An Answer to SeekGod.ca, Part 4

The purpose of this article is to defend Messianic Judaism against what I believe to be an unfair and unscriptural attack. While this of necessity requires a certain amount of “counter-attack,” I will try to keep the focus on the arguments rather than the person, though some comments about Vicki’s general tendencies in her writings are necessary.

Promoters of Hebrew Roots

It’s significant that in this section, Vicki has isolated a handful of individuals of, frankly, little contribution to the Messianic movement as a whole. She does not even bring up David H. Stern, whose Messianic Jewish Manifesto and Complete Jewish Bible and Commentary are standard reading in many or most Messianic congregations; in fact, while modern Messianic Judaism has no singular leader or founder (unlike, for example, the Lutherans, Presbyterians, or Methodists), David Stern would come closer to qualifying than almost anyone else.

Nor does she mention D. Thomas Lancaster or Tim Hegg of First Fruits of Zion, Michael L. Brown (Answering Jewish Objections to Jesus), Kevin Howard and Marvin Rosenthal (The Feasts of the Lord), Mark Kinzer (Post-Missionary Messianic Judaism), or any other well-known, published authors in the Messianic movement. Admittedly, some of these (like FFOZ) may have come to the forefront after she wrote her initial article, but Stern, for example preceded her website by fifteen and seven years, respectively.

(A correction: I originally referred to Mark Nanos here as being Messianic; he is not, but rather is a Reform Jew who believes that the misrepresentation of Paul's view has been extremely harmful to the Jewish people--and he's right. My apologies to him for the accidental misrepresentation on my part.)

Vicki shows little understanding of the diversity within the Messianic and Hebrew Roots movement—to start, she continually groups them together when they should be regarded as interrelated, but separate groups. For another, she takes several distinct congregations, takes diverse statements from their leaders, and jumbles them together into a caricature of what “mainline” Messianic Judaism (if there is such a thing) truly believes.

For example, she has no cognizance of the fact that the role that the Talmud, if any, should play in Messianic Judaism is an ongoing and healthy debate. Avi ben Mordecai, as a Jew of Orthodox background living in Israel, believes that the Talmud should be kept. There is a whole community of Messianic Jews living in Israel (warning: YouTube link) who disagree with him—and far more living outside of the Land. In fact, he himself says at the beginning of the quote she has selected, “I am not a proponent of the ‘Jewish Roots’ or ‘Hebraic Roots’ movement as you or they define the terms”! How then are his opinions on the matter of halakhah relevant to a discussion of a group that he himself admits not belonging to? That’d be like me quoting a Catholic about Mary to discredit an Evangelical denomination!

Vicki quotes several sources as “leaders” of the Messianic movement; where she got the idea that these were leaders accepted by the movement as a whole is not stated. She has failed to notice that each of these three has distinct points-of-view which are at least partially incompatible with the others: Avi ben Mordecai would be unlikely to accept Dean Cozzens as a prophet, for example. Nor would Cozzens or Rowland accept ben Mordecai’s belief that we should keep the whole Oral Torah—not to mention ben Mordecai’s denial of being a part of the Hebrew Roots or Messianic movements at all!

What we are seeing here is that Vicki does not know how to properly discern between differing sub-groups of a movement. By differing between such groups and then discerning the common denominators between them, one can develop a core set of beliefs that characterize a movement as a whole, and then present a criticism of those. In the case of the Messianic/Hebrew Roots movement, one could legitimately criticize the following beliefs, which I defend on HebrewRoot:

• A need to understand the Jewish origins of the Scriptures and to read them in that light rather than in a Greek/Western light
• The validity in keeping the Torah for the believer in Messiah today
• Keeping the Feasts of the Lord
• A belief that we are grafted into Israel’s branch without replacing the natural branches
• A predominantly premillennial eschatology

If one were doing a critique of the Messianic portion of the movement, one could add the following:

• Keeping of much (not all) Jewish tradition as a legitimate expression of our faith in Messiah
• Referencing the Talmud and other Judaica for history and commentary (though in fact many Christian commentators do this, such as Edersheim, Keil & Delitzsch, and Lightfoot)

However, the following beliefs are held only by some groups within the Hebrew Roots/Messianic movement (many would say the fringe elements):

• A Pentecostal belief in the Spiritual gifts – in this case, my own congregation does believe in the Spiritual gifts as continuing today, but we do not derive any theology from extra-Biblical prophecies, nor do we claim to speak for all Messianics in this matter
• A belief in the divine origin of the Oral Torah
• Kabbalistic teaching – I don’t actually know any Messianic congregation which promotes studying Kabbalah, though I suppose there are probably a few somewhere
• The Sacred Name belief – on why “Jehovah” is not the correct transliteration, see here and here.

