MetaCatholic

A few weeks back I had some real problems when I tried upgrading to Wordpress 2.2 It totally garbled all my Greek, and a few other characters. I spent some time reverting to the previous installation, and haven’t tried again till today. The root of the problem apparently was the previous version misidentifying Unicode text as Latin-1, and therefore mismanaging the conversion.

But today I discovered this excellent plug-in which takes care of everything for you, and it has all worked. So if you had the same problem I was having, check it out.

(I don’t know if it’s a feature of installing with Fantastico, but my wp-config file was completely empty, so I ignored that line of the Read Me, and it would seem that’s quite safe to do.)

written by doug

Iyov draws attention to the question of anti-Semitism surrounding the re-introduction of the Tridentine Mass, in a balanced post on the topic. He concludes that he “very much doubt[s] that the reintroduction of the Tridentine Mass will usher in a new era of Catholic antisemitism.” In that judgement I think he is right. He is right also to note in passing that some of those most associated with the preservation of this rite are virulently anti-Semitic. That, however, seems more to do, I think, with a general extreme right-wing position in which both the old Mass and old Fascism sit very comfortably together.

In this case, I am suspicious that the scholar quoted is the Jesuit liturgist Keith Pecklers. (NB What’s the difference between a liturgist and a terrorist? You can negotiate with a terrorist.) It seems (though I may be misjudging it) a case of playing the man and not the ball. Pecklers would, I think, rightly object on liturgical grounds to the Tridentine Rite, as an awful mess and a historical accident. But that argument won’t wear with Rome, so he has rolled out the “is it good for the Jews?” question that Iyov makes fun of. I don’t think it helps to raise the spectre of anti-Semitism as a replacement for other arguments which have failed.

Iyov has some positive things to say about the Tridentine Rite which I largely agree with. But whatever its historical merits, re-introducing it is a backward step. At best, it is a kind of romantic nostalgia, at worst it is a form of liturgical docetism.

What does it say about the incarnation, what does it say about the capacity of the modern world to be re-created by God, if the langauge(s) we speak are judged unfit for prayer and worship? As Gregory Nazianzus noted long ago: “What he did not assume, he could not heal.” If English, French, Russian, Chinese and the rest can’t sufficiently articulate the words of God’s people, then Christ remains at a distance from our own cultures, capable only of transforming them from without and not from within.

Some modern liturgical English is trite. Modern non-liturgical English in extemporary prayer sometimes reaches the apotheosis of triteness and inarticulateness. And I really would just be meaning that. “Lord” is meant to be more than an equivalent of “er” and “um” as the pray-er works out what to say next. But however sparse and taut it may need to be, modern English is capable of poetic transcendence from within its native culture.

There is a good argument for Arabic in Islam, and for Hebrew in Judaism, and however different the modern is from the old, these are still (or again) living languages, which are also the language of their respective scriptures. (And neither have the same understanding of divine immanence refracted through the Incarnation.) Latin is neither a living language, nor the language of the scriptures, but itself bears witness to that need for a culture to address God from within its own language and culture, translating the scriptures and prayers it has inherited, and developing the latter accordingly.

When this was first done in English, it not only produced a rich inheritance, but it shaped the language and the culture. The era of that first translation and re-articulation has now largely passed (but see, e.g. this post by Suzanne McCarthy). Reclaiming contemporary English (and other languages) for both scripture and prayer is fundamental to the church’s mission. If we cannot express transcendence in contemporary garb, if we cannot speak to and of God in the language we speak to our neighbours, then we and our culture are truly lost.

written by doug

David Ritsema draws attention to a lecture by Tom Wright: “Can Scientists Believe in the Resurrection”. You can read it here, or choose to listen to it or watch it from the links provided by David, or on the NT Wright Page. Unsurprisingly, Tom quickly moves the question onto the grounds of history and “scientific” historiography. The lecture also provides a useful and compact summary of some of the key lines of argument in his massive book The Resurrection of the Son of God.

