Israel and Humanity - Preface by Hyacinth Loyson
This should be the constant concern of our Christianity to reform constantly. As he has in him, beside the divine element, a human element involved inevitably to instability and imperfections in things of this world and who also is known to change to adapt to the intellectual development It is always necessary to work to reconcile science and faith, as it is also essential to fight against possible abuses by recalling frequent constituent principles.
In fact, we know that this is not usually the case, because religion is also the ancestral tradition, the instinct of self preservation not only too easily degenerates into formalism and routine.
The need remains nevertheless, and the history of Christianity with its countless sects eloquently attests. Protestantism, which gave the train somehow ultimately do not appear otherwise than as a return to Christianity of St Paul, apostles and Jesus.
At a time when the excesses of papal absolutism me so evident, I tried to do something similar in the Catholic Church I have always deeply loved and my attempt may be particularly interesting to him by his failure itself, because it shows that there is in Christianity other vital points which need to be corrected also. And this need is felt equally by Protestantism, which all sides claim to turn a reform of the reform.
It is extremely interesting to see a rabbi, an authorized representative of the synagogue to express his opinion on this important issue. We can certainly send the Jews blamed for too long been silent. Without doubt the difficult conditions under which they are found, for so many centuries in Christian circles, and which kept our prejudices and hatreds unjust, forcing them to this attitude erased. But now they enjoy complete freedom, they need to make their voices heard. Necessary, I say, for how we understand the cliristia, body, if Judaism, the religion which it is derived, is unknown? We forget too that Jesus was Jewish. Like it or not, we will change nothing. The Jews are our fathers in faith is to them that we owe the priceless gift of cro Yance to God. They owe us today because of their protest against our secular interpretation of the role and teachings of Jesus. So we rejoice to see a scientist of his people to give us his opinion on our reli gious crisis and seek solutions.
I have not had the satisfaction of knowing personally Benamozegh Rabbi Elie and I regret even more that I knew he was interested in my religious experiences. In addition, what I read the writings of this great thinker, and especially this important book "Israel and Humanity", struck me deeply.
We certainly can not expect to qu'uw rabbi spoke of Christianity is the same point of view that a Christian theologian. But the doctrine of Elias Benamozogh is basically much less destructive of Christianity that one is tempted to believe at first.
Christian theologians saw once in the Old Testament that foreshadows the New. It is Jesus as prophets have announced. Christ came, the mission of Judaism is completed, a new covenant replaces the old. Jesus founded the Church with its hierarchy and sacraments, and one day will come when the head of the Church will be the infallible interpreter of revealed doctrine. We know only too well that the independent exegesis and especially criticism of the Gospels were ruined from top to bottom these traditional data. But then, with them, the whole of Christianity crumbles as an arbitrary, artificial, inconsistent.
Elie Bonamozegh claims to save the best part. It carries the roots, the foundations of Christianity in the highest tradition hébrWfque. The Revelation of God is unique, the Act also, but this revelation and this Act has two aspects: one which regards Israel, the priestly race, and the other to all mankind. This is just the messianism that is the universal religion.
But Christianity, in the design hébralfque as we expose the author of e Israel and Humanity ", appears as Islamism, that other great and powerful religion appear later as a test realization of messianism israiilite. Insofar as there is faithful to the prophetic ideal, it must subsist insofar as it deviates, it is called for reform.
How Christianity reads can still relate to the personality of Jesus, is a question that piem individual can decide for its own account, but the solution directly n'intéresseplus messianism in its historical development. Some radical that is then scientific criticism in his study of Christian origins of earactère and the role of Jesus, Christianity remains, not indeed as a religion complete, perfect, definitive, because divinely revealed in all its parts coinmencement but as an embodiment of a master plan well before the coming of Jesus.
In looking at things from that day, we see that the door remains open to all reforms, strengths, needed improvements, because since this is a test, we understand that it may have been on such or so unhappy and nothing precludes being overhauled to use the term Benamozegh, copying the original.
Instead, all that is best in Christian piety, faith in the fatherhood of God, human regeneration, the triumph of peace, justice, universal brotherhood, all these treasures that we are certainly not the pagan Greek or Roman, but of tradition, heritage hébrWique persist and may even legitimately be called the religion of Jesus, because we do not see that he had. or it could be another. In the historical reality, we know he has institw ~ no rite, no sacrament, no Church. Born Jewish, he would live and die a Jew, and from diapers bloody circumcision embalmed shroud until his burial, perform the rites of his own nation (1).
Elie Benainozegh by this book has done justice to an error commonly held among us Christians: that which is to see in the j udaïsme monotheism a national religion than ethnicity. It shows in the ancient tradition of Israel's aspirations more clearly universalist, without any ulterior motive of subjection of the Gentiles at Mosaic. It thus makes a valuable contribution to the study of the religious problem.
While he did not pretend to say everything in a book, but he blazed a path: it is hoped that others engage in it after him and work this way in reconciliation so desirable Jews , Christians and Muslims and through them the entire human family.
Hyacinthe Loyson.
(1) While this passage has been a few days after writing these lines, repeated verbatim by Mr. Hyacinth I `yw, in the lecture he gave on 8 December 1911 the Union of Free Thinkers and Free believers in moral culture and fot the last speech publishes unforgettable speaker.
