CHAPTER VII

OF FLESH AND FAITH:

Abraham as a Principle of Inclusion and Exclusion in Christian Thought

THEODORE PULCINI

Dickinson College, Carlisle, PA

            From its earliest days, the Christian movement affirmed its universal mission. The primitive community proclaimed a Christ who desired to "draw all people to myself" (Jn. 12:32)1 and who commissioned his followers to "make disciples of all nations (panta ta ethne)" (Mt. 28:19). Yet this universalistic impulse existed in tension with a pronounced particularism: Christianity developed within Judaism; it was a Jewish sect. At its Jewish "epicenter" Christianity had to justify its intention to broaden the scope of God’s election, to justify how not only Jews, but also Gentiles could be reckoned God’s people. Ironically, certain Christian apologists used what they considered to be the very centerpiece of Jewish particularism, viz., the figure of Abraham, to justify the new inclu-sivist agenda.

            This paper will examine how Christianity re-interpreted the figure of Abraham to accommodate its needs. Such re-interpre-tation, we shall see, was not always consistent or true to its original purpose. Its "plasticity" allowed Christians to make claims they wished to advance not only in favor of their own cause, but also in opposition to that of the Jews. A number of "Abrahamic inter-pretive models" arose in Christian thought, with certain of these over-shadowing others in the service of specific apologetical or pole-mical aims.

THE PAULINE PERSPECTIVE

            Pauline thought was to shape definitively the subsequent Christian use of Abrahamic imagery as a basis of both inclusion and exclusion.2 Paul was concerned primarily to justify the extension of divine calling to the Gentiles; the Jewish ethnic particularism with which he had been imbued gave way to a universal perspective. However, Paul’s line of thought, despite its initial intention, was to provide the basis for a new sort of exclusivism, one which excluded the Jews no less than Jewish particularism had excluded the Gentiles. Let us examine this line of thought under the following three points:

            (1) Paul saw two covenants in tension: the Mosaic and the Abrahamic. The former was the basis for Jewish particularism and the Jewish sense of superiority. Because it defined standing before God in terms of adherence to the Law given at Sinai, it effectively excluded the Gentiles, who were not part of the ethnos that practiced the "traditions of the ancestors" (cf. Gal. 1:14), especially circumcision.

            (2) Paul therefore argued for the priority of the Abrahamic covenant, seeing its foundation as the faith Abraham manifested in response to God, especially by "hoping against hope" (Rom. 4:18) in God’s promise that he would have progeny, despite his advanced age. Gentiles, no less than Jews, were capable of such faith and thus, no less than Jews, could be drawn into the arena of divine salvation (cf. Rom. 9:24-26, Gal. 3:6-9).

            Those children of Abraham who lived according to the Law were described by Paul as the enslaved children of Hagar, who represented "Mount Sinai in Arabia," where the Law was given. On the other hand, those children of Abraham who lived according to faith in God’s promise were no less than the free children of Sarah. They, like Isaac (rather than Ishmael), were "children of the promise" (Rom. 4:21-31). The message was clear: for Paul, faith, not compliance with the Mosaic Law, was the sine qua non of inclusion in the ranks of God’s elect. By his faith (even before his circumcision) Abraham became the father of all -- circumcised and uncircumcised, Jew and Gentile alike (Rom. 4:11-12). The Mosaic covenant, which appeared four hundred thirty years afterward only as a deterrent to rampant transgression, did not annul the terms of this inclusive Abrahamic, faith-based, promise-centered covenant (cf. Gal. 3:17-19, Rom. 4:13-14).

            In short, Paul argued for the inclusive, rather than the ex-clusive, shape of God’s plan, for the priority of faith in God (of which all, both Jews and Gentiles, were capable), over performance of the works of the Law (of which only the Jews, the sole possessors of the Mosaic tradition, were capable).

            (3) But Paul then made a move which introduced an ex-clusivistic tendency in his rationale for inclusivity: he re-defined faith. No longer was the faith necessary for God’s favor the faith in God exhibited by Abraham; it was now defined specifically as faith in Christ (Rom. 10:9-13, cf. Gal. 2:15-16; Gal. 2:15-16). Thus the vast majority of the Jews, once the sole possessors of special status in the divine plan, were now excluded. Only a remnant of Israel remained in the ranks of the elect of God (Rom. 11:5-10); the rest were like branches lopped off a tree, which could be re-grafted only by coming to faith in Christ (Rom. 11:17ff.). Thus, the appeal to faith, originally a justification for inclusion, became the basis of a new exclusion. The old form of particularism -- that of the Jewish "racial ethnos" -- gave way to a new form of particularism -- that of a Christian "faith ethnos."

