저 중동의 유대인들이 여전히 "하나님의 백성"인가? 현재 "메시아파 유대인들" (예수님을 메시아로 믿는 유대인들) 대다수가 그렇게 생각하는 듯 보입니다. 그러나 신약은 그렇게 말하지 않습니다. 이제 예수 그리스도를 믿는 이들이 (유대인이나 이방인이나 무론하고) 하나님의 백성입니다. 이제는 구약처럼 종족 단위로 구원하지 않으시고 누구든지 주의 이름을 부르는 자가 구원을 받습니다. 헬라인이나 유대인이나 차별이 없습니다.
다음은 한 메시아파 유대인 교회의 현직 장로 빌립과 본인 사이에 오간 신학 이메일들입니다. 본인이 먼저 그 교회로 서신을 보내 이런 주제로 토론하자고 했고, 목사는 그곳 장로 빌립에게 이 서신에 응하도록 주선을 했다고 합니다.
유대인 현직 장로 빌립과의 신학 서신들
보낸 서신
Mar. 15, 2013
Greetings in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ
I am a pastor in Seoul and a scholar who teaches the Bible in various schools.
I'd like to talk about the issue of Israel and Church.
May I find there somebody who is interested in the discussion?
If pastor is willing to talk with me, it will be great.
Thanks in advance
Sincerely yours in Jesus
Pastor Jong
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빌립 장로님에게 받은 답장
2013년 3월 20일 수요일, 01시 42분 14초 +0900
Jong,
My name is Philip and I am an elder in the Beit Eliahu Messianic Congregation. I've been asked to interact with you about your questions regarding Israel and the church. This is a hot topic as evidenced by the scores of books dealing with the subject currently in print.
The translation of our congregational statement of faith states:
People of God: The children of Israel are God's chosen people and He loves them with an everlasting love. God continues to fulfill all the promises given to the patriarchs.
The body of Messiah is composed of Jews and Gentiles who trust in the one God and in His Messiah for the forgiveness of their sins. Both the Jews and the Gentiles are partners, without having to lose their national identity, in the spiritual promises that God gave to the children of Israel, and they are both equal before him.
We believe that national Israel is in need of atonement and salvation. Again, our congregational statement of faith states:
Atonement and salvation: God always provided to mankind some means of atonement. The sacrifices in the Tanach symbolized the one and only atonement which propitiates the wrath of God, which was provided for us in the death of the Messiah. This death is full and complete atonement for sin. Its acceptance by God is proven by the resurrection of Yeshua from the dead. Every Jew or Gentile who repents of his sins and trusts in Yeshua, is saved by the grace of God. This grace brings mankind to love God and obey Him forever.
Holy Spirit has an essential role in the process of a person's recognition of a God's holiness, his need for salvation, and in the salvation itself which is provided by the Messiah. The work of the Holy Spirit is also essential in the process of repentance and faith as well as the gradual process during which the believer is sanctified more and more.
On the basis of this belief, we are actively engaged in sharing the good news regarding Israel's Messiah with the Jewish population here who do not have a personal faith relationship with God through Him.
I hope this provides a starting point for any questions and discussion regarding Israel and the church as understood by us at Beit Eliahu. Please feel free to address me with your questions and I will be glad to attempt to provide you with answers from our perspective.
Yours in the Messiah,
Philip Litle
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본인이 보낸 서신
3/23/2013 2:02 AM, 중일사랑 wrote:
Dear Philip,
I am glad that you responded to me and hope that we will get to know each other as our e-mail friendship goes on.
In you last e-mail you've mentioned of "People of God." It says
"People of God: The children of Israel are God's chosen people and He loves them with an everlasting love. God continues to fulfill all the promises given to the patriarchs. The body of Messiah is composed of Jews and Gentiles who trust in the one God and in His Messiah for the forgiveness of their sins. Both the Jews and the Gentiles are partners, without having to lose their national identity, in the spiritual promises that God gave to the children of Israel, and they are both equal before him."
The children of Israel are God's chosen people - you mean, all the Jews are God's people? Especially you indicated "national identity," that is, their blood relationship (if not their political identity).
I'm afraid that is not what the New Testament says about God's people.
Gal. 3:6 Consider Abraham： "He believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness." 7 Understand, then, that those who believe are children of Abraham.
Gal. 3:26 You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, . .