I want to pick up one thing here that Wright says specifically:

the Christian claim was from the beginning that the question of Jesus’ resurrection was a question, not of the internal mental and spiritual states of his followers a few days after his crucifixion, but about something that had happened in the real, public world, leaving not only an empty tomb, but a broken loaf at Emmaus and footprints in the sand by the lake among its physical mementoes

Now I happen to agree with Wright on the empty tomb, I’m not sure about whether Emmaus has its origins in witness memory or in Lukan creativity (or a combination of both), but the “footprints in the sand” raises the nub of the problem. How does Wright know there were footprints in the sand? Because people walking on sand leave footprints. But do resurrected bodies walking on sand leave footprints? How would we know? After all, if we fully take the gospel accounts as history, resurrected bodies can get into locked rooms, and resurrected bodies can choose when to be recognizable, as well as being able to eat broiled fish. So how would we know whether they leave footprints?

Wright doesn’t do ambiguity and ambivalence very well, yet what we might call the “physicality” of the risen Christ is ambiguous in the gospel narratives. Assertions that the resurrection is historical and then deduce “footprints in the sand” from what historical is presumed to mean are as problematic as those that assert it is eschatological and then deduce from what eschatological means to them that the empty tomb is irrelevant.

One of the stronger historical reasons, to my mind, for asserting the authenticity of the empty tomb comes from the pattern of belief. The disciples’ experience of the risen Jesus unquestionably transformed their believing, and also quite precisely their belief in resurrection, as a hitherto corporate, cosmic and creational event comes to be applied to a single individual ahead of the time expected. What does not change, however is the belief that the resurrection transformation they still awaited was still corporeal. The transformation of the world remains the heart of what they hope for, and ideas of escape from the world and the body do not start to make real headway until the second and third centuries, before being ruled out of the catholic court. That belief in corporeal transformation is a strong logical pointer to the transformation of the specific body that was once entombed.

There is another problem with the way that Wright treats that future corporeal resurrection that we now call the parousia, and its relationship to the resurrection of Christ. He seems to assume that we can simply restate the relationship between the two in a way that repeats affirmatively the statements of the New Testament, and need ourselves to return to a much more (in his view) biblical and Jewish way of conceiving the renewal of all things.

But even within, say, 1 Corinthians 15, we see a shift. At the start of Paul’s argument resurrection is defined by the Jewish and Pharisaic hope, and the explanation of what happened to Jesus is worked out in the categories of that understanding. By the end of the argument, what resurrection for all means is defined primarily by what happened to Jesus, and the hope for all things turns on the specific events of Easter. But the risen Jesus is no longer corporeally present; the last of his appearances to Paul is recognized as out of time and abnormal. There is something different about how Jesus is now present in his church and to the world, and that difference is precisely what allows the negative views of body and creation to gain headway as Christian views, before the church comes to clarify what a Christian view is.

But after 2000 years of resurrection being defined by Jesus risen, but whose presence among us is not corporeal in the way in which the Jesus of the limited time of appearances is corporeal, things look different. The corporeality of Jesus is known through the body of the Church and the body of the Eucharist. Resurrection seems to have a lot more to do with eternity, and with God beyond the world, than it did for Paul, and a simple restatement of Pauline theology may not be the right way to go.

written by doug

Google’s famous early mission statement is “Don’t be evil”. But has this changed? Claude Mariottini notes this post by Google’s Senior Copyright Counsel, which offers a Jewish argument about copyright.

In Judaism, a different source is looked to address copyright issues, hassagut gevul (”infringement of boundary”) … the issue discussed was attribution of authorship rather than proprietary rights in the words spoken … The Tosefta (Baba Kamma 7:3), far from condemning use of other’s words without their permission as “theft” regards it as meritorious, so long as credit is given.

I generally leave aside the initial issue which provoked Mariottini’s initial post, of songwriters claiming copyright and royalties on their songs. Are songwriters in the category of ministers who should be worthy of their keep? Or are they in the Didache’s category of prophets asking to be paid for their prophecies? It’s not a straightforward question.

