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No. IV.
By
A Jewish Layman.
WHEN I first read the advertisement of Matthew H.
Miller in the Asmonean offering for sale his book on
the identity of Judaism and Christianity, it was not
my intention to notice the subject in any manner
whatsoever. I then, as now, regarded it as the
madness of the wild fanaticism of the age, and
unworthy the consideration of any sober-minded
person; but as Mr. Miller has dared to attempt a
vindication of his obnoxious doctrines in the pages
of the Occident, a Jewish publication devoted to the
diffusion of knowledge on Jewish literature and
religion, I have determined to offer to the readers
of your periodical my views on this new phase
of Christianity. And here I would remark that I
think you wrong* to give up one line of your
valuable publication to any writer favouring
Christianity; not because I fear the effects of
their writings, but because the columns of their
religious papers are closed to us.
We
do not fear discussion—they do. The simple unity of
God stands impressed upon all nature, animate and
inanimate. In unity there is strength. It is
proclaimed in the thunder, in the storm, in the roar
of the ocean and the cataract—it is seen in man,
made in the image of his Maker, and in all the
grandeur, and majesty, and power of the works of
God. But a triune God has no foundation in nature,
and cannot stand the test of reason. And I have no
hesitancy in saying that Christianity would soon
fall, and crumble into nothingness, if it were not
sustained by its armies of priests, and the millions
expended to keep it up. But to return.
I will not pause to inquire what is Christianity,
because, to this <<399>>question, I could obtain no
satisfactory reply, even from the professors of this
faith;—each of the numerous sects into which
Christianity has been, and is, divided and
subdivided, would set up its own peculiar belief as
the standard of the true faith; and no honest man
will pretend to assert that the Christianity of the
Catholic is the same as that of the Protestant, or
that the Protestants themselves unite in any one
subject of belief save the immortality of the soul,
a future state of rewards and punishments, and the
worship of three Gods. The Episcopalians deny the
existence of any church but their own, and will not
suffer the ministers of any other sect to preach in
their pulpits. Other Christian sects do not admit a
free intercourse even at the Communion table. Some
believe in predestination and election; others
repudiate them as immoral and anti-Christian. Indeed
if a close analysis were to be made of the various
beliefs and creeds of Christians, from the early
days down to the present time, it would be found
that Christianity was anything, everything, nothing.
In fact, what is this idea of Mr. Miller but a
new phase of Christianity, ever shifting, ever
changing, everything by turns, and nothing long?
Mr. Miller has read the works of Christian divines,
and the history of Christianity to but little
purpose, if he has not learned that Judaism has
always been regarded as a very different thing from
Christianity. Have we not ever been looked upon as
vile outcasts—utterly unworthy and lost—and our
faith as pure unbelief? Have not learned
Christian divines asserted that the ancient Jews did
not believe in the immortality of the soul, and a
future state of rewards anti punishments? And yet a
new light has arisen, which would exhibit Jews and
Christians as hitherto ignorant of their respective
faiths, and that so far from differing, they are one
and the same. The idea is almost too ludicrous for a
grave examination.*
Mahomed ridiculous? Let Mr. Miller answer. If he
says no, then Christianity is a humbug—if he says
yes, then I answer him with his own words, and with
greater truth, for Mahomedanism has been more
successful and more consistent than Christianity.
But, as you have said, I leave Dr. Wise to answer
him.
<<400>>
Before, however, I enter into this examination of
the identity of Judaism with Christianity, I must
appeal to Mr. Miller to remove some difficulties.
Why is the seventh verse of the fifth chapter of
first John retained, when it is known to be
spurious? Luther expunged it, and its spuriousness
was established by Erasmus, Sir Isaac Newton, and
Porson. The verse is not contained in any Greek
manuscript written earlier than the fifteenth
century, nor any Latin manuscript earlier than the
ninth. In the Bibles of Henry VIII., Edward VI., and
Elizabeth, it was printed in small type, or included
in brackets. By what authority is it now
retained?
And again if Christ and God are one, with equal
power, be pleased to explain 1 Cor. xv. 28. In
that verse we are told that, “Then shall the Son
also himself be subject unto him that put all things
under him, that God may be all in all.” Farther, let
Mr. Miller explain how does Christianity arrogate to
itself the title of a “religion of peace,” when
Christ tells us in Matt. x. 34, 35, that he “came
not to send peace on earth, but a sword—to set a man
at variance against his father, and the daughter
against her mother,” &c., &c.
