A Messianic Jewish Approach to Jewish Catholicism: Responding to Antoine Lévy's Jewish Church

Abstract

Antoine Lévy's recent volume, Jewish Church, presents his vision of a Catholic bilateral ecclesiology in which the Jewishness of the universal Church is manifested through the particular Torah-based corporate life of Jewish Catholics. Lévy articulates this vision through a sustained engagement with my writings on this subject. In this article, I first summarize and affirm the heart of Lévy's ecclesiological thesis, along with its soteriological foundation. I then show how his misunderstanding of my work sometimes leads him to exaggerate the extent of disagreement that exists between us. I conclude by highlighting three areas of genuine disagreement that merit further discussion: (1) Do the Jewish people bear any corporate responsibility for the death of Jesus? (2) Does the Church bear responsibility for the emergence of supersessionism? (3) Is there symmetry or asymmetry in the authority of Jewish and Christian tradition for Jewish disciples of Jesus?