Christian responses to the Holocaust. A.J. Taylor 1991

8/22/2019 Christian responses to the Holocaust. A.J. Taylor 1991

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Christian Responses to theHolocaust

Adam Taylor

The Crisis of ChristianityThe Shoah happened in the presence and knowledge of Christians.Some were involved, but most simply had a world view, born of theirChristian background, which allowed the defamation, persecution andmurder of Jews to take place. That Christianity can spawn such awortdview surely tests the credibility of the Christian religious tradition.

If one were to ask the question, "What was the Christian responseto the Holocaust?" the answer would be simple: there was no single,monolithic Christian response to the Holocaust. Even the question,"What were the Christian responses to the Holocaust?" is problematic.There was no definitive Catholic or Protestant Church policy towardsJews in Wor1d War II. Furthermore, it is important to distinguish betweena church "policy", or an "official . church response, and the livingthoughts and actions of Christians in the Holocaust and in its wake.Those thoughts and actions are as diverse as the human beingsresponsible for them, and possess no monolithic quality.

In dealing with particular Christian responses to the Holocaust, oneis thus dealing with individuals and their actions - matters of historicalrecord. But in attempting to identify some kind of generic Christianresponse, one enters the realm of theology; that is, a faith in search of


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Adam TaylorseJfunderstanding. An important part of this particular search for selfunderstanding involves surveying the antecedents of the Christianresponse to the Holocaust; in other words, confronting the history ofChristian Jewhatred. A concomitant irony of this history is theJewishness of Jesus.

Once faith finds its selfunderstanding, it still demands actions tolegitimize it. It is only when Christians come to recognize thesignifjcance of what Arthur Cohen has called the Tremendum of ourage (Cohen, 1984: 12) that they realize the imperative which theHolocaust brings in terms of Christian action. Until then, it is notpossible for Christians to act appropriately in relationship to theHolocaust and to Jews. They simply "know not what they do." (Luke23:43).

There are then three specific elements to be addressed if theChristian is now to face the Holocaust and be transformed by it. As hasbeen intimated above, they are Christian antisemitism, the Jewishnessof Jesus, and the role played by Christian intellectuals and othersignificant individuals during the Holocaust. These three factors add upto a dilemma that has been termed "The Crisis of Christianity "1 Thispaper will journey past some individual responses to the Holocaust, aswell as look for some generic response, but most of all it will offer apersonal response belonging to the generation after the event, theaim of which is to show that ChrisUans can be self-critical and willing toadapt to the demands made by the Holocaust.1. Christian AntisemitismThe seed of Nazi antisemitism sprang up in the fertile ground ofcenturies of Christian antisemitism. It is sometimes suggested thatantisemitism was spawned in the civilizations of the Ptolemys, theSeleucids, and the Romans, long bef.ore the C h r i s t i ~ n s . It is not to bedenied that there were instances of words or actions against Jews inthese ancient civilizations, but the basis of these instances had noneof the characteristics of Christian antisemitism (or indeed .the racialantisemitism of the Nazis). For example, Antiochus Epiphanes

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Christian Responses to the Holocaustdecrees against the Jews of 167 BCE were about political andeconomic overlordship over a people who looked as if their leadersmight be moving their allegiance to Egypt; it was not based on religiousor a ~ i a l notions of superiority (Tcherikover, 1979: 175-203). The realityis that of the approximately 500 references to Jews in ancient literature,a sizable number of them are favourable (Anderson, 1990).2 The Jewsalready had at that time a rich and ancient tradition. The Hellenists had atremendous fascination with Judaism. The Romans, especially,admired long tradition and elaborate ritual.

2 ~ The Jewlshness of JesusBy the turn of the present century, Christians had forgotten the articleof the Christian creed which states that Jesus the Christ was truly Godand truly man. They clung to the Christ concept (a Christ revealed onlyin the cultural and ethnic guise of the believer), but forgot Jesus theman in history. An amusing example of this Christian ethnocentrismwas given by the Episcopalian Bishop John Shelby Spong on hisrecent speaking tour of Australia. He related the story of the woman inhis parish who objected to the introduction of the Revised StandardVersion of the Bible in English for the scripture readings in her parish."If the King James Bible was good enough for Jesus," she grumbled,"it's good enough for me" (Spong, 1991 ).

