“Answering Jewish Objections to Jesus: Theological Objections”

In his second volume on Jewish apologetics, Michael Brown answers twenty eight Jewish theological objections. Brown summarizes this book in his preface:

Theological objections, treated at length in the current volume, cut to the heart of the differences between traditional Judaism and the Messianic Jewish/Christian faith. They revolved around the nature of God (the Trinity, the deity of Jesus, the person of the Holy Spirit), the nature of man and the need for salvation, and sin and the means of atonement. In sum, these objections claim, “The religion of the New Testament is a completely foreign religion that is not only un-Jewish but is also unfaithful to the Hebrew Bible.”

With regard to cutting “to the heart of the differences between traditional Judaism and Messianic Jewish/Christian faith,” I really appreciate the way Michael Brown demonstrated in a scholarly and balanced way that the Christian faith was perfectly compatible with the Jewish Tanakh.

His discussion on the Trinity (the Tri-unity) was excellent. He demonstrated that the Hebrew word for one, ‘echad, does not necessarily refer to absolute unity and, in fact, could very well refer to compound unity (Page 4). He provides examples from the Hebrew Bible where ‘echad is used of a compound or complex unity as per the oneness of Adam and Eve, the many components of the tabernacle being one “unified” tabernacle, and the one nation of Israel which is made up of hundreds of thousands of people (5). I loved the way he backed up his discussion of the Shema as referring the concept of uniqueness (Deut. 6:4) by citing the New Jewish Publication Society Version: “Hear, O Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD alone” (page 6)

Brown demonstrated the deity of Christ by focusing on Him as the Son of God and Word of God, who shares in the divine nature, and who revealed Himself to His people in the Old Testament (15-37). I enjoyed Brown’s treatment of the apparent conflict between the passages which declare that no one has seen God with the other passages which clearly state that God was seen by Abraham, Moses, and Jacob (27-34). As he put it, “it is Jesus the Messiah—the divine Son, the image of the invisible God, the Word made flesh, the exact representation of the Father’s being—who solves the riddle and explains how someone could really see God, even though God cannot be seen.