Coming Back to You: Mark Kinzer’s Jewish Christian Scriptures

Stones the Builders Rejected: The Jewish Jesus, His Jewish Disciples, and the Culmination of History by Mark S. Kinzer (Cascade, 2024)

Reviewed by Michael Jimenez

It is about 300 years after the death of Jesus Christ when the Council of Nicaea comes together to discuss the nature of Christ. Roman persecution throughout these years stalled such a public event, but with his victory, Constantine wanted cohesion among the Christian churches. One outcome out of the council in 325 CE is one of the most famous and lasting creedal definitions about Christ’s deity and humanity. However, despite being so foundational for orthodox Christian belief, it has a subtle omission―that Jesus is a Jewish Messiah (24, 93). This oversight is startling considering all the attention toward Jesus’s incarnation in these debates.

Messianic Jewish theologian Mark Kinzer’s book of essays Stones the Builders Rejected gets to the heart of the problem of supercessionism in Christian history, the idea that the Christian church replaces the Jewish tradition. Kinzer’s work builds upon the rapprochement between the Jewish and Christian faiths especially post-WWII. This is a fascinating time of concrete dialogue between representatives of both traditions that only seems to be growing, with Kinzer a leading voice of these conversations for the last few decades. Therefore, Kinzer’s essays provide a valuable resource for anyone with any interest in Jewish or Christian history.  

Kinzer’s focus is on the continual reality of Jewish Christians. He contends that the manifestation of Jewish Christians serves as an epistemological starting point to remind Christianity of its rootedness in the Jewish scriptures and traditions; they are a bridge between the two monotheisms. In fact, Kinzer reveals that Pope Benedict recently stated that Messianic Jews are an “eschatological sign” (187). Ideas like Benedict’s are what Kinzer uses to help think  as a post-supercessionist theologian. It is post because this is a history that should not be forgotten but instead corrected.

Jennifer Rosner, an expert on Messianic Judaism, provides a helpful introduction that covers the three themes of the book. First,  Jesus Christ is the Jewish Messiah (Christology as Messianology). Second, the future hope for Christians has always included the promises of God toward Israel (Ecclesiology as Israelology―that Christianity benefits from this initial contract between the Hebrew God and His people). Third, the significance of the blessing upon the land of Israel (Eschatology as Zionology). These ideas flow across the different essays so that by the end of the book one can see the connecting thread of Kinzer’s theology.

Kinzer illuminates the links between Jewish and Christian beliefs in Scripture and history. He reminds those in both camps that Jesus is often referred to as King of the Jews (7, 14). However, what is a king without his people and his kingdom (7)? Kinzer notes that the Christian tradition has often spiritualized Jesus’s titles (like Messiah-Christ), jettisoning the Jewish context, but that even within the biblical traditions there are glimpses of different programs for the Jewish and Gentile communities as the twofold people of God (107-8). He argues against the idea that the Church replaces Israel, but that there is a providential plan for both. In short, one can attain a deep spirituality via Christianity, but not at the expense of the Jewish roots and promises.

Taking this stance has not been easy, as seen in the most autobiographical sections of the book (118-21). According to Kinzer, Jewish Christians are often in a mediating position between the Jewish and Christian communities. However, since the mid-twentieth century, there have been positive changes in the relationship between these traditions. In fact, Kinzer notes that the “Jewishness of the historical Jesus is now taken for granted” (3). What exactly has changed?

Kinzer reveals that the Catholic Church has made great strides to acknowledge the crucial role Israel plays in their theology (83-7). It is not only some fringe priest theorizing about it, but the last three popes. In recent years, the work of theologians like Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger and Orthodox Fr. Alexander Men have also sparked a constructive shift in Jewish-Christian relations (140-2). Kinzer dedicates a chapter to Orthodox thinker Lev Gillet because of his understanding of the communal nature of the Jewish and Christian traditions (131-9). This may be the most important part of the book, since some may prematurely dismiss the idea of Jewish Christians and Messianic Judaism as a fantasy of North American evangelical churches and their dispensationalist charts. Many evangelical communities are still a source of support of Messianic Judaism and the state of Israel, but to also see the ideas present in these historic, global traditions adds another dimension to this story. At the very least, Kinzer illustrates how this viewpoint is growing.

Kinzer challenges any hermeneutic that exorcizes Israel from the narrative. Much of his book is exegesis of scripture. For example, Kinzer illustrates that the New Testament books of Luke and Acts center the city of Jerusalem, challenging the reading that the city is left behind in history after AD 70 (175). If the scriptures center and revolve around Jerusalem that means any future events could be discovered there as well (186-7)., This is an important reading that relies on some of the best Jewish and Christian biblical scholars, including Richard Bauckham and Daniel Boyarin, especially because, even though Kinzer’s type of theology is gaining ground, some traditions maintain that there is no theological reason to see Israel as crucial for Christianity.

Kinzer’s essays illuminate Christian blind spots, seeing through a dark glass because of centuries of supercessionism. As Kinzer writes, “Israel receives its name as the result of a wrestling match with God, and the Jewish people have never stopped wrestling” (13). Much of this wrestling occurred during two thousand years of Christian history. If not before, now is the time to see Jewish and Christian history as intertwined. For Messianic Jewish believers “Jesus dwells among the Jewish people as well as the Christian church” (125). Kinzer thinks that the Christian church should recognize that. However, Kinzer points out that Jewish Christians, in particular, should not take a stance of superiority over their Jewish and Christian communities since Jewish converts to Christianity in the past have fueled some of the most anti-Semitic sentiments (142-7).

The danger of supercessionism, and related anti-Semitism, is unfortunately still a global problem, even if one is not a Christian or Jewish. Kinzer’s book is a nice resource to examine this phenomenon especially since he uses resources from theology, philosophy, and history. The book has some technical language but those with some biblical background will be able to follow the essays. The Shoah still complicates how we study world history or comprehend contemporary political events. Kinzer’s Messianism provides a hopeful way to read history without dismissing the real evil that occurred.

If this book of recent essays inspires others to read more about Messianic Judaism, a nice starting point is Kinzer’s classic Postmissionary Messianic Judaism (a text he cites often in this volume). Other books like Gerald R. McDermott’s Israel Matters and Rosner’s Finding Messiah: A Journey into the Jewishness of the Gospel explore similar themes in a readable way. Stones the Builders Rejected reveals a growing literature connecting traditions across the Jewish and Christian worlds. As Kinzer notes, this is both an “opportunity” and a “responsibility” for all parties in light of the checkered history of the church and the world (113). In an age where anti-Semitism is transparently in the public arena in our most cherished institutions, this is a timely book.

Michael Jimenez is an Associate Professor of history at Vanguard University. He is the author of Remembering Lived Lives: A Historiography from the Underside of Modernity and Karl Barth and the Study of the Religious Enlightenment: Encountering the Task of History.