They were not slow to see
she reductio ad absurdum of
my argument.
The rabbi-priest idea drop-
ped, Peggy went on to explain
that she was not a practicing
Christian. Why then, I asked
her, was it so important to
have her child baptized? She
answered with a personal
*anecdote of a cousin whose in-
fant had died. "If that hap-
pened to me I couldn't face
the thought that my child
was unbaptized." Unbaptized,
her child would be suspended
between heaven and hell, con-
.signed to limbus infantum. I
asked about the status of her
husband-to-be. Would an un-
baptized Sam be subject to
limbo or damnation? Would
her beloved Sam be saved?
There followed a long and
deep silence.
In that silence, I pondered
over the neglect of Jewish
theology and philosophy in
Sam's life. Sam's Jewishness
— he had attended a Jewish
day school and performed
well at his Bar Mitzvah —
amounted to casual obser-
vances of a pastiche of rituals,
a vague sentimentality
toward Jewishness and an at-
tachment to his Jewish
parents.
But Judaism offered him no
'way of mapping the world, no
distinctive view of human
nature, God's character or the
quest for meaning. Sam was
liberal in the manner of
polytheists for whom every
god is good enough. For Sam,
and for Peggy as well,
religions are all the same. If
they appeared indifferent it
was because for them there
were no true differences bet-
ween the traditions. It seem-
ed such a shame to dissolve a
love because of a few ethnic
residual memories.
• Preference for a colored
Easter egg or a Seder burnt
egg, a swaying evergreen or a
shaking lulav, are more mat-
ters of taste than of principle.
. But in truth there are
radical differences between
Christianity and Judaism
and for their sake, and that of
their children, Peggy and
Sam ought to understand
them for they entail world
views and values which affect
them more than they think.

ORIGINAL SIN AND
OTHER DIFFERENCES

To begin with, Christianity
is rooted in the dogma of
original sin. By original is not
meant the invention of new
sins, but inherited sin (erb-

suende) traced back to Adam
and Eve's initial disobedience
of God's prohibition against
eating of the Tree of
Knowledge. That culpa
originales is transmitted to
every living human action
"by generation, not by initia-
tion." That sin is not a conse-
quence of an individual's
choice but a congenital curse
from which there is no human
cure. Only by faith (sola fide)
in the incarnation of the man-
God and his unmerited kind-
ness in dying for God's
children is the stain of in-
herited sin wiped out. The
crucified Christ is the sinless
sacrifice that alone can loosen
Eve's children from the grip of
the Satan.
"Whoever eats my flesh and
drinks my blood has eternal
life and I will raise him in the
last day" (John 6:53). That
promise is ritualized in the
eucharist, mass or commu-
nion sacrament wherein the
miracle of transubstantiation
or consubstantiation takes
place. The wine and wafer are
transformed into the blood
and flesh of Christ crucified.
To what degree of literalism
such transformation is
understood remains a Chris-
tian debate that need not con-
cern us here. But no matter
the version of the sacrament,
it is a far cry from the wine
of the Kiddush which re-
mains wine and the challah of
the Motzi which remains
bread.

Baptism is a sacrament
critical for Christian salva-
tion. The Roman Catholic rite
of baptism includes exorcism
of the Prince of Darkness. The
priest blows on the face of the
infant ordering the spirit of
Satan to depart; moistens his
thumb to touch the ears and
nostrils of the infant and asks
the patrini, the sponsors of
the child, to renounce the
power and pomp of Satan.
Those who are baptized and
who believe are saved, those
who refuse are stigmatized by
the inherited sin that re-
mains indelibly inscribed in
the unredeemed soul. We may
better appreciate Peggy's
serious concern over the in-
fant's baptism and her silence
over its absence in Sam's life.
When during the trial of
Adolph Eichmann, a Cana-
dian Christian minister flew
to Jerusalem to offer
Eichmann's soul the oppor-
tunity to confess his belief in
Christ, reporters asked him
whether Eichmann's confes-
sion would save his soul. The

minister affirmed that it
would. Asked whether the
soul of Eichmann's victims
would be saved without such
confession, he answered "no."
No one comes to the Father
but by me," said Jesus accor-
ding to John 14:6.
For many of the Church
fathers Judaism is a vestigial
anachronism, a "has been"
whose purpose was that of
preparatio evangelica, prepar-
ing the path for the good news
of the advent of Christ. In the
gospels of Matthew, Mark and
Luke, we read that on the day
that Jesus died some forty

Judaism and
Christianity are
particular
languages, with
preciously unique
syntaxes, which
when thrown
together produce a
babble of tongues.

years before the destruction of
the second temple, the veil of
the temple was rent in twain
from the top to the bottom.
The temple, the priests, the
sacrificial system, the
authority of the rabbis col-
lapsed and the instruments
for communion with God fell
exclusively into the hands of
the true believers in Christ
crucified and resurrected.
It is noteworthy that the
Christian Bible includes the
"Old Testament" with the
"New Testament" but with a
re-arrangement of the order

of the "Old Testament" books.
The Jewish Bible (Tanach)
ends with the Writings, e.g.,
Proverbs, Psalms and in the
concluding book of Chronicles
with an historical resume of
Biblical history. The last
verse in Chronicles II refers to
Cyrus, King of Persia, who is
charged by God to build His
house in Jerusalem, i.e., to re-
build the Temple. Cyrus who
in Isaiah 45:1 is referred to as
Messiah "anointed" pro-
claims to the Jewish exiles
"whoever is among you of His
people may the Lord be with
him. Let him go up." In the
Christian re-ordering of the
Jewish Bible, the last books
are from the Prophets,
specifically the prophet
Malachi. Here the last verse--
reads "lest I come and smite
the earth with 'a curse." In
this manner the Christian
canonizer of the Old Testa-
ment has removed the hope of
Jewish return to Zion and
replaced it with threat of
Israel rejected. On that order-
ing of the testaments, Jesus
succeeds and supplants the
Hebrew prophets. With the
re-ordering of the Hebrew
texts, Israel's tragic destiny is
scripturally foreshadowed.
The old covenant is broken
and Israel depends for its
redemption upon acceptance
of the New covenant and the
resurrected Savior.
Add, too, to the universal
burden of original sin the par-
ticularistic sin of deicide, the
betrayal and killing of the son
of God. The episode of the
Roman procurator Pontius
Pilate washing his hands of

the blood of the Jews to be
crucified and the obdurate in-
sistence of the mob of Jews
crying "crucify him, crucify
him," is dramatized in Easter
Passion Plays and in such
commercial dramas as
Godspell, and Jesus Christ
Superstar. To the contagion of
the original sin is added the
culpability for the rejection
and mortification of Jesus.
The chilling words in Mat-
thew 27:25 put into the
mouths of the Jewish mob,
"His blood be on us and on
our children," augurs the
history of contempt for "the
perfidious Jew" so virulent in
the hands of the mobs as to
defy even the restraints of
higher church officials.

BAPTISM AND
CIRCUMCISION

Sam and Peggy are obli-
vious to the theological,
moral and emotional con-
tradictions in circumcision
and baptism. For them, both
are items of ritual
choreography devoid of
theological roots or
psychological consequence§.
Both baptism and circumci-
sion are far from complemen-
tary dramas. Baptism is
predicated upon an an-
thropological pessimism.
Man is born in the womb of
sin. Since there is nothing
that a sinner can do in terms
of works or reparation to ex-
piate that innate and human-
ly ineradicable blemish, his
sole recourse is to throw
himself upon a supernatural
Other who assumed the
burden of suffering atone-

TUC IICTDflIT