            It is ironic that, even in advancing this new teaching of inclusive salvation, Paul actually depended on the very foundation of Jewish exclusivism, viz., the racial-ethnic understanding of descent from Abraham. But, one many object, did not Paul replace biological lineage with faith as the criterion for Abrahamic descent? Yes and no. What faith won for the believer was incorporation into Christ, whom Paul saw as the sperma ("seed," i.e., offspring) of Abraham to whom the promises made to Abraham applied (Gal. 3:16; cf. Gen. 22:17-18). That is, through baptism, both Jew and Greek could become descendants of Abraham by being in Christ, whose Abrahamic pedigree was incontrovertible. Thus, in a sense, Gentiles were to be made "adopted Jews" in Christ!

            Then, by an exegetical sleight of hand, Paul contended that one could be a descendant of Abraham only by incorporation into Christ. He saw the term "offspring" mentioned in Genesis 22:17-18 as referring to Christ alone, since it is in the singular (Gal. 3:16), even though the noun clearly has a collective sense. But, one may ask, if being an offspring of Abraham was the necessary condition for becoming an heir to the promises made to him (as Paul seemed to assume) then why were the Jews, already the descendants of Abraham, excluded? Why was Christ now the only descendant to whom the promises applied? Again, in defending inclusion (of the Gentiles baptized into Christ), Paul introduced grounds for ex-clusion of those biological descendants of Abraham who did not have faith in Christ and who were not baptized into him.

THE PERSPECTIVE OF THE AUTHOR OF HEBREWS

            Paul affirmed the priority of Abraham over Moses. The author of the letter to the Hebrews, however, went further; he declared the preeminence of Jesus over both Moses and Abraham. As a high priest according to the order of Melchizedek (cf. Heb. 5:5, 6:20), Christ was superior to Abraham in that Melchizedek received a tithe of spoils from Abraham and blessed him (Heb. 7:6); now, "it is beyond dispute that the inferior is blessed by the superior" (Heb. 7:7). Christ was of the superior priesthood of Melchizedek, which outranked the Levitical priesthood descended from Abraham (Heb. 7:9ff.). The latter was only a pale reflection of the true priesthood of Christ, exercised in the true, heavenly sanctuary (Heb. 8). Thus Christ became the mediator of a new and superior covenant, which superseded the old (Heb. 9-10).

            In short, if Paul wanted to free believers from responsibility for fulfilling the stipulations of the Mosaic covenant, the author of Hebrews wanted to present the new covenant mediated by Jesus as superior to both the Mosaic and the Abrahamic.

            Even though the author of Hebrews did not once specifically mention the Gentiles -- his purpose seemed to be to bolster the faltering faith of Jewish Christians (cf. Heb. 2:1ff., 6:4-6) -- his ar-gumentation nevertheless served to open Christianity to all, Gentile as well as Jew, since the inferior, specifically Jewish, covenantal form was no longer in force. All that was now necessary was faith like that of the luminaries of the old covenant (Heb. 11), only now this faith was to be focused on "Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith" (Heb. 12:2). Such an affirmation of faith could be made by both Jews and Gentiles, thus making the divine covenant accessible to all. However, it denigrated the standing of those who continue to adhere to the old, "inferior" Mosaic covenant. Thus, once again, a line of thought that justified inclusion also provided the basis for a new sort of exclusion.

THE GOSPELS’ RESPONSE TO JEWISH CLAIMS

            REGARDING ABRAHAM

            The Matthean, Lukan, and Johannine communities were en-gaged in adversarial relationships with their Jewish counterparts. These gospels, therefore, include repudiations of the Jews’ claim to superiority by virtue of their descent from Abraham. John the Baptist in both the gospels of Matthew and Luke (the logion is apparently drawn by both from Q) tells the quintessential Jews, the Pharisees and the Sadducees, not to "presume to say to your-selves, `We have Abraham as our ancestor’; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham" (Mt. 3:9; cf. Lk. 3:8). In an even blunter denunciation of Jewish claims to special status, Matthew and Luke, again drawing from Q, portray Jesus as asserting that Gentiles will displace Jews in the kingdom of heaven. Amazed by the Roman centurion’s faith, Jesus says that "in no one in Israel have I found such faith" (Mt. 8:10, Lk. 7:9) and that "many will come from east and west and will eat with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, while the heirs of the kingdom will be thrown into the outer darkness" (Mt. 8:11-12; cf. Lk. 13:28-29).3