Also let him settle whether Judas returned
the silver to the elders, and hung himself, as in
Matthew, or whether he purchased a field with
the reward of iniquity, and he burst asunder, and
his bowels gushed out, as in the Acts?
Men may express similar ideas or similar
moral laws in different language or
words, as Mr. Miller says that the Decalogue is
not the same in Exodus and Deuteronomy; but facts
must not, and cannot, differ. As for example, Moses
may have said, without a charge of discrepancy, in
Exodus, “Thou shalt have no other gods before me,”
and in Deuteronomy, “Thou shalt have none other gods
before me.” But he could not, without a charge of
falsehood, have said in one place, that, the
children of Israel crossed the Red Sea in boats,
and, in another, that they crossed it on dry land.
Nor will it <<401>>do for Mr. Miller to criticise
the Old Testament, for that is received as
unquestioned truth by both of us, but not so
what is called the New Testament.
But to return to the investigation of the question
of the identity of Judaism and Christianity:—I
repeat that I will not attempt an examination into
the question, “What is Christianity?” but, relying
upon the fact that it consists in a belief in the
Trinity, or three gods (to call things by their
right names), and salvation, not by the power and
mercy of God, but by means of the atonement effected
by the death of Christ, I shall proceed to examine
this new light, emitted by Mr. Miller.
Now, although I can conceive of nothing on earth so
dissimilar as Christianity and Judaism: yet if I
were to select any one form of Christianity more
unlike Judaism than all others, that form would be
Presbyterianism. Its doctrine of predestination and
the extent to which it carries its belief in
original sin would alone raise a wall of separation
beyond which no pure-minded Jew could pass. A
distinguished Presbyterian divine has said, “Hell
is paved with the skulls of infants;” and Jews,
who proverbially love their offspring, are called on
to believe that the tender babe, smiling on its
mother’s bosom, is the doomed child of perdition;
that the helpless infant, who knows not right or
wrong, and who is physically and morally incapable
of sinning, is yet steeped and dyed in vice. Mr.
Miller must remove this foul blot from the
escutcheon of Presbyterianism before he can ask us
to worship at its altar.
The belief of the Jew is so simple, that we may at
once proclaim it, and then institute a short
comparison between it and those fundamental points
of belief on which all Christian faiths may be said
to rest.
We
believe in one God, whose unity is unending; who is
without form, and incorporeal; the
Maker of heaven and of earth; who has no beginning,
and no ending; omniscient, omni-present,
all-powerful, and all-merciful. Such is
the God whom Jews adore, and such are his attributes
as declared to us by his word, revealed through his
prophets.
“Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” (Exod.
xx. 2.)
<<402>>
“Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one
Lord.” (Deut. vi. 4; iv. 35, 39.)
“See now that, even I, am he, and there is no god
with me.” (Deut. xxxii. 39; Samuel ii. 2; 2
Samuel vii. 22.)
“To whom will you liken me, or to whom shall I be
equal? saith the Holy One.” (Isa. xl. 25.)
“I
am the Lord, and there is none else; there is
no god besides me.” (Isa. xlv. 5, 6.)
“There is no god else besides me, a just God, and a
Saviour; there is none besides me. Look
unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the
earth, for I am God, and there is none else.”
(Isa. xlv. 21, 22.)
From these texts of Scripture, and they might be
multiplied, we believe in the unity of God,
and in his power and willingness to save and
redeem the repentant, without any aid or
co-operation. And such was the belief of the
Patriarchs and Prophets of old.
“I, even I, am he who blotted out thy
transgressions, for my own sake,” &c. (Isa.
xliii. 25), and, if I may not be accused of
profanity, I would add, “and not for Christ’s
sake.” What Jew can forget the beautiful
assurances of the gifted Isaiah,—“Let the wicked
forsake his ways and the iniquitous man his
thoughts: let him return unto the Lord, and he will
receive him with compassion, and to our God, for he
aboundeth in forgiveness.” (Isa. lv. 7.) “Behold,
the Lord’s hand is not shortened, that it can not
save,” &c., &c. (Isa. lix. 1.)
Indeed, it may safely he averred that Judaism was
established, and has been perpetuated, to proclaim
the mercy of God, and His power and willingness to
save the repentant, and to make known His glorious
and majestic unity in contradistinction to
polytheism, whether in the ancient form, as it
existed when God selected Abraham as his “friend,”
or in the more modern and more incomprehensible form
of three in one. Now no Christian believes in
the unity or oneness of God, nor in his mercy, or
power to save. God, according to Christianity,
is powerless to save, except through the mediation
of Christ. He is a being of dark passions, and
burning with impotent revenge. Because Adam sinned,
every descendant of Adam, through countless
<<403>>ages, is doomed to an eternity of punishment.
