Orthodoxy and antisemitism - Page 4

In the fourth century St John Chrysostom wrote a polemical work "against the Jews". He was trained in the schools of classical rhetoric and he pulled no punches. His language was harsh, intemperate and at times crude and insulting. It would certainly not pass the standards of polite or scholarly discourse today.

Many of those who cite St John Chrysostom as a source of antisemitism, however, have not read this work or any other by him. They know nothing of the setting, and many have seen nothing but a few of the nastier insults quoted out of context. I sometimes get the feeling, reading such critiques (which are several generations removed from the scholarly originals, so that tentative suggestions made by scholarly researchers have become indisputable facts in the minds of those looking for something to bash Christianity with) that somewhere there is a collection of Patristical excerpts, containing all the things that the Church Fathers have said against women, or Jews, or other groups, all collected in one convenient place for reference by modern polemicists.

St John Chrysostom was not really writing against Jews, but against Judaising Christians. There were Christians who would attend Jewish services and prayer meetings, and adopt Jewish customs, and say how superior they were to Christian ones. He rejects their approach, and compares Jewish theology and practice with Christian, trying to show the superiority of Christian beliefs and practices, and their incompatibility with each other.

It is quite clear that he thinks Christianity is superior to Judaism, and that Christians should therefore not attend Jewish services and prayer meetings or adopt Jewish customs. But is this "antisemitic", or does it justify antisemitism? Again, I would say it is not and it does not. Theological disagreement is not antisemitism, even when expressed in very rude language. And theological differences do not justify either pogroms or genocide.

One could also look at the thing from the other side. In our day there are still Judaising Christians, and there are also Christianising Jews. These Jews call themselves "Messianic Jews". They have grown up as Jews, and call themselves Jews, but they believe that Jesus was the Messiah. They continue to call themselves Jews, but like to call themselves "completed Jews". Orthodox Jews regard them as apostates and heretics, and some of the web sites that denounce them as such use rhetoric that differs little from that of St John Chrysostom against Judaising Christians in the 4th century.