Similarly, in John 8, Jesus contests the Jews’ right to call themselves children of Abraham: They answered him, "Abraham is our father." Jesus said to them, "If you were Abraham’s children, you would be doing what Abraham did, but now you are trying to kill me . . . this is not what Abraham did" (Jn. 8:39-40).

Perhaps even more significantly, the Johannine Jesus dismisses the argument from Abrahamic descent on another count: by claiming his own pre-eminence over Abraham: "Your ancestor Abraham rejoiced that he was to see my day. . . . Very truly, I tell you, before Abraham was, I am!" (Jn. 8:56, 58).

            In these texts, one discerns three principles of the early church’s response to the Jewish claims to superiority by virtue of Abrahamic descent: first, that God can -- and indeed will -- raise up other children to Abraham (i.e., the Gentiles), who will displace the Jews; second, faith, rather than biological lineage, establishes one in divine favor; and third, Jesus supersedes Abraham as the touchstone of special standing before God. The motivation behind such principles is evident: to broaden the restrictive covenantal understanding of Second Temple Judaism (at least as understood by the New Testament authors). Ethnic particularism was repu-diated; universal ethnic accessibility to covenanted status was espoused.

PATRISTIC ELABORATIONS

            The foregoing discussion indicates that the various New Testament authors found the figure of Abraham useful for the purpose of broadening the scope of the divine economy. All re-cognized the need for reinterpreting this fundamental figure in Jewish self-understanding to make him "belong" to Gentiles as well. But we have detected a tendency among the New Testament authors to move from using Abrahamic imagery to justify inclusion of the Gentiles to using it to justify exclusion of the Jews. This tendency became more and more pronounced in the literature generated by Christians after the New Testament period. Gra-dually, Abraham was re-defined; he was no longer to be seen as the primordial Jew but as the primordial Christian.4 In other words, Abraham was gradually "taken away" from the Jews and given exclusively to the Christians.

            Consider, for example, how Abraham is depicted in the writings of Justin Martyr (d. 165), Irenaeus (d. ca, 200), Eusebius (d. ca. 340), and John Chrysostom (d. ca. 407).5 In his Dialogue with Trypho the Jew, Justin claims Abraham for the Christians by asserting that Abraham was called by none other than the voice of Christ; it was to Christ that the great patriarch responded. Christians, Justin says, respond to the same voice and thus will be privileged to "inherit the Holy Land together with Abraham, re-ceiving our inheritance for all eternity, because by our similar faith we have become children of Abraham." Therefore, Christians -- not the faithless Jews, he tells Trypho -- are the nation promised to Abraham (ch. 119). The Jews have effectively been "disinherited":

The effect of so radically divorcing Judaism from the promises and from the Christ is that the heritage of the Jews, seeming to promise so rich a harvest, becomes in Justin’s hands mere chaff. Apart from the promises, the Jews have no roots in the past, no grounding. Apart from the Christ, the Jews have no hope in the future, no deliverance. Without the promises and the Christ, the Jews have no part in God, as Justin in fact claims.6

            In a similar vein, Irenaeus, in his Against Heresies, argues that Christianity is not to be seen as a new religion but rather as the ancient faith that brought Abraham to righteousness: for just as Abraham followed the word of God and left "his earthly kindred . . ., walking as a pilgrim with the Word, that he might [afterwards] have his abode with the Word," so the apostles, in following Christ, followed the very Word of God, thus making them participants in the same righteousness as Abraham. We also, by following Christ the Word, possess the same faith as Abraham (iv.6.3-4). Furthermore, because Abraham was a prophet, he foresaw the coming of Christ: "the Lord, therefore, was not unknown to Abraham, whose day he desired to see" (Against Heresies iv.6.5; cf. Jn. 8:56). It is through Christ the Word, who appeared to him in bodily form (cf. Gen. 18), that Abraham came to know the Father (iv.7.1). By not receiving Christ as God’s Word, "but imagining that they could know the Father without the Word, that is, without the Son," the Jews "departed from God" (iv.7.4). In essence, then, Irenaeus argues that the Abrahamic faith was Christian, not Jewish! [See also iv.21.1, iv.25.1.]

