|
Can a man become God?
|
New ways to share the Gospel
|
From engineer to missionary
|
Q&A with Dr. Brian Crawford
Author of "The Scandal of a Divine Messiah"
Q: What motivated you to write this book?
A: The gospel is to the Jew first, and also to the Gentile (Romans 1:16), and a growing percentage of the Jewish community is Orthodox: very religious, in close-knit communities, and opposed to the idea that Jesus is the Messiah. In 2011, I moved into one such community in Brooklyn, NY to serve as a missionary through Chosen People Ministries. On the streets of Brooklyn, I had frequent opportunities to discuss the gospel with religious Jewish people. I had been exposed to many of their objections before, but two stood out. Their objections to the Trinity and the Incarnation were sophisticated, complicated, and intimidating. Despite reviewing the best available apologetics literature for Jewish evangelism, I could not find answers to meet their replies. After years of putting those questions on pause, I discovered the way forward. I am no longer intimidated by the most difficult Jewish complaints about the deity of Jesus. I wrote this book so that all, both Jew and Gentile, may find answers and rest in the divine Messiah.
Q: Describe how much research you did for this book.
A: I spent all of 2019 and much of 2020 writing an early draft of the material in this book. In 2021, I pared down that initial draft to serve as my doctoral project for my Doctor of Ministry degree at Talbot School of Theology. Taking with me the precision and depth that I learned during my Talbot program, I then spent 2023–24 expanding the material to three times my doctoral project’s length. That final iteration became The Scandal of a Divine Messiah. It includes over 900 footnotes with a 30-page bibliography that spans Jewish, Christian, and Greek sources across the Greco-Roman, patristic, rabbinic, medieval, and modern periods.
Q: Who is the audience for this book?
A: This book is for anyone who struggles with the idea of Jesus’s deity due to Orthodox Judaism’s denial that he is the Son of God. The book is also intended for those who have a burden to share the gospel with religious Jewish people but want to be better equipped to defend the Trinity and the Incarnation. This book should be of special interest to Jewish believers in Jesus, Orthodox Jews, and Christians interested in apologetics, theology, and philosophy.
Q: How can a Christian share their faith with a Jewish person?
A: Since one Jewish person can be so different than another, there is no one-size-fits-all approach to Jewish evangelism. For those Jewish people who respect the Hebrew Bible as the Word of God, a Christian can appeal to messianic prophecies such as Isaiah 53, Daniel 9, or Psalm 110. Many Jewish people, however, see Christianity as a foreign religion that is against Jewish people and against traditional Jewish theology, much like how a Christian might view a Mormon or Jehovah’s Witness. My book addresses those fears of otherness by grounding the Trinity and Incarnation within Judaism, and by fairly handling Orthodox Jewish detractors with the respect they deserve. My hope is that The Scandal of a Divine Messiah will help thoughtful Jewish people discover the Son of God, their brother, Savior, and Lord, who is the only way to the Father (John 14:6).
A: The gospel is to the Jew first, and also to the Gentile (Romans 1:16), and a growing percentage of the Jewish community is Orthodox: very religious, in close-knit communities, and opposed to the idea that Jesus is the Messiah. In 2011, I moved into one such community in Brooklyn, NY to serve as a missionary through Chosen People Ministries. On the streets of Brooklyn, I had frequent opportunities to discuss the gospel with religious Jewish people. I had been exposed to many of their objections before, but two stood out. Their objections to the Trinity and the Incarnation were sophisticated, complicated, and intimidating. Despite reviewing the best available apologetics literature for Jewish evangelism, I could not find answers to meet their replies. After years of putting those questions on pause, I discovered the way forward. I am no longer intimidated by the most difficult Jewish complaints about the deity of Jesus. I wrote this book so that all, both Jew and Gentile, may find answers and rest in the divine Messiah.
Q: Describe how much research you did for this book.
A: I spent all of 2019 and much of 2020 writing an early draft of the material in this book. In 2021, I pared down that initial draft to serve as my doctoral project for my Doctor of Ministry degree at Talbot School of Theology. Taking with me the precision and depth that I learned during my Talbot program, I then spent 2023–24 expanding the material to three times my doctoral project’s length. That final iteration became The Scandal of a Divine Messiah. It includes over 900 footnotes with a 30-page bibliography that spans Jewish, Christian, and Greek sources across the Greco-Roman, patristic, rabbinic, medieval, and modern periods.
