of the speculative eschatology contained in this book. This is an especially serious concern given the geo-political climate of today, in which eschatology has the potential to fan the flames of war. Thus, for example, on pages 301-302 Schoeman constructs a dichotomy between the Jews as the holy nation who represent Abraham's fidelity (in begetting Isaac with his aged wife, according to God's promise) and bring forth the Christ, and the Arabs as the wicked nation who represent Abraham's infidelity (in begetting Ishmael through adultery with Hagar, when he doubted God's promise), bring forth the anti-Christ, and cause the global war of Armageddon in which they try to conquer Jerusalem. God forbid this speculation should ever gain a wide following in the Catholic Church: then it would really be impossible to evangelize Muslims. It is also easy to see how such a view of eschatology could produce in Catholics a myopic, one-sided view of the Israeli-Arab conflict, much like the Evangelical Protestants who, because of their eschatology, uncritically and unequivocally support every aggressive Israeli military operation, and with similar thoughtlessness oppose every Israeli concession. When people believe that the Jews are on God's side and the Muslims are on the devil's side, needless to say they are not the most effective peacemakers (cf. Matt 5:9).

Also distressing is the way in which Schoeman prepares the reader for this anti-Muslim bombshell: he quotes a litany of depraved, violent, and bigoted passages from Muslim Scriptures such as the Qur'an and Hadith. He never tells the reader that it would be just as easy to find litanies of depraved, violent, and bigoted texts in Jewish holy books such as the Talmud and Zohar. See my essay "A Catholic Talmud Talmud" for a number of examples. These militate in favor of a Jewish Antichrist just as easily as Schoeman's texts tend toward a Muslim one. The closest Schoeman comes to exposing the Talmud is when, over a hundred pages previous, he spends a few pages noting the Talmud's hostility to Christ and Christianity.

Schoeman himself provides some foundation for a more realistic eschatology. On page 32 he narrates the story of the Lehmann brothers, two eighteen year old twin Jewish boys from a wealthy, aristocratic family in Lyons, France who had converted to Catholicism. Their family tried to beat them to death for converting and they were rescued by the police. Next, as mentioned above, on page 133 Schoeman documents the Talmud's hostility to Christ. Finally, on pages 77-78 Schoeman informs us of the Jewish origins of Communism: he quotes the Jewish nationalist Moses Hess, who is credited with converting Karl Marx to socialism, as teaching that the Jewish people should become their own Messiah by erecting utopian political and social institutions. To Schoeman's testimony let us add that of St. Peter Damian, who told the Jews, "Since the day you cried out and said to Pilate: we have no king but Caesar, you have not had a king; and since you were unwilling to heed the King of Kings, you have lost your kingdom and your homeland."¹⁰

Now we are prepared to construct our meta-historical narrative. Since rejecting Christ the Jews have been uprooted, cast out, driven from place to place, and frequently killed. They have desperately groped about for salvation, and sought it in false messiah after false messiah. Indeed, Wikipedia lists 24 of them, and it does not count political messiahs such as Marxism. The Jews have sought salvation anywhere and everywhere, except it in the only One who can grant it. For they have already rejected Him, and as the Lehmann brothers' story illustrates, they tend to be inveterately opposed when members of their people reconsider that decision. It is this people, not the Muslims, whom we can expect to listen with itching ears when men say "lo, here is the Christ" (Matt 24:23). Indeed, the "symmetry" between Christ and Antichrist will not consist in that they are descended from opposite shoots from the seed of Abraham, as Schoeman speculates, but more likely in that they are descended from the same: Israel. Jewish fidelity, the reception of the Word of God in faith as expressed in Mary's fiat, brought forth the Christ; could Jewish infidelity bring forth anyone other than the man of sin?

The fall from grace is most catastrophic among those who are elected by God to the highest honors. This is why Lucifer, prince of angels, and Judas the Apostle have their place at the bottom of hell, and why the "third Christ," St. Philip Neri, prayed every morning, "Hold on to me Lord, tightly with both hands, or I will betray you worse than Judas." And what higher honor could God bestow on a nation than to incarnate as one of them? There is even a tradition that the highest several occupants of heaven are all Jews: Jesus, Mary, Joseph, John the Baptist, Peter, Paul, and the rest of the Apostles. Hence it should come as no surprise that the fall of such a nation would be particularly devastating. As the German Jewish convert to Christianity, Eugen Rosenstock put it:

The Jews have the saying that one day all people will come to Jerusalem to pray, and they always crucify again the one who came to make the word true. In appearance they wait upon the word of the Lord, but they have grown through and through so far away from revelation that they do everything they can to hinder its reality. With all the power of their being they set themselves against their own promises. They are the image on earth of Lucifer, the highest of angels, elect of God, who wanted to keep God's gift for himself as a dominion in his own right, and fell. So Israel stands upon its own inalienable right.¹¹

But fortunately, unlike Lucifer, Jews are not angels, whose knowledge is purely immediate and intuitive thus rendering them incapable of repentance. On the contrary they are men who reason discursively and can and frequently do have encounters with logos. Moreover, as Schoeman reminds us, traditional patristic and Catholic eschatology holds that in the last days the nation will be converted. Indeed, Pope St. Gregory the Great, inter alios, treats this as common knowledge among the Catholic faithful.¹² Schoeman indulges in a terminological novum, but not a substantial novum, when he says that the Old Covenant brings the New Covenant to fruition by this mass conversion. In any case we should all join him in fervently praying and working to hasten it.

