god of abraham

Hang around evangelicals and fundamentalists enough, and you may hear a belief expressed that seems a little bizarre: that Jews do not worship the God of Abraham because they do not believe Jesus is God. In this opinion, they worship either a false God or "nothing." Got that?

It's actually a very common belief, but one I consider misguided. It often ties in with the idea that God broke his covenant with the Jews and Christians are the new chosen people. I thought Paul said something about being grafted onto the vine, but maybe I misunderstand, and what he actually meant was the exact opposite.

As I understand the argument, it's that Judaism changed when the decision was made as a people group to reject Christ; i.e., Judaism became something like the Democratic Party, known for what it is not. Passages like Isaiah 53 have been reinterpreted to apply to Israel and not to the messiah, beliefs about what the messiah will do have altered so that they are inconsistent with Jesus' teachings and actions. There's other small stuff too, like the matzoh during the seder. One of the pieces of matzoh is taken away and hidden for the children to find, a practice that some scholars believe was originally a Jewish way of saying "See? The body really *was* stolen."

The argument also goes that much of Judaism as it is practiced today is spiritually dead. That's why temples sponsor seminars on alternative spirituality, like transcendental meditation, and est and what have you. The religion has become encrusted with tradition and extra teaching (the Talmud, the Mishnah, and so on) that keep people away from experiencing the Tanakh as it was intended by God.

Invariably when this discussion surfaces, as it has before I made this post, it soon turns on issues of salvation. Since Paul says point-blank that Christ came first for the Jews, then for the Gentiles, many evangelical Christians argue that contemporary Judaism lacks saving knowledge of God. After all, if someone doesn't need Christ to be reconciled to God, but can be drawn near through faithful observance of the Law, isn't Christ's sacrifice negated?

Paul essentially says, "If there a law that could have brought you to God, this one would have done it." But he hammers home the point that following the law only brings death, because sin increases where there is law. ("I would not know to covet if the Torah did not say, 'Do not covet.'")

It's been a while since I wrapped my brain around Paul's reasoning and the arguments set forth in Hebrews, but isn't the idea that the thrust of the Tanakh was to show us our need for a savior, an intercessor between God and man, and to get us to anticipate the coming of that savior and to accept by faith what he would do?

Based on that reasoning, I would have to say that, yes, you can worship God in a sense but not in full knowledge and not in saving knowledge either, by trying to draw near to him through faithful observance of the Torah's requirements. Paul also talked about this in Romans, regarding the hardening of the Jews' hearts so that the full number of Gentiles could come in. (And that's when he also stresses that the Jews remain God's chosen.)

I think it is clear that no one who lived before Christ was saved by keeping the dictates of the Law. They were saved the same way that we are today, through faith in God's promise. For them, the promise had not yet been realized. For us, we can see the realization of the promise in Jesus Christ.

Now, that brings up the question of the Jews who, for whatever reason, don't see Jesus as God's promised Messiah, but still do believe in the promises of God for redemption and for a Messiah. Does their faith in God's promise and in the coming Messiah count for nothing now that Jesus has already come? I don't know. God will have mercy on whomever he chooses, and they could be part of the group. I leave it up to God. I'm making no attempt to discern the mind of the Almighty on this or any other matter.

As to who worships the God of Abraham, my own thesis is pretty simple: There is no God but one. Anyone who acknowledges the God who created the heavens and the earth, the uncreated Supreme Being, is worshiping that God, though sometimes with essential (not minor) differences in understanding his nature and his character. I usually compare it to the faith of the Samaritan woman. She and other Samaritans worshiped God, but the Jews worshiped him in knowledge. So I'd go a step further and risk offending other people, by saying that Muslims also worship the same God that Christians do. In an Arabic-speaking country, I would refer to God as Allah and to Jesus as Isa, the same way I don't mind appropriating the English noun "god," and that Paul didn't object to using the pagan word "theos."

Islam of course denies the divinity of Christ. It accepts the virgin birth, but insists that Jesus was a prophet and no more than a man, making it fundamentally incompatible with Christianity and its teachings about God. I say that because Christian doctrine teaches that God is revealed through Christ and through the silent testimony of creation, and that he God does not tabulate our works and judge us based solely on our obedience to what we perceive his will to be.

But like Christianity, Islam describes God as the creator without beginning. Its depiction of God is incomplete in the Christian understanding -- and it certainly lacks the grace given through Christ -- but the Arabic word "Allah" is no worse a substitute for the Tetragrammaton than the English pagan word "God," the Greek word "theos," or the Kali word "kembu."

The dilemma within a Christian framework of what happens to anyone who has not heard the gospel but was trying to serve God is one that I'm sure we've all spent a lot of hours pondering, discussing and reading about. I generally don't say any particular group is headed to hell, or individual people for that matter. It's not my call to make, thankfully.

But it is an interesting theological question. With pagan peoples who hear the gospel for the first time, one often can see a dividing line once the gospel arrives. The segment that responds favorably to the gospel exhibits a marked change in behavior as they embrace the new revelation as the fulfillment of a cultural concept or religious belief they've long had. (Check out "Peace Child" or "Eternity in their Hearts" for some examples.)

The catch is that the segment of the population that doesn't embrace the gospel also demonstrates marked changes in attitudes and behavior, often toward the darker side of life and often as a societal or spiritual repudiation or rejection of Christ and Christianity.

Skip forward 100 years or so, to a person in the latter population segment. Under the scenario I've just presented, that person will have been raised in a culture with an ingrained bias against Christianity, even if he or she has never actually heard the gospel personally.