Letter 1 : Part 1

The Christian and the Pharisee: Two Outspoken Religious Leaders Debate the Road to Heaven
by R. T. Kendall, Rabbi David Rosen

Through a unique and rare exchange of letters, an evangelical preacher, R. T. Kendall, and a senior Jewish rabbi, David Rosen, openly discuss and debate their views on heaven and how we get there. This groundbreaking book offers an opportunity to read the heartfelt correspondence of these two prolific and acclaimed theologians as they vigorously defend their own beliefs while they challenge each other's claims.

Despite living in a time of tumultuous religious division, the two leaders develop a refreshing and deep mutual respect and forge a strong friendship through the questions asked and answered. As the men encounter seemingly irreconcilable differences in beliefs, The Christian and the Pharisee shows how the little they do share allows them to form strong alliances-a lesson that is crucial to a world in crisis.

Chapter 1

Dear R. T.,

I welcome the opportunity to respond to your writings for a number of reasons. Firstly, friendship requires that we speak our minds sincerely to one another and I know that we can do that in a manner that is sensitive and respectful to each other and our respective faiths. Secondly, as people of faith, we are seekers of truth and thus where we believe that the truth may be tarnished or misconstrued we have an obligation to say so.

However, I believe the most important reason for developing this dialogue is our very relationship. I don't mean just you and me, but that the relationship between Jews and Christians is something special-or at least should be. As the Jewish theologian Martin Buber put it, "We share a book and that's no small thing." I would even go so far as to say that there is a divine plan and purpose in our very differences, but perhaps it's too early for us to be talking about that. For starters, it is surely enough for us to acknowledge that we both see the Hebrew Bible-that you call the Old Testament-as the revealed Word of God. The very fact that we share such a bond with this text of divine revelation places us in a special relationship with one another and requires not only a level of communication, honesty, and love that tragically has been so lacking down the course of history but surely behooves us to work together for the values we share.

At the heart of these values are of course the Ten Commandments, one of which is the prohibition against bearing false testimony. Almost two thousand years of separation between Christians and Jews has tragically led to much pain and suffering. Thank God, most of this is behind us. Nevertheless some of the effects of the past still remain with us and even continue to lead people to unwittingly bear false witness against others. There is, of course, not just one culprit in this sin, but I greatly welcome the opportunity to tell you, your followers and readers, of how I see continued false testimony against my faith and people being maintained among many good Christians today. Let me reiterate that I do not suspect that this is generally intentional (otherwise I wouldn't call them good Christians)-and certainly not in your case, as I know your love for the Jewish people is sincere. The source of this false witness lies precisely in the historic break between the early Christians and the Jewish community from which they came and has been compounded in the course of time. The result is that not only do we know far too little about one another, we often have no idea how each one sees him- or herself even in contemporary terms, let alone historical ones.

So the first thing that I think I need to do is to tell you how I see myself and where I come from. I see myself as part of the people descended from Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (also known as Israel), with whom God made a covenant that was ratified at Mount Sinai with their descendants, the children of Israel. This covenant is an expression of God's everlasting commitment to the children of Israel to be an instrument of His purpose, testifying to His presence in the life and history of humanity. This testimony may take different forms, but ideally it should be through living a way of life as "a kingdom of priests and a holy nation" (Exod. 19:6). To this end the children of Israel were given a "road map" at Mount Sinai that we call the Torah. Indeed, as important as it was to find their way to the promised land, it was far more important to follow the course of religioethical living that was revealed to them at Mount Sinai. Ideally they would live this way of life in the promised land. In fact they were told at Sinai that their ability to live securely in the land was precisely contingent upon following this "road map" of life and that if we failed we would be exiled from it. Nevertheless we were reassured that God would always bring us back again (Lev. 26:44-45).

Jewish tradition maintains that all the teachings in the Torah-that is, the five books of Moses also known as the Pentateuch-were revealed at Mount Sinai, not just the Ten Commandments. Most Orthodox Jews like me accept this tradition. Others see the Sinai revelation as having contained an essence from which the other precepts flowed.