By failing to understand the different “flavors” of Messianism, or to acknowledge that the movement as a whole does not have a single leader or group of leaders, Vicki has mischaracterized mainline Messianic belief. By suggesting that we dispute the inspiration of the NT, she has again mischaracterized mainline Messianic belief. While she does raise some valid questions (though not questions without answers, as my own page and this blog demonstrate), she has not done enough research to know what the Messianic response to her arguments are in order to counter them.

In short, Vicki has either not done her homework or has not done so with a researcher’s discernment, and in the process has (inadvertently, we hope) slandered a large (over a million and counting) group of people.

Shalom!

HebrewRoot Update

I've just posted a new article on HebrewRoot called The Way of Paradise: Rabbinic Hermeneutics. It's a look at the four levels of interpretation that one can find in virtually any passage of Scripture, including examples of those levels being used by the Apostles in the Renewed Covenant Scriptures. I actually wrote it in response to some of the stuff I've been responding to on SeekGod, but it incorporates some thoughts that I've had and arguments I've made on FR as early as two years ago. Hopefully, it stands as a worthy contribution to an area where many others have written in more (and probably better) detail.

Shalom!

An Answer to SeekGod.ca, Part 3

The purpose of this article is to defend Messianic Judaism against what I believe to be an unfair and unscriptural attack. While this of necessity requires a certain amount of “counter-attack,” I will try to keep the focus on the arguments rather than the person, though some comments about Vicki’s general tendencies in her writings are necessary.

Anti-Semitism?

“Those who have challenged the Hebrew Roots teachings in the past have been dealt with swiftly and with the utmost hostility,” Vicki writes. “Dealt with?” With what? Hit-squads? No, as it turns out, by angry emails which use strong language. While I don’t condone the email presented, I’m not sure how this constitutes being “dealt with swiftly” or “with the utmost hostility”—is Vicki likewise dealing with Messianics “swiftly and with the utmost hostility” by publishing her website?

It’s interesting that the email she has chosen to use as an example of this hostility is obviously a knee-jerk reaction, rather than one written by a calmer, more eloquent author. She claims it to be from a “well-known leader,” but doesn’t tell us who. Frankly, anyone who is in ministry gets the occasional kook email or letter; our synagogue gets them all the time, many from “leaders” in the Christian world. Should I use those emails to show just how the Christian world is out to get us, and hint at a conspiracy to silence our point of view? Neither should Vicki use her kook mail to attack Messianism.

She continues,

Those who question this movement have often been accused of anti-semitism. Does the presentation of various Jewish doctrines obtained from Jewish sources constitute anti-Semitism? It seems unreasonable to conclude that the facts, presented objectively, are inherently anti-Semitic.

That depends: Are these Jewish doctrines presented in their full historical and linguistic context? Has Vicki studied the Judaica enough to know how to evaluate whether a source is considered “authoritative” or whether it is simply the recorded position of a single rabbi? Frankly, I could go through the writings of such well-respected fathers of Christianity as John Chrysostom and Martin Luther and pull quotes a-plenty to demonstrate that Christianity is a Jew-hating religion—but Vicki would be quick to leap on me for my selective quotation, and rightfully so.

Let me be the first to point out that there are passages in the Talmud and other traditional sources that are very blasphemous to our Lord Yeshua. However, I would also point out that a) just because something is in the Talmud does not make it authoritative for Judaism as a whole (just as not all things said by the early Church fathers are authoritative for Christianity as a whole), and b) that those statements were given and recorded at a time when the Church had joined with the State of Rome in persecuting the Jewish people.

Which is more blasphemous: To speak slander of an anti-Torah, anti-Jew “Jesus” that the Christians have presented you, or persecuting a person in Jesus’ name so as to provoke them to speak slander of Him? I’d say the latter.