Attempts were made to find the Jesus of History. Around the turn ofthe century, Albert Schweitzer took on the famous Quest of theHistorical Jesus. But he concluded that the historical Jesus could not

be discovered (Schweitzer. 1954). A basic fact w ~ s tragically forgotten:that Jesus of .Nazareth, whom Christians recognize as the Messiah. wasnever anything but Jewish. For several generations, the earlyChristians remained a Jewish sect, and thereafter are difficult todistinguish ~ r o m JevJs and Jewish practice for several centuries. Writingaround the turn of the first century CE, Ignatius of Antioch polemicizesagainst Jews precisely because Christians are adopting Jewishpractices (Meeks, Wilken, 1978: 20). Archaeologists when uncoveringancient sanctuaries of the Levant of the second century CE, have hadtrouble distinguishing whether they are Christian church or Jewish

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Adam Taylorsynagogue, or whether Jewish-Christian self-definition had proceededfar enough at that stage and in that place for such a distinction even tobe made at all (Meyers, Strange, 1981: 130-39; 170-71). JohnChrysostom, the fourth century Church Father responsible for bitterinvective against the Jews was motivated by the fact that his communitywas frequenting the synagogue and the Jewish festivals (Meeks,Wilken, 1978: 85ff).3 It is thus correct for Krister Stendahl to say"Christians are a special kind of Jew." (Littel, 1974: 18). However, suchperspectives were not a part of European Christianity in the first half ofthis century.3. The Role of the Intellectuals and the Actions ofSignificant IndividualsAnyone who argues that the road out of bigotry, prejudice andintolerance is education, in general, has their thesis sorely tested bythe Holocaust. There were more brains per square metre in Germany inthe 1920s and 1930s than anywhere else in Europe. The fact of thematter is that the Nazi killing machine, used in the Nazi war against theJews, was planned, engineered and deployed by German PhDs andMDs who were, almost without exception, baptized Christians (Littel,1985: 12; Littel, 1986: 13;20).

The question can be asked: How much more advanced are we, interms of ethics, values, morals and professional discipline than werethe German universities of the late 1920s? While Christian apostacywent on during the Nazi reign, very few Christian intellectuals spokeout, preferring the comfortable notion of ICkeeping out of politics" so asto keep the universities free of turmoil and controversy (Littel, 1974:21 ). There were some lonely voices - James Parkes, George Bell,Reinhold Neibuhr and Dietrich Bonhoeffer; but the majority of theChristian intellectuals must be questioned for their culpable silence.

This element of our examination of the Crisis of Christianity includes'1he actions of significant individuals." Perhaps it is better termed "thesignificant actions of individuals." The actions and the individualsconcerned are significant not necessarily because they were good or

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Christian Responses to the Holocaustright or representative, but because they stand out in history, orperhaps because many people took the lead, in their thoughts andactions, from these deeds and their initiators.

The first two elements of the Crisis, Christian antisemitism and theJewishness of Jesus, are tied up with the role of the intellectuals. Itwas intellectuals who cultivated the Christian teaching of contempt forJews, of which more will be mentioned later, and it has been Christianand Jewish scholars of the post-war period who have together madethe rediscovery of the J ~ w i s h n e s s of Jesus. Discussion of these twoelements wilf reflect much of the contribution of the intellectuals. In thefirst case, there is a realization that intellectuals played a role incontributing to the H o l o c a u ~ t ; this is a realization which has come out ofthe Holocaust, and it is one of the Christian sins. In the second case,we are looking at a rediscovery which reshapes both Christianity and itsrelationship to Judaism; this is a realization which has come out of theHolocaust and out of it can come Christian salvation. In describing eachof these elements, the impact of the Holocaust and the way in whichthe Christian tradition either is changing or must change can beconsidered. Such consideration is essential should Christianity wish tomaintain credibility in the post-Holocaust era.

