Trinitarian universalism is a variant of belief in universal salvation, the belief that every person will be saved, that also held the Christian belief in Trinitarianism (as opposed to, or contrasted with, liberal Unitarianism which is more usually associated with Unitarian Universalism). It was particularly associated with an ex-Methodist New England minister, John Murray,
and after his death in 1815 the only clergy known to be preaching
Trinitarian Universalism were Paul Dean of Boston and Edward Mitchell in
New York.
Traditionally, the doctrine of Christian universalism was traced by Universalist historians back to the teachings of Origen of Alexandria (c. 185–284), an influential early Church Father and writer. Origen believed in apocatastasis,
the ultimate restoration and reconciliation of creation with God, which
was interpreted by Universalist historians to mean the salvation and
reconciliation with God of all souls which had ever existed, including
Satan and his demons. However more recent research has shown that this
analysis of Origen's views is uncertain.
Origen also believed in the pre-existence of souls and that glorified
Man may have to go through cycles of sin and redemption before reaching
perfection. The teachings of Origen were declared anathema at the Ecumenical Council of 553, centuries after his death, though Gregory of Nyssa,
another figure to whom Universalist historians attributed Universalist
belief, was commended as an Orthodox defender of the faith by the same
Council. Universalist historians have also identified Johannes Scotus Eriugena (815–877), and Amalric of Bena (c. 1200). as Universalists. Much of this research was incorporated by French priest Pierre Batiffol into an article on Apocatastasis later translated for the 1911 Catholic Encyclopedia.
During the Protestant Reformation,
all doctrines and practices of the Catholic (Universal) Church were
re-examined and numerous sects formed, although none revived the belief
(originally attributed to Origen) in universal reconciliation. In 1525, Hans Denck (1425–1527) was accused of being a Universalist, but this is now considered unlikely.
Jane Leade
(1623–1704), a mystic who claimed to have seen heaven and hell, started
a Universalist congregation, the Philadelphians, which dissipated after
her death. She was a Behmenist rather than orthodox Trinitarian.
John Murray
(1741–1815) was forced to leave the Methodist Church because of his
Universalism. In 1770, he moved to New England and is credited with
being the Father of Universalism in North America. Although Murray was a
Trinitarian (as was his mentor, James Relly), his successor, Hosea Ballou (1771–1852) was a strong Unitarian who opposed Trinitarianism, Calvinism, and legalism. During his tenure, Universalism became linked with liberal theology as well as Unitarianism.
Modern Trinitarian Universalists include Robin Parry an evangelical writer, who under the pseudonym of "Gregory MacDonald" released a book The Evangelical Universalist, (2006) and Thomas Talbott author of The Inescapable Love of God (1999).
Theology
Thomas Talbott offers three propositions which are biblically based, but which he asserts to be mutually exclusive:
God is omnipotent and exercises sovereign control over all aspects of human life and history.
God is omni-benevolent, is ontologically Love, and desires the salvation of all people.
Some (many) persons will experience everlasting, conscious torment in a place of (either literal or metaphorical) fire.
Traditional theology clarifies omnipotence or omni-benevolence to resolve the contradiction. Calvinism
resolves it by positing a doctrine of limited atonement, which some
interpret as claiming that God's love is restricted (though this
assertion is disputed by most Calvinists). Only a select number of
people are elected to be saved, which includes redemption and
purification. This demonstrates a special love, and most people (the
'eternally reprobate' or non-elect) are given only common grace and tolerance. This bifurcation of grace intends to retain a doctrine of God's omnibenevolence and a doctrine of hell. In comparison, Arminianism resolves the contradiction by rejecting divine omnipotence with respect to human will. This is commonly referred to as synergism. It posits that God has given human beings have an inviolable free will,
which allows the choice of accepting or rejecting God's grace.
Universalists disagree with the third claim, and argue that all people
receive salvation.
Heresy is "adherence to a religious opinion contrary to church dogma".
Because dogma varies among denominations, what is considered heresy by
one denomination or congregation may be accepted as doctrine or opinion
by another. In a socially free world, free moral agents may identify
with whichever perspectives and positions, persons and communities, and
traditions (or subtraditions) they find most intellectually,
emotionally, and spiritually palatable. However, the results of their
exercise of this operational freedom may be understood or interpreted
differently by different persons.
There are three generally accepted understandings of hell:
A literal place of fire where the damned suffer eternal conscious torment.
A metaphorical hell where the suffering is real but is not literally
fire and brimstone. The pain may be physical, emotional or spiritual.
Conditional, where souls are punished until retributive justice is
met or accomplished, after which these punished souls are annihilated.