Vicki writes, “Moreover, this writer has no bias against the Jews, but looks forward to the salvation of any through Jesus Christ.” The question is, once they are saved, would she encourage them to remain circumcised, Jewish, per Acts 21:20ff and 1 Co. 7:19, or would she expect them to assimilate into Gentile Christian culture? If she objects to the Messianic movement as a whole, the answer is necessarily the latter; and if the latter, Vicki is either saying that she wants there to be no more Jews, only Gentilized Christians, or that she wants some or most Jews to never accept their Messiah.

I’m sure Vicki would be appalled at those two conclusions, but they are the only ones which logically follow from her arguments.

Shalom!

An Answer to SeekGod.ca, Part 2

The purpose of this article is to defend Messianic Judaism against what I believe to be an unfair and unscriptural attack. While this of necessity requires a certain amount of “counter-attack,” I will try to keep the focus on the arguments rather than the person, though some comments about Vicki’s general tendencies in her writings are necessary.

To Embrace Hebrew Roots: Part I

Introduction

I have to give Vicki credit for both hitting the ground running and not pulling her punches even in her opening. She begins:

Research into the Hebrew Roots & Messianic movements constitutes research into Judaism as well as the occult. . . . We do not wish to edit or criticize Judaism, but recognize it as distinct from our Christian beliefs, just as many in Judaism also see a distinction and separateness from our beliefs, and we jointly have mutual respect for our differences and each other.

As we will see, by her tacit accusation of “occultism” in Messianic Judaism, she means our general utilization of the Talmud as a source of history and commentary. To say this on the one hand, but to claim respect for Judaism on the other, lacks consistency to say the least.

She begins with a fairly common format of asking the questions she intends to answer and expressing her concern that the Hebrew Roots movement is not all that it claims. So far, so good, and no real surprises. I would argue with her assertion that Christians “already study [the Old Testament] in light of the New Testament”—while this may be true in theory, in practice 90% percent of all sermons concentrate on the writings of Paul, and rarely touch on any of the Tanakh. The fact is that the Hebrew Roots movement wouldn’t even exist as a noticeable entity within the Body of Messiah if there weren’t so many believers hungry to better know how the Tanakh and New Covenant fit together.

Her introduction concludes:

We know that many of the Hebrew Roots ministries are connected with each other and with various other types of ministries. This obligates us to investigate them even more thoroughly. By examining the HR teachings, those of the Jewish faith and it's [sic] mystical exponent, Kabbalism--which is indeed the concerning root of the Hebrew Roots movement--we will then see if what is taught upholds the Word of God.

The first sentence is so obvious as to be meaningless: Of course many Hebrew Roots and Messianic ministries are connected with each other! We keep in contact the same way and for the same reasons that the various Evangelical churches and denominations do. I fail to see why this merits special investigation, unless Vicki’s intent is to suggest some sort of sinister cabal underlying the whole thing.

However, it’s the charge of Kabbalism against the movement as a whole which is particularly interesting and telling. The fact is that most Messianics—including those who have been in the movement for many years—have little more idea of what Kabbalism is than a dictionary definition. I’ve done somewhat more research into what Kabbalism teaches, and I can say that there is very little if any Kabbalistic influence in the Messianic movement. We’ll address her specific arguments for this influence as we continue.

Anti-Semitism?

“Those who have challenged the Hebrew Roots teachings in the past have been dealt with swiftly and with the utmost hostility,” Vicki writes. “Dealt with?” With what? Hit-squads? No, as it turns out, by angry emails that use strong language. I’m not sure how this constitutes being “dealt with swiftly” or “with the utmost hostility”—is Vicki likewise dealing with Messianics “swiftly and with the utmost hostility” by publishing her website?

It’s interesting that the email she has chosen to use as an example of this hostility is obviously a knee-jerk reaction, rather than one written by a calmer, more eloquent author. She claims it to be from a “well-known leader,” but doesn’t tell us who. Frankly, anyone who is in ministry gets the occasional kook email or letter; our synagogue gets them all the time, many from “leaders” in the Christian world. Should I use those emails to show just how the Christian world is out to get us, and hint at a conspiracy to silence our point of view? Neither should Vicki use her kook mail to attack Messianism.