However, as anyone who is familiar with the Pentateuch knows, it contains hundreds of commandments. According to Jewish tradition, 613 to be precise. Of course a large proportion of these relate to the temple: its construction, the offerings that took place within it, its maintenance, and matters of ritual purity connected with its function. In addition many of the commandments are conditional-even being dependent upon failure to fulfill others. For example the commandment allowing divorce (Deut. 24:1) is of course conditional on the failure of a marriage. Or more dramatically, the commandment to lighten the load of your enemy's donkey (Exod. 23:5) implies that one has already desecrated another commandment, for if one loved one's neighbor as oneself (Lev. 19:18), one wouldn't have an enemy in the first place-and one could go on and on. In other words, a far smaller number of commandments are practically relevant to the average person's daily life.

Nevertheless for the believing Jew, following these divine directions means living according to God's will and way. These precepts were revealed to us not only for our good, for our life (Deut. 30:15-16), but through following them we come close to God, to know and love Him (Deut. 6:5-6, 10:12-13, 11:22).

However many of them are communicated in shorthand. For example, we are told to "remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy" (Exod. 20:8). What does "holy" actually mean? How do we go about achieving that goal? According to Jewish tradition, when the Almighty revealed His written Word to Moses for the children of Israel, the meaning was explained. The explanations and clarifications of the Written Torah are known in Jewish tradition as the Oral Torah. And indeed the ongoing process of clarifying their application in changing times and conditions is part of its eternal vitality. Religious Jews have traditionally understood that the practice and study of the Written and Oral Torah are the way of life that God requires of them; that this is the source of the joy and beauty in their lives and is the secret of their survival.

Now, R. T., I am about to enter the historic context that is the focus of your faith: the Second Temple period two thousand years ago in the land of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Already by then much had happened to the children of Israel. The ten tribes of Israel in the northern part of the land had been conquered by the Assyrians and were lost to the southern tribes who were known by the name of the dominant tribe Judah (from which of course come the names Judea and Jew). Then Judea was conquered by the Babylonians, Solomon's temple was destroyed, but the Jews survived the cataclysm. The Persians let us return, the temple was rebuilt, but then we were subsequently subjugated by the Greeks and then the Romans. The result of all these comings and goings and various cultural influences was that by the time Rome ruled in the Middle East, the Jewish people was more diverse than ever.

Our main historic source for that period of time is Josephus, who describes four primary groups of Jews who were active at the time: Sadducees, Pharisees, Essenes, and Zealots.

The Essenes and the Zealots represented different reactions to the effects of oppressive Roman rule. The first of these chose to withdraw from general society, which was seen as corrupt and degenerate, and to prepare themselves for the end of the society that God would destroy and replace with one in their image. The Zealots believed that what God wanted was for them to take up arms to defeat the pagan Romans notwithstanding the latter's physical might. However, the two mainstream groups among the Jewish people were the Sadducees and the Pharisees.

The purpose of all the historical retrospective that I have given is to explain to you now how generations of Jews over almost two millennia have viewed these two groups.

As Josephus records, the politically dominant group that was the usual address for the Roman authorities and often served as their surrogate was the Sadducees. They were made up of dominant priestly families who controlled the temple and wealthy segments of society, who felt themselves to be part and parcel of Roman culture as well.

Copyright © 2006 by R. T. Kendall and David Rosen

About the Author

Dr. R. T. Kendall served for 25 years as Minister of Westminster Chapel in London and now lives in Florida. From there, he continues his career as a popular Christian preacher and writer. His best-selling books include The Thorn in the Flesh, Total Forgiveness, and The Anointing.

Rabbi David Rosen, previously Chief Rabbi of Ireland, has for the last twenty years lived in Jerusalem where he currently holds a number of important posts, including: Director of the Department for Interreligious Affairs and Director of the Heilbrunn Institute for International Interreligious Understanding of the American Jewish Committee, President of the World Conference on Religion and Peace and Honorary President of the International Council of Christians and Jews.