Here I want to note my suspicion of Google’s attitude to copyright. On the one hand it is in the interests of most of us web users to be able to access the vast array of information that is available on the web. Google is for most of us not only the tool of first resort, but the verb we use to describe what we’re doing.

At the same time, Google is, first and foremost, not our tool for accessing information, but a money making machine, for whom our searches are the fundamental building block of the company’s revenue. Today I was told I needed to upgrade my Java runtime environment: I was surprised that this offered me yet another opportunity for me to deselect the option to install Google’s IE toolbar, and select Google’s desktop search. No, I cried, bugger off! You’re not getting access to my desktop, and I’m never ever going to enable page ranking. I may use a lot of Google’s tools, but not this one. I’m very happy to have Google record whether any of my pages are search-worthy. I’m not happy that they should know what I’m searching for: they’ll only use it to sell things to me. I groan every time I go to delete spam from my Gmail account, only to be offered a recipe for Spam fritters.

Interestingly, even fake Steve Jobs takes Microsoft’s side about Google’s demand to have their desktop search included in Windows Vista. According to Google, I can’t have an operating system that allows me to search my own computer for my own files, unless I’m also compelled to be given a choice to use Google’s search to drive their advertising revenue. And Google isn’t entirely neutral: see this piece of research (which may be biased in favour of its funders and promoters) which shows that every search engine on the market is biased.

How much control do I want to give to a search engine that is a tool for selling advertising? How much trust do I want to place in what it gives me? And how much should I accept rabbinic arguments from a Google advocate that tell me it’s biblical to reject copyright legislation in favour of using material providing it’s attributed? Google’s copyright and search policies, as endorsed by God: biblical proof that it’s not evil. Somehow, I’m just not entirely convinced.

written by doug

I confess to always having had a weakness for the Jerusalem Bible’s translation of Ephesians 2:10

We are God’s work of art, created in Christ Jesus to live the good life as from the beginning he had meant us to live it.

Let me list the problems

• “work of art” is a bit of a stretch for ποίημα (poiēma) that seems almost more influenced by a reverse etymology of the English “poem”
• “to live the good life”  Not only is this a paraphrase of “for good works” (ἐπὶ ἔργοις ἀγαθοῖς) though “a life of good works” could be argued for as a reasonable interpretation., but “the good life” in modern English often carries hedonistic overtones.
• Taking the idea of these works being “prepared in advance” as “from the beginning” is probably, in the light of Eph 1:4 a legitimate interpretation of what it could mean, but far more than the text says
• Translating “as … he had meant us to live it” seems to look more to original intention in creation, than to the idea of a current way of life prepared as part of redemption.

So, generally, unlike the JB the NRSV is a quite accurate and unexceptional translation:

For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.

But I still find my imagination fired, my ethical vision stirred, and my heart excited by the Jerusalem Bible in a way the much more accurate NRSV simply fails to manage (along with every other translation I’ve looked at).  I don’t know what I should make of that theologically, except that it seems to me to belong to that whole range of fuzzy edges of additions, emendations, different readings, and strange translations that make scripture much more of a lively tradition in transmission than the repetition of a past text.

For me, this bad translation  is “inspired”, even though under most theories it probably shouldn’t be.

written by doug

Two BBC issues related to Blair’s departure. As Iain Dale, a Conservative blogger, notes, they seem to have lost all sense of proportion in cutting away from Tony Blair’s final Prime Minister’s Questions to start showing a game of tennis (and allow time for the obligatory trailers of forthcoming programmes). The tennis, of course, was washed out almost as soon as it started.

You have to wonder how the BBC can hope to maintain a reputation as a serious public service broadcaster when it shows such a fine sense of priorities.

Then there is the very strange case of Nick Robinson. He notes the fact that Cherie Blair, on getting into the car for the Blairs’ final journey away from No 10, says to the gathered press, “Goodbye. I don’t think we’ll miss you.” He omits the half-smile with which she says it, but is kind enough to provide a link to the video footage.