Before proceeding with that task, something should be said aboutthe actions of a select few individuals, which, it has already beenpointed out, were not representative, but significant. Some of theseare recorded in a new book by Mark Aarons and John Loftus, entitledRatlines (1991}. Ratlines are the horizontal ropes on the rigging of tallships, which form a webbing up which sailors can clamber. During theSecond World War, lhe word was used generically to refer to theevacuation networks used by intelligence agents or airmen shot downover enemy territory. In Aarons and Loftus' book, the term refersspecifically to the network created by a small band of Vatican officials, incollaboration with Western intelligence agencies, for the evacuation ofNazis from Europe to South America and elsewhere. As Morris Westwrites in a review of the book, the pun in the title "is brutally simple - alot of obscene animals escaped the sinking ship of the thousand-yearReich over the Vatican ratlines" (West, 1991: 32).

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Adam Taylor

One of the characters involved in the operation was MonsignorGiovanni Montini, Pope Pius Xll's Undersecretary of State who was laterto become Pope Paul VI. Montini was responsible for organizing theVatican Information Service, whose apparent task was to trace missingpersons, refugees and POWs, and also to direct the Vatican campaignfor the resettlement of millions of refugees and displaced persons whoswarmed into Western European countries after the war (West, 1991:33).

The Vatican Information Service sponsored two majororganizations, Caritas International and the Pontifical Aid Commission.It was within the framework of these organizations that the Ratlineswere established. These Vatican organizations sought and receivedpermission for selected priests to visit civilian and POW camps,ostensibly to give spiritual and material food to the inmates; but someof the inmates were not innocents, and some of the priests were drivenby motives other than Christian charity.

One such person was Archbishop Alois Hudal, a German priest inresidence in Rome after 1945. In the early 1930s, as a professor of OldTestament Studies at Graz in Austria, he had travelled widelythroughout Germany and Italy preaching support for Adolph Hitler andthe National Socialists. Evidently, his rise to a position of authoritywithin the church was not barred by his pro-Nazi stance. After the war,Hudat admitted of his immediate post-war activities in his book RomanDiary.

The allies' war against Germany was not a crusade, butthe rivalry of economic complexes for which they hadbeen fighting . . . [A]II these experiences were thereason why I felt duty bound after 1945 to devote mywhole charitable work mainly to former NationalSocialists and Fascists, especially the so-called "warcriminals" (quoted in West, 1991: 33).With the value of hindsight, we can clearly see the paucity of hisdefence. Even in the context of its time it does not stand up well.

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Christian Responses to the Holocaust

Many have claimed that Pope Pius XII did not do enough to helpJewish victims of Nazi persecution. He was certainly aware of theirplight l:)y December 1939, when in his Christmas message he madereference to any ''nation or race" which had been "condemned todeath or progressive extinction" under the Nazis. This veiledreference to the Jews was supported by piecemeal directives by thePope: church property was made available in Rome for Jews; amountsof money were loaned to Jewish organizations; some Jews escapedon faked Vatican papers; recommendations were made that Religiouscongregations harbour Jews (Holmes, 1982: 7-15), and vaguecondemnations of National Socialism continued. In Western Europe,however, Pope Pius XII left local bishops to decide the policy of theCatholic Church towards Jews.

One must understand the limitations of what is the apparentCatholic Church monolith. While the Supreme Pontiff makes universaldeclarations, those declarations receive wildly different reception andinterpretation depending on the Catholic community concerned.Deference to the Papacy is dependent on the social, economic,political and religious climate of the day, let alone the historical andethnic background of the Catholic community who are listening toPapal words and actions. Correspondingly, some Catholiccommunities assisted Jews in Western Europe, others did nothing; yetothers worked actively against Jews.