There is also the doctrine of purgatory, distinct from hell, where
imperfect souls are cleansed and made ready for heaven. It may be a
place of rehabilitation, correction, or retribution.
Universalists believe that every person will be saved, where more
orthodox Roman Catholics believe that only those who died in God's
grace will find purgation for their venial sins in Purgatory.
The Argument
There are four major theories about human salvation in Christendom:
Exclusivism: Salvation is exclusively found in Christianity. Anyone who is not a Christian will go to hell.
Inclusivism: Some adherents of other religions may find salvation, but it is still only Jesus Christ who can (and may or will) save them.
Pluralism:
One's own religion is not the sole and exclusive source of truth;
salvation, in principle, may be found in any religion, although
salvation is not necessarily found in one's search of any (other)
religion(s).
Universalism: All persons (and peoples?) will be saved.
Christian denominations and churches will generally profess one of
the above to be true and the others as error; however, they are not all
mutually exclusive. For example, some
who hold to #4 "Universalism" also hold to #1 "Exclusivism". For these,
anyone who is not a Christian will go to hell, but ultimately everyone
will become a Christian and therefore be saved. Others may be #2
"Inclusivists" and #3 "Pluralists". For those who might hold to these,
because God may use the tools of any particular religion or culture to
reveal his grace in Christ (Inclusivism), other religions therefore,
potentially exhibiting the effects of this work, may in fact hold
valuable insights to truth for theology (Pluralism), consequently
calling the members of a particular congregation/denomination/religion
to be open to that possibility.
Objections
Arminian objections
Arminianism
holds that God will not abrogate humanity's free will because love must
be chosen, not forced, and that some people will choose alienation from
God over consummation, and so God has "graciously" provided a place for
them to exist. C.S. Lewis
speculated, through literary allegory, that hell is locked from within
but few will leave because over a lifetime and through the coming ages,
they will become more and more at home in hell.
A Trinitarian Universalist believer might counter that for God to
allow his misguided and confused children to suffer eternal separation
from him is the very opposite of grace, runs counter to his loving and
sovereign nature, and would compare unfavorably to the attitude and
behavior of even average human parents toward their children. The Bible
seems to teach that those who believe do so because God caused them to
believe, not by any freedom of choice of their own (Ephesians 2:8–10),
and they might cite the following in support their answer:
"He choose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we
would be holy and blameless before Him. In love He predestined us to
adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind
intention of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He
freely bestowed on us in the Beloved." Ephesians 1:4–6
"For He says to Moses, 'I will have mercy on whom I have mercy,
and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.' So then it {does}
not {depend} on the man who wills or the man who runs, but on God who
has mercy." Romans 9:15–16
(See also: John 15:16, Philippians 1:29, Ephesians 1:11)
Also, the Bible in several places refers to freedom being only for
those freed through Christ, and that those who are not in Christ are in
darkness under the dominion of Satan (Acts 26:18), and are slaves to sin
(John 8:34). Therefore, it would make no sense to maintain that someone
can have the "freedom" to "reject God"—it is only by sin that people
reject God. Those in sin are slaves to sin and Satan, and therefore it
is only God who can, by his grace, release them from that bondage and
make them able to believe:
"The Lord's bond-servant must not be quarrelsome, but be kind to all,
able to teach, patient when wronged, with gentleness correcting those
who are in opposition, if perhaps God may grant them repentance leading
to the knowledge of the truth, and they may come to their senses {and
escape} from the snare of the devil, having been held captive by him to
do his will."
Mortalist objections
Mortalists object that, in their view, the Bible does not teach torment of souls, either in Hades, nor at the Last Day in Gehenna.
Hope of universal salvation
Apart
from the dogmatic belief that a sentence of endless torment in hell is
incompatible with God's moral character there are notable theologians
who believe that God wants everyone to be saved and that it is possible
for God to save everyone but, at the same time, they will not limit
God's sovereign right to choose not to save everyone.
While Thomas Talbott, "Gregory MacDonald" (the penname for Robin Parry) and Eric Reitan regard everlasting punishment as impossible, Reformed, neo-orthodox theologian Karl Barth and Catholic theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar believed that the eventual salvation of all was merely a possibility.
The decline of Hellenistic Judaism started in the second century
and its causes are still not fully understood. It may be that it was
eventually marginalized by, partially absorbed into, or progressively
became the Koine-speaking core of Early Christianity centered on Antioch and its traditions, such as the Melkite Greek Catholic Church and the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch.
Background
Map of Alexander's empire, extending east and south of ancient Macedonia.