28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
29 If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise.
What I understand from these verses is that from the time of Jesus the Messiah, children of God are not comprised of according to any nationality but according to their faith in Jesus. In the era of the NT no ethnicity can claim on for admission into God's assembly.
That's why John 1:12 and 13 say,
12 Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God--
13 children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband's will, but born of God.
When Jesus called twelve disciples, the number 12 meant, I suppose, 12 heads of a new spiritual Israel, replacing the 12 tribes of Israel. At the time of Jesus, there were some of the Jews who became a part of the New Israel. The primitive church in Jerusalem was the first participants of th New Israel (from now on "NI"). From the time of Pentacost there arose many who belonged to the NI, including many of the priests (Acts 6:7 The number of disciples in Jerusalem increased rapidly, and a large number of priests became obedient to the faith)
That much for today, Elder Philip.
Thanks for your partnership and God bless you with your congregation!
Sincerely yours in Christ
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빌립 장로님에게 받은 답장
May 17, 2013
Jong,
It has taken some time for me to respond to you. I'm sure you are also quite busy and understand that the subject you ask about requires the investment of time to be useful.
The subject of the "People of God" is one that generates considerable differences of understanding and opinion. Typical theology defines the people of God as the church, and goes on to define the church as "the community of all believers for all time". It would appear to me that this narrow definition is your understanding of the term "God's people" based on your comments and questions.
Such a limited definition, however, fails to appreciate the wider use of the word ἐκκλησία in the New Testament or of the Hebrew קהילה (frequently translated as such in the Septuagint) in the Tanach. According to the was both these words are used, it can be seen that OT people of Israel as well as the local NT church include individuals whose personal relationship with God is questionable and who are in need of exhortation to bring them to repentance and a renewal of faith. As such, the a priori acceptance of the typical theological definition that takes the view of the people of God as only including true believers has created significant misunderstanding of the Scriptures regarding to whom they refer when they address the earthly and visible people of God, which they do frequently.
At issue is how to understand the relationship between God and the natural descendants of Abraham through Isaac and Jacob - the OT people of Israel and the NT/modern Jewish people to whom the large majority of Scripture are specifically addressed. A close corollary and necessary starting point is the issue of the relationship between the NT ἐκκλησία and these natural descendants in terms of God's promises and salvific program. The most common understanding historically among Christian theologians is one of the replacement of the OT "kehilah" (קהילה) of Israel by the NT ἐκκλησία of true believers in all the plans and promises of God. Taking this step in and of itself has created considerable problems for theologians due to the difficulty in determining which groups or organizations among the multitude of earthly and visible organizations calling themselves "churches" are now the subject of God's promises and how does the existence of these groups effect our interpretation of these promises.
The idea that the "church" somehow "replaces" Israel in the promises of God is rejected by Beit Eliahu. We recognize Israel's failure as a people group to embrace the Lord's Messiah as disobedience which has eternal consequences for the vast majority who are refusing to believe and accept Yeshua as the Messiah. However, this disobedience on the part of national Israel in no way marks and end to the Lord's continued choosing of the nation, as the Apostle Paul indicates in Romans 11:29: "for the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable." Being the people of God is not equated in the context of Romans 11 with salvation. In fact, the Olive Tree analogy point to the concept of a "natural" group who are removed from experiencing the blessing of the kingdom of God due to disobedience with a "wild" group which is made a part of this kingdom through obedience, but which also faces the threat of being removed if it does not continue in obedience.
In order to provide a more thorough treatment, I've attached an article written by Walter Kaiser, past professor and president of Gordon-Conwell Seminary. Please feel free to interact with me on its contents as you look more closely at this very important matter.
Yours in the Messiah,
Philip
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Kaiser, W. An Assessment of Replacement Theology.pdf
본인이 보낸 서신
May 20, 2013
In the pdf article you've sent (for which I am thankful) Walter Kaiser wrote about five flaws of the so-called replacement theology thus:
1) The “New Covenant” was made with the house of Israel and Judah. God never made a formal covenant with the Church;
2) The failure of the Jews, like the failure of the Church, was calculated in the plan of God (Rom 11:8);
3) The New Testament clearly teaches that God has not cast off disobedient Israel (Rom 11:1,25-26), for they are the natural branches into which the Church has been grafted;
4) The “eternal” aspect of the promise of the land is not to be equated with the “eternal” aspect of the Aaronic priesthood (I Chr 23:13) or the Rechabite descendants (Jer 35:19); and
5) Paul's allegory of Galatians 4:21-31 does not teach that national Israel has been replaced by the Church; it teaches that the quest for justification by works leads
to bondage whereas justification by faith and grace leads to freedom and salvation. Each of these theses must be examined in as much detail as the space here allows.
