Constantine's Sword Review

Constantine's Sword: the Church and the Jews,

by James Carroll

What a fascinating journey it's been.  I sped-read the last forty pages because I just wanted to be done with the thing, but don't let that foster the idea that I wasn't completely absorbed in what Carroll had to say about life, history, and religion.  Because I was.  For the past two months, it's been nearly all I can think about.  So.  Where to begin in this review.

To sum up, as he neared conclusion: 

I had come here with my three questions.  The first:  How did the history of Christian antisemitism contribute to the Holocaust?  The second:  How did the Church abet, or oppose, the Holocaust as it unfolded?  And the third:  How does the Church today negotiate that layered past, both the deep past of antisemitism and the recent past of the Holocaust? (536)

While I by no means agree with everything Carroll had to say about Church history - particularly of the early Church - I can appreciate his call to reform.  Though he writes from a purely Catholic standpoint, we Protestants certainly must fall under his criticism.  Listen to what he has to say about the lack of Catholic repentance for their part (or silence) in the Shoah:

The Final Solution has refused to remain unadjudicated in institutions everywhere.  If Bayer, Swiss banks, the Louvre, owners of apartments in the Eighth Arrondissement, the Ford Motor Company, the US Treasury Department, and the New York Times are made to confront their relationship to this unfinished business of the twentieth century, so with the Catholic Church.  If Argentina can repent, as its president did in June 2000, of having offered refuge to Nazi war criminals, why can't the Vatican repent of having helped some of those same war criminals escape to Argentina?  (555)

What he proposes is reform.  A Vatican III, as he calls it.  Because there is no place for a cross at Auschwitz.  There must be something wrong with the Church as we know it.  "At bottom, what [is] so urgently required of the the Catholic Church [is] a change in what is said, thought, and believed about Jews" (551).  What he says here, on page 560, summarizes not only the highlights of the book as a whole (emboldened), but the measures necessary for true reform within the Church:

The possibility of human recovery from the tragedies of the past adheres, permanently, in the future.  Thus, in addition to anti-Jewish texts, a Vatican Council III would take up the unfinished questions, perhaps even in the order of the chronology we followed, of power (Constantine, Ambrose, Augustine), of Christology (Crusades, Anselm, Abelard), of Church intolerance (Inquisition, Nicolaus of Cusa, the ghetto), of democracy (Enlightenment, Spinoza, modernism), and only then of repentence (Holocaust, silence, Edith Stein).  As this book has demonstrated, the Church's attitude toward Jews is at the dead center of each of these problems, and a fundamental revision of that attitude is the key to the solution of each problem, too.  

Unfortunately, his suggestion extends beyond our reinterpretation of beliefs about the Jewish people. Even further, he suggests we amend what we believe about Jesus, and by extension, the entire world: believers and non-believers alike.  Rather than emphasize Jesus' crucifixion, which places the blame on the Jews who had Him killed, focus on His life of love and service - "a hope for all!" - which demonstrates that the world is already loved and accepted by God.  While his agenda of pluralism is by no means a new doctrine, it is no less disappointing.  He sacrifices integrity with the Scriptures, understanding of the altogether Jewish purpose and role of Jesus as Messiah, and the role of the Church in the life of the world.  As it is said in 1 Corinthians, and is evident here in Carroll's work:

For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, 

but we preach Christ crucified, 

a stumbling block to the Jews and folly to the Gentiles.

(1:22-23)

This work was enlightening: I don't think I ever learned as much Church history from Eddy Field as I did James Carroll.  If content matter such as this could be considered a "delight" to read, I would be the first to say it.  Dense, yes, but so beautifully and honestly portrayed.  Ultimately, I disagree with so many of Carroll's fundamental beliefs; and consequently, his conclusion.

However, I agree the conversation here needs to take place.  Let this be a call to the Church to reform not the measures he proposes, but a revitalization, a return to truth: our Messiah calls us to love our neighbor paired with the insistence that only through Himself is salvation found, and the Apostle's heart's desire and prayer for his people.  A sensitivity must be ever in our words, but urgency and confidence as well.  This is the gospel.