The conquests of Alexander in the late fourth century BCE spread Greek culture and colonization—a process of cultural change called Hellenization—over non-Greek lands, including the Levant. This gave rise to the Hellenistic period, which sought to create a common or universal culture in the Alexandrian empire based on that of fifth-century Athens, along with a fusion of Near Eastern cultures. The period is characterized by a new wave of Greek colonization which established Greek cities and kingdoms in Asia and Africa,
the most famous being Alexandria in Egypt. New cities established
composed of colonists from different parts of the Greek world, and not
from a specific metropolis ("mother city") as before.
With the conquest of Judea by Alexander the Great, the spread of Hellenism caused a blending of the local indigenous culture and the culture of the conquerors.
Jewish life in both Judea and the diaspora was influenced by the
culture and language of Hellenism. Local indigenous elites frequently
played a significant role in embracing and promoting Hellenism, leading
to its impact on all regional cultures, including the Jewish culture. In
Palestine, Hellenism gradually took hold, despite the relatively small
number of foreign inhabitants.
Mosaic floor of a Jewish Synagogue Aegina (300 CE).
The Jews living in countries west of the Levant formed the
Hellenistic diaspora. The Egyptian diaspora is the most well-known of
these. It witnessed close ties. Indeed, there was firm economic integration of Judea with the Ptolemaic Kingdom
that ruled from Alexandria, while there were friendly relations between
the royal court and the leaders of the Jewish community. This was a
diaspora of choice, not of imposition. Information is less robust
regarding diasporas in other territories. It suggests that the situation
was by and large the same as it was in Egypt.
The Greeks viewed Jewish culture favorably, while Hellenism
gained adherents among the Jews. While Hellenism has sometimes been
presented (under the influence of 2 Maccabees, itself notably a work in Koine Greek) as a threat of assimilation diametrically opposed to Jewish tradition,
Adaptation to Hellenic culture did not require compromise of Jewish precepts or conscience. When a Greek gymnasium was introduced into Jerusalem, it was installed by a Jewish High Priest. And other priests soon engaged in wrestling matches in the palaestra. They plainly did not reckon such activities as undermining their priestly duties.
Later historians would sometimes depict Hellenism and Judaism
uniquely incompatible, likely due to the influence of the persecution of
Antiochus IV. However, it does not appear that most Jews in the
Hellenistic era considered Greek rulers any worse or different from
Persian or Babylonian ones. Writings of Hellenized Jews such as Philo of Alexandria show no particular belief that Jewish and Greek culture are incompatible; as another example, the Letter of Aristeas
holds up Jews and Judaism in a favorable light by the standards of
Greek culture. The one major difference that even the most Hellenized
Jews did not appear to compromise on was the prohibition on polytheism;
this still separated Hellenistic Jews from wider Greek culture in
refusing to honor shrines, temples, gods etc. that did not pertain to
the God of Israel.
Hellenistic rulers of Judea
Under the suzerainty of the Ptolemaic Kingdom and later the Seleucid Empire, Judea witnessed a period of peace and protection of its institutions. For their aid against his Ptolemaic enemies, Antiochus III the Great promised his Jewish subjects a reduction in taxes and funds to repair the city of Jerusalem and the Second Temple.
Relations deteriorated under Antiochus's successor Seleucus IV Philopator, and then, for reasons not fully understood, his successor Antiochus IV Epiphanes
drastically overturned the previous policy of respect and protection,
banning key Jewish religious rites and traditions in Judea (although not
among the diaspora) and sparking a traditionalist revolt against Greek rule. Out of this revolt was formed an independent Jewish kingdom known as the Hasmonean kingdom, which lasted from 141 BCE to 63 BCE. The Hasmonean Dynasty eventually disintegrated due to a civil war.
Hellenization of Jewish society
Overall, Jewish society was divided between conservative factions and pro-Hellenist factions.
Pro-Hellenist Jews were generally upper-class or minorities living in
Gentile-majority communities. They lived in towns that were far from
Jerusalem and heavily connected with Greek trading networks.
Hellenization was evident in the religious Jewish establishment:
'Ḥoni' became 'Menelaus'; 'Joshua'
became 'Jason' or 'Jesus' [Ἰησοῦς]. The Hellenic influence pervaded
everything, and even in the very strongholds of Judaism it modified the
organization of the state, the laws, and public affairs, art, science,
and industry, affecting even the ordinary things of life and the common
associations of the people [...] The inscription forbidding strangers to
advance beyond a certain point in the Temple was in Greek; and was
probably made necessary by the presence of numerous Jews from
Greek-speaking countries at the time of the festivals (comp. the
"murmuring of the Grecians against the Hebrews," Acts
vi. 1). The coffers in the Temple which contained the shekel
contributions were marked with Greek letters (Sheḳ. iii. 2). It is
therefore no wonder that there were synagogues of the Libertines, Cyrenians, Alexandrians, Cilicians, and Asiatics in the Holy City itself (Acts vi. 9).
