The executive director of Jews for Jesus said that the Vatican’s statements that Jews do not need to believe in Jesus Christ to be saved are “egregious.”
The statement from David Brickner, the executive director of Jews for Jesus, comes after the Vatican’s Commission for Religious Relations with Jews released a document last week about Jewish salvation.
"That the Jews are participants in God's salvation is theologically unquestionable, but how that can be possible without confessing Christ explicitly, is and remains an unfathomable divine mystery," the document argues.
"Since God has never revoked his covenant with his people Israel, there cannot be different paths or approaches to God's salvation.
"The theory that there may be two different paths to salvation, the Jewish path without Christ and the path with the Christ, whom Christians believe is Jesus of Nazareth, would in fact endanger the foundations of Christian faith."
The Committee’s document is not a directing or order to the church.
Brickner said: "We believe that the Apostle Paul, whose name is invoked frequently in the Vatican document, would be horrified at this repudiation of the words with which he started his letter in Romans: 'For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes: first to the Jew, then to the Gentile.'"
Publication date: December 14, 2015