This leads to the last of my complaints against Salvation is from the Jews: lack of clarity. This is perhaps a testimony to the disaster that has resulted from the collapse of episcopal supervision over Catholic publishing. Much grief could have been avoided if Schoeman had received more constructive criticism and been asked to explain certain things before the book went to print. For example, on page 352 he states:

We have seen how, at the very outset of Christianity, many held the mistaken belief that one must be a member of the Old Covenant (i.e., be a Jew) to be eligible for participation in the New. This error was quickly corrected, but was soon followed by another known as "supersessionism" - that the Old Covenant had been entirely replaced (or superseded, hence "supersessionism"), made null and void, by the New. This view dominated Christian theology for much of the past two thousand years. It has only recently been definitively rejected by the Church.

Given that Schoeman elsewhere says that the New Covenant did replace the Old, this passage is confusing to say the least. Moreover, given that Schoeman states that this "error" dominated Christian theology for the past 2,000 years, it is easy to see how one might accuse him of attacking traditional Catholic covenant theology as articulated for example by the Council of Florence. Yet he has explained in private correspondence to David Palm:

Regarding Supersession, I am not saying that the Church has in no way replaced Israel. All I am saying is that it has not replaced Israel in every way -- that it is an error to claim that the role of the Jews in Salvation History is completely over now, that there is no longer any special role, or quality, to "fleshly" Israel. The Church never taught this, or any other error -- of course the Church cannot err in its official teaching -- but this erroneous view was quite common among many of the members of the Church over a long period.

In a way, this apologetic is tenuous; if the Fathers, Doctors, and faithful of the Church consistently hoped for a mass conversion of the Jews at the end of time, why would Schoeman say that a contrary view, i.e., that God no longer has any special plans for the Jews, ever dominated Christian theology? At best such a view may have made inroads here and there. Like I said, this kind of thing illustrates the need for more rigorous standards of clarity and orthodoxy in Catholic publishing. Schoeman's text sounds like it's rejecting Catholic doctrine, and the qualification and explanation which he has provided in private correspondence is badly needed in the text itself. The statement about the error dominating Christian theology should have been purged, too.

Another qualification that is badly needed in the text itself concerns the reestablishment of national Israel and the reinstitution of the cult of Jewish animal sacrifice in the Jerusalem Temple. Schoeman speculates that these things are all predicted by prophecy, and hence constitute necessary chapters in the drama of the eschaton. The problem is that he leaves the reader with the impression that he regards these events, not only as prophetically required, but as good in themselves and positively willed and blessed by God. This is especially egregious with respect to the Jerusalem Temple, whose sacrifices would constitute an insult to the sufficiency of the sacrifice of Christ. Its liturgy, so far from being positively willed by God, would be an abomination.

Well, apparently, Schoeman agrees with me. In private correspondence (once again) he has informed me that he agrees with the Church Fathers who taught that Temple sacrifice, after the Passion of Christ, is illicit. Further, he believes that the events surrounding Julian the Apostate's attempt to rebuild the Temple are illustrative of God's attitude toward the whole endeavor. Wonderful. If only he had said so in the book itself!

The problem is exacerbated on page 315, where, I believe, Schoeman constructs a premise from which it logically, necessarily follows that the Jerusalem Temple sacrifice is good; he argues that the prophecies about the abomination of desolation setting himself up in the holy place, profaning the sanctuary, and taking away its sacrifice, might be fulfilled by the Antichrist profaning the Jerusalem Temple. He sets this in parallel to the patristic interpretation, in which the Antichrist takes away the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. Note that the abomination of desolation does not set himself up in the place of illicit and offensive Christ-denying sacrifice: he sets himself up in the holy place; he profanes the holy place; it follows that the sacrifice which he causes to cease in that place is holy. Starting from Schoeman's premise, it is difficult to avoid this conclusion. Nevertheless, Schoeman rejects it, Deo gratias.

So, Salvation is from the Jews is a flawed book, but nevertheless one well worth reading. This is especially the case for Jews and those with a particular calling to evangelize them. This book contains invaluable truths, and one hopes that Schoeman will make an effort to clear up the more problematic elements in the future, because the truths deserve to shine all the brighter without the obstruction of confusion and controversy. They call fleshly Israel to repentance, and spiritual Israel to rededication and renewed fervor for her Lord. They need to penetrate widely and deeply among Jew and Gentile alike, that the New Covenant may indeed be brought to fruition by the salvation of the full number of the elect. May nothing hinder conversion.

Ben Douglass
February 27, Anno Domini MMVII

[1] Roy Schoeman, Salvation is from the Jews (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 2003) p. 39.

[2] Ibid., pp. 46, 49.

[3] Cf. John Paul II, "Pope's Message for 'Men and Religions' Meeting," Zenit, 2004-09-08: "I was convinced of this in October 1986 in Assisi, when I asked people belonging to all religions to gather side by side to invoke God for peace." This included Animists, Hindus, and representatives of other varieties of paganism.

[4] Schoeman, op. cit., p. 22.

[5] Ibid., pp. 69, 71.

[6] Ibid., pp. 208ff.

[7] Cf. Sukkah 52a.

[8] Schoeman, op. cit., p. 161.

[9] Ibid., p. 162.

[10] The Letters of Peter Damian 1-30, translated by Owen. J. Blum, O.F.M. (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press) p. 47.

[11] Judaism Despite Christianity, edited by Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy (University, AL: University of Alabama Press, 1969) p. 125.

[12] See the impressive litany of testimonies ammassed by Jacob Michael in Never Revoked by God.