The turbulence created by Alexander the Great's death also popularized Jewish messianism.
For 2000 years, Jews lived in Greece and created the Romaniote Jewish community. They spoke Yevanic, a Greek dialect with Hebrew, Arabic and Aramaic influence. According to oral tradition, they were descendants of Jewish refugees who fled Jerusalem in 70 CE, after the destruction of the Second Temple. However, their presence dates back to 300-250 BCE, according to existing inscriptions. Greek philosophers such as Clearchus of Soli were impressed by Jews and believed they were descendants of Indian philosophers.
Elsewhere, Jews in Alexandria created a "unique fusion of Greek and Jewish culture".
The attractiveness of Christianity may, however, have suffered a setback with its being explicitly outlawed in the 80s CE by Domitian as a "Jewish superstition", while Judaism retained its privileges as long as members paid the fiscus Judaicus.
The opening verse of Acts
6 points to the problematic cultural divisions between Hellenized Jews
and Aramaic-speaking Israelites in Jerusalem, a disunion that
reverberated within the emerging Christian community itself:
it
speaks of "Hellenists" and "Hebrews." The existence of these two
distinct groups characterizes the earliest Christian community in
Jerusalem. The Hebrews were Jewish Christians who spoke almost
exclusively Aramaic, and the Hellenists were also Jewish Christians
whose mother tongue was Greek. They were Greek-speaking Jews of the
Diaspora, who returned to settle in Jerusalem. To identify them, Luke
uses the term Hellenistai. When he had in mind Greeks, gentiles,
non-Jews who spoke Greek and lived according to the Greek fashion, then
he used the word Hellenes (Acts 21.28). As the very context of Acts 6
makes clear, the Hellenistai are not Hellenes.
Some historians believe that a sizeable proportion of the Hellenized Jewish communities of Southern Turkey (Antioch, Alexandretta and neighboring cities) and Syria/Lebanon converted progressively to the Greco-Roman branch of Christianity that eventually constituted the "Melkite" (or "Imperial") Hellenistic churches of the MENA area:
As Christian Judaism originated at Jerusalem, so Gentile Christianity started at Antioch,
then the leading center of the Hellenistic East, with Peter and Paul as
its apostles. From Antioch it spread to the various cities and
provinces of Syria, among the Hellenistic Syrians as well as among the
Hellenistic Jews who, as a result of the great rebellions against the
Romans in A.D. 70 and 130, were driven out from Jerusalem and Palestine
into Syria.
Legacy
Widespread influence beyond Second Temple Judaism
Both Early Christianity and Early Rabbinical Judaism were far less 'orthodox' and less theologically homogeneous than they are today; and both were significantly influenced by Hellenistic religion and borrowed allegories and concepts from Classical Hellenistic philosophy and the works of Greek-speaking Jewish authors of the end of the Second Temple period
before the two schools of thought eventually affirmed their respective
'norms' and doctrines, notably by diverging increasingly on key issues
such as the status of 'purity laws', the validity of Christian messianic
beliefs, and the use of Koiné Greek and Latin as liturgical languages replacing Biblical Hebrew, etc.
First synagogues in Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East
The word synagogue itself comes from Jewish Koiné Greek,
a language spoken by Hellenized Jews across Southeastern Europe
(Macedonia, Thrace, Northern Greece), North Africa and the Middle East
after the 3rd century BCE. Many synagogues were built by the Hellenistai or adherents of Hellenistic Judaism in the Greek Isles, Cilicia, Northwestern and Eastern Syria and Northern Israel as early as the first century BCE- notably in Delos, Antioch, Alexandretta, Galilee and Dura-Europos: because of the mosaics and frescos
representing heroic figures and Biblical characters (viewed as
potentially conductive of "image worship" by later generations of Jewish
scholars and rabbis), many of these early synagogues were at first mistaken for Greek temples or Antiochian Greek Orthodox churches.
Mishnaic and Talmudic concepts
Many of the Jewish sages who compiled the Mishnah and earliest versions of the Talmud were Hellenized Jews, including Johanan ben Zakai, the first Jewish sage attributed the title of rabbi and Rabbi Meir, the son of proselyteAnatolian Greek converts to Early Rabbinical Judaism.