A harmless, and decidedly understandable statement, whether wise or unwise. But not for Nick for whom this is

Gob-smackingly spine-chillingly hair-raisingly extraordinary … Now that’s an end to suggestions that Tony Blair is leaving entirely at a time of his own choosing

What a parade of extreme adjectives for such a mundane observation! And how precisely does this morph into proof that Blair was pushed out? This is an attempt to create not simply a mountain out of a molehill, but more a planet out of pigeon-shit.

When this is presented by the leading political commentator of the country’s premier news organization on their public site, you know why politicians try to spin the news. If they don’t, the media will. Spinning may be a dreadfully unfortunate development, and a serious downgrading of political life, but for the poor hapless politician faced with this kind of “public-service” spin by “the world’s most trusted” news organization, political spin-doctoring becomes nothing more than an act of self-defence. Shame on the media that make it so necessary an evil, and not just on the politicians who do it.

written by doug

Chris Heard has a useful post Is the Bible history or theology? which is part of a discussion on the Biblical Studies list. Generally I would want to affirm what he says there. Taken globally about the whole Bible, the question poses a false antithesis

A point I would like to develop a little further, however, is that a great many of these discussions, including the one referred to, tend to assume that we all know what we mean by history, and that we all mean the same thing. Self-proclaimed post-modern views of history, however, are in many respects virtually indistinguishable from theology. One of the foremost proponents of this approach to history is Keith Jenkins, who says of his work:

I thought and still think—that debates about ‘history’ are debates about meaning (i.e. ontological debates) and, of course, meaning (of the ‘facts’; of this or that interpretation, etc.) escape facticity and interpretation. (b) That all historical discourse is positioned—is ideological/political, and that, rather than avoid this obvious conclusion, one should make explicit one’s own position… that is to say, there was a call for ‘reflexivity’ going ‘all the way down’.

Other historians strongly disagree in debating the question “What is History?” The precise relationship between an ordered information-bearing narrative or discourse on the one hand, and specific pieces of discrete data, whether literary data, artifacts, or (reconstructed) facts, on the other is a hot topic amongst all historiographers, not just those concerned with the Bible and theology. At one extreme is the view that one is essentially offering a coherent discourse that simply gives information about what happened. At the other extreme is the view that one is offering an account or critique of the present by telling a story about the past.

The first of those views is remarkably like what many people mean when they claim that the Bible’s narrative is essentially history. The second is very like what people mean when they claim the Bible is purely theology. Most historians, of course, take a position somewhere between the extremes, whether they are writing about purely secular history, or seeking to write about biblical or theological history. This is, in short, less a debate about the Bible, than a debate about historiography carried on in relation to the Bible.

written by doug

Mike Bird posted a list of the 10 worst ideas in c20 NT scholarship over the weekend. By my reckoning just over half of them (listed below with Bird’s numbering) are at least in part about already decided or derived models being imposed on the data.

1. The Gnostic Redeemer Myth
3. The Cynic Jesus
4. The Fourth Gospel as Hellenistic Dogma in a Christian garb
5. Judaism as uniformly legalistic
6. “Early Catholicism”
7. Pre-Christian Gnosticism
8. Palestinian Christianity vs. Hellenistic Christianity

My guess is that 100 years from now, when someone looks back at our century, most of the bad ideas will also come from imposing models on the data, and I suspect that more than a few will be associated with forms of social-scientific criticism. I don’t mean to dismiss it by saying that, just note the temptation to model-imposition of an approach which lacks one of the primary tools of anthropology (participant observation) and two of the primary tools of sociology (survey and interview). In both disciplines such empirical research can query the model. In the use of those disciplines by historians and biblical scholars, it’s decidedly easier to massage the non-resisting data into the contours of the model.

I would also say that three and a half items on Bird’s list owe something to what I see as an undue attention to the sayings tradition in Jesus research.

