-300x300.jpg)
In this episode Trent examines rabbi Daniel Polish’s criticisms of Pope Francis published in America Magazine and shows why the Holy Father said nothing wrong when he discussed the Mosaic Law in a recent homily.
Welcome to the Council of Trend podcast, a production of Catholic Answers.
Trent Horn:
Everyone, welcome to the Council of Trend podcast. I’m your host Catholic Answer’s Apologist and speaker, Trent Horn. I only have time for a quick episode today because I’ve been traveling a lot recently, but I hope to have some hefty dialogues and rebuttals coming soon for you. In the meantime though, today I want to talk about an opinion piece that I saw in America magazine. It was published on September 8th and it really caught my eye. Not as much as the one they published a year ago called the Catholic Case for Communism, but it was interesting because the editorial dealt with a controversy back in August related to something that Pope Francis said.
Trent Horn:
So here’s the situation. On August 11th, pope Francis gave a general audience and in that talk that he gave, he gave spiritual reflection on Paul’s letter to the Galatians. Now, in one part of the address, Pope Francis said this of the mosaic law, “The law, however, does not give life. It does not offer the fulfillment of the promise because it is not capable of being able to fulfill it. The law is a journey, a journey that leads towards an encounter. Those who seek life need to look to the promise and to its fulfillment in Christ.” Sounds good to me, right? But in America magazine, Rabbi Daniel, I don’t know if it’s Polish or Polish, I’m going to say Polish, he talked about how the International Jewish Committee on interreligious consultations quote, “Quickly sent a letter expressing grave concern about the Pope’s words. Jews engaged in dialogue with the church expressed profound, personal dismay.”
Trent Horn:
Rabbi Polish himself, published the editorial in America where he says, well the title is “Why Pope Francis’ comments on the Torah were hurtful to his Jewish friends”. Now, before I explain what’s wrong with Rabbi Polish’s criticism, I should note that there’s a bit of an inconsistency in his view on hurtful words. So Jewish leaders like Rabbi Polish, they’re concerned that the Pope essentially said that a central feature of their religion, like the Torah, is worthless or it’s insufficient to truly meet their spiritual needs. But those same leaders, they have no problem saying that Jesus of Nazareth is not the Messiah, is not divine, and he didn’t rise from the dead. And when they say those things, I don’t consider them hurtful words. They’re just what I would expect from someone who doesn’t think that Christianity is true.
Trent Horn:
Rabbi Polish himself has said in a previous America article, “Jesus plays no role in our religious life as Jews.” But instead of being offended by words like that, I would consider them an opportunity to dialogue about Jesus and show why he should play an important role for any Jew who wants to be faithful to God. Now, it is possible to treat a religion that you consider false in a hurtful way and Rabbi Polish, he commends Pope Francis for not doing that in the past, for opposing anti-Semitism, for celebrating Judaism and Christianity’s joint spiritual heritage. But nothing that Pope said in this August audience contradicted his previous charitable stance towards Judaism. And this can be clearly seen in the context of the Pope’s remark about Galatians. So let’s dive into that.
Trent Horn:
Galatians is one of Paul’s most contentious letters. He’s vigorously challenging his fellow Jews who were claiming that in order to be a good Christian, you first had to be a good Jew. So what they were saying, for example, was that Gentiles who converted to Christianity, non Jews, that they had to be circumcised in order to be saved. And Paul was so outraged by their demands. He said in Galatians 5:4, “They cut themselves off from Christ, severed themselves from Christ and in Galatians 5:12 he said, “If they love circumcisions so much, maybe they should just castrate themselves if they want to create this obstacle for people coming to Christ.” Now Paul’s words are harsh, but you got to think of it as an intra-jewish dispute. Disputes among Jews in the first century could be very harsh.
Trent Horn:
When we read in the writings of the Jewish historian, Josephus or in the dead sea scrolls, you see different Jewish sex calling each other harsh names, asking God to curse one another. So Paul’s remarks should not be seen as an outsider’s anti-Semitic attack on Judaism. Instead, we have to think of Paul, as Michael Barber calls him, a new covenant Jew telling his Jewish peers the mosaic law was not intended to be a permanent covenantal foundation. So Paul says the law was in Greek, [foreign language 00:05:07], which is like a babysitter or a tutor that accompanies God’s people until it’s not needed for that purpose.
Trent Horn:
So obedience to things like the 10 commandments, it’s still necessary for salvation, but the obedience itself is not what saves us. This is what Paul writes. “For if a law had been given which could make alive, then righteousness would indeed be by the law. But the scripture consigned all things to sin, that what was promised to faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe.” So when Pope Francis says the mosaic law does not give life, he’s not saying that the mosaic law is worthless. In fact, St. Paul himself makes no such claim. Paul even says, “The law is holy and the commandment is holy and just and good.” Roman 7:12. And in his follow up address, Pope Francis, he prayed for the Jewish people who were celebrating Rosh Hashanah and this is what he prayed. “May the new year be rich with fruits of peace and good for those who walk faithfully in the law of the Lord.”
Trent Horn:
So the mosaic law is good, but it’s not sufficient. Pope Francis was essentially just quoting St. Paul’s declaration that the law does not give eternal life, only Christ does. And Christ does this not by abolishing or replacing the law, but by fulfilling it, Matthew 5:12 and bringing the law to its proper end. Pope Benedict the 16th said this, “The law remains valid. Even if it must be read anew in new situations. But this new reading is neither a repeal nor a substitution, but a deepening in unaltered for validity. There is really no substitution here.” Now, this is important because Rabbi Polish accuses Pope Francis of endorsing super sessionism or what’s been called replacement theology. He describes it this way, “That super sessionism holds that the religion of the Jews, the Torah, is antiquated and outmoded. It has been replaced in God’s favor and design by a new Israel, the church triumphant. It leaves no room for Jews and Judaism in God’s plans for the world.”
