Israel's Messiah and the People of God

A Vision for Messianic Jewish Covenant Fidelity

Mark S. Kinzer, Jennifer M. Rosner, Rosner

• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9781621892403
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Church

Israel's Messiah and the People of God presents a rich and diverse selection of essays by theologian Mark Kinzer, whose work constitutes a pioneering step in Messianic Jewish theology. Including several pieces never before published, this collection illuminates Kinzer's thought on topics such as Oral Torah, Jewish prayer, eschatology, soteriology, and Messianic Jewish-Catholic dialogue. This volume offers the reader numerous portals into the vision of Messianic Judaism offered in Kinzer's Postmissionary Messianic Judaism (2005). An introductory essay by editor Jennifer M. Rosner sets Kinzer's thought and writings in context.

Part I

Vision for Messianic Judaism

1

The Messianic Fulfillment of the Jewish Faith

Mark Kinzer describes his own story of coming to faith in Yeshua, and thereby to a richer understanding of Judaism and a deeper commitment to Jewish life. Upon becoming a believer in Yeshua in 1971, Kinzer never questioned that his newfound faith would be lived out in the context of Judaism. This commitment came at a time when a path for Jewish expression of Yeshua-faith had yet to be fully forged, and this essay represents Kinzer’s burgeoning vision to pioneer such a path. In many ways, the convictions that Kinzer held in the early years of his messianic faith would cast the trajectory for the rest of his life and his life’s work. In the impassioned reflections of a young man, we see here the seed-form of Kinzer’s mature theological commitments.1

The Jewish Christian2 is for many people an anomaly and enigma. His identity often seems incomprehensible to both his non-Messianic Jewish brethren and his Messianic Gentile brethren. The Jewish form of incomprehension was passed on faithfully to me in my younger years. I recall being unable to distinguish between the words goy (Gentile) and Christian; in my mind both words referred to all of those who were not Jews. The Christian form of incomprehension is reflected in the questions many Gentile believers ask me: “So you are a convert from Judaism?” or “So you were formerly a Jew?” The man who insists that he is a Jewish Christian looks to all the world as one who is trying to walk along a fence with a leg on each side, or as one who answers yes and no to the same question.

There are obvious historical explanations for this inability to yoke together the words Jew and Christian. Nonetheless, one cannot dismiss Jewish Christianity on historical or logical grounds. Jesus was a Jew, the apostles were Jews, the New Testament is a patently Jewish book, and the early messianic congregation saw the unity of Jew and Gentile within its halls as the paramount sign of God’s having reconciled the world to himself (Ephesians 2:11–22). Even the non-Messianic Jew cannot fault the logic: If Jesus was indeed the Messiah, then a Jew is obligated to follow him, and can only experience the fullness of Judaism as a result. One can argue with the premise, but not with the inevitability of the conclusion.

The fulfillment of Judaism in Jesus the Messiah is to me both a theological and an experiential reality, a truth I believe and a truth I live. I am a Jew, seeking to follow Torah (the Jewish law) and living today a more Jewish life than ever before; I am also a Christian, believing that Jesus fulfills the promises made to my ancestors, and experiencing the fruits that come from a relationship with him.

Background

My immediate family memory goes back only two generations. Just before World War I my grandparents made the long ocean voyage from the eastern European shtetl (Jewish village) to the great American metropolis. My mother’s father was a humble carpenter, a jovial and simple man. My paternal grandfather was a learned and pious talmudic scholar. The rabbis would sit at his side and seek his opinion on abstruse matters of Jewish law. Though both of these men lived far beyond their allotted time of three score and ten years, a gulf separated their universe from mine—a gulf of language, culture, age, and worldview. I lived in the same house with each of them for a time, but I never really knew them.

My father was a kind man with few spiritual inclinations but with a passionate attachment to the synagogue and to Zionism. Through most of my youth he would drive twice daily to the shul (synagogue) to attend the morning and evening services. As President or Vice President of the congregation he would devote several full evenings each week to committee meetings and practical management of the building. He would also contribute generously to the Jewish National Fund and other Zionist causes. Though usually mild and reasonable, he could be inflamed to a fever pitch at the mere mention of the state of Israel.