2. Form Criticism
3. The Cynic Jesus
8. Palestinian Christianity vs. Hellenistic Christianity
11. The postulation of a “Q” or “Johannine” community [the half item]

I wanted in a comment to take it a bit further, by losing the idea of “Judaism as uniformly legalistic” which in my view predates c20, and putting in instead either the idea of Aramaisms or the criterion of double dissimilarity. I was taken to task in the comments by James Crossley (what can you expect from a Man U fan?) who sees Aramaisms as absolutely vital for historical Jesus research. (Update at 21:41 — I may have misunderstood what James was saying, see the comments on Mike Bird’s post.)As I pointed out there:

I am not remotely convinced that Aramaisms have any significant place in historical Jesus research. First, I think that the language of the Septuagint distorts the whole question. Second, I can imagine a Jesus-saying that actually enters the Greek tradition well-translated by a fluently bilingual follower of Jesus showing little trace of the source language. Thirdly I can imagine a saying of Jesus made up by an Aramaic speaking follower.

In short, I think they are virtually useless as a criterion of historicity. But the more I thought about it, the more I thought that this, together with my suggestion about the negative use of the criterion double dissimilarity (to rule sayings out), is really a protest about privileging the sayings as a route to the Jesus of history.

First, privileging sayings gives more weight to the hypothetical and reconstructed Q, and to Thomas, whose dating, and geographical and theological placing are seriously problematic, than it does to the canonical gospels, because “saying collections” are understood to be the more primitive and therefore implicitly reliable sources.

Second, privileging sayings already implies certain answers to the question that are far more likely to emerge with Jesus as sage, prophet and teacher, than as exorcist, healer, wonder-worker, Messiah (whatever that means). The answers begin to be presupposed by the methodology.

Finally, the gospel tradition itself bears some witness to the ways in which some sayings at least were moved around or collected together. Sayings come with less historical context and information that narrative units, either those narrative units that reach their high-point in a saying, or those which report deeds. Consequently sayings naturally carry less implicit historical information, and re-contextualising them can easily shift their meaning.

Doing what Sanders does with some verve, or Meier with little verve but great thoroughness, of moving from contexts to content, seems to me far more appropriate, and far less prone to fanciful reconstruction. What I really want to replace Bird’s item 5 “Judaism as uniformly legalistic” with is this: “Making jigsaws of the sayings of Jesus and calling it history”

written by doug

It is always risky and possibly arrogant to disagree with almost everyone, but I have become increasingly convinced that our Bible translations are generally wrong about Romans 13:6, here quoted from the NRSV.

For the same reason you also pay taxes, for the authorities are God’s servants, busy with this very thing.
(διὰ τοῦτο γὰρ καὶ φόρους τελεῖτε· λειτουργοὶ γὰρ θεοῦ εἰσιν εἰς αὐτὸ τοῦτο προσκαρτεροῦντες.)

First I don’t think it’s helpful to translate διάκονός (diakonos) in 13:4 and λειτουργοὶ (leitourgoi) here both as “servant(s)” when the words are significantly different. Second, this translation implies, as some have suggested¹ that there is some kind of non-payment of taxes going on. On the contrary: “Paul takes it for granted that the Christians of Rome have been paying their taxes”². Much more significantly, I’m not at all sure that λειτουργοὶ can actually refer to someone who takes money from you.

Paul uses the word twice elsewhere. In Romans 15:16, he uses it to describe himself as a “minister (λειτουργὸν ) of Christ Jesus” and ties this to the “offering of the Gentiles” which in context is far less likely to be any reference to Paul’s collection, but the Gentiles themselves as Paul’s ministerial offering to God. In Philippians 2:25 he uses it to describe Epaphroditus as “your messenger and minister (λειτουργὸν ) to my need”. In this case it would seem that Epaphroditus is offering material comfort to Paul. In both these cases Paul’s use of the word fits the more general sense. As Cranfield notes: “it means characteristically a public service of work in the ordinary secular sense (specially a public service carried out by a private citizen at his own expense).”³ In both religious and public service (to use a more modern distinction) liturgists – λειτουργοὶ – are those who make an offering, not those who collect it. A secular liturgy is a public benefaction. Those who make conspicuous benefactions (and that meant virtually any wealthy benefactor) could expect a form of public recognition as the authorities give praise to those who do good. (Romans 13:3).

