Christ, Covenant Fulfillment, and the Limits of the “Judeo-Christian” Concept

I recently had a conversation with a few Catholics about a phrase that has become more common among conservative Christians — “Judeo-Christian.” Used to describe a shared Jewish-Christian heritage that helped shape Western civilization and, in some contexts, to articulate support for the State of Israel, the term can blur a fundamental Christian tenet: that Jesus Christ fulfills the Old Covenant and establishes the New Covenant. In a more salient manner, the term is often used in Christian Zionist and evangelical circles to emphasize Israel’s role in God’s providential plan and the unique place of the Jewish people in salvation history.

The term “Judeo-Christian” first appeared in 1821 in a letter by the Anglican minister Alexander McCaul, who used it to describe Jews who had converted to Christianity. A few years later, in 1829, the missionary Joseph Wolff used the term in connection with efforts to attract and convert Jews by incorporating certain Jewish practices into the Church of England.

Historian K. Healan Gaston notes that the phrase gained wider popularity in the United States during the 1930s as some Protestant leaders promoted a shared religious and cultural identity in opposition to both fascism and communism. The term also helped distinguish that vision from forms of “Christian civilization” that had become associated in some quarters with antisemitism and authoritarian movements, including those defended by the controversial “Radio Priest,” Father Charles Coughlin.

Judaism and Christianity do share the Old Testament, faith in one God, the Decalogue, and a history of the people of Israel. Yet from the standpoint of Catholic theology, the expression “Judeo-Christian” requires careful qualification. Catholicism does not understand Judaism and Christianity as two independent and parallel covenantal paths to salvation. Rather, it teaches that Jesus Christ fulfills the Scriptures revealed to the Israelites and mediates the New and eternal Covenant.

One has to distinguish between covenant and people. A covenant is a relationship God freely establishes with mankind, while Israel is the people whom God gradually formed through His election, revelation, worship, and covenantal dealings. The Jewish people, therefore, cannot simply be identified with the Old Covenant itself. This, however, does not imply that the fulfillment of the covenant in Christ means that God rejected or replaced the people through whom He unfolded His saving plan. Rather, the New Covenant fulfills and universally extends the promises God entrusted to Israel. The Pontifical Biblical Commission has emphasized that Christ’s establishment of the New Covenant “does not imply any rupture of God’s covenant with his people, but constitutes its fulfillment.” Christ’s words to the Samaritan woman therefore illuminate this truth: “…for salvation is of the Jews (ὅτι ἡ σωτηρία ἐκ τῶν Ἰουδαίων ἐστίν)” (John 4:22).

In other words, salvation was never intended for the Jews alone. While Jesus affirmed that “salvation is of the Jews” (John 4:22), He also declared that the time had come when true worshipers would worship the Father “in spirit and truth” (John 4:23-24). Beginning with the Jews at Pentecost and extending to figures such as the Ethiopian eunuch and Cornelius, the Church’s mission revealed the universal scope of God’s plan of salvation (Acts 2:41; 8:26-40; 10:1-48). So while Israel was entrusted with the Law and the promises, God’s plan was for all peoples. As He promised to Abraham that “all nations on earth will be blessed through you” (Genesis 18:8), this promise was fulfilled in Jesus Christ and the New Covenant. To understand this, we have to recognize the dynamic, evolving nature of God’s covenantal plan.

This is particularly important because Scripture does not present a single covenantal arrangement governing the whole history of salvation, but a developing sequence of covenants: the covenant with Noah (Genesis 9:8-17); the covenant with Abraham (Genesis 12:1-3; 15; 17); the covenant established with Israel through Moses (Exodus 19-24); and the promises associated with David (2 Samuel 7:8-16; Psalm 89).

God’s plan of salvation unfolds throughout history and finds its fulfillment in Jesus Christ. God chose Israel from among the nations, gave the Law through Moses, and spoke through the prophets in order to prepare for the coming of the Messiah, through whom all peoples would be invited into the New and everlasting Covenant. This preparation, as the Catechism of the Catholic Church describes, included the covenant God made at Sinai that made Israel the holy nation, and for the prophets’ new hope in a future covenant in which God’s law would be written on the hearts of His people.

These covenantal promises are fulfilled in Jesus Christ. In His life, death, and resurrection He gives us the New and eternal Covenant that the prophets had foretold and that is God’s vision of salvation. The Church regards herself as the People of God of the New Covenant, constituted by Christ in continuity with and fulfillment of Israel’s vocation. “From the beginning of his ministry, the Lord Jesus instituted the Twelve as ‘the seeds of the new Israel and the beginning of the sacred hierarchy.’” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, n. 877).

For this reason, St. Thomas Aquinas argued that Christians who knowingly persisted in observing the ceremonial prescriptions of the Mosaic Law as binding acts of worship committed a grave sin and, in certain circumstances, even unbelief or blasphemy against Christ’s completed work (cf. Summa Theologiæ I–IIæ, q. 103, a. 4). The rites were not evil; rather, they were sacred signs instituted by God to foreshadow Christ. Once Christ had come, however, continuing to observe those rites as covenantal religious obligations would be to treat the figure as though the reality had not yet arrived. The ritual would therefore communicate a false theological claim about Christ’s coming and His redemptive act on the Cross.

This does not mean that God has rejected or discarded the Jewish people: “For the gifts and the call of God are irrevocable” (Romans 11:29). But, like the rest of humanity, they are called to embrace Christ as the universal Savior and enter fully into the life of His Catholic Church through Baptism. Pope St. John Paul II affirmed this in his encyclical Redemptoris Missio, n. 5, affirming the “universality” of salvation through Jesus Christ, which applies “for all people—Jews and Gentiles alike.”

The term “Judeo-Christian” is inadequate to the theological characterization of the relationship between Judaism and Christianity, even as it is useful to describe the shared historical and cultural heritage of Jews and Christians. That is because it says nothing about the Christian belief that God’s covenantal promises are fulfilled in Jesus Christ and His Catholic Church.