My mother’s temperament had a more intuitive bent. She believed deeply in God and in prayer, yet she had little knowledge of the Scripture or of Jewish tradition. She concentrated her prayer and her energy rather on raising the three unruly youths to whom she had given birth.

My two older brothers and I responded to my parents’ faith with undisguised condescension. We were living in a new age and a new culture, and the old ways were clearly unsuitable. We would sit together in the synagogue on the High Holy Days and joke about the operatic falsettos of the cantor or the spiritual apathy of the congregation. We were unimpressed with Judaism as we knew it—a ritualistic faith based on a language that few understood and a set of spiritual realities that few experienced. After celebrating our bar mitzvah’s in our thirteenth years, we all scrupulously avoided religion in any form.

Of course, I did have other obsessions. In my early years my life gained meaning from one main source—sports. My brothers and I ate, drank, and slept sports. We played them in the streets and fields, read about them in the newspapers, watched them on television, attended them at the stadiums and arenas, and talked about them everywhere. As I grew older I discovered another source of joy and purpose—music. Again I dove in with gusto—playing, singing, and listening until even in sleep my head vibrated with Chopin and Brahms and B. B. King. Finally, I stumbled upon what was to become my greater passion—philosophy. It all began when I pulled from the shelf of our local library a volume of Plato’s Dialogues. I read it quickly, and was immediately conquered. Spinoza and Aristotle soon followed. Philosophy led to psychology, and I rapidly digested morsels from Freud, Jung, Fromm, and R. D. Lang. I had already read Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy, and now I appreciated them even more. My mind had come alive with hunger for knowledge and truth, and the passion was not less strong for being intellectual rather than physical.

At this time I had an ambivalent attitude toward Jesus—a mixture of fascination, attraction, fear and hostility that is common to many Jewish people. On the one hand, the very name of Jesus could cause me to cringe with apprehension and animosity. There was something alien and threatening in that name; it was associated not so much with a person as with ideas, institutions, and an ancient enmity that I did not understand. My mother once told me how she came home crying after her first day in a Gentile primary school and asked her parents, “Who is Jesus? They said I killed Jesus!” Such incidents leave their mark. Even many Jews who have never personally experienced the hostility of Christians still react with irrational fear and anger at the mention of the name of Jesus.

On the other hand, the man Jesus fascinated me. Something about his teaching and life caught my imagination and impressed me deeply. One night I stayed up until 3:00 a.m. watching a movie on television based on the life of Christ. I was so affected that I asked a Gentile friend the next day if I could borrow her Bible. I wanted to read the firsthand accounts of the life of this remarkable man. Unfortunately the Bible was in King James English, and I began with the first chapter of Matthew—sixteen verses of “begats.” My zeal quickly waned, and I returned the Bible to my friend in as unused a condition as it was when I received it.

Reversal

The most significant year of my life began as I left my parents’ household and enrolled at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. I had been eagerly awaiting this transition for many years. I looked forward to being independent of my parents and their authority. Even more, I looked forward to the academic environment of intellectual and social ferment that awaited me in Ann Arbor. I wanted to meet other seekers who could aid me in my quest for knowledge and truth. Hidden in me beneath many layers of youthful pretense and egoism lay an intense desire for that which was right and true. I was a product of the late sixties, and the idealism of those years left an imprint on my mind.

The disillusionment of my first year at school hit me harder because of my high expectations. There were several reasons for this disillusionment. First, I found the huge university bureaucracy oppressive and stifling. Like most freshmen, I lived in a residence hall that housed close to a thousand students. I developed personal relationships with few of my classmates and none of my instructors. Secondly, I soon discovered that at the university, knowledge was fragmented into a multitude of discrete yet warring compartments. My quest for an integrated worldview was frustrated on every side. Each of my professors was eloquent, knowledgeable, and persuasive; unfortunately, they all disagreed with one another. Thirdly, I found few people who were actually concerned with life’s meaning and purpose. For years the main philosophical question that troubled me was the question of death. I was not so much afraid of death as I was unwilling to ignore it. What was the meaning of my work, my morals, my body, my relationships of love and friendship if all were destined to end in dust? I quickly found that very few people were concerned about such things, even at the university. Finally, I began to grow more conscious of my own shortcomings. My ideals were high, but my ability to live up to these ideals was substantially lower. In particular, I began to see some of my closest relationships deteriorate, and I knew that I was largely to blame. Therefore, the university sent me home for the summer disheartened, disillusioned, and slightly confused.