            The same line of argument is developed by Eusebius in his Church History. He asserts that Christianity is not something new, but rather the restoration of the ancient religion of righteousness. "All those who have enjoyed the testimony of righteousness," he claims, "from Abraham himself back to the first man, were Christians in fact if not in name" (i.4.6). They knew the "very Christ of God," who appeared to Abraham, imparted revelations to Isaac, and conversed with Jacob, Moses, and the prophets (i.4.8). The Mosaic stipulations (circumcision, observance of the Sabbath, dietary restrictions), at the core of Jewish religious identity, were irrelevant to this righteousness. Thus the Mosaic covenant was simply an intrusion in the process of salvation, an obfuscation of the original Abrahamic faith. Christianity, on the other hand, is its restoration:

So that it is clearly necessary to consider that religion, which has lately been preached to all nations through the teaching of Christ, the first and most ancient of all religions, and the one dis-covered by those divinely favored men in the age of Abraham. . . . But that very religion of Abraham has reappeared at the present time, practiced in deeds, more efficacious than words, by Christians throughout the world. What then should prevent the confession that we who are of Christ practice one and the same mode of life and have one and the same religion as those divinely favored men of old? (i.4.10, 14-15).

Again, the faith of Abraham is equated with the faith of Christians, and Judaism is derogated as expressive not of the Abrahamic but of the Mosaic covenant.

            Thus the figure of Abraham, initially adduced to justify the inclusion of Gentiles in the economy of salvation along with the Jews, was now being invoked to explain the exclusion of the Jews from that economy. The Jews, by means of the figure of Abraham, were now being disinherited, dispossessed of their patrimony.

            This "disinheritance" is clearly taught by John Chrysostom (d. 407). In commenting on John 8:42-44, he states plainly, that Christ "drove them out" of their relationship to Abraham, telling them that "they not only are not Abraham’s children, but that they are even children of the devil." He thus inflicts a wound on the Jews, "which might counterbalance their shamelessness."7

RITUALIZING INCLUSION AND EXCLUSION:

            BAPTISM AND THE EUCHARIST

            The dynamic of inclusion and exclusion discussed above found expression in the liturgical tradition of Christianity, most notably in baptismal and eucharistic rites. As we have seen, Paul’s thought established baptism as the means by which all, Gentile no less than Jew, could become one of the progeny of Abraham. Baptism "incorporated" one into Christ, the "seed" of Abraham, to whom the ancient promises applied. But if baptism opened Abra-hamic patrimony to all, it also served as a primary means of defining "the other," i.e., the non-Christian who was not baptized.

            Similarly, the emphasis on the new and superior covenant mediated by Christ led to the increased importance of the ritual meal by which that covenant was re-presented and re-sealed among believers, i.e., the eucharist. To be sure, the "breaking of the bread" had been central to Christian practice from the earliest days of the movement (Acts 2:42; cf. Lk. 24:35), but its mystical significance as an affirmation of the covenant through participation in the sacrificed body and shed blood of Christ increased its sig-nificance in Christian practice. Again, this rite served to draw together those from every nation who professed faith in Christ, thus serving as an effective sign of Christianity’s inclusivity, but it also drew a clear boundary between those who were in the community and those who were outside. Exclusion from the sacramental table ritually expressed exclusion from the community itself.

            Furthermore, it was not only in these sacramental rites that Christian liturgy expressed its new inclusivity and exclusivity. Numerous texts gave expression to the universal claim of Christianity to the Gentiles, as well as its definitive exclusion of the Jews. One text used during the Lenten services of the Orthodox Church gives powerful expression to both sentiments:

            Israel has clothed itself with fine linen and purple,

            shining with sacred, royal garments,

            rejoicing in the services of the Law,

            rich in the Law and the prophets!

            But it has crucified thee outside its gates,

            rejecting thy life after the death on the cross,       

            O Thou who art ever in the bosom of the Father.  

            Now Israel thirsts for just a drop of grace,

            like the merciless rich man who left poor Lazarus

            and went in purple and fine linen

            into the unending flames!

