Other chapter reviews in this series: 1-4 5 6 7 8 9
A body you have prepared for me, ... I come to do your will. (Hebrews 10:5-7 reading the LXX for Psalm 40:6-8)
Chapter 10 of the subject book, Tikva Frymer-Kensky, David Novak, Peter Ochs, David Fox Sandmel, Michael A. Signer, Christianity in Jewish Terms, is entitled Embodiment. Is incarnation anathema to Judaism? Even if we read Psalm 40 in the Hebrew - my ear you have pierced or dug - perhaps reflecting the servant song of Isaiah: day by day you open my ear - we still have a human body doing the will of God. Is God incarnate as servant anathema to Judaism?
In the chapter's first essay, Judaism and Incarnation: The Imaginal Body of God, Elliot R. Wolfson cites Hans Joachim Schoeps:
Christological doctrine in itself - the belief that God has become man and has allowed his only-begotten son to suffer sacrificial death as a propitiation for the sins of mankind - has remained, as Paul rightly says, a 'stumbling block' to the Jews. It is an impossible article of belief, which detracts from God's sovereignty and absolute otherness - an article which, in fact, destroys the world. (The Jewish-Christian Argument: A History of Theologies in Conflict 1963)
Now there is a true statement! Christians should believe this statement completely - for God in Christ has indeed destroyed the world. That's why the resurrection is good news. Every other doctrine should be commentary.
to be continued...
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