Nostra Aetate is an epochal document also from a Protestant perspective. Partly this is due to the fact that relations between Protestants and Catholics, as well as between Christians and Jews, have improved during these past forty years (despite some setbacks on both fronts). This has created a sense of shared history, whereby what was achieved by Vatican II in its effort to overcome millennia of Christian enmity towards Jews is regarded as an achievement on behalf of Christendom as a whole. Partly it is due to the fact that Nostra Aetate served as an inspiration for the Protestant churches to craft their own statements of a similar nature. If even the Roman Catholic church, which regards itself as the pre-eminent guardian of unchanging truth, can admit its error in countenancing the “teaching of contempt” for so many centuries – so the implicit argument went – surely the Protestant churches should do no less.
In my own denomination, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the most striking development of this nature was the 1994 “Declaration of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America to the Jewish Community.” In what was probably the first time an official Lutheran body has ever renounced a teaching of Martin Luther, the ELCA decisively repudiated the anti-Jewish views expressed in several of his treatises. “We reject this violent invective,” the declaration states, “and yet more do we express our deep and abiding sorrow over its tragic effects on subsequent generations. . . . We recognize in anti-Semitism a contradiction and an affront to the Gospel, a violation of our hope and calling, and we pledge this church to oppose the deadly working of such bigotry, both within our own circles and in the society around us.” Looking forward, the declaration states “our urgent desire to live out our faith in Jesus Christ with love and respect for the Jewish people.”
via www.jcrelations.net
The ELCA's renunciation of specific teachings by Martin Luther points the way for some of the healing needed within Christianity.
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