The Golden Age of Jewish/Christian Relations Revisited:
The Contribution of H.J. Schoeps to Interfaith Dialogue

by Christopher Buck

Background: This paper, "The Golden Age of Jewish/Christian Relations Revisited: The Contribution of H.J. Schoeps to Interfaith Dialogue," was submitted on March 22, 1984 for a University of British Columbia seminar, "The History of Christian Anti-Semitism," team-taught by the former chair of UBC’s Religious Studies Department, the late Professor William Nicholls (d. 2014), ceremonies.ubc.ca/2015/02/16/william-nicholls, and visiting scholar Professor Moshe Amon, israelipalestinian.procon.org/source-biographies/moshe-amon. Professor Amon failed this paper ("F") — but Professor Nicholls gave it a solid "A"!

This paper highlights the contributions of Jewish scholar Hans-Joachim Schoeps to Jewish-Christian dialogue, with implications not only for a wider dialogue with Islam, but for interfaith dialogue with the Bahá'í Faith as well, especially with respect to the following statement from the first Christian novel, the Pseudo-Clementine Homilies:

“Neither, therefore, are the Hebrews condemned on account of their ignorance of Jesus … if, doing the things commanded by Moses, they do not hate him [Jesus] whom they do not know. Neither are those from among the Gentiles condemned, who do not know Moses … provided that these also, doing the things spoken by Jesus, do not hate him [Moses] whom they do not know. … Moreover, if anyone has been thought worthy to recognise both as preaching one doctrine, that man has been counted rich in God.” (Homilies 8:5–7; see also Recognitions 4:5)

Personal correspondence (previously unpublished) between Bahá’í scholar Dr. Udo Schaefer (Germany) and Dr. Hans-Joachim Schoeps (Germany) is provided in the Appendix and translated into English from the original German. [-C.B. 2021]

Download: buck_jewish_christian_relations.pdf.