Jesus is THE Faithful Jew

Unlike the conversion of the gentile and pagan nations, the conversion of the Jews to the Catholic Faith will come about through their Jewishness, as a fulfillment.​

In a recent article, Philip Primeau argued that Jesus should not be considered a “faithful Jew.” Primeau has a very rightful concern that this turn of phrase feeds religious indifferentism and thereby discourages evangelism. Primeau is a good friend of mine, and I think he has nothing but good intentions in his article. Indeed, from our conversations about this, I think we agree with much of the substance of the matter. Nonetheless, I disagree entirely with his framing of the question. Not only was Jesus a faithful Jew, He was the most faithful Jew to ever live. This is important to make clear when we evangelize to Jews.

Primeau rightly concedes that Jesus was an ethnic Jew and that He followed the law of Moses. Nonetheless, Primeau distinguishes this sort of Judaism from Rabbinic Judaism, and he argues that Jesus was not faithful to this latter sort of Judaism. While there is some truth regarding the need to distinguish between biblical and Rabbinic Judaism, this distinction is overstated by Primeau.

Since many would be skeptical of modern sources on this subject, let us turn to what the Angelic Doctor has to teach about this. According to St. Thomas Aquinas, God gratuitously elected a certain people, the Jews (populus Iudaeorum), to be the recipients of the Old Law (ST I-II, q. 98, a. 4). The purpose of this law was to form them into the sort of people who could fittingly bring forth the Messiah, as well as to foreshadow the Messiah. Thus, Jesus, as the Messiah, perfectly conformed His entire life to the law (ST III, q. 40, a. 4). This is important since it means that the religion that Jesus followed during His earthly life can properly be called Judaism.

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