            Israel is sick as it beholds the Gentiles,

            who before possessed not even a bit of truth,

            but who now warm themselves in the bosom

            of the faith of Abraham! . . .

            (Apostichon of Matins, Wednesday of Palm Week)

Such themes recur throughout Great (Holy) Week texts in the Orthodox service books, with the exclusivistic, anti-Judaic element reaching its peak on Great Thursday and Great Friday. The inclu-sivistic theme emerges with greatest strength on the Feast of Pentecost (on the fiftieth day after Pasch), on which the opening of the gospel to all nations is commemorated (cf. Acts 2).

            Needless to say, the power of liturgical texts and actions, not only in Orthodoxy but in other Christian traditions as well, has done much to imprint the inclusive-exclusive dialectic on the minds of worshippers. This doubtlessly is part of the reason that the Roman Catholic Church has taken constructive steps to eliminate some of its more inflammatory texts giving expression to the exclusivistic perspective, tempering them to affirm the continuing inclusion of the Jews in the divine plan. Consider, for example, the following three texts, each giving the content of the Prayer for the Jews found in the Good Friday Liturgy of the Roman Church. The first is from the Tridentine missal, the second from the 1966 revised missal, and the third from the post-Vatican II missal now in use:

            (1) Let us also pray for the faithless Jews (pro perfidis Judaeis): that our God and Lord would withdraw the veil from their hearts: that they also may acknowledge our Lord Jesus Christ. . . . Almighty and eternal God, who drivest not away from Thy mercy even the faithless Jews, hear our prayer, which we offer for the blindness of that people: that acknowledging the light of Thy truth, which is Christ, they may be delivered from their darkness. . . .8

            (2) Let us also pray that our God and Lord will look kindly on the Jews, so that they too may acknowledge the Redeemer of all, Jesus Christ our Lord. . . . Almighty and eternal God, you made the promises to Abraham and his descendants. In your goodness hear the prayers of your Church so that the people whom from of old you made your own may come to the fullness of redemption. . . .9

            (3) Let us pray for the Jewish people, the first to hear the word of God, that they may continue to grow in the love of his name and in faithfulness to his covenant. . . . Almighty and eternal God, long ago you gave your promise to Abraham and his posterity. Listen to your Church as we pray that the people you first made your own may arrive at the fullness of redemption. . . .10

            The differing views of inclusion and exclusion inherent in these prayers are immediately evident. The progression in them in-dicates a willingness to re-think Christian claims of exclusivity, at least as they pertain to Jewish participation in the Abrahamic pro-mises.11 Prayers (2) and (3) establish that Abraham and his promises belong not only to the Christian but to the Jew as well.12 In other words, these changes in liturgical prayers symbolize a re-emphasis of Abraham as a principle of inclusion rather than of exclusion, a reaffirmation of a universal rather than a particularist Christian vision.

EXCLUSION WITHOUT VILIFICATION,

            INCLUSION WITHOUT INDIFFERENCE

            We have seen how, from its inception, the Christian move-ment defined itself within a dialectic of inclusion and exclusion, between universalism and particularism. The nascent Church moved to justify the opening of the Gospel to the Gentiles; it there-fore needed to broaden the definition of Israel, the elect of God, from the definition then obtaining among the Jews. This meant that the Church had to look beyond the Mosaic Law, which belonged only to the Jews, for the criterion of election. We have seen that Paul blazed the trail in this development, highlighting not the figure of Moses but the figure of Abraham, by whom "all the families of earth shall bless themselves" (Gen. 12:3). Paul affirmed that faith like Abraham’s, not legal observance, was the necessary condition of divine favor. Gentiles, no less than Jews, were capable of such faith. Moreover, by baptism into Christ, the "seed of Abraham," Gentiles became his adopted progeny -- adopted Israelites, so to speak -- and therefore heirs to the promises made to him. Paul’s aim was clear: to include the Gentiles, not to exclude the Jews. He denied that God has rejected the Jews (cf. Rom. 11:1). His view was not triumphalistic.13

            But the use of Abraham as a principle of inclusion gradually gave way to his use as a principle of exclusion. This tendency is already evident in the gospels of Matthew, Luke, and John. It emerges in full force in Christian texts after the New Testament period, as early as the second century. Abraham is no longer depicted as the patriarch of the Jews but of the Christians. He him-self was a Christian, and his faith was in Christ. Thus the Jews were disinherited and dispossessed. The thought of the author of He-brews helped further to denigrate the religion of the Jews by asserting that the new covenant mediated by Jesus was superior to those of both Abraham and Moses; to be a Jew was to be party to an inferior relationship with God.