Even Israeli rabbis of Babylonian Jewish descent such as Hillel the Elder
whose parents were Aramaic-speaking Jewish migrants from Babylonia
(hence the nickname "Ha-Bavli"), had to learn Greek language and Greek
philosophy in order to be conversant with sophisticated rabbinical
language – many of the theological innovations introduced by Hillel had
Greek names, most famously the Talmudic notion of Prozbul, from Koine Greek προσβολή, "to deliver":
Unlike literary Hebrew, popular
Aramaic or Hebrew constantly adopted new Greek loanwords, as is shown by
the language of the Mishnaic and Talmudic literature. While it reflects
the situation at a later period, its origins go back well before the
Christian era. The collection of the loanwords in the Mishna to be found
in Schürer shows the areas in which Hellenistic influence first became
visible- military matters, state administration and legislature, trade
and commerce, clothing and household utensils, and not least in
building. The so-called copper scroll with its utopian list of treasures
also contains a series of Greek loanwords. When towards the end of the
first century BCE, Hillel in practice repealed the regulation of the
remission of debts in the sabbath year (Deut. 15.1-11) by the
possibility of a special reservation on the part of the creditor, this
reservation was given a Greek name introduced into Palestinian legal
language- perōzebbōl = προσβολή, a sign that even at that time legal
language was shot through with Greek.
— Martin Hengel, Judaism and Hellenism (1974)
Influence on Levantine Byzantine traditions
The unique combination of ethnocultural traits inhered from the fusion of a Greek-Macedonian cultural base, Hellenistic Judaism and Roman civilization
gave birth to the distinctly Antiochian "Middle Eastern-Roman"
Christian traditions of Cilicia (Southeastern Turkey) and Syria/Lebanon:
"The mixture of Roman, Greek, and
Jewish elements admirably adapted Antioch for the great part it played
in the early history of Christianity. The city was the cradle of the
church".
But many of the surviving liturgical traditions of these communities rooted in Hellenistic Judaism and, more generally, Second Temple Greco-Jewish Septuagint culture, were expunged progressively in the late medieval and modern eras by both Phanariot European-Greek (Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople) and Vatican (Roman Catholic)
gentile theologians who sought to 'bring back' Levantine Greek Orthodox
and Greek-Catholic communities into the European Christian fold: some
ancient Judeo-Greek traditions were thus deliberately abolished or
reduced in the process.
Antigonus of Sokho, also known as Antigonos of Socho, was the first scholar of whom Pharisaic
tradition has preserved not only the name but also an important
theological doctrine. He flourished about the first half of the third
century BCE. According to the Mishnah, he was the disciple and successor of Simon the Just. Antigonus is also the first noted Jew to have a Greek
name, a fact commonly discussed by scholars regarding the extent of
Hellenic influence on Judaism following the conquest of Judaea by Alexander the Great.
Antigonus II Mattathias (known in Hebrew as Matityahu) was the last Hasmonean king of Judea. Antigonus was executed in 37 BCE, after a reign of three years during which he led the national struggle of the Jews for independence from the Romans.
Aristobulus of Alexandria (fl. 181–124 BCE), philosopher of the Peripatetic school who attempted to fuse ideas in the Hebrew Scriptures with those in Greek thought
Artapanus of Alexandria (fl. 3rd century BC), Alexandrian Jewish writer who wrote a history Concerning the Jews, quoted by Polyhistor and Eusebius
Cleodemus Malchus, Jewish historian referenced by Alexander Polyhistor and Josephus
Ben Sira,
also known as Yesu'a son of Sirach, leading 2nd century BCE Jewish
scholar and theologian who lived in Jerusalem and Alexandria, author of
the Wisdom of Sirach, or "Book of Ecclesiasticus".
Titus Flavius Josephus, was the first Jewish historian. Initially a Jewish military leader during the First Jewish-Roman War, he famously switched sides and became a Roman citizen and acclaimed Romano-Jewish academic. He popularized the idea that Judaism was similar in many ways to Greek philosophy
Julianos (Hellenized form of the Latin name Julianus) and Pappos (from Koine Greekpappa or papas 'patriarch' or 'elder') born circa 80 CE in the city of Lod (Hebrew: לוֹד; Greco-Latin: Lydda, Diospolis, Ancient Greek: Λύδδα / Διόσπολις – city of Zeus),
one of the main centers of Hellenistic culture in central Israel.