Q: Who is the audience for this book?
A: This book is for anyone who struggles with the idea of Jesus’s deity due to Orthodox Judaism’s denial that he is the Son of God. The book is also intended for those who have a burden to share the gospel with religious Jewish people but want to be better equipped to defend the Trinity and the Incarnation. This book should be of special interest to Jewish believers in Jesus, Orthodox Jews, and Christians interested in apologetics, theology, and philosophy.
Q: How can a Christian share their faith with a Jewish person?
A: Since one Jewish person can be so different than another, there is no one-size-fits-all approach to Jewish evangelism. For those Jewish people who respect the Hebrew Bible as the Word of God, a Christian can appeal to messianic prophecies such as Isaiah 53, Daniel 9, or Psalm 110. Many Jewish people, however, see Christianity as a foreign religion that is against Jewish people and against traditional Jewish theology, much like how a Christian might view a Mormon or Jehovah’s Witness. My book addresses those fears of otherness by grounding the Trinity and Incarnation within Judaism, and by fairly handling Orthodox Jewish detractors with the respect they deserve. My hope is that The Scandal of a Divine Messiah will help thoughtful Jewish people discover the Son of God, their brother, Savior, and Lord, who is the only way to the Father (John 14:6).
“This book is a tour de force, an impressive achievement of theological dialogue between Christian and Jewish sources, ancient, medieval, and modern.” – Garrett J. DeWeese, Philosopher
Q: What does the average Christian need to know about the faith of their Jewish friends?
A: The beliefs and practices of the Jewish community are widely varied, with a very clear pecking order of observance and religious knowledge. On one end of the spectrum are Jewish people who are unaffiliated, secular, rarely attending synagogue, and who don’t care much about the Bible or Judaism. At the opposite end are the Haredim, the most observant Jewish people who live highly traditional lives in close-knit communities, and who study Jewish texts and pray every day. The Haredim are joined by others who have similar beliefs but more modern practices under the umbrella term of “Orthodox.” Besides shared physical descent from Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, there is little that binds the opposite ends of this spectrum together. However, the theological intuitions that originate at the top—in the most Orthodox of Jewish theology—filter down to the rest of the Jewish world. One of those intuitions is that it is impossible for God to become a man. Consequently, to believe in Jesus’s deity is to worship a false god, not the God of Israel. My book is focused on dealing with the theological objections that come from the top, within Orthodox Judaism. Nevertheless, because all Israel is one people, the discussions in the book have relevance for all Jewish people who think it is scandalous to consider Jesus being God in the flesh.
Q: There seems to be a surge of antisemitism around the world and especially in the U.S. Why do you believe this is happening?
A: There are many factors that are contributing to this worrying phenomenon, both within and outside the church. As the memory of the Holocaust grows dim, the many-headed hydra of antisemitism is regrowing old libels that one might have thought were confined to a bygone era. Hateful rhetoric and conspiracy theories that ought to make sophisticated people blush are now embraced as long as the target is Jewish. Outside the church, cultural Marxism and radical Islam have forged an odd alliance where the only thing they agree upon is that Jewish self-determination in their ancestral homeland is the cause of the world’s ills. Since the attacks of October 7, Israel has been caught in a no-win scenario that was cunningly designed by Hamas to inflict maximum damage on the Jewish people’s reputation. Inside the church, there has been a resurgence of reading Old Testament promises to the Jewish people allegorically, assigning their fulfillment to the Christian church, rather than to the Jewish people. This has led many Christians to treat Jews as just one people group among many, not special in any religious sense, rather than a unique covenant people who remain elect and beloved by God despite their unbelief in Jesus (Romans 11:28–29). When the Jewish people’s positive status in the eyes of God is devalued among Christians, even believers can fall into the anti-semitic spirit of the post-October-7 age.
Q: Why did you decide to focus on the Incarnation?