            In developing a theology that justified universalism, Christ-ianity also began to develop a strong sense of its own particularity. Its boundaries, expressed in liturgical rites and texts, became more and more defined. Judaism, the root from which Christianity grew, was now seen as "the other," outside the arena of divine grace. Thus the flip-side of Christianity’s inclusivity was its exclusivity. The initial impulse to include was mitigated by a tendency to exclude.

            Did things have to develop this way? Perhaps. It is quite natural that boundaries be drawn between different groups and that one group use the other as a "foil" against which to define itself. Human beings seem to have a need to be distinct, to stand apart from others, in order to have an identity. Because it is difficult to form an identity positively, i.e., to articulate and internalize what it is that makes them or their collectivity unique, many opt for the "apophatic" path to identity-formation, i.e., for developing a sense of who and what they are by making explicit who and what they are not. The bolder and sharper the lines of demarcation the better.

            In part, this explains what happened in Christianity: Christians defined themselves over and against their parent re-ligion, Judaism. To be sure, as the centuries went on, Christians took great pains to define who they were; but alongside this "po-sitive" or "cataphatic" identity formation was always the tendency to affirm an identity in opposition to Judaism.

            It is interesting to speculate how Christianity would have developed differently if it had not followed this path, if it had not fallen prey to the urge to define itself exclusivistically or against Judaism, if it had avoided vilifying and excluding the Jews, if it had included Judaism alongside itself as a fellow beneficiary of divine favor. Would such inclusiveness in any way have harmed Christ-ianity? Would it in any way have diminished its fresh perspective? I think not. Despite a continuing affirmation of the legitimacy of the Judaic covenantal relationship with God, Christianity would have flourished as an alternative which would certainly have been better suited to most non-Jews (and not a few Jews as well) who wanted to be drawn into relationship with the God of Israel without having to embrace all the stipulations of the Mosaic Law. At first, it is true, Jews anathematized Christians as heretics (minim), but would they have come to see Christianity as a sort of Judaism for Gentiles if Christians had not so enthusiastically reciprocated their ana-themas? Of course, we will never know the answers to such questions, but it is intriguing to speculate.

            These questions, however, do suggest a means of re-orientation for contemporary Christianity. Could Christians today not affirm an "Abrahamic dynamic" in which, rather than displacing the Jews, they would stand alongside them in the divine economy? It seems that undergirding the revised prayers noted above is this sort of reorientation. Without betraying its universal scope or its commitment to pan-ethnic mission, Christianity could still affirm the validity of Jewish particularity as being in conformity with the divine purpose. In so doing, it would reclaim the perspective that Paul himself seemed to affirm in Romans 11: the resistance of the Jews to the Christian message, no matter how vexing to Christians, is somehow in accord with the riches, wisdom, knowledge, and inscrutable will of God (cf. 11:32). Contemporary Christianity could thus introduce into Christian thought a corrective to the develop-ment in nascent Christianity by which the imperative to include the Gentiles was coupled with a hostile exclusion of the Jews.

CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS

            Christianity certainly cannot betray its universal impulse. Christians affirm that the gospel overcomes ethnic particularity and racial exclusivism. Christianity discerns in history a process by which God invites all nations into covenantal relationship with God and with each other.14 National and ethnic antagonism fades. Re-ligious "tribalism" is overcome. Division gives way to community.

            The figure of Abraham was the principle by which such a universal vision was justified in the context of Second Temple Judaism. But does this vision require that his children "according to faith" displace and dispossess his children "according to the flesh"? Abraham has been used as both a principle of inclusion and a principle of exclusion in Christian thought. For centuries his role as the latter has been at the fore. Perhaps it is time to re-emphasize his role as the former.

