This chapter situates philosemitism within the discourse of postwar humanism. Despite a burgeoning revolt against the Western conception of “man” in French and anti-colonial philosophy, “everyday humanism” remained omnipresent in early postwar culture. How did this post-fascist humanist consensus affect perceptions of the Holocaust, Jewish refugees, and Israel during the first two decades of Western European democracy? Until the late 1950s, the humanist reprobation of Nazi inhumanity universalized the Holocaust as the catastrophe of mankind. Sympathetic observers of the new state of Israel went further. The Jewish homeland, for its admirers, not only rescued but fulfilled the promise of European humanism.

The chapter reconstructs the tortuous path of “Judeo-Christian Europe” from 1945 to the Vatican’s Nostra Aetate declaration of 1965. Contrary to Cold War America, where Judeo-Christian affinities accelerated the mutation of Jews into “white folks,” the concept was met with fierce resistance in postwar Europe. The founding fathers of European integration, for their part, did not invoke “Judeo-Christian values” to advocate unity: The phrase only gained popularity with the rise of post-1989 anti-immigrant populism. Yet for a network of Catholic and Protestant churchmen, the tragedy of the Holocaust required epochal rapprochement with Judaism. In French catholic intellectual circles, “Judeo-Christian Europe” also meant the Judeo-Christianization of the Holocaust: an appropriation of the crime which also elevated the Jew to the rank of proximate friend.

This chapter teases out Paul’s understanding of the Torah (“the law”) as having functioned in two different but related ways prior to the coming of Christ. The Torah was a guardian of the ethnic people of Israel, but it was also commandeered by the cosmic power of Sin as a tool for its purposes.

The reception of the Gospel of John, like that of any NT work, is complicated. Even in early Christian history, authors questioned whether and how John’s Gospel fit among the Synoptics and, as such, what John’s story revealed about not only the Son, but also the Father and the Holy Spirit. This short chapter cannot rehearse all the twists and turns of this Gospel’s complex reception history and various contributions to Christian theology, but I will seek to hit some of the most significant moments, referring readers on to additional resources to fill in the gaps. Even this overview, however, will demonstrate that the Gospel of John influenced not only what came to be known as Trinitarian orthodoxy, but also the questions that drove the debates that led to the Church’s creedal conclusions.

This chapter foregrounds Paul’s vision of a corporate assembly of Christ-followers living by the Spirit in patterns of self-extending love for the enrichment of others. Paul contrasts this with the propensity for self-centered living that otherwise characterizes “the present evil age.”

This chapter tracks some moments in the reception history of Galatians, focusing on seven topics: (1) Jews, Christians, and church authorities in the early centuries; (2) Luther and the medieval church; (3) Judaism and grace; (4) God’s apocalyptic invasion; (5) racial justice; (6) gender and power; and (7) Jewish and Muslim interpreters.

In the last chapter, I introduced narrative theology as the approach of this book. Even though the Gospel of John is itself a narrative, it also communicates its theology by building on an underlying story of God’s relationship with creation. I will focus more on this story in Chapter 4, which examines how the Gospel uses Scripture to share God’s life-giving will. In this chapter I will describe the narrative of the Gospel itself, exploring its genres, rhetoric, and plot. Chapter 3 continues the conversation by exploring the Gospel’s major narrative elements that provide the basis for the thematic chapters that follow in Part II of this book.

This chapter explores Paul’s reflections on the death (and resurrection) of Christ in relation to the cosmic power of Sin and human sinfulness. Union with Christ is the power-vortex that reprocesses the identity of Christ-followers in liberation from the power of Sin.

The Gospel of John has a lot to say about Jesus’s identity, especially his unique nature that results in his revelation. He shows the way to the Father (1:18) and opens the way for believers to experience unity with him and the Father through the Holy Spirit (14:15–17; 16:7–11; 20:22). Union with God, with Jesus, and with one another through the Spirit results in life now and in the future. Yet, while John is undoubtedly concerned with who Jesus is and what he offers, this should not suggest that the Gospel’s sole focus is Christology. Rather, as I argued in the last chapter, Jesus’s identity as the Word of God become flesh means he articulates and embodies God’s life-giving will, making God accessible in ways never previously experienced. Thus, for John, it is as though no other human has seen God before (1:17). After Jesus’s incarnation and ministry, however, the Gospel claims, “we have seen his glory” (1:14) and the Johannine Jesus tells a dissatisfied Philip, “If you have known me, you also know the Father. Indeed, from now on you know him and have seen him” (14:7). For John, Christology is central to theology because it is through Jesus alone that believers can fully see and know the Father, and therefore, truly experience God’s will: life.