The future Pope John XXIII was asking questions fromConstantinople, and according to Yehuda Bauer, the Pope of the timesaid nothing. Bauer goes on to say,It wouldn't have saved a single Jew if he had saidanything, but he might have saved his soul (Bauer,1991).

The Teaching of ContemptSo we come more generally to the question, why did the vast majorityof the Christian leaders in Germany bless the Nazi colours? Before

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Adam Tayloranswering this, let us look at one Christian who did not, DietrichBonhoeffer. For his part in a plot to overthrow Hitler, Bonhoeffer wasimprisoned and finally executed in a Nazi concentration camp. In hisday, he was recognized as a courageous opponent of Nazism. Today,he is respected as one of the great Protestant theologians of themodern era, who openly rejected as antisemitic the writings of hiseminent teacher, Kart Barth.

One might expect that Bonhoeffer's attitude to the Jews, theprimary victims of HitJer's reign of terror, was compassionate. Indeed itwas; in a sense. But a theological point he made in relation to the Jewsin 1933 should be noted. He wrote:

The Church of Christ has n e v ~ r lost sight of thethought that the ..chosen people" who nailed theredeemer of the world to the cross must bear the cursetor its action through a long history of suffering ... Butthe history of the suffering of this people, loved andpunished by God, stands under the sign of the finalhomecoming of Israel to its God . . . and thehomecoming happens in the conversion of Israel toChrist ... the conversion of lsraeJ, that is to be the end .of the people's period of suffering . . Each newattempt to solve 11the Jewish question" comes tonaught ... nevertheless such attempts must be made(quoted in Fleischner, 1975: 24-25).This was a man who had expressed concern about the wrongness

of Christian proselytization of Jews as early as 1926. A man who, bycalling for the formation of the State of Israel in 1943, was one of thefirst churchmen to do so (Littel, 1990). The statement by Bonhoefferquoted above was written in 1933, yet there is no evidence that hechanged his views on this matter. Bonhoeffer was eventuallymurdered by the Nazis on 8 April, 1945. It should be noted thatBonhoeffer had opposed the Nazis as a citizen, without reference toChristian values, so detective were the doctrinal tools he had gleanedfrom his Lutheran education (littel, 1973: 486). Had his doctrinal toolsbeen right, he could have opposed the Nazis firstly as a Christian, thenas a citizen. Bonhoeffer was no doubt quite unaware that he would be

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Christian Responses to the Holocaustheld up later as one of the great amongst the persecuted in themodern church. That a man such as Bonhoeffer harboured such viewsis an indication of the depth to which the "teaching of contempt"extended in Western Christianity.

The ''teaching of contempt" is a term coined by a French scholar,Jules Isaac (Isaac, 1964). He more than any other convinced PopeJohn XXIII of the importance of the consideration of Christian-Jewishrelations at the Catholic Church's Second Vatican Council (1962-65).He proposed that the teaching of contempt was the belief amongstChristians that the Jews had suffered a divine curse. The teaching ofcontempt was the theological response of Christianity to the fact thatthe Jews continued to exist in spite of the Christian revelation. InJesus' time the Jews had rejected the Messiah. They had forfeitedtheir right to be called God's people. Their suffering from those timeswas a punishment for their crime of deicide.

The Holocaust challenged Christianity in that it had to make senseof the survival of a resilient people, who defied the systematic,despicable and thoroughgoing attempt to eradicate it. Not onlysurvival, however, but also the rebirth of the Jewish nation after 1900years showed beyond doubt that the future of Judaism was assured.

