Peter M. Waddell's Broken Gospel? asks a straightforward, though far from uncomplicated question: ‘[H]as the Church's wickedness [with regard to Jews] been so thorough that the truth of the Gospel itself is called into question?’ (p. 2). This is not a new question; it has been asked by a series of Christian and Jewish scholars for at least fifty years. If Waddell had not learned from these scholars, we might well respond, ‘Why ask again?’ But he has learned from them, and as a result Broken Gospel? offers new insights on a decades-old debate.
The book addresses a variety of issues related to the moral credibility of Christianity. The first, addressed in chapter 1, ‘Barabbas and His Afterlife’, concerns the Jews’ responsibility for the death of Jesus; the chapter asks whether this is the teaching of the New Testament, whether it is historically probable, and how the Christian belief in Jewish culpability for Jesus’ death, and the theological teaching of contempt that that grew from it, placed Jews in mortal peril in the Constantinian era and beyond. Waddell concludes that traditional Christian anti-Semitism, rooted ultimately in New Testament texts, was a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for the Holocaust, that ‘a direct, if twisting, line between the Barabbas story and the Final Solution remains’ (p. 26). This is, in essence, the conclusion drawn by Rosemary Ruether fifty years ago. But Waddell remains hopeful about ethical handling of the passion narratives, adding a section on responsible reading of the Barabbas story today.
In chapter 2, subtitled ‘Christian Churches and the Killing’, Waddell takes up the matter of whether Christians were responsible for the Holocaust. Here he addresses Pope Pius XII's activity (or inactivity) in response to Nazi anti-Semitism and recent attempts to assess the pope's level of complicity in Jewish suffering. When considering German Protestants, Waddell focuses on the ambivalent tone struck by the early anti-Nazi writing of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and post-war attempts to mythologise the Confessing Church as a source of anti-Nazi resistance. Drawing on recent critical scholarship, Waddell notes that ‘one could be a good Confessing Christian and remain wholly signed up to Nazi militarism, the Führer principle and violent anti-Semitism – and many were’ (p. 53). He concludes not only that many nominal Christians participated in the murder of Jewish civilians during the Second World War, but that many of those who actively supported Hitler thought of themselves as ‘Christian Nazis’.
In chapter 3, Waddell deals with the Holocaust's theological ‘aftermath’, asking to what extent the Church has ‘confessed and repented of its past’ (p. 65). In this context, Waddell pays particular attention to the Catholic document, ‘We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah’ (1998), echoing other critics of the statement by pointing out that it inappropriately claims victimhood for Christians and ‘whitewashes a very dirty past’ (p. 80). In chapter 4, ‘Has the Church Disproved the Gospel?’, Waddell summarises the previous three chapters, which he claims have shown that ‘through the long history of violent anti-Semitism, culminating in the Holocaust, Christianity has not been a transformative factor for the good. In the best case, it provided the seedbed for genocide; in the worst, it collaborated; in neither has it adequately repented’ (p. 93). Given this, he asks, what is the church's value going forward? Here, Waddell develops some thoughts in the direction of a ‘radically self-critical ecclesiology’ (p. 98) in conversation with the fourth-century Donatist controversy, the Catholic desire to distinguish between the sins of individual Catholics and the sins of the church per se (a distinction insisted upon in ‘We Remember’), and the theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
Chapter 5, ‘Christians, Jews and Israel’, addresses theological options for understanding the covenantal relationship between the church and the Jewish people, particularly the ‘two-covenant’ model and its relationship to supersession, evangelism of Jews, and Pauline theology. This chapter includes a section on the State of Israel in which Waddell attempts to establish a middle ground between Christian Zionism and Christian anti-Israelism. In chapter 6, ‘Where Was God’, Waddell reviews Jewish theological responses to the Holocaust by Ignaz Maybaum, Richard Rubenstein and Eliezer Berkovits, and places them in conversation with Christian thinkers Bonhoeffer, Paul van Buren and Jürgen Moltmann.
The book concludes with a chapter titled ‘Is Hitler in Heaven?’, which addresses the question, ‘[D]o some people go to hell?’ (p. 147). Waddell's question is really how one maintains a worldview that does not erase Nazi crimes via ‘popular Buddhism’ (in which the individual ego is dissolved after death) or ‘universalism’ (in which all are finally restored to God's grace). Waddell's own conclusion is that there must be hope for Hitler, but that we must ‘affirm the freedom of Hitler not to be saved if Hitler so chooses’ (p. 161).
Broken Gospel? wrestles with questions that have dogged Christian and Jewish scholars virtually since the Holocaust ended. Waddell's book is a valuable addition to the literature that has grown up around these questions as he adds his own distinctive perspectives as a clergyman and theologian.
