The sheer magnitude of the vision presented by Timothy Jackson in Mordecai Would Not Bow Down: Anti-Semitism, the Holocaust, and Christian Supersessionism makes any review immeasurably challenging. Jackson, a professor of ethics at the Candler School of Theology at Emory University, focuses on the long history of anti-Semitism that culminated in the Nazi Holocaust in the context of a multiplicity of literature from the Bible through Shakespeare and contemporary Holocaust scholarship.
Jackson critiques the understanding of the Holocaust by several prominent scholars such as Hannah Arendt and Daniel Goldhagen while his introduction of a wide array of views on human self-understanding results in a richness for further reflection not found in most writings on anti-Semitism and Nazi ideology. The frequent brevity of the citations makes for a somewhat unhinged presentation at times. The one more extended discussion of a resource comes in the concluding section where we find an in-depth reflection on the witness of Anne Frank and her diary. Yet even the brief quotes are suggestive of additional thought that could easily produce material for a second volume.
A central thesis links together the many disparate insights that Jackson offers. Simply put, for Jackson, Jews have undergone continued persecution over the centuries because of the ideals for human behavior central to their self-understanding as a people. These ideals have stood in sharp contrast to the power-lust combination that has categorized so-called worldly wisdom. Ultimately anti-Semitism can be overcome only through a mindset that has a positive Semitism at its core. This Semitism must be willing to embrace the Jewish call to a higher standard of morality that calls humanity to lives of goodness, truth, and beauty for no reason other than their intrinsic preciousness.
As Jackson sees it, this Jewish tradition of high moral commitment stands as the ultimate cause of the Nazi desire to remove Jews from the face of the earth. He does not totally deny the presence of some other causal factors for the rise of Nazism such as a social vision of power embedded in pre-Christian German tribal identity. But the moral standards promoted by the Jewish tradition must be seen as fundamentally central in any sound analysis of the Holocaust. This is something that is largely missing in the writings of most Holocaust scholars such as Arendt and Goldhagen, to name but two. Jackson sees this interpretation of the root cause of the Holocaust as also a guide for any theological and ethical discussion of the Holocaust as crucial for its continuing significance for authentic human meaning today.
In his blurb for the publisher, Gilbert Meilaender of Valparaiso University says that while he does not share some of Jackson’s theological premises the volume opens the door to significant reflection on the history of Christian anti-Semitism and its foundational role in the development of Nazism. I share his perspective on the volume even though we might not agree completely on a substitute interpretation.
During my decades of study of the Holocaust as an integral part of my many years of involvement in creating and promoting a narrative regarding the Holocaust at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, I have come to the conclusion that any such narrative must underscore the multidimensional nature of the Holocaust’s origins. Different people participated in its development and execution for varied reasons. If a single feature is to be seen as central to its vision, I would argue that it should be a notion of biological racism. Hence, I must reject Jackson’s thesis that opposition to Judaism’s high level of moral standards was the central motivation of those who framed the ideology and implementation of the Holocaust.
Biological racism is the one factor that ties together the principal victims of the Nazi genocide. Jews, Roma/Sinti, Slavs (especially Poles), the disabled, and gay people were all viewed as inherently inferior and a drag on the continuing development of humanity’s unlimited potential. There is also evidence to suggest that people of African ancestry would have been added to this list if Hitler had entered regions where they exist in sufficient numbers. Yet there is scant attention to these other victims by Jackson in his calculations about the cause of the Holocaust. The fact that the Nazis began their effort with the attack on the disabled rather than the Jews is significant. Jews did eventually become the primary victims and their supposed inferiority was directly linked to the centuries of the church’s negative portrayal of Jews and Judaism in Christian catechesis, liturgical celebration, and art.
The non-Jewish victims of the Nazis were not incidental or marginal to the Nazi genocidal project even though the intensity of hatred for them was not as great as it was toward the Jews. Jackson’s failure to include these victims in his work is a major defect in his overall presentation.