NOTES

            1. All scriptural citations are from the NRSV (Division of Christian Education of the NCC, 1989).

            2. Paul’s use of Abrahamic imagery has been the focus of a number of studies yet unpublished, among which are: F. D. Layman, "Paul’s Use of Abraham: An Approach to Paul’s Under-standing of History" (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Iowa, 1972); M. T. Irvin, "Paul’s Use of the Abraham Image in Romans and Galatians" (Ph.D. dissertation, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 1985); G. E. Robertson, "Paul and the Abrahamic Tra-dition: The Background of Abraham and the Law in Galatians 3-4 and Romans 4" (Ph.D. dissertation, Southwestern Baptist Theo-logical Seminary, 1988); R. A. Harrisville, "In the Footsteps of Abraham: The Figure of Abraham in the Epistles of Saint Paul" (Ph.D. dissertation, Union Theological Seminary, 1990).

            3. The Gospel of Luke makes other references, less adver-sarial in tone, to Abrahamic descent as the distinctive Jewish claim. See 1:55, 1:73, 13:16, 16:23-31, 19:9; also Acts 3:25, 7:2, 13:26.

            4. Note that this claim closely parallels the early Islamic assertion that Islam was not a new religion but rather the res-toration of the ancient religion practiced by Abraham. An interesting study on this topic is: R. D. Parks, "Abraham, the `First Christian’ and the `First Muslim’: Hermeneutics of a Religious Symbol in Western Christianity and Sunni Islam" (Ph.D. dissertation, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 1987).

            5. Patristic quotations are from the Eerdmans series tran-slation, The Ante-Nicene Fathers and The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers.

            6. J. S. Siker, Disinheriting the Jews: Abraham in Early Christian Controversy (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1991), p. 184.

            7. Homilies in St. John, Homily 54.

            8. St. Andrew Daily Missal (St. Paul, MN: E. M. Lohmann, 1940), pp. 566-567.

            9. English-Latin Roman Missal for the United States of America (New York: Benziger, 1966), p. 317.

            10. The Liturgy of the Holy Week (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1980), p. 88. The Lutheran Book of Worship (1978, p. 140) contains essentially the same prayer in its Good Friday Liturgy: "Let us pray for the Jewish people, the first to hear the Word of God, that they may receive the fulfillment of the covenant’s promises. . . . Almighty and eternal God, long ago you gave your promise to Abraham and his posterity. Hear the prayers of your Church that the people you first made your own may arrive with us at the fullness of redemption. . . ."

            11. Such rethinking of the place of Jews in Christian self-understanding, both Catholic and Protestant, has been an ongoing process, much to extensive to recapitulate here. A few of the more recent resources for understanding the issues and dynamics of this process are the following: WCC, The Theology of the Churches and the Jewish People (Geneva: WCC Publications, 1988); W. Harrelson and R. M. Falk, Jews and Christians: A Troubled Family (Nashville: Abingdon, 1990); H. H. Ditmanson, ed., Stepping-Stones to further Jewish-Lutheran Relationships (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1990); J. Rousmaniere, A Bridge to Dialogue: the Story of Jewish-Christian Relations (New York: Paulist Press/Stimulus, 1991); M. Shermis and A. E. Zannoni, eds., Introduction to Jewish-Christian Relations (New York: Paulist Press, 1991); H. Ucko, Common Roots, New Horizons (Geneva: WCC Publications, 1994).

            12. This notion is expressed in the Vatican II declaration regarding non-Christians, Nostra Aetate, which states: "As the holy Scripture testifies, Jerusalem did not recognize the time of her visitation (cf. Lk. 19:44), nor did the Jews in large number accept the gospel; indeed, not a few opposed the spreading of it (cf. Rom. 11:28). Nevertheless, according to the Apostle, the Jews still remain most dear to God because of their fathers, for He does not repent of the gifts He makes nor of the calls He issues (cf. Rom. 11:28-29)." W. M. Abbott, ed. The Documents of Vatican II (New York: Guild Press, 1966), pp. 664-665.

            13. K. Stendahl contends that "one of the most striking elements of Paul’s anti-triumphalism lies exactly in the fact that in Romans Paul does not fight Judaism but reaches a point where he warns the Gentile Christians against feelings of superiority toward Judaism and the Jews (Rom. 9-11, esp. 11:11-35 which climaxes in a non-christological doxology). When it dawns on Paul that the Jesus movement is to be a Gentile movement -- God being allowed to establish Israel in his own time and way -- then we have no triumphalist doctrine, but a line of thought which Paul uses in order to break the religious imperialism of Christianity." Paul Among Jews and Gentiles (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1976), p. 132.