Boys, Mary C.. Has God Only One Blessing?

Boys, Mary C.. Has God Only One Blessing? Judaism as a Source of Christian Self-Understanding.

 

 

 

Book Review

 

Has God Only One Blessing?
Judaism as a Source of Christian Self-Understanding

 

by Mary C. Boys. Paulist Press, New York and Mahwah, NJ, 2000
393 pp., $29.95, paper

 

 

In this magisterial book, Mary Boys distills the fruits of a generation of Christian

 

biblical, liturgical, and systematic theology, blends in the sharp piquancy of

 

Jewish-Christian dialogue, and produces a vintage worthy to savor as we welcome the new

 

millennium....Boys’ achievement is as remarkable as it is timely.

 

 

 

Eugene J. Fisher
Associate Director, Secretariat for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs,
National Conference of Catholic Bishops

 

 

 

 

Contents

 

Preface
Introduction

 

PART I: PARABLES

 

1. Sion"s Story
2. Tales of Two Texts
3. Synagoga and Ecclesia

 

PART II: PARABLES IN CONTEXT

 

4. Jews and Christians in Historical Perspective
5. A Revised Story for the Church: Supersessionism Replaced

 

PART III: CHRISTIAN ORIGINS IN CONTEXT

 

6. The Complex World of First-Century Judaism
7. Jesus" World: "A Composition of Place"
8. "Jesus" Renewal Movement" Becomes "Christianity"
9. The Partings: Christianity"s Prolonged and Polemical Break with Judaism
10. The Emergence of a Distinctive Christian Theology

 

PART IV: CHRISTIAN ORIGINS IN THE CHURCH"S LIFE

 

11. A New Lens on Scripture
12. The Liturgy: A Call to Conversion
13. The Cross as a Christian Symbol

 

PART V: ECCLESIA CHANGING

 

14. Ecclesia"s New Posture: The Transformation in Church Teaching
15. Re-educating Ecclesia

 

 

 

Appendix – God"s Mercy Endures Forever: Guidelines on the Presentation of Jews

 

and Judaism in Catholic Preaching

 

 

 

 

 

Notes
Bibliography

 

 

 


 

In her new book, Has God Only One Blessing?, Mary Boys presents an overview of the

 

church’s troubled relations to and distorted image of the Jews and Judaism over the

 

centuries, together with proposals for a theological and practical reconstruction of the

 

relationship. "The fruit of years of personal experience, dialogue, and research, this

 

is a ground-breaking work in every way," says Elizabeth Johnson, C.S.J., Distinguished

 

Professor of Theology at Fordham University. "With a wealth of examples and argument,

 

it challenges the inherited idea that Christianity has fulfilled or superseded Judaism as

 

God’s favored religion, and crafts an alternative vision of the church and synagogue as

 

partners rather than rivals. Preachers, educators, pastoral ministers, and thoughtful

 

persons of all stripes will be stunned by this mirror held up to their assumptions and moved

 

to translate insight into action."

 

Rabbi A. James Rudin, Senior Interreligious Advisor for the American Jewish Committee

 

(New York), has described Has God Only One Blessing? as "one of the most

 

important books I have ever read" (see full text of his review),

 

and Rabbi Michael Signer, Abrams Professor in the Department of Theology of Notre Dame

 

University, has stated: "In these pages Jews can discern the true fruits of more than

 

twenty years that Mary Boys has spent in dialogue with them."

 

Sister Mary C. Boys, S.N.J.M., is the Skinner and McAlpin Professor of Practical Theology

 

at Union Theological Seminary in New York City, and is the author of three previous books. Has

 

God Only One Blessing? includes 64 pages of notes and a 25-page bibliography, and as an

 

appendix, the full text of the 1988 publication of the National Conference of Catholic

 

Bishops, "God"s Mercy Endures Forever: Notes on the Presentation of Jews and Judaism

 

in Catholic Preaching."

 

 

 

Franklin Sherman

 

 

 


 

Introduction to the book, including a definition of key terms.