The question with which Christians are now faced is howresponsible was Christian antisemitism for the Holocaust. Christianscholars such as Rosemary Ruether have argued forcefully thatChristianity has a direct guilt to bear (Ruether, 1974). Anti-Jewishconvictions are firmly implanted in the traditions of the Church Fathers(Ruether, 1979). The Mendicant Orders, who took the leading hand inthe execution of the Inquisition, had Jittfe compunction in attackingJews under whatever pretext could be found, although from a strictlylegal point of view the Inquisition had no jurisdiction over Jews per se(Cohen, J., 1982: 47). Popular anti-Jewish sentiment in medievaltimes periodically erupted into violence, most notably in the massacresof Jews occasioned by the First Crusade (Cohen, J., 1982: 51). Thethreat of violence made Jews increasingly reliant on the protection ofEurope's kings and princes; but Western rulers were committed to the

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Adam Taylorhegemony of Christianity as the only religious path to salvation.Correspondingly, the medieval Christian ruler could only takeresponsibility for the welfare of Christians; heretics and other nonbelievers were subject to expulsion or destruction. While Jews werethe exception to this general rule, the price they paid was inferior socioeconomic and residential status in European communities (Katz, 1982:5-6). This status was still evident on the eve of the Holocaust.

The following letter from a Protestant clergyman of Berlin was sentto Hitler, Goering and Goebbles in reference to Kristallnacht, inDecember 1938. While the letter, from Pastor Erich Klapproth,protests the actions of the Third Reich, there is no questioning of theunderlying lowly status of the Jews.

The events that occurred amongst our people on andafter November 9th of this year force me to take a clearstand. Far be it from me to disregard the sins that manymembers of the Jewish people have committedagainst our Fatherland, especially during the lastdecades; also, far be it from me to deny the right oforderly and moderate proceedings against the Jews ...(Kulka, 1982: 232).

There was a deafening silence from the German Catholic bishops at thetime of the Kristallnacht pogroms referred to in this letter (Conway,1982: 349).By the first half of 1943, the fate of the Jewish deportees wascommon knowledge amongst the German people (Kulka, 1982: 236).The rise to power of the Nazis had been received favourably by themajority of German Catholics, who saw in Hitler the country's best

defence against Bolshevism (Conway, 1982: 349).Fascism, with its roots as much as anywhere in 19th centuryRomanticism (Sternhell, 1976), sought to return the German people to

a "mythical monism of the past" (Littel, 1974: 14). Baptized Christiansin Germany had long forgotten the fact that Christianity began as acounter-cultural movement. They were consumed in the secular

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Christian Responses to the Holocaustculture of their Teutonic ethnicity to such a degree that the distinctionbetween the values of the state and the values of the Christianreligious tradition were muddied if not lost (Littel, 1974: 14). In theireagerness to "rid the world of atheistic Communism,,. baptizedChristians were prepared to allow and even participate in Nazipersecution. Their role has a doubfe evil. As well as persecution it wasChristian apostacy (Littel, 1974: 16).

Franklin Littel, the American Protestant theologian, relates the storyof a Nuremberg rally to which he was invited. He describes theexperience as having an atmosphere of intense spirituality. Germany,he suggests, had not seen so much spirituality as this for 200 years.Littel adds that it was a spirituality struck through with evil and withoutbiblical base (Littel, 1990). Christian men were heard to say withmisguided sincerity, as Hitler rose to power: "Adolph Hitler is God's manfor Germany" (Littel, 1990). Clearly indicated here is the problem--thecrisis for Christianity in the Holocaust and indeed beyond it: what was,and still is, the role of the "good people"; people who are antisemiticwithout even realizing it?

Jn the aftermath of it all, there does not appear to have been any farreaching attempt to rethink Catholic doctrine as a result of theseevents. As John Conway notes:The heated controversy which arose in the early1960s over the so-called silence of Pope Pius XIItowards the suffering of the Jews concentrated on thealleged diplomatic and political shortcomings ofVatican policy rather than on the theologicalpresuppositions [like the Teaching of Contempt)which may have guided the Curia's attitudes towardsthe persecution of the Jews {Conway, 1982: 350).

Protestant church statements also, from the first World Council ofChurches Assembly in 1948, have, in the main, failed to acknowledgechurch responsibility and coercion in modern antisemitism. There havebeen some notable exceptions. A joint statement from a 2000 strong

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Adam TaylorRoman Catholic and Protestant ecumenical meeting in Germany inJune of 1971, contained two important themes. It said,

Ecumenical encounters without Jewish participationare incomplete. because without the Jewish roots theChristian faith develops wrongly, unbiblically.It also said,

The concrete consequences of ecumenicalcooperation between Jews and Christians isexpressed also in strategic solidarity with the state ofIsrael and its people as also in political involvement forpeace in the Middle East (littel, 1973: 487).