Julian and Pappus led the Jewish resistance movement against the Roman
army in Israel during the Kitos War, 115-117 CE (their Hebrew names were Shemaiah and Ahijah respectively)
Lukuas, also called Andreas, Libyan Jew born circa 70 CE, was one of the main leaders the Jewish resistance movement against the Roman army in North Africa and Egypt during the Kitos War, 115-117 CE
Rabbi Meir, a famous Jewish sage who lived in Galilee in the time of the Mishna, is thought to be the son of Anatolian Greek (Talmud, Tractate Kilayim) gentile proselyte
converts to Pharisaic Judaism (folk etymologies and mistranslations
connected him, wrongly, to the family of Emperor Nero). He was the
son-in-law of Haninah ben Teradion, himself a Hellenized Jewish aristocrat and leading rabbinical figure in late 1st century CE Jewish theology.
Rabbi Tarfon (Hebrew: רבי טרפון, from the Greek name ΤρύφωνTryphon), a kohen, was a member of the third generation of the Mishnah sages, who lived in the period between the destruction of the Second Temple (70 CE) and the fall of Betar (135 CE). Thought to be originally from the region of Lod (Hebrew: לוֹד; Greco-Latin: Lydda, Diospolis, Ancient Greek: Λύδδα / Διόσπολις – city of Zeus), one of the main centers of Hellenistic culture in central Israel, R. Tarfon was one of the most vociferous Jewish critics of Early Christianity
Rabbi Haninah ben Teradion, prominent Galilean Jewish scholar and teacher. His father's name (Teradion)
is thought to be of Judeo-Greek origin. Also, 'Hananiah' (or 'Haninah')
was a popular name amongst the Hellenized Jews of Syria and Northern
Israel (pronounced 'Ananias' in Greek). He was a leading figure in late
1st century CE Jewish theology and one of the Ten Martyrs murdered by the Romans for ignoring the ban on teaching Torah
Trypho the Jew, thought to be a 2nd-century CE rabbi opposed to Christian apologist Justin Martyr, whose Dialogue with Trypho is paradoxically "equally influenced by Greek and Rabbinic thought." He is most likely the same as Rabbi Tarfon.
The Radhanites: an influential group of Jewish merchants and financiers active in France, Germany, Central Europe, Central Asia and China in the Early Middle Ages
– thought to have revolutionized the world economy and contributed to
the creation of the 'Medieval Silk Road' long before Italian and
Byzantine merchants. Cecil Roth and Claude Cahen, among others, claim their name may have come originally from the Rhône River valley in France, which is Rhodanus in Latin and Rhodanos (Ῥοδανός) in Greek, as the center of Radhanite activity was probably in France where their trade routes began.
Marriage of the Virgin
by Robert Campin, circa 1420, illustrates the symbolic foundation of
Christianity on Judaism through the depiction of Mary and Joseph's
marriage at the unfinished portal of a Gothic church, built upon the
Romanesque Temple of Jerusalem.
Christianity began as a movement within Second Temple Judaism, but the two religions gradually diverged over the first few centuries of the Christian Era, and the Christian movement perceived itself as distinct from the Jews by the fourth century. Historians continue to debate the dating of Christianity's emergence as a discrete religion apart from Judaism. Philip S. Alexander characterizes the question of when Christianity and Judaism parted company and went their separate ways (often termed the parting of the ways) as "one of those deceptively simple questions which should be approached with great care". According to historian Shaye J. D. Cohen, "the separation of Christianity from Judaism was a process, not an event", in which the church became "more and more gentile, and less and less Jewish". Conversely, various historical events have been proposed as definitive points of separation, including the Council of Jerusalem and the First Council of Nicaea.
Historiography of the split is complicated by a number of factors, including a diverse and syncretic range of religious thought and practice within Early Christianity and early Rabbinic Judaism
(both of which were far less orthodox and theologically homogeneous in
the first centuries of the Christian Era than they are today) and the
coexistence of and interaction between Judaism, Jewish Christianity, and Gentile Christianity over a period of centuries at the beginning of Early Christianity.
Some scholars have found evidence of continuous interactions between
Jewish-Christian and Rabbinic movements from the mid-to late second
century CE to the fourth century CE. The first centuries of belief in Jesus have been described by historians as characterized by religious creativity and "chaos".
The two religions eventually established and distinguished their
respective norms and doctrines, notably by increasingly diverging on key
issues such as the status of "purity laws" and the validity of Judeo-Christianmessianic beliefs.
Shaye
J.D. Cohen writes that "Even the most Hellenized of Jews, e.g. Philo of
Alexandria, belonged to Jewish communities that were socially distinct
from “the Greeks,” no matter how well these Jews spoke Greek, knew Greek
literature, and assimilated Greek culture high and low."
