The problem with FFOZ’s Tent of David

“Tent of David is a wonderful book for those who believe Messianic gentiles should become classic gentile Christians.”

First Fruits of Zion is heavily promoting a new book, Tent of David, which purports to “heal the vision of the Messianic gentile.”

In reality, by “heal”, they mean telling gentiles to go back to the Church and making sure they understand they’re not part of Israel.

That’s the essence and theme throughout the book, and there’s no point in beating around the bush. Might as well “calls ‘em like I sees ‘em”, as they say!

In a nutshell, the book argues Messianic gentiles should stay in the church, instead of forming Hebraic Roots congregations with other like-minded individuals. It does this in accordance with Bilateral Ecclesiology theology, a new theology put forth in Post-Missionary Messianic Judaism (2005), which states that God has 2 sub-peoples, the gentile Christian Church and the Messianic Jewish synagogue.

Bi-Ecclesiology asserts gentiles should stay in the Church while Messianic Jews form their own separate congregations. This is the driving theme throughout Tent of David; the book is directed toward Messianic-minded Christian gentiles in the Church, admonishing them to stay in the Church.

The book acknowledges problems in the Church – for example, the perceived problem that the Church doesn’t believe Jesus practiced Judaism – but it rejects the idea that the Church is either anti-Torah or influenced by paganism, arguing that the Church is essentially good.

Despite the Church’s anti-Semitic past, and some inherited anti-Jewish doctrines such as supersessionism, argues the author, there are still good people in the multi-national Christian Church and many keep the weighty matters of the Torah.

The author argues that “Messianic gentiles”, a term I think he uses only begrudgingly, are really just Christians, and that they can do more good from within the Church, so, the book argues Messianic gentiles really ought to bloom where you’re planted.

(Ironically, this is the same argument Jews for Jesus makes to Jewish Christians to stay in the Church. I consider it an anemic religious plea that ignores God’s unique calling on different individuals.)

What’s the problem with Messianic gentiles staying in the Church?

Simple: assimilation. It’s difficult to keep the Torah when no one else is.

Christians are generally practicing mercy and kindness, sure, but they aren’t sanctifying shabbat, they aren’t eating kosher, they aren’t keeping Passover, they aren’t living a Torah-lifestyle, by and large. (In fact, they’re arguing vehemently against all these things, and not just for gentiles, but for all humanity.)

And if that church is your community, the odds are stacked against you; chances are, you won’t change them; they will change you. Classic assimilation.

“Show me your friends, and I’ll show you your future”, as the saying goes.

The author states (p. 36) that "to be a ‘Messianic Gentile’ does not make one something other than “Christian.”’ It’s true that Messianic gentiles are indeed Christians  – followers of Christ – but truthfully, so are Messianic Jews, and the author acknowledges this (p. 37).

Messianic Jews are Christians, and yet FFOZ would not encourage Messianic Jews to go back to the Church nor forsake their Messianic congregations. They do this only for Messianic gentiles, in accordance with Bilateral Ecclesiology.

If you’re a Messianic gentile who believes God’s commandments are good and righteous, and you’ve applied them to your own life, staying in the Church is problematic because you’ll inevitably assimilate and drop your Torah observance.

If you doubt this, direct your attention to the Messianic Jewish Christian pioneers of the 19th and 20th centuries, and look at their children: they’ve become, essentially, gentile Christians. Paul Levertoff’s descendants are largely Roman Catholics, for example. If assimilation into gentile Christianity took the children of the Messianic Jewish pioneers, how much more easily for the Messianic gentile?

And even for the 1st century church: as former pagans adopted Yeshua faith, bringing with them ways foreign to the Tenakh, the Torah lifestyle soon dimmed, then ceased, and even became an enemy of the Torah: outlawing observance and persecuting those who observed it.

I think the book’s author knows well that going back to the church means almost certain assimilation, and so he does not encourage Messianic Jews to do the same.

But the book does encourage Messianic gentiles to stay in or go back to the Church, because Messianic gentiles assimilating just means them becoming classic Christians again, thus accomplishing one of the goals of Bilateral Ecclesiology.

Stay in the Church or join a Hebraic Roots congregation?

This is something only God can dictate.

Ultimately, a bold and hardened few will have callings to stay in the church and bring about change there. Others are called out of the Church to live in a community that keeps the commandments.

And perhaps this is what’s most egregious with Tent of David, the overall sense that it places little value on the work God’s done in gentiles today in drawing them to Torah – a work that transforms gentiles into Israel-loving, Torah-embracing people. That work is devalued and its momentum redirected to implement Bilateral Ecclesiology: keeping the gentiles in the Church and out of the Messianic synagogue or Hebrew Roots congregation.