A: At first, I was studying the Incarnation to answer the questions I faced on the streets of Brooklyn, but I had no idea where the research would take me. As I read my initial sources about Jewish objections to the Incarnation, I kept finding Jewish scholars referring to Maimonides and the Kabbalistic tradition. I only had minimal exposure to each, but the references kept piling higher. I came to realize that Maimonides, the medieval Jewish rationalist, and the Kabbalistic tradition, also emerging in the Middle Ages, provided Jewish people with the most potent and sophisticated resources for challenging Christian theology. Thus, from early on, my research revolved around placing the Incarnation, Maimonides, and Kabbalah in conversation with each other. I explored where they fit together, where they oppose each other on a fundamental level, and how the Incarnation triumphs over the opposition in terms of Scriptural fidelity, scientific accuracy, and philosophical rigor. Studying the Incarnation is like a scarlet thread that is woven through every discipline imaginable, for the triune God’s mystery is his Messiah, “in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Colossians 2:3).
Q: What do most Christians get wrong about the Jewish faith?
A: Well-meaning Christians often assume that we can learn about Judaism by being faithful students of the Old and New Testaments. Unfortunately, this is not the case. The Judaism of the Pharisees and the Sadducees is not the same as Judaism today. Judaism has undergone significant transformations since the time of the New Testament, such as the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD and the rise of rabbinic tradition in the centuries that followed. However, this book makes the case that the most relevant theological Jewish revolution that Christians need to know about is found in the Middle Ages. If we are unfamiliar with the theological and philosophical transformation that Judaism underwent in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, then we will misunderstand the theological objections Jewish people have to belief in Jesus. Before this medieval transition, segments of Judaism were more open to theological ideas that are similar to the Trinity and the Incarnation. After the arrival of Maimonides and Kabbalah in the Middle Ages, the doors were closed, and such notions were redefined as non-Jewish and “Christian” ideas. To open the doors up again, Maimonides and Kabbalah need to be addressed. I do not know of any other book that handles these topics, and The Scandal of a Divine Messiah fills that gap.
A: The beliefs and practices of the Jewish community are widely varied, with a very clear pecking order of observance and religious knowledge. On one end of the spectrum are Jewish people who are unaffiliated, secular, rarely attending synagogue, and who don’t care much about the Bible or Judaism. At the opposite end are the Haredim, the most observant Jewish people who live highly traditional lives in close-knit communities, and who study Jewish texts and pray every day. The Haredim are joined by others who have similar beliefs but more modern practices under the umbrella term of “Orthodox.” Besides shared physical descent from Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, there is little that binds the opposite ends of this spectrum together. However, the theological intuitions that originate at the top—in the most Orthodox of Jewish theology—filter down to the rest of the Jewish world. One of those intuitions is that it is impossible for God to become a man. Consequently, to believe in Jesus’s deity is to worship a false god, not the God of Israel. My book is focused on dealing with the theological objections that come from the top, within Orthodox Judaism. Nevertheless, because all Israel is one people, the discussions in the book have relevance for all Jewish people who think it is scandalous to consider Jesus being God in the flesh.
Q: There seems to be a surge of antisemitism around the world and especially in the U.S. Why do you believe this is happening?
A: There are many factors that are contributing to this worrying phenomenon, both within and outside the church. As the memory of the Holocaust grows dim, the many-headed hydra of antisemitism is regrowing old libels that one might have thought were confined to a bygone era. Hateful rhetoric and conspiracy theories that ought to make sophisticated people blush are now embraced as long as the target is Jewish. Outside the church, cultural Marxism and radical Islam have forged an odd alliance where the only thing they agree upon is that Jewish self-determination in their ancestral homeland is the cause of the world’s ills. Since the attacks of October 7, Israel has been caught in a no-win scenario that was cunningly designed by Hamas to inflict maximum damage on the Jewish people’s reputation. Inside the church, there has been a resurgence of reading Old Testament promises to the Jewish people allegorically, assigning their fulfillment to the Christian church, rather than to the Jewish people. This has led many Christians to treat Jews as just one people group among many, not special in any religious sense, rather than a unique covenant people who remain elect and beloved by God despite their unbelief in Jesus (Romans 11:28–29). When the Jewish people’s positive status in the eyes of God is devalued among Christians, even believers can fall into the anti-semitic spirit of the post-October-7 age.