The Protestant Churches' Declaration of the Rhineland .Synod ofJanuary 1980 states,The provincial synod accepts the historical necessityof attaining a new relationship of the church to theJewish people (Littel, 1985: 14-15}.

The declaration recognised Christian co-responsibility for defamation,persecution and murder in the Holocaust; it recognised new Biblicalinsights regarding the Jewish context of Christianity; and it recognisedthe state of Israel.4Recognition of church complicity in the "teaching of contempt" was

also acknowledged by the Anglican Lambeth Conference of 1988.On the other hand, there are those who argue that there is noconnection at all between Christian antisemitism and the Nazi pogroms

(Conway, 1982: 348). Their prime example is in the person of WilhelmMarr, the Hamburg journalist who was responsible for coining the term"anti-Semitism". Marr, who was a major source of inspiration to Hitler, isregarded not only as anti-Jewish but also anti-Christian (Conway, 1982:348)..Thus, the nexus between Christianity and antisemitism issundered. But Marcel Dubois has written:

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Anyone studying Christian anti-Judaism will eventuallyhave to confront what is for many of us the mostdifficult question of all: is anti-Judaism part and parcelof Christian dogma? Are its seeds to be found in theChristian scriptures, in our Christology? (Dubois, 1982:444).In 1945, when the dust was yet to settle on Auschwitz or Treblinka,a book was published in Paris by a prominent Catholic theologian,

Charles Journet, abhorring the abomination of antisemitism anddetermined that it hold no further place in Christian thinking. ButJournet attempted to reject antisemitism without changing one iota ofhis traditional Christian theology (Talmage, 1975: 72).

The link between the Christian teaching of contempt and theHolocaust cannot be dismissed. Arthur Cohen has argued that even toask the question is significant. When Christian theologians addressthemselves to the Holocaust, they have already recognised it as anevent which affects (either to alter or confirm) Christian faith and ethics.

Those Christians willing to encounter this dark night ofthe historical must deal at every turn with afundamental ambivalence - a two-mindedness whichresults from an inherited theological viewpoint thatantedates the Holocaust and undergirds the structureof Christian theology up to the modern age and therequirements of a theology after the Holocaust whichcannot help but view the murder of the first chosen ofGod as an implicit judgement upon such traditionalformulations of Christian thought regarding the Jews(Cohen, 1982: 417).

The Dangerous Memory of JesusCharles Journet's was evidently not aware of it, but the Holocaust muststand as the classic countersign of our age, particularly with regard totraditional Christian theology (cf Tracy, 1982). That is to say, Christiansmust now realize the ambiguity of the church, and be suspicious of itsinterpretation of the church-remembered Jesus Christ. In his work,

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Adam TaylorThe Analogical Imagination, David Tracy explains further what is meantby this ambiguity, this suspicion:

The church ... is an ambiguous social reality.Theologically, the church is at once both gift from God,primarily mediator of the church-remembered JesusChrist, and yet "sinful church," frequent betrayer of thevery event entrusted to its care ... The recognition ofthe ambiguity of the reality of church, when exposedby the Christ event mediated in the church and theJesus dangerously remembered by the church, is thevision at the heart of the Christian hermeneutic ofsuspicion (Tracy, 1981: 321).

Tracy speaks about the "dangerous" memory of Jesus. Dangerousmemories, he explains, are memories which make demands on us. Inother words, if we remember that Jesus was Jewish. there is a demandhere for Christians to act in certain ways and to hold certain views whichare reflective of this fact. Jolted out of historical amnesia by theHolocaust, genuine historical truth might break through to the centrepoint of our lives and reveal new and dangerous insights for thepresent (Metz, 1977: 1 09). Such is the memory of Jesus for thechurch.

