This chapter examines the resurgence and reinvention of antisemitism in Western Europe in the aftermath of World War II. To understand why anti-antisemitism became a distinctive philosophical, theological, and political project requires attention to the resilience of Judeophobia in the late 1940s and 1950s. Although unrepentant Nazis, former pro-German collaborators, or traditionalist Catholics transgressed the taboo, the delegitimation of antisemitism in the public arena also forced Judeophobia to take cover behind favorable views of Jews: Tactical philosemitism in occupied Germany and the early Federal Republic is a case in point.

This short chapter asks what Paul might say if he were alive today. How might he rearticulate his message to the Galatians in ways that address our dangerously discordant world?

This chapter explores what Paul means by the disputed term “righteousness.” His conceptualization of righteousness merges with other important features of his theologizing – in particular, the faithfulness of God, including divine faithfulness to “the Israel of God.”

As noted in the first chapter, John has long been considered “the Theologian” of the Church. Such a view began as early as the second century and can be traced through Christian history even until today. In his recent work on the theology of John, for example, Jörg Frey continues to support the “bold” thesis that Johannine theology is the “climax” of NT theology. Before weighing in on this thesis, however, or even the need to determine a hierarchy within NT theologies, we must consider how John’s theology fits within the larger NT as one theological expression among many. In this chapter, I will consider specifically the theology of the Gospel of John, even though many scholars support a blending of the Gospel with the Letters of John to determine a more comprehensive “Johannine theology.” My decision to focus on the Gospel both reflects the limitations of this present volume and respects the value of 1–3 John as works meriting their own extended treatment in the study of NT theologies.

So far, this study of John’s theology has emphasized God’s initiative in the Gospel of John, as well as God’s will for life begun at creation, revealed through the stories of Israel’s Scripture, and climactically revealed in the person and work of Jesus. But what of the believers left behind and those who come to believe that Jesus is the Christ the Son of God (20:31) after his departure? The Gospel of John is a written testimony and remembrance, encouraging believers and shaping their understanding of God and Jesus, but also of the world, the Holy Spirit, and the community (or family) of which they are now a part. Past interpreters often argued against the presence of explicit ecclesiological, missiological, and ethical teachings in John, highlighting the Gospel’s trenchant dualism and sectarianism rooted in a realized, present eschatology. This chapter, however, challenges these readings by exploring how John’s story casts believers, past and present, as part of the family of God, reborn and equipped not only to love those within their new family, but also to continue revealing the love of God within and for the world.

Leviticus has shaped both Jewish and Christian theology and practice over the centuries. The final chapter examines its influence in the rest of the Old Testament and into the Second Temple period and the New Testament. Levitical theology also influenced a Christian understanding of sacred space in church architecture as well as helping shape the Christian liturgical year.

In the He then concludes with a chapter on the implied readers to discuss the Gospel’s use of irony, misunderstanding, and symbolism. I do not have the space for such a detailed analysis in the present chapter, but these aspects are nevertheless crucial to our study of the Gospel’s theology and provide foundational language and perspectives for the thematic chapters that follow.

This chapter follows the flow of Paul’s presentation in Galatians, offering a light commentary on the movement and content of Paul’s discourse in the thirteen interlocking text units of the letter.

The development of Jewish studies and Holocaust research in academia during the 1970s and 1980s, or fascination with the “Jewish sign” in post-modern philosophy, were other legacies of 1968 in higher education and thought. But another “1968” informed liberal visions of cosmopolitan Europe during the last decade of the Cold War. Established in France since 1975, the Czech émigré novelist Milan Kundera almost single-handedly prompted the nostalgic rediscovery of Mitteleuropa in the West. His influential essay, “The Tragedy of Central Europe” (1983), romanticized Central European Jewish intellectuals as symbols of lost but retrievable supranational Europe. Advocates of the European Union, however, grounded cosmopolitanism on the memory of the Shoah – the birth certificate of a new Europe allegedly triumphant over nationalism, antisemitism, and racism. Competing memories of communist oppression impeded the export of Holocaust remembrance across the former Iron Curtain. Yet post-Communist countries developed their own forms of Shoah memorialization, even if “to control the way in which the Holocaust is remembered, understood, and interpreted.” At the start of the twenty-first century, the commemoration of murdered Jews had become “our contemporary European entry ticket.”