Q: Why did you decide to focus on the Incarnation?
A: At first, I was studying the Incarnation to answer the questions I faced on the streets of Brooklyn, but I had no idea where the research would take me. As I read my initial sources about Jewish objections to the Incarnation, I kept finding Jewish scholars referring to Maimonides and the Kabbalistic tradition. I only had minimal exposure to each, but the references kept piling higher. I came to realize that Maimonides, the medieval Jewish rationalist, and the Kabbalistic tradition, also emerging in the Middle Ages, provided Jewish people with the most potent and sophisticated resources for challenging Christian theology. Thus, from early on, my research revolved around placing the Incarnation, Maimonides, and Kabbalah in conversation with each other. I explored where they fit together, where they oppose each other on a fundamental level, and how the Incarnation triumphs over the opposition in terms of Scriptural fidelity, scientific accuracy, and philosophical rigor. Studying the Incarnation is like a scarlet thread that is woven through every discipline imaginable, for the triune God’s mystery is his Messiah, “in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Colossians 2:3).
Q: What do most Christians get wrong about the Jewish faith?
A: Well-meaning Christians often assume that we can learn about Judaism by being faithful students of the Old and New Testaments. Unfortunately, this is not the case. The Judaism of the Pharisees and the Sadducees is not the same as Judaism today. Judaism has undergone significant transformations since the time of the New Testament, such as the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD and the rise of rabbinic tradition in the centuries that followed. However, this book makes the case that the most relevant theological Jewish revolution that Christians need to know about is found in the Middle Ages. If we are unfamiliar with the theological and philosophical transformation that Judaism underwent in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, then we will misunderstand the theological objections Jewish people have to belief in Jesus. Before this medieval transition, segments of Judaism were more open to theological ideas that are similar to the Trinity and the Incarnation. After the arrival of Maimonides and Kabbalah in the Middle Ages, the doors were closed, and such notions were redefined as non-Jewish and “Christian” ideas. To open the doors up again, Maimonides and Kabbalah need to be addressed. I do not know of any other book that handles these topics, and The Scandal of a Divine Messiah fills that gap.
|
Q: In laymen’s terms, can you explain the Maimonidean and Kabbalistic challenges?
A: Maimonides makes the Incarnation impossible, and Kabbalah makes the Incarnation redundant. Both of these streams of thought emerged in the Middle Ages, but they are the foundational worldviews that animate Orthodox Judaism to this day. I think it is important to take a quick glimpse at these historically: |
|
Maimonides (1138–1204), the Jewish rationalist and Aristotelian, wrote The Guide to the Perplexed, the greatest work of Jewish philosophy. In the first third of his book, he defines God as unknowable, indescribable by words, infinitely detached from the universe, and never interacting directly in the universe at all. All Scriptural passages that appear to say otherwise are metaphors and allegories. When Abraham “saw the Lord” in Genesis 18, Abraham had a vision in a trance. When Moses “saw God” on the mountain, it was a figure of speech. God interacts only spiritually, never physically in time and space. Maimonides declares that it is impossible for God to take physical form, just as it is impossible for God to sin or to cause himself to stop existing. There are some things that God cannot do, and the Incarnation is one of them. Anyone who would say otherwise is an idolator and polytheist who breaks the Shema of Deuteronomy 6:4: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.”
Kabbalah, the Jewish mystical tradition which arose in Spain in the late 1200s, opposes the Incarnation from a different angle. The Kabbalists also meditated on the Shema, which they interpreted as meaning, “All things are united in God.” They taught that all things, from the lowest to the greatest, are overflows of God’s divinity and are mystically united within him. Although it may appear that humans are different than trees, and both are different than God, the Kabbalists teach that appearances are deceiving. All things are inhabited by divine sparks and are tabernacles for deity. Literal interpretations of Scripture are folly as well, because appearances are deceiving. Scripture, like the world around us, is full of secrets and mysteries that only Kabbalah can unlock. Under this worldview, it is irrelevant that Christians claim that Jesus is God in the flesh, since everything is God in the flesh. Under Kabbalah, Jesus is redundant.
