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  • The Jews and the Christian West
  • Dietrich von Hildebrand
    Translated by John Henry Crosby (bio)

The great battle for the Christian West, which is raging furiously today, draws the question of the nature and spiritual roots of the West into the center of intellectual analysis and debate. It is therefore not coincidental that the question of the Jews and the Christian West is presented first in this lecture series on the Jewish question. It is a matter of equal concern for Jews as well as Christians, and its resolution contains significant consequences for both sides.

In speaking of the "West," we mean not only a geographic region or a particular number of nations, but above all a spiritual realm with a very specific character. Here is not the place to speak about the "countenance" of the West in all of its particulars. Yet it is beyond doubt that a Western spirit does exist, which despite all national [End Page 145] differences––of the Italians, the French, the Germans, and so forth––possesses a clearly formed, sharply contoured countenance, which predates the birth of these nations, and which, despite the apostasies and denials of it since the Renaissance, is still alive today. For us it is above all crucial that we understand that Israel has an essential share in the formation of this Western spirit, something that many today forget or would want to forget.

The Old Testament, as the encyclical Mit Brennender Sorge clearly expresses anew, is an essential part of the Christian religion. It is inseparably bound up with the New Testament. The tremendous significance that it thereby possesses for the shaping of the West is obvious. For even if the Christian West grew out of a marriage of Christianity and antiquity, even if Christianity and antiquity are principles of form, and the particular ethnic character (Stammeseigenart) of the Romans, Germans, Celts, and Slavs a principle of matter, surely of these two formative elements, Christianity takes the overriding and leading position.

The Old Testament plays an essential part in the deepest and most decisive formation of the spirit of the West through the light of revelation. This role bespeaks the place of the Old Testament within the totality of divine revelation. To the extent that the Old Testament is both the foundation and anticipation of the New Testament, to the extent that it is indissolubly taken up and incorporated into Christian revelation, it also has a part in the formation of the West through divine revelation. Because God spoke to Israel in the Old Testament and because he chose this people to be the bearer of his revelation, Israel plays a unique and irreplaceable role in the shaping of the spirit of the West. The wonderful encyclical Mit Brennender Sorge says:

The sacred books of the Old Testament are entirely the word of God, and constitute an organic part of his revelation; they are penetrated by a subdued light, corresponding to the gradual development of revelation, the dawn of the bright day of [End Page 146] the redemption. As should be expected in historical and legal books, they reflect in many particulars the imperfection, the weakness and sinfulness of man. But side by side with innumerable touches of greatness and nobility, they also record the story of the chosen people, bearers of the Revelation and the Promise, repeatedly straying from God and turning to the world. Eyes not blinded by prejudice or passion will see in this prevarication, as reported by the Biblical history, the luminous splendor of the divine light revealing the saving plan which finally triumphs over every fault and sin.1

Israel––Representative People of Humanity

The Old Testament is divine revelation. Yet it is also the history of the Jewish people, an expression of its essential character, its ethos, its poetry; and these elements too have a deep share in the inner formation of the West, one that cannot simply be thought away, even if these elements are of course incomparable with the purely revealed content of the Old Testament.

Like no other people, Israel was a classical representative of humanity.2 I do not say that it possessed this role on the basis of...

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