For three years much of my life had revolved around three close friends. We were all agnostics, and we were proud of our unbelief. During these years we were never apart from one another. I now decided that it was time for me to make a break with my past stabilities—especially the camaraderie of my friends. I needed to make up my mind decisively about what I thought, what I believed, and where I was headed. As an initial step in this direction, I purchased a backpack and reserved a seat on a cheap chartered flight to Europe. This would allow me to be away from my friends and family, visit some places I always wanted to see, and make some fundamental decisions about the direction of my life.

The next seven weeks proved to be a turning point. Every book I picked up seemed to speak about the reality of God and of Jesus Christ. I visited the magnificent cathedrals of Europe and marveled at the centuries of energy, treasure, and genius that men devoted to the glory of their God. A man approached me as I was eating lunch behind a Viennese palace and started speaking in German; as I told him that I did not speak his language, he broke out into a broad Kansas smile and began to speak to me in my native tongue about Jesus the Messiah. I spent a weekend with a Christian couple in Worcester, England, who talked with me about the Lord at great length and refreshed me with loving hospitality. They gave me a book that spoke of God as a personal and powerful being who ruled the world yet wanted us to know him consciously and intimately. I had been seeking an ultimate source of meaning, a foundational principle that could organize and integrate the field of human knowledge, an ethical system that was lofty yet livable; but I was totally unprepared for this type of God, who was less concerned that we pursue him and more concerned that we let ourselves be found.

The straw that broke the camel’s back awaited me as I returned home. In the seven weeks that I had been gone all three of my friends had become Christians. Their experiences and lines of thought paralleled my own. With this fact, I was finished. I could not resist and still maintain my integrity. I now began to pray, read Scripture, and meet occasionally with other believers. Every day I found new confirmations of my still slightly half-hearted faith. Prayer was answered; Scripture blazed like a torch before my eyes and enlightened my mind with unexpected truths; my life and character started to undergo a radical change. This was an entirely new world, full of powers and principalities beyond my imagining.

I had sought the truth, and it had seized me. I had longed for a comprehensive intellectual system, and instead found myself face to face with a person who was more than a person. This new faith had intellectual solidity, but it soared far beyond the realms of philosophy. The quest had ended where it had begun—with the God of Israel. He had summoned me, and there was no possible response other than the response of my fathers: “Here am I.”

A Messianic Judaism

How could I reconcile my new faith with my former aversion to Christianity, that cluster of ideas and institutions and historical events that I had once associated with the name of Jesus? My initial approach was simple: I was not becoming a Christian in that sense. I was not joining myself to some entity called Christendom, but was merely believing that Jesus was the Messiah and deciding to follow him. In many ways I still identified Christianity with the goyim (Gentiles), and I was determined not to subject myself to a process of gentilization. My attitude has mellowed over the years as I have learned to appreciate many aspects of the Gentile Christian heritage, but that early determination to live as a Jewish follower of Jesus—a Jewish Christian—has remained the same.

My first Christian teacher was a Jewish man who was raised in an Orthodox home. He had become a believer in Yeshua (Jesus) at the age of nineteen, and had been serving t...

Table of contents

• Israel’s Messiah and the People of God
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction to the Thought and Theology of Mark Kinzer
• PART I: Vision for Messianic Judaism
• PART II: Judaism from a Messianic Perspective
• PART III: Yeshua-faith from a Jewish Perspective
• Epilogue: Postmissionary Messianic Judaism, Three Years Later: Reflections on a Conversation Just Begun
• General Bibliography
• Chronological Bibliography of Material Related to Postmissionary Messianic Judaism