Trent Horn:
Polish also says that the Second Vatican Council obliges Catholics to accept the faith of Jews as a spiritual equal. Now there’s two errors we need to avoid concerning the relationship between Christianity and Judaism. On the one hand, Christians need to recognize that Judaism is unique among all non-Christian religions. It’s unique. That’s why the church condemned hereses like Marcionism which repudiated the old Testament. Marcion said, “Oh, we don’t even need the Old Testament, just get rid of it.” The catechism says, “The Old Testament is an indispensable part of sacred scripture. Its books are divinely inspired and retain a permanent value, for the old covenant has never been revoked.” Paragraph 1:21. Now the Second Vatican Council said, “Although the church is the new people of God, the Jews should not be presented as rejected or cursed by God.”
Trent Horn:
So Judaism is unlike other non-Christian religions because everything it teaches about what God had revealed previously is true. So it’s not like Islam, for example, that has a false view of what actually happened in the Old Testament. What Judaism teaches about what happened in the Old Testament is completely true. The falsities in Judaism are related to what it says about Jesus Christ, not what it said about the events that God previously revealed himself in prior to Jesus Christ in the old covenant. So Judaism is distinct from non-Christian religions. But on the other hand, this doesn’t mean that Judaism and Christianity are spiritual equals as Rabbi Polish says, in the sense that it makes no difference to which religion one belongs. Now, Evangelism to Jewish people must be sensitive of abuses and evils that took place in the past. But even still, it can’t, out of fear of causing offense to people, abdicate the duty to share the truth about Jesus, the Messiah, the Christ, to the people who have kept the promises of Abraham.
Trent Horn:
When someone tells me words that I’ve said are hurtful, I sometimes ask them, how could I have communicated my message with different words that aren’t hurtful? So in some cases, critics will ask me, “Well, just use completely different words that contradict my message. If I say marriage is a union of a man and a woman, say God loves same-sex marriage.” I can’t do that, that contradicts my message. I tell the person that what they found hurtful, wasn’t the words I used, it was the truth I shared. And I suspect that Rabbi Polish and other Jews, not to mention Muslims and other non Christians, would find it hurtful to say. As the acts of the apostles says, “There is salvation in no one else. If there is no other name, Christ, under heaven, given among men by which we must be saved.” Acts 4:12.
Trent Horn:
But instead of focusing on taking offense at a hard saying, our Jewish brothers and sisters, they should take heart because God has given the Jewish people special gifts to recognize God’s anointed one, to recognize the Messiah. In John 4:22, Jesus even said that salvation is from the Jews. And this salvation was given to us through a God who chose to be born of a Jewish woman, born of a woman, born under the law, as Galatians 4:4 says, “So that we could live under freedom under the law of Christ and have eternal life with him.” As it says in Galatians 6:1. So to pull it all together, if you meet someone who is offended by what Pope Francis said in these remarks, what he said about Judaism, you should ask that person how could the Pope have said his message, which is essentially what Paul says in the letter of the Galatians.
Trent Horn:
How could he say that the mosaic law is good, but it is not sufficient to give us eternal life and salvation is found only in Jesus Christ. How could he have said that in a non hurtful way? And many of the critics that you’ll speak with, they’ll say, “Well, you just shouldn’t say that. That the Jews will be saved by their own means, Muslims by their own means, Buddhist by their own means.” But that is not what scripture teaches. That is not what Christ teaches. The thing that God has given away, given us to perfectly take away sin, is not Buddha, it’s not Oprah, it’s not self- enlightenment, it’s not Muhammad. It’s not even the old covenant law. It’s not even the mosaic law, which served a purpose to reconcile the people to God, but it did so in an imperfect way.
Trent Horn:
That’s why the letter to the Hebrews says that the sacrifices of bulls and animals that was done in the Jerusalem temple, those were not perfect because you had to keep offering them over and over and over again. Instead, God has become man. He has become the paschal lamb. The lamb of God offered once at Calvary, once at Calvary, and then at mass, that one single perfect sacrifice of Christ is represented for us to be able to take part in the new Passover. So once again, we see that those who would curse Judaism or anything like that are completely and hopelessly misguided, that our faith is the natural fulfillment of Judaism. That’s why I would definitely recommend resources like Brant Petri’s book “Jesus and the Jewish Roots of the Eucharist.”
Trent Horn:
Roy Shuman is a convert from Judaism to Catholicism who has several books on the subject. One of them is called “Salvation is from the Jews” so I would highly recommend that. I’ll also leave a link in the description. I’ll leave a link in the description of this video to an article my friend, Jimmy Akin, wrote about replacement theology and what Pope Benedict the 16th had to say about that. Because there’s different ways of understanding how should we understand that the old covenant was given for a time and now we have the new covenant. What can we understand as being true and good in Judaism, but what is ultimately insufficient and lacking? How do we understand all that? I’ll leave a link to Jimmy’s article because it goes into that in great detail and I think that you’ll find it helpful. And I hope that you found this episode helpful today, and I just hope that you have a very blessed day.
If you like today’s episode, become a premium subscriber at our Patreon page and get access to member only content. For more information, visit Trenthornpodcast.com.