Profound reflection by a Jew on Christianity

David Gelernter is a man I have long admired.  A professor of computer science at Yale, he writes prolifically on a huge range of subjects, many in the humanities and religion.

He is also a brave man.  He wrote something against the cruel philosophy of the Unabomber back in the 1980s, and as a result had his hand blown off by a bomb attached to a package in his mailbox.  So he is a victim of terrorism.

This man of enormous intellect and imagination has just published a piece at First Things that will move you.  Or it ought to.  He writes as a Jew who, I am certain, does not believe Jesus was the messiah.  But in a gesture of great spiritual generosity, he speaks positively of the religion that killed many (perhaps hundreds of thousands) of his fellow Jews over the centuries.

What does Gelernter say?  Well, you can read it for yourself at the link above, but among the profound insights are these:

1. Christianity is a dialect of Judaism.

2. Christianity has taken the message and life of Judaism to the world.

By message and life I mean a) the message that the true God is the God of Israel, and b) participation in the only true life there is–the very being of that true God.

He also argues that the mounting opposition to modern Israel is a species of anti-Semitism.  I wish he could come to the first-ever academic conference supporting Christian Zionism at Georgetown University on April 17.

I wish you would come too.  It will be historic.