To each I would respond:
1) the New Covenant was not made with the church, but with the house of Israel and Judah.
Kaiser begs the question with this statement.
Jesus in his last supper made proleptically the new covenant with the Father (we assume) in the presence of his disciples. The cup and the bread represented his own blood and flesh, which corresponded to the OT sacrificial blood and flesh in covenant making (Gen 15, Jer 34; Ex 24).
Concerning a covenant making, there is an interesting passage in Heb. 9:16-17: {Opou ga.r diaqh,kh( qa,naton avna,gkh fe,resqai tou/ diaqeme,nou diaqh,kh ga.r evpi. nekroi/j bebai,a( evpei. mh,pote ivscu,ei o[te zh/| o` diaqe,menoj (NIV, In the case of a will, it is necessary to prove the death of the one who made it; 17 because a will is in force only when somebody has died; it never takes effect while the one who made it is living).
NIV's translation on the verse is a pitiful mistranslation. We should remember there is no theology of will in the OT, which is reflected in the verse by the writer of the Hebrews. Rather we should translate the verse:
For where a covenant is, there must of necessity be the death of the one who made it 17 For a covenant is valid only 'over [on the basis of] dead bodies' (evpi. nekroi/j), for it is never in force while the one who made it lives (my own translation).
Heb. 9:17 echoes Ps 50:5: Gather My godly ones to Me, Those who have made a covenant with Me over sacrifice (´ispû-lî Hásîdäy Körtê bürîtî `álê-zäbaH).
Now the question is that whether Jesus made the covenant with the church or the house of Israel and Judah. I understand that at the time, Jesus was the mediator and also the sacrifice over which the covenant was to be made. Furthermore, Jesus was the representative of the house of Israel and Judah (his disciples included also). The new covenant was proleptically (looking to the cross) concluded between God the father, and the house of Israel and Judah represented by Jesus and his disciples.
After the supper or the crucifixion, God poured out his Spirit upon the covenanted community, the Pentecostal gathering. The anointed ones were none other than the disciples of Jesus, the ones who represented the house of Israel and Judah in the last supper. This is to be noted: the Spirit came upon the community of believers of Jesus on the Pentecost.
Acts 2:3 And there appeared to them tongues as of fire distributing themselves, and they rested on each one of them. 4 And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit was giving them utterance (NIV).
Then, this community expanded itself after the anointing by incorporating the new Jewish believers:
So then, those who had received his (Peter's) word were baptized; and there were added that day about three thousand souls (Acts 2:41).
And on other occasion, many more were added to the community:
And all the more believers in the Lord, multitudes of men and women, were constantly added to their number (Acts 5:14);
But many of those who had heard the message believed; and the number of the men came to be about five thousand (Acts 4:4);
And the word of God kept on spreading; and the number of the disciples continued to increase greatly in Jerusalem, and a great many of the priests were becoming obedient to the faith (Acts 6:7).
Now this community is a new Israel, the church, which is the recipient of all the OT promises. This New Israel is represented by twelve apostles, replacing the twelve tribes of Israel. Thus the house of Israel and Judah, the covenant party, is none other than the church itself. Without any discontinuity, the early church became a universal community with the incoming of the Gentile believers.
This new Israel has come into being in accordance with the OT promise of Israel's restoration, of which the so-called second Isaiah speaks most prominently. Thus, Isaiah has foretold:
Isa. 40:3 A voice is calling,
"Clear the way for the LORD in the wilderness;
Make smooth in the desert a highway for our God.
4 "Let every valley be lifted up,
And every mountain and hill be made low;
And let the rough ground become a plain,
And the rugged terrain a broad valley;
5 Then the glory of the LORD will be revealed,
And all flesh will see it together;
For the mouth of the LORD has spoken."
As is well known, this passage about the voice in the wilderness has been quoted by all the evangelists to have been fulfilled in the ministry of John the Baptist. This reveals two significant facts:
First, the prophecy of restoration of Israel, which looks upon our first look like a literal coming back of Israel from the land Babylon, speaks in fact about the spiritual coming back of Israel to God through the ministry of John the Baptist, and that of Jesus.
