World Council of Churches
Federation of Swiss Protestant Churches
Reformed Churches Bern-Jura-Solothurn

Palestine Israel Ecumenical Forum (PIEF)

INTERNATIONAL THEOLOGICAL CONFERENCE
“Promised Land”

Church Center Bürenpark, Bern, Switzerland
10 - 14 September 2008 

Holiness of the Land in Christian Theology

Rev. Prof. Dr Adolfo Ham
Presbyterian-Reformed Church in Cuba, Cuba

PDF version for downloads

“Let us pray that the tears of the dead be stronger than the shouts for vengeance!”

Louis Massignon

Emmanuel Levinas tells us: “The importance of the state of Israel does not consist in the realization of an old promise, nor that it would be a sign of the beginning of an era of material security (very problematic!), but in the opened opportunity to fulfil the social law of Judaism. The Jewish people has been avid to have its land and its state not because of an empty independence but because it was possible to begin its life.”¹

Levinas also shares a very important insight from the Talmudic tract Sota. It refers to the episode of “the twelve explorers” or “spies” in Numbers 13.

“Moses led us out of Egypt, opened the sea, and nourished us with manna. Do you think it was to conquer a land in the same way as conquering a colony? Do you think that our conquest should be an act of imperialism? We have this land in order to climb to heaven… We do not possess the land as other people do generally, we have to build on this earth a just city, and it means to sacralize the earth, to build a just city. A society without human exploitation, where all human beings are equal… What we call the Torah furnishes the norms of human justice. And it is in the name of this universal justice and not of a national justice of any kind that the Israelites took the land.”

The episode of the explorers teaches us that “an absolute moral people does not have any right to conquer”.²

Louis Massignon in 1935 quotes with approval words from the President of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem: 

“The only way to rebuild Israel in the holy land is using highly pure and unobjectionable procedures. Without which, God, who has never forgiven his people for falling again into idolatry, will make the Jews in Palestine suffer again a kherban, that is, a catastrophe…In this holy land which should not be given away to the privileged, should be the untorn tunic of world reconciliation, the place for the intimate fusion of all, and to begin with, those who after all have more reasons to be united than to hate each other, Semitic Jews and Arabs, children of Abraham and Christians, spiritual Semites, all of which should have vigorously abhorred idolatry, since their idols are crimes that are perfectly useless.”³

Massignon says reconciliation should have been brought about by Christians and then gives a sad account of all the historical blunders of Christians with regard to Jews and Muslims.⁴

H.H. Schmidt argues that the promise of the land in the Old Testament goes back to patriarchal times.⁵ Perhaps the oldest formulation is found in Genesis (Gen. 15:18), but it is particularly important in the theology of Deuteronomy. Yahweh has sworn to the patriarchs and their descendants to deliver the land. The promise and the possession of the land are closely related to obedience to the torah. 

In a well-known essay,⁶ Gerhard von Rad affirms that the most important subject in the whole Hexateuch is the promised land, given later on by Yahweh. In the Old Testament there are two traditions; the Sinai tradition and the tradition of the conquest of the land. “If the festive tradition of Sinai celebrated the coming of God to his people, the tradition of the conquest of the land commemorates the way the people are led in the history of salvation.” But stating that obedience to the commandments is a condition of possessing the land is a deviation from the emphasis on grace to a form of legalism.

Walter Zimmerli remarks that: “The land in Old Testament faith is not something indifferent that could just as well be as not be. It is something that belongs to the complete relationship of God to Israel. It is not a question of blut und boden religion, as if Israel grew up with and was bound to this soil from the very beginning… the land is a gift of Yahweh, the Lord of the land, who has led Israel out of Egypt in order to bring her to the place of rest… but the land should not exercise a tyranny over Israel, otherwise it would no longer be the promised land of which the Old Testament speaks. Rather it has the function of both calling to mind and keeping awake the joy which can be Israel’s before her God”.⁷ Zimmerli links this promise with the commandment “You should not steal” in the decalogue (Ex.210.15; Deut.5.19) and says: “The mere right of possession does not yet justify the possession of goods.”

