In Judaism, the concept of the Jews as chosen people is the belief that the Jews as a subset, via partial descent from the ancient Israelites, are also chosen people, i.e. selected to be in a covenant with God. However, Israelites being properly the chosen people of God is found directly in the Book of Deuteronomy as the verb baḥar (בָּחַר), and is alluded to elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible using other terms such as "holy people". Much is written about these topics in rabbinic literature. The three largest Jewish denominations—Orthodox Judaism, Conservative Judaism and Reform Judaism—maintain the belief that the Jews have been chosen by God for a purpose. Sometimes this choice is seen as charging the Jewish people with a specific mission—to be a light unto the nations, and to exemplify the covenant with God as described in the Torah.
Christianity began as a movement within Second Temple Judaism, but the two religions gradually diverged over the first few centuries of the Christian Era. Today, differences of opinion vary between denominations in both religions, but the most important distinction is Christian acceptance and Jewish non-acceptance of Jesus as the Messiah prophesied in the Hebrew Bible and Jewish tradition. Early Christianity distinguished itself by determining that observance of halakha was not necessary for non-Jewish converts to Christianity. Another major difference is the two religions' conceptions of God. The Christian God consists of three persons of one essence, with the doctrine of the incarnation of the Son in Jesus being of special importance. Judaism emphasizes the Oneness of God and rejects the Christian concept of God in human form. While Christianity recognizes the Hebrew Bible as part of its scriptural canon, Judaism does not recognize the Christian New Testament.
Deuteronomy is the fifth book of the Torah, where it is called Devarim and the fifth book of the Christian Old Testament.
The Epistle to the Galatians is the ninth book of the New Testament. It is a letter from Paul the Apostle to a number of Early Christian communities in Galatia. Scholars have suggested that this is either the Roman province of Galatia in southern Anatolia, or a large region defined by Galatians, an ethnic group of Celtic people in central Anatolia. The letter was originally written in Koine Greek and later translated into other languages.
Supersessionism, also called replacement theology, is a Christian theological opinion that describes the idea that the Christian Church has superseded the nation of Israel assuming their role as God's covenanted people, thus asserting that the New Covenant through Jesus Christ has superseded or replaced the Mosaic covenant. Supersessionism also holds that the universal Christian Church has replaced ancient Israel as God's true Israel and that Christians have replaced the biological bloodline of ancient Israelites as the people of God.
Salvation is the state of being saved or protected from harm or a dire situation. In religion and theology, salvation generally refers to the deliverance of the soul from sin and its consequences. The academic study of salvation is called soteriology.
There is no established formulation of principles of faith that are recognized by all branches of Judaism. Central authority in Judaism is not vested in any one person or group - although the Sanhedrin, the supreme Jewish religious court, would fulfill this role if it were re-established - but rather in Judaism's sacred writings, laws, and traditions.
Messianic Judaism is a modernist and syncretic sect that considers itself Jewish. Many consider it a part of the Christian movement of evangelicalism.
In Christianity, salvation is the saving of human beings from sin and its consequences—which include death and separation from God—by Christ's death and resurrection, and the justification entailed by this salvation.
Throughout history, various groups of people have considered themselves to be the chosen people of a deity, for a particular purpose. The phenomenon of a "chosen people" is well known among the Israelites and Jews, where the term originally referred to the Israelites as being selected by Yahweh to worship only him and to fulfill the mission of proclaiming his truth throughout the world. Some claims of chosenness are based on parallel claims of Israelite ancestry, as is the case for the Christian Identity and Black Hebrew sects—both which claim themselves to be the "true Israel". Others claim that the concept is spiritual, where individuals who genuinely believe in God are considered to be the "true" chosen people. This view is common among most Christian denominations, who historically believed that the church replaced Israel as the people of God.
Pauline Christianity or Pauline theology, otherwise referred to as Gentile Christianity, is the theology and form of Christianity which developed from the beliefs and doctrines espoused by the Hellenistic-Jewish Apostle Paul through his writings and those New Testament writings traditionally attributed to him. Paul's beliefs were rooted in the earliest Jewish Christianity, but they deviated from this Jewish Christianity in their emphasis on inclusion of the Gentiles into God's New Covenant and in his rejection of circumcision as an unnecessary token of upholding the Mosaic Law.
Covenant theology is a conceptual overview and interpretive framework for understanding the overall structure of the Bible. It uses the theological concept of a covenant as an organizing principle for Christian theology. The standard form of covenant theology views the history of God's dealings with mankind, from Creation to Fall to Redemption to Consummation, under the framework of three overarching theological covenants: those of redemption, of works, and of grace.
Ed Parish Sanders was an American New Testament scholar and a principal proponent of the "New Perspective on Paul". He was a major scholar in the scholarship on the historical Jesus and contributed to the view that Jesus was part of a renewal movement within Judaism. Sanders identified himself as a "liberal, modern, secularized Protestant" in his book Jesus and Judaism; fellow scholar John P. Meier called him a postliberal Protestant. He was Arts and Sciences Professor of Religion at Duke University, North Carolina from 1990 until his retirement in 2005.
The "New Perspective on Paul" is a movement within the field of biblical studies concerned with the understanding of the writings of the Apostle Paul. The "new perspective" was started with scholar E. P. Sanders' 1977 work Paul and Palestinian Judaism. The old Protestant perspective claims that Paul advocates justification through faith in Jesus Christ over justification through works of the Law. After the Reformation, this perspective was known as sola fide; this was traditionally understood as Paul arguing that Christians' good works would not factor into their salvation – only their faith would count. In this perspective, first-century Second Temple Judaism is dismissed as sterile and legalistic.
Dual-covenant or two-covenant theology is a school of thought in Christian theology regarding the relevance of the Hebrew Bible, which Christians call the Old Testament.
Early criticism of Judaism and its texts, laws, and practices originated in inter-faith polemics between Christianity and Judaism. Important disputations in the Middle Ages gave rise to widely publicized criticisms. Modern criticisms also reflect the inter-branch Jewish schisms between Orthodox Judaism, Conservative Judaism, and Reform Judaism.
The Federal Vision is a Reformed evangelical theological conversation that focuses on covenant theology, Trinitarian thinking, the sacraments of baptism and communion, biblical theology and typology, justification, and postmillennialism. A controversy arose in Reformed and Presbyterian circles in response to views expressed at a 2002 conference entitled The Federal Vision: An Examination of Reformed Covenantalism. The ongoing controversy involves several Reformed denominations including the Orthodox Presbyterian Church (OPC), the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA), the United Reformed Churches in North America (URCNA), and the Reformed Presbyterian Church in the United States (RPCUS), and the Protestant Reformed Churches in America (PRCA).
This is a glossary of terms used in Christianity.
Since the 1970s, scholars have sought to place Paul the Apostle within his historical context in Second Temple Judaism. Paul's relationship to Judaism involves topics including the status of Israel's covenant with God and the role of works as a means to either gain or keep the covenant.
Paul's theology is considered by some interpreters to center on a participation in Christ, in which one partakes in salvation by dying and rising with Jesus. While this theology was interpreted as mysticism by Albert Schweitzer, according to the New Perspective on Paul, as initiated by E.P. Sanders, it is more aptly viewed as a salvation theology.
