Friday, January 28, 2022

The Lack Of Soteriological Advantage In Being A Jew

Being Jewish is not the same as having a specific skin color or being born in a specific country, but misconceptions of how God is said to have interacted with the ancient Jews are relevant to how racism and nationalism are understood in relation to Christian morality and soteriology.  Just as some people might falsely think themselves to have a more genuine connection to Christianity because they are white or black, some might think themselves closer to God by virtue of being Jewish or non-Jewish, despite the New Testament and the Old Testament both rejecting this stance.  From Genesis 1 onward, the Bible makes it clear to those who do not make assumptions about its contents that the Jews did not receive anything more than others beyond than the initial moral revelation from Yahweh--something vital in Christian theology, but not something that gave them a culture-based shortcut to salvation or moral superiority.

Never did the Biblical deity ever truly withhold salvation from non-Jews, for being a Jew was never enough to ensure someone's moral character or secure them salvific redemption from the divine consequences of sin.  You would have to either never sin or become restored to God for that to happen, and being a Jew does not mean one will do either.  No one even needs a specific verse stating otherwise to realize that the opposite of this would contradict foundational ideas in the Bible; thankfully, this can be easily proven.  Choosing a group of people to serve a special role as religious ambassadors of sorts does not mean that God cares about Jews or non-Jews more or less than the other.  This can be shown to not logically follow whether or not certain comments that are in the Bible were included.

There are still passages that affirm this.  The first chapter of the Bible speaks of how all humans bear God's image, something that is relevant over and over in examining Christian theology here and elsewhere.  Genesis 1:26-27 specifically mentions gender as it relates to having the image of God, but, by logical extension, people in all human groups, including Gentiles, must bear God's image according to Genesis as well.  While Yahweh is described as giving specific moral revelation to the Jews, in no way does it logically follow that Gentiles are automatically inferior, barred from salvation, or unable to conform to the moral obligations outlined in Mosaic Law and the New Testament.

When it comes to particular affirmations of this in the Old Testament and New Testament, though, examples can indeed be found.  Isaiah 56:3 blatantly acknowledges that even non-Jews, called "foreigners" in the verse, are not excluded from following God because of the circumstances of their birth or lineage.  Even if nowhere else in the Bible addressed this issue, the Bible would still have rejected Jewish spiritual superiority, but there are other verses that speak of this, including one with more mainstream recognition.  In Galatians 3:28, Paul writes that there is no "Jew or Greek" when it comes to salvation.  Of course, this does not mean that there are no Jews or Gentiles that can be saved, or else no one could be saved since all humans fall into one of those two categories, but that being a Jew or Gentile does not give one a soteriological advantage over others.

Galatians 3:28 also expands this to include men and women and slaves and free people, showing that when it comes to salvation, gender and social class are also not relevant factors in the slightest way--and if no one is granted or denied salvation moreso than others based on these things, it is because of a baseline metaphysical equality in that gender, social status, and lineage do not make one person superior to another.  This verse in Galatians 3 does not contain a lot of detail, but the ideas and other verses that it stands on (such as the aforementioned Genesis 1:26-27) are explicitly, inescapably egalitarian: salvation is not the only aspect of Christian theology in which factors like being a Jew or Gentile never gave someone metaphysical superiority.

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