Q: How much emphasis do modern-day Jews put on these two traditions vs. the Old Testament itself?
A: There is no such thing as sola scriptura in Judaism. All Jewish texts, including those of the Bible, are expected to be studied in the context of a Jewish community, with rabbinic interpretations guiding the reader along the way. At first, the Pharisees held to an unwritten oral tradition that Jesus sometimes opposed (Matthew 15:2–6) and sometimes accepted (Matthew 23:23). The Pharisees’ successors, the rabbinic sages, expanded their oral traditions into the Mishnah (ca. 300 AD) and the Talmuds (ca. 300–600 AD). These sages said that it was not possible to understand the Hebrew Bible without the later oral traditions. In the Middle Ages, Maimonides and Kabbalah each added their own layers of interpretation. Maimonides said that one could not understand the Mishnah, or the Talmud, or Scripture, unless one had the proper philosophical training. A century later, the Kabbalistic tradition said that one could not understand Maimonides, or any Jewish text that came before him, without their mystical interpretations.
This is the status quo in Orthodox Judaism today, whereby it is said that Maimonidean and Kabbalistic schools are the primary means by which the Hebrew Bible is to be understood. Even if a Jewish person is not Orthodox, these schools of thought have trickled down into all forms of Judaism. Thus, the interpretive distance between a Jewish person and the biblical text is quite far, and there are many layers of tinted glasses between them and God’s word.
Kabbalah, the Jewish mystical tradition which arose in Spain in the late 1200s, opposes the Incarnation from a different angle. The Kabbalists also meditated on the Shema, which they interpreted as meaning, “All things are united in God.” They taught that all things, from the lowest to the greatest, are overflows of God’s divinity and are mystically united within him. Although it may appear that humans are different than trees, and both are different than God, the Kabbalists teach that appearances are deceiving. All things are inhabited by divine sparks and are tabernacles for deity. Literal interpretations of Scripture are folly as well, because appearances are deceiving. Scripture, like the world around us, is full of secrets and mysteries that only Kabbalah can unlock. Under this worldview, it is irrelevant that Christians claim that Jesus is God in the flesh, since everything is God in the flesh. Under Kabbalah, Jesus is redundant.
Q: How much emphasis do modern-day Jews put on these two traditions vs. the Old Testament itself?
A: There is no such thing as sola scriptura in Judaism. All Jewish texts, including those of the Bible, are expected to be studied in the context of a Jewish community, with rabbinic interpretations guiding the reader along the way. At first, the Pharisees held to an unwritten oral tradition that Jesus sometimes opposed (Matthew 15:2–6) and sometimes accepted (Matthew 23:23). The Pharisees’ successors, the rabbinic sages, expanded their oral traditions into the Mishnah (ca. 300 AD) and the Talmuds (ca. 300–600 AD). These sages said that it was not possible to understand the Hebrew Bible without the later oral traditions. In the Middle Ages, Maimonides and Kabbalah each added their own layers of interpretation. Maimonides said that one could not understand the Mishnah, or the Talmud, or Scripture, unless one had the proper philosophical training. A century later, the Kabbalistic tradition said that one could not understand Maimonides, or any Jewish text that came before him, without their mystical interpretations.
This is the status quo in Orthodox Judaism today, whereby it is said that Maimonidean and Kabbalistic schools are the primary means by which the Hebrew Bible is to be understood. Even if a Jewish person is not Orthodox, these schools of thought have trickled down into all forms of Judaism. Thus, the interpretive distance between a Jewish person and the biblical text is quite far, and there are many layers of tinted glasses between them and God’s word.
About Dr. Brian Crawford:
|
Dr. Brian Crawford is the Director of Digital Evangelism for Chosen People Ministries. He directs the evangelistic website AboutMessiah.com and the Messianic apologetics website ChosenPeopleAnswers.com. He received his Master of Divinity from the Charles L. Feinberg Center for Messianic Jewish Studies, and his Doctor of Ministry in apologetics from Talbot School of Theology. Brian has been married to his college sweetheart, Liz, since 2007, and they have three young children. The Crawfords spent nine years ministering in Brooklyn, New York, but now they reside in Southern California. For more information visit https://brianjcrawford.com.
|
|