She continues,

Those who question this movement have often been accused of anti-semitism. Does the presentation of various Jewish doctrines obtained from Jewish sources constitute anti-Semitism? It seems unreasonable to conclude that the facts, presented objectively, are inherently anti-Semitic.

That depends: Are these Jewish doctrines presented in their full historical and linguistic context? Has Vicki studied the Judaica enough to know how to evaluate whether a source is considered “authoritative” or whether it is simply the recorded position of a single rabbi? Frankly, I could go through the writings of such well-respected fathers of Christianity as John Chrysostom and Martin Luther and pull quotes a-plenty to demonstrate that Christianity is a Jew-hating religion—but Vicki would be quick to leap on me for my selective quotation, and rightfully so.

Let me be the first to point out that there are passages in the Talmud and other traditional sources that are very blasphemous to our Lord Yeshua. However, I would also point out that a) just because something is in the Talmud does not make it authoritative for Judaism as a whole (just as not all things said by the early Church fathers are authoritative for Christianity as a whole), and b) that those statements were given and recorded at a time when the Church had joined with the State of Rome in persecuting the Jewish people.

Which is more blasphemous: To speak slander of an anti-Torah, anti-Jew “Jesus” that the Christians have presented you, or persecuting a person in Jesus’ name so as to provoke them to speak slander of Him? I’d say the latter.

Vicki writes, “Moreover, this writer has no bias against the Jews, but looks forward to the salvation of any through Jesus Christ.” The question is, once they are saved, would she encourage them to remain circumcised, Jewish, per Acts 21:20ff and 1 Co. 7:19, or would she expect them to assimilate into Gentile Christian culture? If she objects to the Messianic movement as a whole, the answer is necessarily the latter; and if the latter, Vicki is either saying that she wants there to be no more Jews, only Gentilized Christians, or that she wants some or most Jews to never accept their Messiah.

I’m sure Vicki would be appalled at those two conclusions, but they are the only ones which logically follow from her arguments.

Shalom!

An Answer to SeekGod.ca

Let’s face it: We in the Messianic and Hebrew Roots movement have a lot of adversaries. More than any other reason, I think this is because of an old and misplaced fear in the Church of “Judaizing.” Now just what is Judaizing? Per Acts 15:1 and Gal. 3:3, it is believing that being circumcised—which is to say, becoming fully Jewish by the rabbinic ceremony of circumcision—is a requirement for salvation or for “perfecting” one’s walk. It is not Judaizing for a Jewish believer in the Messiah to continue to be Jewish and keep Torah, or else none of the Apostles were saved (Acts 21:20ff); nor for a Gentile to learn Torah in the synagogues, for then Jacob (James) was in error in Acts 15:21; nor even for a Gentile to become circumcised for the right motives after understanding his salvation by faith, or else Paul damned both Timothy and himself (Acts 16:3).

Now, under that definition, are some Messianic synagogues Judaizing? Possibly, but it seems to be the exception rather than the rule. We do encourage our Sunday brethren to rediscover the joys of keeping the Torah—particularly the Feasts, which all point to Messiah—but this is simply a matter of disagreeing that only the New Testament should be followed. The vast majority of us out here recognize that we are all saved by faith, so we can afford to honestly agree to disagree and all of us who have put our faith in the Messiah, whether we worship on Shabbat or Sunday, are brothers and sisters together and will be together in the World to Come.
Nevertheless, the accusation refuses to die. So it is with Vicki of SeekGod.ca, who has written quite an extensive series of articles attacking Messianism. Such challenges both deserve and require a response.

Vicki has wisely decided to maintain a certain degree of anonymity on the internet by withholding her last name and other personal information. We do not begrudge her her privacy one bit; however, she does not even disclose a denomination, and in fact claims in her introduction page, “This website is not supported by or aligned with any denomination. This is our family ministry.” She speaks of going to an evangelical church, but does not disclose which branch of evangelicalism. Her statements of belief are extremely general, not allowing for any practical cross-examination. For example, she says, “That the Bible is clear in saying that if we love our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, we will obey all His commandments, not just some of them and that our lives will show a change, as ‘all things become new.’” I would agree (though pointing out that Yeshua told us to keep the whole Torah in Mat. 5:17-19); the problem is that she does not disclose the practical applications of what that means to her. In the interest of fairness, shouldn’t one who subjects the beliefs and practices to others to a microscope be willing to allow them to do the same of hers?

