Dear Lukas:

What is going on, Lukas, is that either you have been listening to people who are anti-catholic, or you are an anti-catholic yourself, or in your own reading of this document you have completely misinterpreted it.

The document in question is entitled, The Jewish people and their sacred Scriptures in the Christian Bible. Click on the title to read the document the Vatican website.

Your quotes are out of context, and as such render a different meaning that what is actually said in the document. For example, you quote section II A 7 as:

“to read the Bible as Judaism does necessarily involves an implicit acceptance of all its presuppositions, which exclude faith in Jesus as Messiah and Son of God. Christians can and ought to admit that the Jewish reading of the Bible is a possible one.”

What Section II. A. 7 actually says is this (my emphasis in bold):

22. The horror in the wake of the extermination of the Jews (the Shoah) during the Second World War has led all the Churches to rethink their relationship with Judaism and, as a result, to reconsider their interpretation of the Jewish Bible, the Old Testament. It may be asked whether Christians should be blamed for having monopolised the Jewish Bible and reading there what no Jew has found. Should not Christians henceforth read the Bible as Jews do, in order to show proper respect for its Jewish origins?

In answer to the last question, a negative response must be given for hermeneutical reasons. For to read the Bible as Judaism does necessarily involves an implicit acceptance of all its presuppositions, that is, the full acceptance of what Judaism is, in particular, the authority of its writings and rabbinic traditions, which exclude faith in Jesus as Messiah and Son of God.

As regards the first question, the situation is different, for Christians can and ought to admit that the Jewish reading of the Bible is a possible one, in continuity with the Jewish Sacred Scriptures from the Second Temple period, a reading analogous to the Christian reading which developed in parallel fashion. Both readings are bound up with the vision of their respective faiths, of which the readings are the result and expression. Consequently, both are irreducible.

On the practical level of exegesis, Christians can, nonetheless, learn much from Jewish exegesis practised for more than two thousand years, and, in fact, they have learned much in the course of history. For their part, it is to be hoped that Jews themselves can derive profit from Christian exegetical research.

The document says that we cannot read the Bible as the Jews do because the Jews interpretation excludes faith in Jesus as the Messiah. The statement in context totally refutes your implication.

The context of the quote, "Jewish Messianic expectation is not in vain" is one of eschatology for Christians. In context, this statement refers to the Messianic expection of the coming of the Messiah and the Christian expection of his returning a second time.

The Jewish espectation is not in vain. It will happen, the Messiah will come in the Second Coming and the Jews will be enlighted of who the Messiah really is — Jesus Christ.

Here is the context of that statement:

The definitive fulfilment will be at the end with the resurrection of the dead, a new heaven and a new earth. Jewish messianic expectation is not in vain. It can become for us Christians a powerful stimulant to keep alive the eschatological dimension of our faith. Like them, we too live in expectation. The difference is that for us the One who is to come will have the traits of the Jesus who has already come and is already present and active among us.

Again, the document does not say what you are implying.

I believe, sir, that due to the nature of your rhetoric and how you word things that you are not a member of the Evangelical Free Church, as you claim. Your arguments are right out of the ultra-traditionalist viewpoint, which is not in communion with the Church, or the viewpoint of radical fundamentalist Protestants who are rabid anti-Catholics who have no respect for the truth.

Neither of these documents, the The Jewish people and their sacred Scriptures in the Christian Bible nor Pope Benedict's book, God and the World, are heretical. Such a supposition is under nonsense and the crime of rash judgment. Not only is this nonsense but you are not qualified nor have the competence to determine these documents heretical.

Pope Benedict is not denying the Christian faith in the quote you posted. This is obvious to anyone who's not looking through anti-catholic eyeglasses.

He states the theme of his point in the first sentence: "It is of course possible to read the Old Testament so that it is not directed toward Christ." He is correct. If one chooses not to recognize the many passages in the Old Testament that look forward to Christ, and many people do deny this, then they will not see those prophetic words. This is all the Pope is saying.

The Catholic Church fully recognizes, and has been teaching long before Protestants even existed, that Christ can be seen in the Old Testament. In fact, the Catholic Church teaches that it is the prophecies of Christ in the Old Testament that proves that Jesus is who he said he was.

I would suggest, sir, that you get off the anti-catholic bus, and read these documents in their full context in light of the total teaching of the Catholic Church, instead of creating straw men arguments to conveniently tear down.

God Bless,
Bro. Ignatius Mary