Jewish Christianity, Israel’s Stumbling and the Sonderweg Reading of Paul

Abstract

The Sonderweg reading of Paul posits two distinct categories within Paul’s sociology of salvation. In Lloyd Gaston’s words: ‘Had all Israel followed Paul’s example, we could have had an Israel loyal to the righteousness of God expressed in the Torah alongside a gentile church loyal to the righteousness of God expressed in Jesus Christ and his fulfillment of the promises to Abraham’ (Gaston 1979: 66). In this bifurcated construction of covenantal reality, Jewish Christianity appears to be an anomaly. What to make of Israelites who are also ‘loyal to the righteousness of God expressed in Jesus Christ’? Are they doubly blessed or only misguided? Is such dual loyalty even possible or is it categorically excluded? The purpose of this article is to study the place of Jewish Christianity in the Sonderweg reading of Paul (Gaston, Gager, Stowers), the epistle to the Romans in particular. The conclusion is that, while Paul does not envisage a Sonderweg for Israel, he nevertheless assigns his own people a Sonderplatz within God’s single program of salvation. © 2006, Sage Publications. All rights reserved.