Our translations, however, persist in using this word to describe the authorities, and by implication the tax-collectors, sometimes to almost exaggerated effect.

for the authorities are God’s servants devoted to governing. (NET)
the authorities are all serving God as his agents, even while they are busily occupied with that particular task. (NJB)
the authorities are God’s servants, who give their full time to governing (NIV)

Given that I am about propose an idea that may seem anachronistic, I should note first that these translations are also somewhat anachronistic in their view of tax-revenue as supporting the government’s public service of keeping law and order. But also let’s be clear that there is no explicit reference to the authorities in this verse. The translations read it back in. What happens if we take it out altogether, and divide the sentence differently:

Because this is the real reason you pay your taxes: those who keep on doing this very thing (i.e. paying taxes) are offering service to God.

The second clause then keeps close to the normal range of meaning of “liturgy makers” by referring to those who make the offering, and shell out the cash, rather than those who collect it. By implication (and this is the seeming anachronism) taxes become the benefaction of the poor, who cannot afford the conspicuous benefactions of the wealthy, and so can only receive their praise from God. No state will erect a tablet in their honour.

We then have an argument that is all of a piece in a slightly different way from that which has normally been suggested. Romans 13 flows effortlessly from the preceding injunctions: “Be patient in tribulation (12:12) …. Bless your persecutors (12:14) … Do not repay evil for evil (12:17) … As far as possible for you, live in peace with everyone (12:18) … Do not avenge yourselves (12:19)

Paul makes four arguments in Romans 13 to support these injunctions for a non-violent inter-communal life.

• Those who seek vengeance for themselves go against the appointed role of the state to bear the sword. If you do not live at peace, the state will enforce peace against you (13:1-2, 4).
• Those who have wealth should use it to do works of public good (13:3).
• Those wealthy and prominent people may either act out of fear (of the state’s punishment) or conscience (being rightly thought well of by others) (13:5).
• Those who are poor also make benefactions through taxes (13:6) and by calling them God’s benefactors Paul stresses the way they serve the public good, and God’s purposes.

Joining in some sort of communal violence is not only wrong, because it fails to give the state its due role under God, but it’s a waste of your own money, which has gone to support communal peace, which should be ordered appropriately. I need hardly say that this, of course, is also arguing for some very specific situation at Rome as part of the reason the letter takes the shape and content it does.

1. e.g. Jeremy Moiser ‘Rethinking Romans 12 –15’ in NTS (1990) vol 36 pp 571 – 582, John Ziesler Paul’s Letter to the Romans London: SCM, 1989 ad loc [↩]
2. J A Fitzmyer, Romans London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1993 [↩]
3. A critical and exegetical Commentary on The Epistle to the Romans (Vol 2) Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1979 ad loc [↩]

written by doug

I have been made to think quite hard by a number of comments on my posts (here and here) on the story of Ann Holmes Redding. Among those who’ve responded here, Andii Bowsher and Iyov have also blogged about the issue. Peter Kirk’s comment points to a fascinating phenomenon of “Messianic Muslims” to throw into the mix.

It is clear that this discussion not only provokes strong opinions, but actually touches in different ways on people’s own sense of self-definition, and the self-identity that is claimed, explored or owned through one or another of those mixes of culture, tradition, way of life and belief that we label religion. That (unspoken)assumption that we are all talking about the same thing – religion – may actually be part of the problem. I attended a very thoughtful lecture by Rowan Williams in 2003 which made this point in a very carefully nuanced way.

I offer a handful of thoughts. These thoughts are very tentative. I am aware of many books that deal with this and related topics, almost all of which I have miserably failed to read. I also need to be clear that I am trying to state what I see as a reasonable Christian discernment. I am not trying to produce some kind of “objective” viewpoint. I would be particularly (though by no means exclusively) interested in seeing some of those from other faith traditions respond either on their own blogs or here.

