"In his 2011 volume on church documents of post-1945 Christian-Jewish dialogue, Lutheran theologian Franklin Sherman summarizes those changes succinctly. He writes: "A transformation has taken place in recent times in the relation between Christianity and Judaism." Sherman dates the beginning of this transformation to February 1946, when the nascent World Council of Churches expressed a "deep sense of horror at the unprecedented tragedy which has befallen the Jewish people" and acknowledged "the failure of the churches." Christianity shed its supersessionist ideology that portrayed Judaism as inferior, as the old Israel, as God-killers, and so forth, and, instead, began to speak of Judaism and Christianity as sibling faith traditions. In 1948, the World Council of Churches followed up with the declaration that "antisemitism is a sin against God"; and in 1965, the Catholic Church issued the authoritative Nostra Aetate (In Our Time), in which it repudiated the Christian teachings of contempt, affirmed God’s covenant with the Jewish people, and declared the church’s opposition to any "hatred" and "persecutions" directed against Jews. For the past seven decades, efforts at improving Jewish–Christian relations through dialogue have been, to say the least, impressive. Despite occasional attempts to the contrary, there is little chance of turning back to pre-Holocaust theological attitudes that had declared Jews and Judaism the antithesis of Christianity."

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/article/Cross-Currents/306008980.html

The Challenge

If these things are so, and they clearly are, then the challenge that arises in relation to all of them arises in the form of the question, how is it enough to renounce antisemitic thought and teaching and not go further to affirm emphatically and say outright to the whole world that Jesus/Yehoshua prayed for the unconditional forgiveness of Jerusalem and the Jews in his prayer from the cross? And from this to confess that Christian faith cannot be finally sustained without belief that God heard and answered that prayer!

To whom should this challenge be addressed? To church authorities who have their positions based on the structural inheritance of supercessionism? We might think not. But it is they who have made this ‘official’ confession. The correct way of seeing this is that it is not a question of whether this challenge should be addressed to the institutional leaders. It is only a question of how and when they should be confronted with this question. For it should first be addressed to every believer. It is a challenge which belongs to the reformation of the timeless Gathering of Believers in the promise of the Messiah of Israel. For that assembly, seen and unseen, has been subject to institutions of the present world and age. And yet at its beginning it was subject only to the authority of the eternal kingdom. And so the spirit and force of its reformation has ever been to return in its end to its beginning. Therefore the leaders of the present world institutions of the assembly of believers should be addressed by this challenge together with all others, as believers, and every believer will hear and accept the challenge according to the veracity of their faith, and will respond in accordance with their position.

What if this Jewish-Christian Dialogue today is left without this full confession of Yehoshua’s prayer for the forgiveness of Jerusalem? The present avowal is only to be sister faiths. That is how things would be left. But these are not just any two sisters. Their dialogue is like the dialogue between a rock and a hard place, [see full quoted article]. And who do they think should be caught there between the rock and the hard place? The world. But here that this vise-like relationship is being created is not my point. Rather, I want to ask, what does it mean ethically internally to Jewish faith and Christian faith to leave Jewish-Christian dialogue with no more than the answer of "dual covenants"? Only that neither faith, within this construct, is a revelation of Hashem that Hashem determines to have. Instead each is a revelation only of its own subjective spirituality. Even so, can this yet be seen as a redemptive movement? Yes. Even if its answer is weak its question is strong. God has not forsaken his people, Israel, whom he knew before, therefore what is Christianity? This is a strong question. A sister faith to Judaism? That is a weak answer. But behind it is another question with an answer. And both that question and answer are as strong as the first question. The true leaders of Christianity can be redeemed in their confession by coming to this second question and answer.

What are they? The question is simply, what is the relationship of those who are “all the families of the earth” to Abraham and his seed in the promise of God that all the families of the earth would bless themselves in Abraham and his seed? What is that relationship. That is the second completely strong question. It can be seen as being actually a different form of the first question, and then, if it is understood this way, its answer is already being prepared in the mouths of the official confession of the true leaders of the assembly of believers among the nations. That confession is that Hashem is revealed, (where Hashem and His Name are one), in his choice of Abraham and promise of blessing for Adam given to Abraham. And this choice is eternally realized, and this promise is fulfilled, in the prayer of Yehoshua HaMashiach for Jerusalem and the Jewish People, for Israel, from the cross, and then in the answer to that prayer, which is embodied in the resurrection of Melek HaMashiach Shel Yisroel — King Jesus the Messiah of Israel — from the dead.