The first followers of Jesus were essentially all ethnically Jewish or Jewish proselytes. Jesus was Jewish, preached to the Jewish people, and called from them his first followers. According to McGrath, Jewish Christians,
as faithful religious Jews, "regarded their movement as an affirmation
of every aspect of contemporary Judaism, with the addition of one extra
belief-that Jesus was the Messiah."
On the subject of the separation of early Christian belief from
Judaism, Shaye J. D. Cohen writes that early Jewish believers in Christ
"had a choice: they could join the emerging Christian communities which
were being populated more and more by gentile Christians; or they could
try to maintain their place within Jewish society, a stance that will
become harder and harder to maintain as the decades go by; or, if they
were uncomfortable among non-Jewish Christians and non-Christian Jews,
they could try to maintain their own communities, separate from each of
the others." He writes that the New Testament
shows that, among Christ-believing Jews in the first century, the norm
was to join the emerging gentile-populated Christian communities. But as
these communities became more hostile to non-Christian Jews, the
Christ-believing Jews were pushed to compromise either their Jewish
identities or their belonging within the Christian communities.
By the second century, Romans regarded Christians and Jews as
separate communities, persecuting Christians without targeting Jews.
Second-century Christian writers regularly accused the Jews of
collaborating with the Romans in their anti-Christian persecutions. Eusebius
attests to a Christian converting to Judaism in order to escape Roman
persecution. The opposite is true, too; when the Romans persecuted Jews,
they ignored Christians.
Historiography
Daniel Boyarin describes a traditional (and in his view, errant) understanding of Judeo-Christian origins in 1999's Dying For God:
Not long ago, everyone knew that
Judaism came before Christianity. The story would go that Christianity
developed out of the "orthodox" Judaism of the first century, rabbinic
Judaism, and either deviated from the true path or superseded its
ancestor.
He writes that this narrative, which he calls the "old paradigm", was
propagated in "more or less the same" form by both Christian and Jewish
scholars, with an understanding of pre-Christian Jews that
anachronistically reduced their religious diversity into a single
"Judaism".
Israel Yuval described the paradigm as seeing early Christianity "only
as influenced and not as influencing". In the late 20th century,
scholars began to favor a more complex view of pre-Christian Judaism,
and came to understand early Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism as
"sister religions that were crystallized in the same period and the same
background of enslavement and destruction."
Parting of the ways
The term parting of the ways
refers to a historical concept figuring the emergence of Christianity's
distinction from Judaism as a split in paths, with the two religions
becoming separated like two branching roadways "never to cross or
converge again".
While most uses of the metaphor consider Christianity and Judaism to be
two equally-important roadways, some use it to describe Judaism as the
main "highway" from which Christianity forked. The metaphor may also
refer to an interpersonal "parting", as in human relationships when two
parties no longer see eye to eye and decide to "go their separate ways".
Reed and Becker describe a "master narrative" of Jewish and
Christian history that is guided by the parting concept, which describes
a first-century Judaism characterized by great diversity, with exchange
between Christ-believing and non-Christ-believing Jews, that was
fundamentally changed in the wake of the Second Temple's destruction and the later Bar Kokhba revolt
of the Jews against Roman rule, after which Christianity and Judaism
"definitively institutionalized their differences". The master narrative
recognizes this period as the point from which Judaism's influence on
Christianity was limited to the Jewish scriptures that the Church held
as their Old Testament.
The parting of the ways is the most commonly-used metaphor in
contemporary scholarship on the topic of Christianity's historical
distinction from Judaism, and the notion has been subject to a number of
debates, criticisms, and metaphorical adaptations from scholars. Judith Lieu
has argued for a "criss-crossing of muddy tracks which only the expert
tracker, or poacher, can decipher" over the parting metaphor, while
Daniel Boyarin describes a continuum along which one could travel rather
than a divide or partition between rabbinic Judaism and Christianity. Scholarly works on the matter of the concept of the parting of the ways have been published under such titles as "The Ways That Never Parted", "The Ways That Often Parted", and "The Ways That Parted".