• We make no assumption that our different faith traditions mean the same thing by the same word. Instead we listen carefully to see what stories are being told, so that we can understand the meanings of the words. We listen attentively to what questions those stories generate, so that we can better understand their answers.
• Within the Christian story, there is an explicit claim that Jesus of Nazareth is the pinnacle and centre of God’s self-defining engagement with the created world. That claim is initially worked out in terms of Jewish narrative, hotly disputed, but quickly comes to generate narratives, questions and answers of its own.
• This early history, before church and synagogue fully part in mutually exclusive self-definition, roots a fulfillment narrative at the heart of traditional Christian reflection. The early fathers apply something similar to Graeco-Roman culture when Justin Martyr borrows and develops his views of a logos spermatikos (seed of reason, seminal wisdom?) in every person, and Clement of Alexandria can proclaim the great philosophers as “Christians before Christ” for their reflection of God’s logos in their reasoning. The fulfillment model is fundamentally a model about Jesus as Messiah and Word of God affirming the peoples of the world, Jew and Greek, as prepared by grace for the coming of a universal Saviour.
• This fulfillment narrative quickly hardens into a supercessionist model. This is true both of Christian attitudes to Judaism, which is marginalised and then oppressed, and also of Christian attitudes towards paganism, where on the Exodus model, anything good may be appropriated as “plundering the treasures of the Egyptians.” The supercessionist model is fundamentally a model about the church as the only chosen people, and a very superior chosen people at that.
• It seems to me that the fulfillment model seeks to hold onto something about Jesus as the defining locus of God’s revelation and salvation which is a non-negotiable part of Christian narrative and identity. The supercessionist model needs, I think, to be repented of as a form of cultural and religious arrogance that mistakes the historical church for the eschatological kingdom of God.  But I would also want to say that, standing where we are at the start of the 21st century, with so much harmful history behind and between us, Christians must affirm first that Christianity itself is in constant need of a Jesus-shaped fulfillment in conversion, salvation and renewal, before daring to try to say (as I think in some sense it must) to those of other faiths and none: “and Jesus of Nazareth is the fulfillment of your humanity, culture and life too”.
• In that context, there is something that should be acknowledged, I think,  as positive (from a Christian viewpoint) about the anomalies of either “Messianic Jews” or “Messianic Muslims.” The best examples of such groups are, as far as I can see, trying to work out where Jesus might fit in their Jewish and Islamic narratives, given that neither Judaism today is the same community as the Judaism that birthed the Christian church, nor Islam today the same community that formed itself in partial rejection of the Christian church.
• However, the negative side, to my mind, outweighs the positives. First, I am not convinced that either the missionaries working with such groups, nor the groups themselves, are actually sufficiently engaged in the attentive listening that truly explores what stories are being told, or what questions asked. It seems to me that in fact, developed Christian answers are being dressed up in Jewish and Muslim clothing as answers to questions that neither Jewish nor Islamic narratives are asking. Consequently neither Muslims nor Jews can actually recognise their stories and questions in the answers these groups seek to supply.
• Secondly, it is not at all clear to me that these groups have listened attentively enough to the Christian story. Christian tellings of the Jewish narrative focused on and refracted through Christ are explicitly universal. The catholic church is seen as the consequence of the universal humanity of the divine Saviour. In seeking a distinctive identity as messianic Jews or messianic Muslims, these groups understandably disown respectively the history of European anti-Semitism and Western cultural imperialism. Unfortunately, they also in practice seem in their own particularity to disown the catholicity of the church, which is both intended as witness to and fruit of, the universality of Jesus.

I tentatively conclude that these groups are in danger of being neither fish nor fowl, a tertium quid in which each mainstream religious tradition can no longer recognise their own narratives, nor hear their own questions asked, nor attempt answers that are recognizable to those who pass these stories on as their own stories.  They are, I think, a sideshow in both mission and inter-religious dialogue alike, rather than any kind of pointer to the way forward. But I well may be wrong: we all have a lot more respectful listening to do.

written by doug