Second, the restoration of Israel foretold in Isa 40:3-5 has been fulfilled or being fulfilled through the ministry of Jesus first coming (not the second coming), as John the Baptist was the forerunner of the Messiah. As John was fulfilling the Isaiah's prophecy of restoration of Israel, so Jesus in his earthly works brought about the fulfillment of the restoration prophecy because Jesus was the coming one for which John had been sent to prepare.
Thus, even before going over the second item, of the five flaws Walter Kaiser has listed, we could almost drive wedge in the shattering of the arguments raised by Walter Kaiser.
That much for today,
my brother Philip, thanks for your sincerity shown in your response!
Sincerely yours in Christ
Pastor John Choi
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본인이 보낸 서신
Aug. 10, 2013
Dear Philip,
I take it up again with no response to my last letter. Yet I am confident that you've read and understood what I was trying to point out in my last e-mail letter.
Today I took the second item of W. Kaiser: "The Failure of Israel was calculated by God."
I guess, as for this point, W. Kaiser has overlooked what Paul is serious about. The key issue was why Israel (most of them) has rejected her Messiah. To answer that question, Paul surveys theologically Israel's history, the way Israel has been throughout her history. To Paul's contemporary the fact that the majority of Israel has rejected might have been a bewilderment to understand because it was to Israel that God gave all the promises of her Savior Messiah, the branch of David. But to Paul, it was not so much surprising a phenomenon since throughout the history of salvation, always as Paul delineates in Rom. 9-11 only a small portion of Israel, the remnant has been saved.
That's the point Paul was making. Look at me, I am a Benjaminite, the core member of Hebrew people. How about Abraham's two sons, Ishmael and Isaac? only the seed given by the divine promise, Isaac, should be the elect remnant. Ishmael though he was a son of Abraham was not and could not be an elect because he was born of an illegitimate wedlock, to borrow Pauline term, a thing of flesh.
How about Isaac's twins Jacob and Esau? only Jacob God loved, that is, He elected only Jacob, but hated, that is, reprobated Esau. This way Paul brought down the history of Israel to the era of the prophet Elijah when only 7,000 remnant was left with all others deserting God of Israel. How about the time of Paul? Paul and the disciples of Jesus were Jewish remnant though majority of Israel repudiated Jesus as their Messiah, the prophecied Anointed king, prophet and priest.
Throughout the salvation history only the elect, the remnant, which has been always a small segment of the whole, are the object of God's grace. Rom. 9:27 Isaiah cries out concerning Israel: "Though the number of the Israelites be like the sand by the sea, only the remnant will be saved."
W. Kaiser has argued:
the plan of God had deliberately calculated the failure of Israel and her people. Romans 11:8 affirmed, using the informing theology of Deuteronomy 29:4 and Isaiah 29:10, that “God gave [Israel] a spirit of stupor, eyes so that they could not see and ears so that they should not hear, to this very day.” Thus, the spiritual slumber in which Israel currently tosses is divinely induced! God thereby insured, in that sense, that all Israel would not believe so that salvation might come to the gentiles through those Jews who did not believe. And so it happened that “because of [Israel's] disobedience,” divine mercy was shown to the gentiles —and that
condition persists down “to this very day,”Paul adds.
I am afraid to affirm the way of W. Kaiser to understand the passage. What Paul cited was from various parts of the Old Testament, such as Isa. 6:9, Deut. 29:4, and Isa. 29:10 etc. What these passages convey is a divine punitive action upon disobeying Israelites. It is advisable to direct out attention to its punitive nature rather than focusing on the divine cause of Israel's failure. There are two sides in the failure of Israel: one is God's sovereignty over all happenings and the other is Israel's disobedience. Fundamentally speaking God is the cause of the failure of Israel but that is a highly complicated reflection of spiritual reality. A similar incident was Adam's failure at the garden of Eden. It was in God's providence that Adam fell. But that does not mean God induced his failure. God foreknew his fall but it is radically different story if we say God caused Adam to fall. Likewise, to say Israel's failure was induced by God is not so good a statement. Rather we may say their failure was in God's providence, that is, God foreknew their failure. But the sure reality is that Israel sinned repeatedly and rejected God's offer of salvation. Their hardening was so great, God sent a spirit of slumber to punish them. The punitive action is still active in the hearts of unbelievers, who hear the call of gospel invitation but turn aside their ear from the truth.
May the grace of Jesus Christ our Lord be fully operative in your life and church!
Pastor Choi from Seoul.