Perspectives on Hebrew Roots and Messianic Christianity
I have mixed feelings about the Messianic and “Hebrew Roots” movements. I think the two have different origins, but work from similar principles. I think it’s definitely valuable to understand the Hebrew context and roots of the Christian faith, to seek to recover valuable traditions—but at the same time, many of the people I’ve talked to tend to be anti-traditional and iconoclastic in the opposite direction, toward all established Christian tradition, both Protestant and especially Catholic.
The Importance of Tradition and History
Christianity has come down to us by way of a 2,000-year-old tradition—2,000 years of faithful men and women who have believed and followed God and preserved and handed down the faith. And if one isn’t careful about it, this “Hebrew Roots” movement implies a renunciation of all that. It seems to be the extreme end of the attitude that was born in the Reformation: let’s go back and recover the original Christian faith; let’s find a “pure” faith, and throw away anything else that’s been added.
But I think it’s dangerous to separate faith from history and tradition. The Protestant notion of sola scriptura put forward the idea that all one needs to have Christian faith is “Scripture alone,” so it’s only logical to suppose that if we strip away all the tradition, even the Protestant tradition, we’ll end up with what we were originally supposed to have. But the fact is that history presents a very different story.
The Parting of the Ways
By the beginning of the second century, mere years after the deaths of the Apostles, the Christian and Jewish traditions were already parting ways. The Jews rejected Christians as anti-Jewish heretics, and Christians came to reject Jewish traditions as subversive and anti-Christian. Christian worship on the Lord’s Day (Sunday) had been a practice since the Apostles themselves, and the growing Church soon fell away from also celebrating Jewish worship on the Sabbath. To sever faith from history forgets all of that and denies it happened.
The Vision of the One New Man
The Church is at a crossroads in understanding its relationship to Jews and Judaism. The aim is to work toward realizing Paul’s Ephesians 2 vision of the One New Man, made up of Jews and Gentiles in Messiah, who affirm each other as Jews and Gentiles. This is a healthy direction and it leads to much partnership, fruitfulness and peace in the kingdom of God.
Our perspectives on this complex issue include several key points:
- The Church is a body of Jews and Gentiles in Messiah who are called to live out a God-given relationship of interdependence and mutual blessing.
- Gentile believers do not need to become Jews or take on Jewish lifestyle to walk in the ways of the Lord.
- Jewish followers of Jesus are called to remain true to their identity as Jews.
- History is going in the direction of healing the schism between the Church and the Jewish people.
Theological Approaches and Movements
I also want to show how Hebrew Roots/One Law Theology and Replacement Theology represent departures from Paul’s One New Man vision. Consider the following distinctions between these approaches:
| Theology/View | Core Premise |
|---|---|
| Hebrew Roots / One Law | Aims to recover original faith by stripping away tradition; sometimes results in the "One New Jew." |
| Replacement Theology | Departure from the One New Man vision; results in the "One New Gentile." |
| The One New Man | Jews and Gentiles in Messiah who affirm each other in their respective identities and callings. |
| Traditional Christianity | Faith preserved through 2,000 years of tradition, preserving authentic teaching of the Apostles. |
Yes, Jesus and the Apostles were Jews, and the Christian faith is the fulfillment of Hebrew prophecy and the culmination of Hebrew tradition. However, to cast away the Tradition of the Church loses the whole context of the New Testament and the Early Church, and with it the authentic teaching of the Apostles on how Christian worship was to be conducted. The liturgy of the Catholic Mass even to this day clearly follows the forms of the Jewish synagogue liturgy; the “Hebrew Roots” of Christianity are not lost; they merely grew into full-grown oaks.