Introduction
God
The Jewish View of Jesus
Free Will and Original Sin
Death, Heaven, and Hell
INTRODUCTION
There are many substantial and vital distinctions between Judaism
and Christianity. Of course, there are many similarities as well,
primarily because Christianity emerged from Judaism. However, the
emergence was not a direct line. Christianity broke from Judaism,
forming a new religion, so it is misleading, however comfortable
the thought might be, to believe that the two religions are
essentially the same, or to see Christianity as the natural
continuation of Judaism.
The differences between the two religions will be explored in this
section. As a preface, it is useful to repeat Judaism's central
belief that the people of all religions are children of God, and
therefore equal before God. All people have God's love, mercy, and
help. In particular, Judaism does not require that a person convert
to Judaism in order to achieve salvation. The only requirement for
that, as understood by Jews, is to be ethical. While Judaism
accepts the worth of all people regardless of religion, it also
allows people who are not Jewish but who voluntarily wish to join
the Jewish people to do so.
It is not really possible to summarize either Judaism or
Christianity fairly in this section, so further study is
encouraged. Also, the formal positions of Judaism on various issues
should be discussed with a rabbi. The beliefs described in this
section are mainstream Christian and Jewish beliefs. Individual
Christian and Jewish thinkers may differ, sometimes considerably,
with the positions described here. It is nonetheless useful, even
with all these limitations, to consider the differences. One book
that is excellent on this subject is JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY: THE
DIFFERENCES, by Trude Weiss-Rosmarin (Jonathan David, 1981).
GOD
Judaism insists on a notion of monotheism, the idea that there is
one God. As Judaism understands this idea, God cannot be made up of
parts, even if those parts are mysteriously united. The Christian
notion of trinitarianism is that God is made up of God the Father,
God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Such a view, even if called
monotheistic because the three parts are, by divine mystery, only
one God, is incompatible with the Jewish view that such a division
is not possible. The Jewish revolutionary idea is that God is one.
This idea allows for God's unity and uniqueness as a creative
force. Thus, for Jews, God is the creator of all that we like and
all that we don't. There is no evil force with an ability to create
equal to God's. Judaism sees Christianity's trinitarianism as a
weakening of the idea of God's oneness. Jews don't have a set group
of beliefs about the nature of God; therefore, there is
considerable, and approved, debate within Judaism about God.
However, all mainstream Jewish groups reject the idea of God's
having three parts. Indeed, many Jews see an attempt to divide God
as a partial throwback, or compromise with, the pagan conception of
many gods.
THE JEWISH VIEW OF JESUS
To Christians, the central tenet of their religion is the belief
that Jesus is the Son of God, part of the trinity, the savior of
souls who is the messiah. He is God's revelation through flesh.
Jesus was, in Christian terms, God incarnate, God in the flesh who
came to Earth to absorb the sins of humans and therefore free from
sin those who accepted his divinity.
To Jews, whatever wonderful teacher and storyteller Jesus may have
been, he was just a human, not the son of God (except in the
metaphorical sense in which all humans are children of God). In the
Jewish view, Jesus cannot save souls; only God can. Jesus did not,
in the Jewish view, rise from the dead.
He also did not absorb the sins of people. For Jews, sins are
removed not by Jesus' atonement but by seeking forgiveness. Jews
seek forgiveness from God for sins against God and from other
people (not just God) for sins against those people. Seeking
forgiveness requires a sincere sense of repenting but also seeking
directly to redress the wrong done to someone. Sins are partially
removed through prayer which replaced animal sacrifice as a way of
relieving sins. They are also removed by correcting errors against
others.
Jesus, for Christians, replaced Jewish law. For traditional Jews,
the commandments (mitzvot) and Jewish law (halacha) are still
binding.
Jesus is not seen as the messiah. In the Jewish view, the messiah
is a human being who will usher in an era of peace. We can tell the
messiah by looking at the world and seeing if it is at peace. From
the Jewish view, this clearly did not happen when Jesus was on
Earth or anytime after his death.
Jews vary about what they think of Jesus as a man. Some respect him
as an ethical teacher who accepted Jewish law, as someone who
didn't even see himself as the messiah, who didn't want to start a
new religion at all. Rather, Jesus is seen by these Jews as someone
who challenged the religious authorities of his day for their
practices. In this view, he meant to improve Judaism according to
his own understanding not to break with it. Whatever the Jewish
response is, one point is crucial. No one who is Jewish, no born
Jew and no one who converts to Judaism, can believe in Jesus as the
literal son of God or as the messiah. For the Jewish people, there
is no God but God.
FREE WILL AND ORIGINAL SIN
Judaism does not accept the notion of original sin, the idea that
people are bad from birth and cannot remove sin by themselves but
need an act of grace provided by the sacrificial death of Jesus as
atonement for all of humanity's sins. For Christians, there are no
other forms of salvation other than through Jesus.
In contrast, the Jewish view is that humans are not born naturally
good or naturally bad. They have both a good and a bad inclination
in them, but they have the free moral will to choose the good and
this free moral will can be more powerful than the evil
inclination. Indeed, Jewish ethics requires the idea that humans
decide for themselves how to act. This is so because temptation,
and with it the possibility of sin, allows people to choose good
and thus have moral merit. The Jewish view is not that humans are
helpless in the face of moral error.