Are you a gentile who is aware of God’s commandments and believe you have a call on your life return to the Torah, keep the commandments, and join an enlarged Commonwealth of Israel?

Welcome to the group.

Thousands upon thousands of Messianic gentiles share this grand vision, and I think that vision is from God.

Should you stay in your Church and try to change it? Maybe. Go to the Father with that stuff, pray about, see where you’re led. Know that keeping Torah when no one else does is an extraordinarily difficult task. Historically, it almost always results in assimilation, you and more certainly your kids. If you acknowledge that, are ready to combat that, and God calls you to remain in the Church and change it, then do so.

For everyone else, I encourage Messianic gentiles to join Torah-minded individuals in Messianic congregations, whether Hebrew Roots congregations or healthy Messianic Jewish congregations which consider gentiles first-class citizens. Keeping Torah in a Torah-honoring community will grow your faith and mature you through God’s commandments, something a classic Christian denominational Church will not accomplish.

Articulating the Hebraic Roots vision for Messianic Gentiles

If Tent of David’s view of Messianic gentiles is an aberration, one that leads to assimilation back into the Church, where can Messianic gentiles look for sound teaching and an intellectually- and Scripturally-grounded vision for gentiles in Messiah?

Here’s something to look forward to, my friends.

Next month, a dear friend and longsuffering laborer for Messiah, Messianic apologist J.K. McKee, is publishing a new book that will put forth the proper Hebraic Roots perspective for the Messianic Gentile:

 Are Non-Jewish Believers Really a Part of Israel?

I’d encourage gentiles who are seeking Torah to read McKee’s book and hear the Hebraic Roots vision for gentiles in Messiah, a glory-filled vision which places gentiles not as a second sub-people of God, but as first-class citizens in the Commonwealth of Israel, sharing an identity within Israel, returning to a Israel-centric, Torah-rooted Messianic faith in a community of like-minded believers. I’ll be posting a write up review of this new book in the coming month.

I also point you fine Kineti readers to Torah Resource Institute’s excellent review of Tent of David, highlighting more issues than what I’ve uncovered.

Conclusion

I'd like to end on a positive note. There are so many good folks at FFOZ. Some of them have even personally assured me of the book's good intentions, assuring me the intention is not to drive Bilateral Ecclesiology. To these folks, I ask you to honestly consider this question:

If Messianic Jews in the church have historically assimilated into Christianity, how will Messianic gentiles be any different?

I believe if you answer that question honestly, you'll understand why so many of us in the Hebrew Roots movement object to Tent of David's thesis.

I see 3 possible answers to this important question. Each answer points us to a deeper problem:

1. If you believe gentiles will influence the Church towards Torah and Israel, then what’s to stop assimilation? (Remember the MJ pioneers and their descendants.)
2. If you believe gentiles have no portion in Torah, then why the term “Messianic gentiles”? (This is why I say the author only begrudgingly uses the term.)
3. If you believe ‘Messianic gentiles’ are just gentile Christians, so assimilation is a good thing, then you deny the legitimacy of Torah observance for Messianic gentiles. (You’re arguing for Bilateral Ecclesiology; why hide it?)

Fine Kineti readers, should Messianic gentiles go back to the Church?

Ecclesiology in a nutshell: Christianity, Judaism, Hebrew Roots, and Messianic Judaism

Defining Bilateral Ecclesiology created a bit of banter, got people thinking.

Let’s take this a bit further.

Let’s see if we can define the ecclesiology of Judaism, Christianity, Hebrew Roots, and Messianic Judaism, all in blurbish, bite-sized nutshells, please:

• Judaism: God chose Special People A.
  
• Christianity: God chose Special People A. God sends messiah to Special People A, who reject him. God’s messiah picks Special People B to replace Special People A.
  
• Hebrew Roots: God chose Special People A. God sends messiah to Special People A, who temporarily reject him. God invites everyone to join Special People A.
  
• Messianic Judaism: God chose Special People A. God sends messiah to Special People A, who temporarily reject him. God’s messiah picks new Special People B. God has two special peoples.

At least all 4 can agree that “God chose Special People A”. The streams start forking as soon as Messiah is introduced into the mix:

Did Messiah never show up? Judaism.

Did Messiah replace Special People A with a new Special People B? Christianity.

Did Messiah open up membership to Special People A? Hebrew Roots.

Did Messiah chose a new Special People B whilst keeping Special People A? Messianic Judaism.

Nitpicker’s corner: yes, we’re oversimplifying. Sometimes, though, generalizations are generally helpful.

