Nostra Aetate precursors

Dialogika Resources

On the Jewish Question

The following is a resolution of the Synod of the Evangelische Kirsche in Deutschland, meeting in Berlin-Weissensee in April 1950.

 

"For God has consigned all men in disobedience, so that he may have mercy upon all" (Rom 11:32).

 

We believe in the Lord and Savior, who as a person came from the people of Israel.

We confess the Church, which is joined together in one body of Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians and whose peace is Jesus Christ.

We believe God's promise to be valid for his chosen people even after the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.

We state that by omission and silence we became implicated before the God of mercy in the outrage which has been perpetrated against the Jews by people of our nation.

We caution all Christians not to balance what has come upon us as God's judgment against what we have done to the Jews; for in judgment God's mercy searches the repentant.

We ask all Christians to disassociate themselves from all anti-semitism and earnestly to resist it, whenever it stirs again, and to encounter Jews and Jewish Christians in a brotherly spirit.

We ask the Christian congregations to protect Jewish graveyards within their areas if they are unprotected.

We pray to the Lord of mercy that he may bring about the Day of Fulfillment when we will be praising the triumph of Jesus Christ together with the saved Israel.