Paul Griffiths’ Israel: A Christian Grammar is as lucid as it is provocative. It is, one might say, “classic Griffiths.” Since retiring from teaching at Duke Divinity School in 2017, he has continued to churn out a steady stream of books and articles on a wide range of topics, from the art of listening to homilies to the value of texts written by artificial intelligence.
As an author, Griffiths wears the influence of his theological heroes (Augustine, Pascal, Newman) on his sleeve, but he’s not interested in merely regurgitating their thoughts. His work is highly original and often speculative, while remaining grounded in the Catholic theological tradition. This is an exceedingly rare combination. Griffiths is a unique theologian who combines novelty and creativity with precision and clarity. His writing is deeply learned and, at times, challenging, yet it never comes across as condescending or ostentatious.
I had the privilege of studying under Griffiths and I continue to benefit from his writing, yet I confess that one of the reasons I’m drawn to his writing with an almost magnetic pull is that I find myself vehemently disagreeing nearly as often as I’m robustly agreeing with him. Reading Griffiths is exciting, even invigorating. When I disagree with him, it’s always a fruitful disagreement. My book on the ethics of lying, for example, was largely inspired by my profound misgivings about his book on lying. So, whenever I come across a new book or article by him, I meet it with eager anticipation.
Israel: A Christian Grammar is no exception. Its theses are bold and guaranteed to raise eyebrows across the theological spectrum: namely, that the term Israel is not identical with the Church alone, nor with the Synagogue alone, but rather encompasses both without conflating them; that the Synagogue maintains a greater intimacy with God than the Church; and that Christians should not proselytize Jews (nor, perhaps, even baptize Jewish converts to Christianity), because they already have a covenantal relationship with God that is not superseded by the Church. These theses are articulated, and important terms defined, in the preface and first chapter, and the analysis unfolds in the ten more tightly constructed chapters and four brief excurses. Notice I didn’t write that the “argument” unfolds. Griffiths claims, “I have no interest in convincing readers of anything” (xiii). Rather, the book “proposes some fundamental adjustments to the several Christian grammars of that matter [i.e., Christian discourse about Israel] which have been lively since the effective separation of Synagogue and Church” (Ibid.).
Griffiths’ book stands out from the countless other books on Christianity and Judaism in several important ways. First, it doesn’t offer any kind of historical analysis of Christian-Jewish relations. While historically informed, this is not a historical study. This is not to say that the book is written from an ahistorical perspective. On the contrary, some of Griffiths’ proposals are explicitly motivated by the ways Christians have mistreated Jews throughout history and have thus lost standing to relate to Jews in certain ways today.
Second, the book offers virtually no direct engagement with or exegesis of biblical texts one might expect to encounter in a work on this topic. Again, this is not to say the book is unconcerned with biblical interpretation. One of the excurses (“The Interpretation of Scripture”) is dedicated to this topic. But given Griffiths’ methodology, any focus on specific biblical texts would distract from the project’s central aims.
Third, it does not directly cite any previous works on Christianity and Judaism, nor any secondary literature at all, apart from a “Works Consulted” section at the end. Some readers will be perplexed or frustrated by this feature. Griffiths has taken this approach before (see Christian Flesh, for example), and I find that it gives his writing a lively sense of immediacy and vividness. This is a work of constructive, speculative theology through and through.
Another admirable feature of the book is that it doesn’t pander to any specific audience. His claim that “No Jew needs to know Jesus to come to the Father, for every Jew is already with the Father; and is there because of Jesus” (216), for example, is likely to scandalize both Jewish and Christian readers. While Griffiths is deeply sensitive to the atrocities inflicted upon Jews throughout the centuries, he doesn’t hesitate to recognize that some features of his proposal will be unpalatable for most Jewish readers. He observes that his description of Judaism “is an ecclesiastical imagining of the Synagogue, and as such may or may not (very likely not, I should think) be acceptable to the Synagogue” (43). By the same token, his proposal is averse to Christian triumphalism, resisting both supersessionist complacency and sentimental philosemitism by insisting that the Church, too, must be imagined ecclesiologically as partial, wounded, and accountable within the larger mystery of Israel.
I expected to learn from and to be challenged by this book. I did and I was. To my surprise, however, I find very little with which to disagree. It is the kind of book that begs for another reading. However, I will quibble with Griffiths’ claims concerning the baptism of Jews. He writes, “The provisional conclusion is that Jews who freely seek full communion with the Church do not need baptism. And further: they ought not be granted it” (173-74). He proposes, instead, the development of a new ecclesial rite for the reception of Jews into the Church.
I can’t see how this squares with the many examples in the New Testament of Jews being baptized: John’s baptism of “the whole Judean region and all the people of Jerusalem” (Mark 1:4–5), the 3,000 Jews baptized in Acts 2:38–41, and several other instances of Jewish baptism, not to mention that of Jesus himself (Luke 3:21–22). It doesn’t seem that God designed baptism merely as a means of incorporating Gentiles into Israel.
Of course, Griffiths’ reasoning is provisional and more nuanced than I’m suggesting here. He anticipates such an objection and offers a brief reply: “This objection assumes that if the Church has once rightly done something, then it may always rightly do that thing” (174). But I find Griffiths’s arguments for ceasing the practice unpersuasive. This is a relatively minor concern, considering the boldness of the book’s broader claims. Other readers will encounter larger stumbling blocks (to use a Pauline phrase) in this Christian grammar of Israel. Nonetheless, this is a book many should read and give the consideration it deserves.
The Rev. Dr. Stewart Clem is associate professor of moral theology at Aquinas Institute of Theology in St. Louis and theologian in residence at the Church of St. Michael & St. George.