Jackson overemphasizes the significance of the high moral standards central to Judaism. I have personally come to admire these standards. But they are not as unique to Judaism as Jackson makes them out to be. And they have often not reached down to the level of concrete ethical practice within the living Jewish community. After Christianity acquired power following Constantine’s conversion Jews were never in the same position as the church to use power to corrupt its moral standards. But I am unwilling to accept the assertion that Judaism is incapable of such corruption. Without entering into an extended evaluation of the Jewish community’s use of power since 1948, I would insist that there are examples of Jewish leadership using power in ways that contradict the high moral standards of Judaism, as a number of Jewish analysts have argued.
Jackson includes a good chapter (chapter 4) on the evils of supersessionist theology which has historically depicted Judaism’s role in religious history as coming to an end with the arrival of Jesus. What he describes in this chapter is certainly on target. But a major difficulty remains. A post-supersessionist theology that takes seriously the experience of the Holocaust cannot be recast in a classical theological framework and vocabulary. This is where Jackson’s volume shows itself as disconnected from key writings on post-Holocaust theology by authors such as John Roth, Michael Berenbaum, Jürgen Moltmann, David Gushee, and, especially, Irving Greenberg.
While it is important to reject the traditional notion of Jewish covenantal exclusion after the Christ Event, it is equally important to take up Irving Greenberg’s challenge to the perceived reality of covenant and covenantal-like relationships with God for Jews, Christians, and even Muslims.Footnote 1 Jackson’s portrayal of the God-human community relationship remains largely mired in a biblical understanding of this relationship. While the experience of the Holocaust has not totally invalidated the biblical perspective it has seriously called into question any notion of an all-powerful God who totally controls the destiny of humankind. Here the notion of divine self-constriction found in parts of the Jewish mystical tradition may prove far more helpful in generating a meaningful image of God today. And Jürgen Moltmann’s notion of divine accompaniment of Holocaust victims through Jesus as the Christ may further elucidate an acceptable vision of God in our time.Footnote 2 If we fail to adjust our understanding of divine power and its continuing impact on the human condition then we are left with a monster-like God who is vicarious and arbitrary in terms of divine concern for creation. The Holocaust and other genocidal events in human history leave us with a God to whom we are still drawn in terms of consolation and support.
Greenberg is correct, however, in arguing for a form of responsibility reversals in which the human community assumes the primary, immediate role in creational governance.Footnote 3 In recent years Greenberg has moderated a bit of his views on the role reversal after critics argued that he had overly marginalized God’s role in creational governance. But he has remained steadfast in his insistence that the experience of the Holocaust forces us to restate the divine-human relationship.
As a professor of ethics, I would have assumed that Jackson would have raised the heightening of human responsibility as integral to any discussion of the Holocaust’s impact on theological construction in our day. But he does not. One hopes that in future writings, he will continue efforts to better integrate the relationship between a post-supersessionist Christian theology and a post-Holocaust theology than is the case in Jackson’s volume.
At the end of the volume, Jackson provides an extensive bibliography of works relevant for his central thesis. But glaring omissions exist, in terms of both post-supersessionist theologies and works examining the theological implications of the Holocaust. The writings of major figures who have shaped the response to the Holocaust and to classical Christian supersessionism are largely missing. While I applaud Jackson’s recognition of the twin, integrated challenges posed for these areas of thought by the Holocaust he will need to expand his understanding through a dialogue with the works of scholars such as Roth and Berenbaum, as well as Franklin Littell, Paul van Buren, Clark Williamson, and numerous biblical scholars who have fashioned a new understanding of Jesus’s relationship with the Judaism of his day and the Pauline articulation of Jesus’s role in the process of human and creational salvation.
Several times in the course of his narrative Jackson comments briefly on the theological vision of Soren Kierkegaard whom he seems to regard as useful for the development of a post-supersessionist/post-Holocaust theological perspective. But he really does little to clarify this assertion. This remains yet another item for his future agenda.
Though I have been rather rigorous in my critique of Jackson’s volume, I do so as a positive response to the discussion that he has launched. It would be my hope he would continue to reflect on the issues he has raised, often with deep-seated insight. As one who has wrestled with the same issues, I fully recognize the monumental dimensions of the questions he has raised.
In sum, Jackson’s book certainly contributes much to the ongoing discussion of the supersessionist/Holocaust issues. All of us in the field, Jackson included, need to develop a more coherent flow in the new narrative than we have achieved up until now.