*update*: Nitpicker’s corner 2: By “special people”, I mean special because of God’s choosing. Please don’t read too deeply into wording. This is a blog post, not an academic paper.

Two Church: Defining Bilateral Ecclesiology in Simple Terms

Let’s see if I can explain Bilateral Ecclesiology: Imagine that God has a people. A very special group of people. Now later, God tells his son to go to his special people. When his son arrives, he chooses a new special people. Now God has 2 special peoples.

That's Bilateral Ecclesiology in a nutshell. In case you didn't figure it out, God's "2 special peoples" are the Jewish people (God's chosen people from old) and the Church (His son's chosen people). Bilateral = "two groups". Ecclesiology = "theology about the ekklesia, the assembly of people". A simpler name of this belief might be "Two Church": it believes that God has 2 assemblies: the Christian Church, and the Jewish people.

An interesting outcome of this theology is separation: If God has 2 special peoples, then we shouldn't blur the line between Special People A and Special People B. There's an example in Scripture where a tribe called the Galatians -- part of theoretical Special People B -- thought they had to undergo the old Special People A ritual in order to be approved by God. Paul, a follower of the aforementioned son, wrote a letter to these Galatians, and basically tore them a new one.

"You crazy people! Don't you know God accepts you without having to do the Special People A ritual?! I say that if you undergo Special People A ritual, you may as well never have heard about God’s son."

In concrete terms, Paul the apostle of Jesus was telling gentiles they didn't need to convert to Judaism and become Jewish in order to gain God's approval. So maybe the Bilateral Ecclesiology folks have a point about all this separation stuff?

Well, Bilateral Ecclesiologists...ermm, I'm going to call them Two Churchers for simplicity. Two Churchers are all about preserving distinctions between Special People A and Special People B. This has resulted in a funny little thing: when they see Special People B (gentiles) keeping the Torah (God's agreement with Special People A), they cry, "Supersessionism!"

(Doesn't this all sound utterly ridiculous thing to argue about? Religious people are stupid and wasteful and totally spend way too much time arguing about silly things. Yes, we should be spending our time on more important things like feeding the poor and helping people. But here we are...)

Supersessionism. It's the "Special People B replace Special People A" idea. B replaces A. Christians replace Israel. Bilateral Ecclesiologists hate this thing. (I do too!) We hate it because it has resulted in persecution of Jewish people by Christians: Just 90 years ago, for example, a Catholic leader in the Vatican wrote that because they rejected God's son, Jews were forever cursed to be wandering nomads without nation. He wasn’t the first to make that claim, either. (Guess they were wrong.)

So supersessionism, replacement theology, is bad. God hasn't replace the Jews. And there's pretty good evidence in the Christians Scriptures that suggest he's not replaced Jewish people. Paul, that same guy who tore the Galatians a new one, said of Jews:

"God has not forsaken his people whom he foreknew. I'm a Jew myself! There's a temporary hardening of hearts here. It'll go away eventually, but it's being used by God to bring in the gentiles."

Back to Two Churchers: while they rightfully disdain supersessionism, they're prone to seeing supersessionism everywhere. It's like the Hebrew Roots paganoia, except with supersessionism. Gentile saying the Shema? Supersessionism. Gentiles celebrating Passover? Supersessionism. Gentile giving the Aaronic blessing out of Deuteronomy? Supersessionism. Singing to music instead of traditional prayers? Supersessionism. Filling grandma's prescriptions? You get the idea.

Another criticism of Two Church is that the idea doesn't really have support in the New Testament. We don't see in the New Testament, for example, gentiles and Jews meeting in separate assemblies. On the contrary, it records gentiles meeting in the synagogues; and only 1 "assembly" is mentioned: Messiah's assembly. If there was separation between Yeshua's followers at an assembly level, the New Testament is silent on it.

In practice, this leads to accusations of exclusion, racism, and feelings of inferiority: non-Jews are encouraged to go back to Special People B places -- Christian Churches -- so that Special People A, the Jews, can have their distinctions and separations, avoiding assimilation into Special People B.

This has led to conversions and proselytism (Special People B want to join Special People A), but also has resulted in apostasy. More on that in the next post.

Bilateral Ecclesiologists announce discovery of Messianic who gives a turd

(With apologies to Yegge.)

The worldwide Bilateral Ecclesiology community met up over wine coolers today to celebrate their unprecedented discovery of a Messianic who gives a turd about Bilateral Ecclesiology.

On Tuesday, chief Bilateral Ecclesiologists issued a press release blog post revealing that 28-year-old Seth Tritte, a Messianic gentile at Congregation Beth Shalom in North Carolina, actually gives a turd about bilateral ecclesiology.