No good deeds, no purity of character, can save. He
may do all that our God, the God of Israel,
requires; he may “do justly, love mercy, and walk
humbly with God;” he may “fear God, and keep his
commandments;” but it will avail him not with the
Christian’s God, without faith in the atoning blood
of Christ. Hence it will be seen that no two beings,
spiritual or mortal, can be more unlike than
Israel’s God, all-merciful, and all-powerful to
save, and the Christian’s God, who cannot exercise
the power of pardon except through another, and that
other his son.
But Mr. Miller is wrong in supposing that our sole
objection to Christianity consists in the second
person of the Trinity. It is true that the
polytheism of Christianity is abhorrent to us, the
“witnesses” of God’s unity; but still more abhorrent
is the doctrine of the atonement, which we regard as
sinful and immoral. Because Adam sinned, all men are
sinners from the moment of their birth, and doomed
to perdition; God himself has no power to save. At
this point the son of God, more merciful than his
father, steps in, and, by undergoing death by the
awful punishment of the cross, appeases the wrath of
God: and faith in the redemption of the world by
this atonement is necessary to salvation. There is
such confusion of ideas in the whole scheme, and
such manifest injustice, that it cannot stand the
test of reason or revelation. We have already seen
what revelation tells us is necessary to salvation,
and will now apply the test of reason. In addition
to the texts of Scripture already quoted, I would
refer to a very memorable passage in Scripture,
decisive of the whole controversy. When the children
of Israel strayed from God to worship a golden calf,
Moses prayed to God to allow him to atone,
but God said: “Whosoever hath sinned against me, him
will I blot out of my book." (Exod. xxxii. 32, 33.)
See also Ezek. xviii. 20, 21, 22.
But it is unnecessary farther to quote Scripture.
And I might here add with propriety, that I
challenge Mr. Miller, and the whole priesthood, to
find one sentence in the whole Old Testament that
speaks of a trinity in the Godhead. The sentence
“Kiss the son, lest he be angry with you,” so much
<<404>>quoted by the ignorant, is a false
translation, and so known to Christian and Jewish
Hebrew scholars. Now I appeal to the candour and
common sense of any unprejudiced mind, and ask if it
is reasonable that God, who constantly proclaims his
unity, and his desire and power to pardon the
repentant, should have concealed from the readers of
the Bible so important a fact as this mystical unity
of three, and this means of redemption by faith in
another’s sufferings. And if Scripture affords no
light, surely reason does not; and this all honest
Christians admit for when reason is appealed to,
they at once say, “Oh, it is a mystery!”
Can any man by reason establish the doctrine of the
Trinity? Clearly not. And is it not abhorrent to our
ideas of justice to suppose that God would punish
one man for the sins of another, or that He would
receive the sufferings of Christ as an atonement for
any wickedness? And if Christ’s sufferings are
necessary to save the world, what saved the world
before he suffered? But how can God suffer? or how
can an infinite and eternal being die? And again, if
it was necessary that God should die to appease God,
who created the necessity? If God created the
necessity, then God could have pardoned without any
sacrifice, or He is not all-powerful. But I cannot
pursue this train of reasoning, for we are taught
not to revile the gods of other nations, and I beg
it to be expressly understood that I speak not of
the God of Israel.
It
has always appeared strange to me that, whilst the
Council of Nice were purifying the gospels by making
an arbitrary selection, they did not also expunge
the two remarks of Christ whilst on the cross,
“Father, forgive them, for they know not what they
do,” and, “My God! my God! why hast thou forsaken
me?” These two remarks at once destroy his divinity,
and the whole doctrine of the atonement. Why ask
forgiveness for the Jews for doing an act necessary
for their salvation, and that of the whole world,
and why ask for their forgiveness when he was equal
with God? And finally, how could God forsake
himself, or how could he, who had supreme power, be
forsaken? If, however, the Christian should reply,
he spoke and suffered <<405>>in his human and not
his divine nature, then I answer, human reason
cannot understand the distinction; and if his divine
nature did not suffer, then I would ask, how could
the sufferings of a human being be an infinite
sacrifice, and an infinite atonement? From the above
it will be clearly seen that the Jew and the
Christian are antipodes in belief, and that they can
never amalgamate.
In
conclusion I would say to Mr. Miller, that if I have
said aught to offend, I beg him to remember that I
sought not the controversy, and but for his
intrusion into a Jewish publication he should never
have heard from me. |