In the foreword to Martin Buber’s On Zion⁸, N.N. Glatzer emphasizes that Buber’s position on Israel and the land was very clear. He wanted to keep the country free of the prevailing methods of Western politics, economy and culture. He objected to politics that used power for imperialistic purposes, an economy that aimed at reckless profits, and a culture that was “an ordered lie”. The new social order of Israel—a binational Palestine—should be founded on radical opposition to these powers, affirming true Judaism with its ancient tradition of justice and communality “and a lasting brotherly understanding with the Arabs in all areas of public life”. He thinks the authenticity of Israel has to be tested in its attitude to Ishmael. It is the duty of the Jews “to honour the claim which is opposed to ours and to try to reconcile both claims… Since such love and such faith are surely present on the other side as well, a union in the common service of the land must be within the range of possibility.” They should establish in Palestine “a model and just community, the independence of one’s own must not be gained at the expense of another’s independence… Only if the land of Israel becomes a spiritual force will it endure.” 

There is a very interesting response by Martin Buber to an article that Mahatma Gandhi published in Harijan in November 1938 in which he questioned the validity of the Jewish claim to Palestine.⁹ Buber says, giving the biblical basis for each point: 

What is decisive for us is not the promise of the land, but the demand, whose fulfilment is bound up with the land, with the existence of a free Jewish community in this country. For the Bible tells us and our inmost knowledge testifies to it, that once more than three thousand years ago our entry into this land took place with the consciousness of a mission from above to set up a just way of life through the generations of our people, a way of life that cannot be realized by individuals in the sphere of their private existence, but only by a nation in the establishment of its society: communal ownership of the land, regular recurrent levelling of social distinctions, guarantee of the independence of each individual, mutual aid, a general sabbath embracing serf and beast as beings with an equal claim to rest, a sabbatical year in which the soil is allowed to rest and everybody is admitted to the free enjoyment of its fruits. These are not practical laws thought out by wise men; they are measures which the leaders of the nation, apparently themselves taken by surprise and overpowered, have found to be the set task and condition for taking possession of the land. No other nation has ever been faced at the beginning of its career with such a mission. Here is something which there is not forgetting and from which there is no release. 

Hans Ucko¹⁰ writes that in Genesis we find the strange verse: “In the fourth generation your descendants will come back here, for the sin of the Amorites has not reached its full measure” (15.16). The Amorites live in this land and Yahweh will not throw them out until they are found to be unworthy of the land. Hence the land cannot be dissociated from ethics, the people have to be worthy of it. The land is never given as a right but on condition that the people are a holy people. Ucko affirms: “The calling of this chosen people is to transform it from the land of Canaan to the land of Israel, i.e. a land that battles, together with God, so that God’s will be done on earth as it is in heaven. This is the meaning of real community; its members have a common goal overriding all other concerns. This mission, which cannot be lived in vacuum, but needs a land, conflicts with reality today. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict.” And then he quotes Yeshayahu Leibowitz: “Once we accepted the rule by force over other people, once we accepted the apparatus of oppression, all other values fell by the wayside. It does not matter in the least what we suffered in the past by others.”

After examining several church statements on the Jewish question, Paul van Buren comes to four conclusions. First, because of the state of Israel is in part the product of the ancient and the living hope of the Jewish people and is of deep concern to almost all Jews, disregard for its safety and welfare is incompatible with concern for the Jewish people. Second, no degree of support for or theological validation of the state of Israel should imply that all specific policies and actions of the Israeli government are beyond criticism. Third, Christian concern for the safety and survival of the state of Israel can in no way exclude Christian concern for the Palestinian people. Finally, because God’s covenant with the Jewish people has been from its beginning been evidence of God’s incarnate concern for the whole concrete creation, the Jewish state is a reminder of the earthly historical dimension of God’s promises.¹¹

Any Christian proposal for the solution of this question should include:

·        repentance for our anti-Semitism, which starts already with the Second Testament

·        abandoning unwarranted claims to power and rights

·        the right to possess the land without nationalisms

·        full recognition of the state of Israel, in the terms of the Declaration of Independence of 1948, and of the state of Palestine and the full rights of the Palestinian people

·        calling of a World Peace Conference for Palestine

·        projects and temples for reconciliation and prayer of the three Abrahamic religions

This is my thesis: the problem which concerns us in this meeting can only be solved in status confessionis, when the three Abrahamic religions pray and act together to establish a permanent and just peace in Palestine. The only way is to believe that our common God will perform the miracle. I finish with a quotation from Hannah Arendt:

“…It is not the least superstitious, it is even a counsel of realism, to look for the unforeseeable and unpredictable, to be prepared for and expect ‘miracles’ in the political realm. And the more heavily the scales are weighted in favour of disaster, the more miraculous will the deed done in freedom appear; for it is disaster, not salvation, which always happens automatically and therefore must appear to be irresistible."¹²