The Holocaust, as an obvious sign of "sinful church," demandsreinterpretation of the Christian founding event. Also to bequestioned, as well as the founding event, are the authoritativeresponses to that event (Cohen, A., 1982: 436 n.6). Christians mustreorder their doctrinal premises and teaching as a direct result of theHolocaust. The Holocaust carries with it an imperative to account forthe evil and suffering in the world. To reflect on this evil leads to therecognition of the complexity of the image of God in the OldTestament. From the God of love and justice in Deuteronomy to thesuffering God of Amos, Hosea and Job; the Christian rediscovers thatthe God of the Christians is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

As well as suspicion about the "sin1ul church'', Christians must seekto rediscover the trustworthy elements of the tradition which can beutilized in the interpretation of our modern situation.

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One of the elements of the Christian tradition which must beretrieved is the recognition of the Jewish roots of Christianity and of thecontinued presence of the Jews as God's Chosen People. In turningto the Jews, Christians are called to acknowledge and take cognizanceof post-Testamental Jewish history and literature. To do this has farreaching consequences for the scrutiny of the classic texts of theChristian faith.

Is it merely misrepresentation of the gospels which has led toChristian antisemitism? Or is it the case that the gospels display clearand unambiguous instances of anti-Judaism? An illustrative case is theexamination of the forebears of Rabbinic Judaism, the Pharisees.Nothing could be more vehement than the invective against this groupin the repeated words of Matthew chapter 23: ''Woe to you scribes andPharisees, hypocrites!" Christian scholarship on the Pharisees at theturn of the century drew its portrait of them almost singularly from theNew Testament. 'nevitably, they saw the Pharisees as self-righteoushypocrites. In Christian history, it has never been too difficult a step toidentify anti-Pharisaism with anti-Judaism and antisemitism in general.In the interest of defending their faith against Christian attacks, Jewishscholars were drawn into the debate. That they entered the arena asapologists sorely affected their potency as critical observers (Neusner,1971: 335-36}.

Thus, for generations, scholarship on the Pharisees was polemicallydivided along Jewish-Christian lines. Neither group had muchcompetency in the examination of the other's literature. In the postHolocaust period, there has been a genuine development of dialoguebetween Jewish and Christian scholars. Whereas the emphasis ofundergraduate courses in New Testament 20 years ago was on theGreek background, today there is strong emphasis on the Jewishbackground. The rabbinic writings are now recognized as a majorsource for understanding the New Testament.

The invective against the Pharisees in the gospel of Matthew canbe viewed as the attempt of the gentile church to come to terms with

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Adam Taylorthe emerging Rabbinic tradition. It was what David Flusser has termedthe process of "de-Judaization" (Fiusser, 1975). Suspicion leads us tothis reassessment, and the retrieval of a clearer understanding of theJewish heritage of Christianity and the life-giving experience which liesbehind the language-bound words of scripture.Final QuestionsThere are two questions to be asked with regard to Christian reflectionon the Holocaust. Firstly, should the construction of Christian theologybe affected by the Holocaust? The answer must be a resounding yes.The second question is a corollary of the first. To what extent has areconstruction actually taken place? The reforms of the SecondVatican Council are, for example, just the first expression of thesuspicion which should be cast upon the Christian teaching ofcontempt (Littel, 1987: 11; see also Wigoder, 1988). Certainly, newways of theologizing have arisen in Christian circles since the war, butmuch of it seems to ignore the call made by the Holocaust itself.sWhile some theologians have responded to the call with words, it maybe generations before the ordinary Christian responds with actions.Having given students a series of lectures on the perils of covert antiJudaism in Christian theological and philological writings, CharlotteKlein found that student essays submitted to her were replete with thevery anti-Jewish perspectives on which she had lectured (Klein, 1978:129). It would appear that students continue to quote the preHolocaust words of those perceived as the giants of Christian thought.The role of the post-Holocaust Christian intellectuals must be toformulate counter-consensus positions and create a new climate ofJewish-Christian understanding and dialogue.

