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6. Romans 9–11: Rereading Aquinas on the Jews
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101 Holly Taylor Coolman 6 Romans9–11 Rereading Aquinas on the Jews Given the events of the twentieth century—including both atrocities committed against the Jews and new openness and dialogue between Jews and Christians —it is not surprising that the question of Aquinas’s understanding of the Jews has received regular treatment. Aquinas stands as a profoundly influential voice within the Christian tradition , a thinker who is receiving renewed attention from both Catholics and Protestants. Any attempt to reassess the major strands of traditional Christian thinking on Judaism must take account of his thought. Furthermore, as is discussed further below, Aquinas’s own historic situation was marked by important shifts in Christian responses to Judaism. There is much to be learned in attending closely to his claims. In fact, over the last three decades, important work has been done on this question. In light of the painful reality of the persecution Jews have suffered, this research has tended to occur against a backdrop of very practical questions : Does the work of Aquinas contribute to pernicious anti-Jewish tendencies in Christian thought? Does it offer resources for positive constructive work? According to the scholarship to date, certain elements of Aquinas’s thought fall into the first category, while others fall into the second. In this chapter, I give a brief summary of that scholarship, noting in particular the element in Aquinas’s thought that is most clearly negative with regard to present-day Judaism—his condemnation of the practice of the ceremonial law—and the element in Aquinas’s thought that has been most consistently recognized as positive—his assertion that, ultimately, “all Israel will be saved.” Not incidentally, given the focus of this volume, the more positive element is seen most clearly in Aquinas’s Commentary on Romans. The Romans commentary has only quite recently been available from the Latin into English translation , and it seems likely that this lack of a translation has led to a much greater 102 Holly Taylor Coolman emphasis upon Aquinas’s thought as it appears in the Summa, much widely available in translation, but also the source of Aquinas’s more negative claim.1 I then go on to argue that there is, in fact, a profound connection between these two elements. Aquinas’s negative claim regarding the ceremonial law, especially when seen in the context of his larger argument, is actually called into question by his more positive claim concerning the eventual salvation of the Jews. The Ambivalence of Recent Scholarship Serious questions have been raised regarding certain elements of Aquinas’s thought that seem to disparage Judaism and exacerbate Jewish-Christian tensions . The renowned Jewish thinker Michael Wyschogrod raises what is perhaps the most troubling aspect of Aquinas’s teaching regarding the Jews: his claim that after Christ, the practice of the ceremonial law constitutes mortal sin.2 For Wyschogrod, it is a teaching that “strains contemporary Christianity ’s relationship with Judaism.”3 To make sense of Aquinas’s claim regarding the ceremonial law, however, requires a bit of explanation. Following earlier Christian interpreters, Aquinas divides the Mosaic law into three parts: the moral, the judicial, and the ceremonial. The “moral” and the “judicial” continue to have import for Christian practice. The “ceremonial ,” however, refers to commandments that are, by their very nature, anticipatory of the work of Christ, and these commandments, including, for example, the commandment to circumcise one’s sons, are ones that Christians therefore may no longer observe. The “ceremonial law,” thus, is a marker by which Christians distinguish Jewish obedience of God’s Law from their own. Specifically, Aquinas writes that observance of the ceremonial law is now both “dead” and “deadly.” It is not difficult to see why such a claim might garner attention. Aquinas is insisting that the observance of the ceremonial law after Christ’s appearing not only accomplishes nothing, but harms those who engage in it. Observant Jews, in other words, deal death to themselves in an ongoing way, as they observe the very rites that were commanded by God himself. 1. Torrell notes that between 1869 and 1874, a multi-volume French translation of all the commentaries on Paul’s writings did appear: Commentaires de saint Thomas d’Aquin sur tout les êpitres de S. Paul, trans. abbé Bralé, 6 vols. (Paris: Vivès). See Jean-Pierre Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas, vol. 1, The Person and His Work, trans. Robert Royal (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1996), 340...