Reception and criticism
In the Introduction to The Ways That Never Parted,
Annette Reed and Adam Becker identify two fundamental assumptions
guiding the parting model: that "Judaism and Christianity developed in
relative isolation from one another," and that "the interactions between
Jews and Christians after the second century were limited, almost
wholly, to polemical conflict and mutual misperception." Reed and
Becker, however, describe a literary and archaeological record of
interaction between Jewish and Christian communities that suggests a
"far messier reality" than that suggested by the parting concept, citing
theological literature in which Jews and Christians reacted to one
another's theologies and religions. Shaye J. D. Cohen,
who upholds the parting narrative, argues conversely that "the notion
of 'the parting of the ways' does not in the least suggest that Jews and
Christians stopped speaking with each other, arguing with each other,
and influencing each other," and that reactions to Christianity in
rabbinic scholarship neither prove nor disprove such a parting, and only
prove that Jews and Christians continued to speak with one another
after their parting. Cohen also argues that "There was no parting of the
ways between gentile Christians and non-Christian Jews for the simple
reason that their ways had never been united."
Philip S. Alexander describes motivations for both Christian and
Jewish scholars in upholding and propagating the parting of the ways:
"The attempt [to lay down a norm for Judaism in the first century]
barely conceals apologetic motives-in the case of Christianity a desire
to prove that Christianity transcended or transformed Judaism, in the
case of Jews a desire to suggest that Christianity was an alien form of
Judaism which deviated from the true path."
Other metaphors
Historians of Early Christianity have been "inventive in creating metaphors" to explain and illustrate the emergence of Christianity from Judaism. Philip S. Alexander posited a Venn diagram
to compare to the process of Christianity's differentiation from
Judaism, with the two religions beginning as two overlapping circles,
which gradually moved apart until they were entirely separated. Daniel Boyarin
commends Alexander's Venn diagram image for complicating the dominant
"parting of the ways" notion of Christian historical distinction, but
regards the metaphor as still being too simple for the "reconfiguring
[of the historical narrative of Christianity's emergence] that needs to
be done". Among the several metaphors proposed by James Dunn is the metaphor of a textile, which illustrated first-century Judaism as a woven textile, and Early Christianity as one of its fibers. Both Dunn and Daniel Boyarin have used body of water
metaphors: Dunn described Rabbinic Judaism and Early Christianity as
two currents that eventually carved separate channels from the stream of
ancient Judaism, and Boyarin described Early Christianity as one of
many first-century Jewish movements that flowed out from one source,
like ripples on a pond's surface.
Kinship
Metaphors
of family and kinship "dominated" nineteenth- and twentieth-century
academic discussion of the relationship between Judaism and
Christianity, and are still used in contemporary scholarship.
Daniel Boyarin calls the understanding propagated with the use of this
metaphor "the old paradigm". A mother-child metaphor was particularly
common in the nineteenth century, with Christianity as the child born
from and nurtured by Judaism. Adele Reinhartz
criticizes this formulation for its implication that Judaism was a
single entity, when in fact it was "an ever-shifting set of groups". Boyarin identified the mother-daughter metaphor, which he attributes to Jacob Lauterbach, as "a typical example of how the myth [of Judaism and Christianity as 'self-identical religious organisms'] works".
Alexander described the historical reduction of pre-Christian Jewish
religious diversity into the singular entity of "Judaism" as taking
place in two distinct ways: through the anachronistic "retrojection" of Rabbinic Judaism onto first-century Pharisaic Judaism,
and through the assumption that all first-century Jewish religions
shared some common features that allowed them to be joined into a single
religion.
Alan Segal proposed a sibling metaphor as more accurate than that
of the mother and daughter. Segal's metaphor compares the two religions
to the biblical twins Jacob and Esau, "Rebecca's
children", in acknowledgment of their "mother": Second Temple Judaism.
Daniel Boyarin identified this interpretation of the two "new" religions
as "part of one complex religious family, twins in a womb, contending
with each other for identity and precedence, but sharing with each other
the same spiritual food" for at least three centuries, as a new
scholarly paradigm that overtook the "old paradigm" of the
mother-daughter metaphor.
Boyarin suggested that kinship metaphors should be abandoned
altogether, because they erroneously imply a separation of first-century
Judaism and Christianity as organic, definite entities.
He proposed "a model of shared and crisscrossing lines of history and
religious development", describing Judaism and Christianity in late Antiquity as two points on a continuum, with Marcionites and non-Christ-following Jews at each end, respectively.
Causes
Theological
Social
Shaye J.
D. Cohen argues that, while theological disputes between Jews and
followers of Christ contributed to the social separation of the two
groups, the disputes themselves had no direct connection to the parting;
instead, the split of Christians from Jews was a process of social
separation.
Simon bar Kokhba led the Jews of Judea in a revolt against the Roman Empire
from 132–135 CE. The Romans, either as a cause of or in response to the
uprising, initiated a persecution against Jewish religious observance.
During this campaign, the Romans ignored the Christians, considering
them to be separate from the Jews.