"Mr. Tritte has followed every single one of our blog posts for years," the press release stated. "Probably even this one."

Prominent Bilateral Ecclesiologist Lee Derek explained how they had stumbled on the theoretical possibility of Seth Tritte and his persistent interest in Bilateral Ecclesiology. "We knew that there are precisely 38 people who give a turd about Bilateral Ecclesiology," said Derek, "because every Bilateral Ecclesiology-related post gets exactly 38 “Likes” on Facebook. But there are only 37 of us on our mailing list, so we figured there was a lurker somewhere."

"That, or it was a miscount of the No Gentile section at our congregation," Derek added. "But we don't, uh, like to dwell on, I mean with gentiles in our congregations, we can, um... sorry, I need to get some water."

As Derek stumbled off in a coughing fit, his fellow theology inventor Jean F. Kraine outlined their basic dilemma: "Finding a person who gives a turd about Bilateral Ecclesiology is an inherently difficult problem. It's similar in scope and complexity to the problem of trying to find a tenured rabbi who didn't have the bulk of his work done before ignorant One Law laypeople. So even though we suspected Tritte existed, we needed a strategy to smoke him out."

He explained the trap they set for Tritte: "We crafted a fake satirical blog post lampooning Bilateral Ecclesiology as a harmful, wall-building, divisive theology -- a writing task that was emotionally difficult but conceptually trivial. Then we laced the post with deeper social subtext decrying the endemic superficiality of One-Law Messianics, to make ourselves feel better. Finally, each of us “thumbed-up” the post, which was unexpectedly contentious because nobody could agree on what the “thumb-up” button actually meant in a communal expression which has no way to affirm the unique calling of Jewish people in the broader Jewish, Christian, and Messianic worlds."

"And then we waited to see who, if anyone, would give a turd," he said.

Kraine concluded, "Our elegant approach didn't work, so we hired some brute Messianic gentile to go dig up the personal details on all 38 accounts that had ever “thumbed up” a Bilateral Ecclesiology post, and the only one we didn't know was Tritte. So we reached out to him, and thankfully so far he hasn't started his own One Law congregation."

Tritte says he is pleased to have been recognized for his apparently unique turd-giving about Bilateral Ecclesiology. "I've been giving a turd about Bilateral Ecclesiology for as long as I can remember. I follow all their blogs and teachings and podcasts closely, just in case I ever get the urge to practice Bilateral Ecclesiology for something someday."

"It's a beautiful, elegant theology," Tritte observed as he busied himself cleaning a fingernail. "You'd be hard-pressed to find a more identity-preserving, racially-distinct core set of beliefs. And they've made astounding advances over the years in extending clear boundaries upon their peripheral, already-marginalized gentile congregants, may their numbers ever decrease.”

"I'm kind of surprised I'm the only person on earth who gives a turd about it," Tritte continued. "I'd have thought there would be more people following the blogs closely and then not practicing Bilateral Ecclesiology. But they all just skip the blogs and go straight to the not practicing it part." Tritte shuddered at the possibility of a gentile uttering a blessing intended only for Jacob’s children.

"People see words like exclusive identity marker and clear ethnic boundaries," Tritte continued, swatting invisible flies around his head for emphasis, "and their Giving a Turd gene shuts down faster than a Bilateral Ecclesiology synagogue with a Messianic gentile at the door. I'm really disappointed that more Messianics don't get actively involved in reading endless threads about how to preserve identity markers and subvert gentile inclusion to accomplish basic crap you can already do in regular Messianic congregations. But I guess that's the lazy, ignorant, immature world we live in: the so-called 'real' world."

Bilateral Ecclesiologist Oliver Antoine remains hopeful that one day they may be able to double or even triple the number of Messianics who give a turd about Bilateral Ecclesiology. "I believe the root cause of the popularity problem is Bilateral Ecclesiology’s lack of support for a well-thought-out liturgical service. If we can create bilateral liturgy that is perceived as sufficiently sexy by Messianics, then I think we will see an uptick in giving a turd, possibly as much as a full extra person."

Bilateral Ecclesiologist aficionado Sasha Runembach is not quite as sanguine as his colleague Antoine. "I doubt Bilateral Ecclesiology will ever be appreciated by the uneducated natives of the Messianic world. As exciting as it is, the discovery of Tritte should be considered an anomaly, and not as a sign that more people will ever give a turd. Messianics only seem to pay attention to things when there is humor involved."

"We do have experimental humorous piyyutim," added Antoine. "But it doesn't seem to be getting much adoption. Bilateral Ecclesiology fans just don't see the need for it."