Changes have occurred. Formerly, the lecture rooms of Christianschools of theology saw Jewish history drop out of existence ca 100CE, at the height of the family quarrel, only to reappear in the early partof the twentieth century with the establishment of Jewish-Christianconferences (Littel, 1982: 466). The Holocaust has awakenedChristians to Jewish history and has demanded that they face the sinfulchapters of Christian history. Scholarship which has moved towards a

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Christian Responses to the Holocaustfirm recognition of the Jewish milieu of Christianity is also one of thepoignant fruits of the Holocaust. The Holocaust confirms the destiny ofthe living Jewish people; it implores all people to make sense of Godand suffering; it begs Christians to move towards a new plurality - anopenness to traditions which have endured alongside it; most of all,Christians are called to a genuine contrition.

There is a decision to be made. Arthur Cohen makes a propositionfor all Christians to consider:

The monstrosity of this century must leave faithfulChristians either utterly unaffected or utterly harrowed.It unaffected, it tries credulity to understand what ismeant by Christianity as a transforming faith and ifharrowed, the task shifts immoderately from thereassertion of old methods and exegeses in thedirection of radically new beginnings (Cohen, 1982:428).The Christian "teaching of contempt" is bankrupt. The notion that

Jews will only be fulfilled in converting to Christianity is rejected. Today,Christian theologians who are the future of a credible Christianity, standwith Emile Fackenheim, who utilizes the metaphor so meaningful toChristians:

Hope died during the Holocaust, with the state of Israelit was resurrected (Fackenheim, 1991: 126).

Endnotes

1A term coined by Franklin Littel at an address given at Yad Vashem,Jerusalem, January, 1991.2 Anderson quotes the research of Joachim Stern.3Patrologia Graeca: 843-942. Meeks and Wilken translate JohnChrysostom's homilies #1 and #8.

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Adam Taylor4 Israel, a major stumbling block to many well-meaning Christians, isregarded as a strictly political issue, not dissimilar to the way in whichsome Jews prior to the war viewed Zionism. A case in point is theAmerican Council of Judaism, founded in 1942 by a dissident band ofReform rabbis, who fought against the establishment of the State ofIsrael. By 1943, when news of the Holocaust atrocities were widelypublished, the AJC could not garner support from the American Jewishcommunity, and it finally disbanded in 1948. The naivepronouncements of the ACJ are anachronistically to be found amongstChristians today. Perhaps when they too confront the meaning of theHolocaust they will recognise their old views as destitute.5There are some voices in the wilderness. For exampte, the myriad ofpositive and reflective papers presented at the Remembering for theFuture Conference, in July, 1988 (Bauer 1988).

BibliographyAarons, Mark, and John Loftus. 1991. Ratlines: How the Vatican'sNazi Networks Betrayed Western Intelligence to the Soviets.London: William Heinemann Ltd.Anderson, P. 1990. "The Church and Antisemitism." Address to theCouncil of Christians and J ~ $ Second AGM. Sydney.Bauer, Yehuda. 1991. " ~ h e Holocaust: A Jewish and ChristianProblem." Address Delivered for the Council of Christians and Jews.Great Synagogue, Sydney.Bauer, Yehuda, et al, (editorial advisory board). 1988. Jews andChristians During and After the Holocaust (Theme 1 . CollectedWorking Papers of Oxford Conference remembering for the future.Oxford: Pergamon Press.Cohent Arthur. 1984. "In Our Terrible Age: The Tremendum of theJews- in Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza and David Tracy (eds) t MarcusLefebure (English language ed.), The Holocaust as Interruption.Concilium 1984. Edinburgh: T &T Clark Ltd.- - - 1 9 8 2 . "The Holocaust and Christian Theology: AnInterpretation of the Problem" in Papers Presented to theInternational Symposium on Judaism and Christianity Under the

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Documents

Christian responses to the Holocaust. A.J. Taylor 1991