In fact, her whole page seems to be nothing but a series of attacks on other Christian groups, offering very little in the way of positive contributions to the faith. While I am all for challenging and testing beliefs that one does not hold to, it seems a bit unbalanced to spend 99% of one’s time attacking others for their “wrong” beliefs without also writing many positive arguments for one’s own. This is why, for example, HebrewRoot has focused on providing positive arguments for Messianic Judaism and Torah-observance and rebuttal arguments against the more common Scriptures cited against us, but does not attack our Sunday brethren directly or question their integrity or salvation for believing differently on certain relatively minor matters. Nor do we here attack Vicki’s integrity or salvation, though I do question the wisdom and humility of attacking a man who has done far more to spread Christianity than almost anyone else this century for alleged “occultism” in his fictional works.

The purpose of this post and those to follow is to defend Messianic Judaism against what I believe to be an unfair and unscriptural attack. While this of necessity requires a certain amount of “counter-attack,” I will try to keep the focus on the arguments rather than the person, though some comments about Vicki’s general tendencies in her writings are necessary. I do not intend to counter her attacks against specific individuals; those who have been the targets of her darts are the ones best equipped to answer her or to choose to ignore her, whichever seems best to them.

Shalom!

Recent Articles

You know, with all the neglecting of this blog, I haven't even made a point of posting links to the articles I've written over at HebrewRoot, so here's some recent material:

• The Feasts and the Exodus, and overview of the Appointed Times of the Lord, how they related to the Exodus, and how they in turn relate to the two Comings of the Messiah.
  
  
• Yeshua: The Living Torah, in which I look at the true significance of John 1:1 and demonstrate that not only is Yeshua not opposed to the Torah, but that He is the Torah--that is, the substance of which the written Torah is the shadow--drawing on both rabbinic and Christian thought. This one is probably foundational to understanding Messianic Judaism.


• Mark 7:19 and Acts 10:10-16: Jesus Ended the Kosher Laws, in which I address the long-held misconception about these two passages and their true significance. I also address why a Gentile believer does not even have to appeal to the B'rit Chadasha for proof that keeping kosher is not mandatory for them, as well as why some of us choose to keep it anyway.

I also have a major piece coming up, called "Who Has the Authority?" In it, I look at the question of how authority devolves in Scripture, and why, even if Sha'ul (Paul) or another Apostle did claim that we should no longer keep Torah (and I've been doing a pretty good job of demonstrating that they didn't, but just for the sake of argument), they would not have the authority to do so, and would have to be rejected as apostles. It can be summed up in one sentence--"If Jesus and Paul ever did disagree on something, who would you follow?"--but goes into far more detail, including details on how we should understand the authority of non-canonical sources like the rabbis or the early Church fathers.

Before that's finished, I plan to have an answer to the argument from Galatians that keeping Torah makes Messiah of no avail to us. I've actually answered this in my debate with Myles Davis, but I look forward to giving more detail than the format of the debate allows. Speaking of whom, Myles has been held up by a firework injury (third-degree burn) to his leg; he and I speak on the phone regularly and he's doing well, though a bit in pain. He'll have his next response up soon; this will be our last argument round, after which we'll make our closing arguments.

I think that's all for now.

Shalom!

Is Oral Torah Necessary to Keep the Written?

It's a question that is often answered in knee-jerk fashion. For many observant Jews, the answer is so obviously yes that it seems stupid to even ask it. On the other hand, Christians and many Messianics are just as quick to say "no." (Interestingly, the answer for many Catholics is "yes," though they would not term their traditions as "Oral Torah.") Both sides have their proof-texts, and a brief blog entry cannot hope to address all of them, but I will nevertheless risk throwing my two cents into the mix.

In Dr. Kinzer's paper (p. 3), he writes:

The Torah requires a living tradition of interpretation and application if it is to be practiced in daily life. This is due in part to the lack of detail in its legislation. As Michael Fishbane notes, “frequent lacunae or ambiguities in their legal formulation tend to render [biblical]…laws exceedingly problematic – if not functionally inoperative – without interpretation.” Thus, the Torah forbids all work (melachah) on Shabbat, but it nowhere defines the meaning of melachah. Similarly, it commands that we “afflict ourselves” on Yom Kippur, but it does not tell us what this means in practice.

