There is no such thing as “Judaeo-Christian”. The use of that term bespeaks a failure to take either Judaism or Christianity seriously in its own terms.
Most practically, perhaps, Judaism gives priority to justice over mercy, whereas Christianity gives priority to mercy over justice. A politician who wishes to draw on either or both needs to be aware of, and sensitive to, that profound difference.
Far from being the
mother-religion that it is often assumed to be, a very great deal of
Judaism is actually a reaction against Christianity, although this is by
no means the entirety of the relationship, with key aspects of kabbalah
actually deriving from Christianity, with numerous other examples set
out in Rabbi Michael Hilton’s The Christian Effect on Jewish Life
(London: SCM Press, 1994), and so on. Come back next month for plenty of detail about that.
Judaism is an organising principle for all sorts of people discontented for whatever reason by
the rise of Christianity in general and the Christianisation of the
Roman Empire in particular, including all the historical consequences of
that up to the present day, without any realistic suggestion of a
common ethnic background.
Above all, Judaism’s unrealised Messianic hope
and expectation has issued in all sorts of earthly utopianisms:
Freudian, Marxist (and then Trotskyist, and then Shachtmanite),
monetarist, Zionist, Straussian, neoconservative by reference to all of
these, and so forth.
They are all expressions of Judaism’s repudiation
of Original Sin, Christianity’s great bulwark against the rationally and
empirically falsifiable notions of inevitable historical progress and
of the perfectibility of human nature in this life alone and by human
efforts alone.
What utter nonsense is this?
ReplyDeleteJesus was not only very definitely Jewish-but he explicitly said, several times, that he had come to affirm the laws of the Old Testament not to repudiate them.
"Judeo-Christian" is precisely the right term-Judaism gave birth to Christianity and Jesus personally acknowledged the debt.
And, of course, Mr Farage is the only one of the party leaders who would actually like to keep Britain Christian.
The two main Parliamentary party leaders both voted to close every Catholic adoption agency in Britain under the last government.
And both would vote to do so again-and again.
They are, at least, open about abolishing Britain as a Judeo-Christian country.
That was not the Judaism that has existed since the rise of Christianity, against which all currently existing forms of Judaism are a reaction. You are out of your depth.
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