On the surface, the idea of an oral tradition to supplement the Torah does make a certain amount of sense. After all, the culture in Biblical times was primarily oral, the written word being both difficult and very expensive to distribute. It also makes sense that there were certain details of the ritual commands that were not recorded in the Torah, details that were best passed on by demonstration (i.e., orally) rather than in a written form. Explaining in text and without diagrams (which would be more prone to error in re-copying) the correct way to cut an animal’s throat so that it suffered as little as possible and to remove the most blood would take a page or more of text or a large number of technical terms whose meanings could be lost in later centuries due to lack of common use, whereas teaching one’s children the correct way would take but a few demonstrations and a few more times letting them do it under supervision. (See here for a longer discussion.)

However, having said that, Scripture requires that such "supplementary instruction" be the exception rather than the rule. Joshua 8:35 sates, "There was not a word of all that Moses had commanded which Joshua did not read before all the assembly of Israel with the women and the little ones and the strangers who were living among them." If we take this with rabbinic literalness, this leaves the way open for additional demonstrations that Moses made that were not read, but it does not leave open the way for additional words comprising an Oral Torah.

Kinzer points out, as many do, that the Oral Torah does not require direct transmission from Moses, but only the authority that the L-RD, through Moses, gave to Israel's judges to make binding rulings (Deu. 17:8-13). This is very true; however, this command only provides that there would develop an oral torah, not the existence of the Oral Torah.

What do I mean by this? Simply put, Torah provides a framework, but as Kinzer points out, it leaves numerous "gaps." Kinzer assumes that these gaps must be filled in a particular way in order for Torah to be carried out. Let me suggest to the contrary that G-d left these gaps open so that they could be filled in different ways, reflecting different cultural traditions.

Let us take the example of Yom Kippur which Kinzer raised: What does it mean to "afflict" ourselves in obedience to Lev. 16:31? The Hebrew word, anah עחה, can mean "afflict" (as in Gen. 31:50), but can also mean to "humble" or "submit" (Gen. 16:9). The traditional Jewish understanding is that this means to fast, as well as forgo all pleasures (such as bathing, leather footwear, etc.). However, is this the Biblically required practice? Consider Isa. 58:5-7:

Is it a fast like this which I choose, a day for a man to humble himself? Is it for bowing one's head like a reed And for spreading out sackcloth and ashes as a bed? Will you call this a fast, even an acceptable day to the L-RD? Is this not the fast which I choose, To loosen the bonds of wickedness, To undo the bands of the yoke, And to let the oppressed go free And break every yoke? Is it not to divide your bread with the hungry And bring the homeless poor into the house; When you see the naked, to cover him; And not to hide yourself from your own flesh?

So then, we see that even the prophets understood that fasting, while not a wrong way to submit one's self to G-d (cf. Mat. 6:16f), is not the primary interpretation of anah. Do we really require the Oral Torah to tell us how to properly afflict/humble ourselves on Yom Kippur?

Kinzer is correct that the Torah requires "a living tradition of interpretation and application if it is to be practiced in daily life" (ibid.). However, where I believe we differ is that I do not see it as requiring just a single "living tradition," but rather as the framework for many living traditions--the traditions of every people, tribe, tongue, and nation. (As indeed there are actually many "living traditions" within the various sects of Judaism, and always have been.) If we try to claim that there can be only one correct "living tradition," then we fall into the error of the P'rushim (Pharisees) who criticized Yeshua's disciples for not following their tradition (Mat. 15:1-20).

I'm not writing as someone who wishes to divorce himself from Jewish tradition and halakha. On the contrary, I have dedicated myself to learning it and living it out. I believe that there is great value in adopting into our Messiah's culture. However, neither do I want to see the full richness of the Torah to continue to be lost: When all the nations live out the Torah, each adapting their cultural traditions to it and vice-versa, then we will truly see the Kingdom of Heaven, as well as the grand variety that the Eternal One loves (cf. Rev. 7:7ff).

Shalom!