Selections of Jacques Maritain’s Writings on the Jews

Jacques Maritain (18 November 1882 – 16 April 1973) was a French Catholic philosopher and the foremost twentieth-century exponent of Thomism. Born in Paris into a liberal Protestant household, he converted to Catholicism in 1906 together with his wife Raïssa Oumançoff, a Russian Jewish émigrée, under the decisive spiritual influence of Léon Bloy — the very Bloy whose theology of Israel, absorb­ed at the source, shaped Maritain’s meditation on the Jewish question for the rest of his life. He held chairs at the Institut Catholique de Paris, Toronto, and Princeton, was appointed French Ambassador to the Holy See (1945–1948), was consulted by Paul VI throughout the Second Vatican Council, and is widely regarded as a principal intellectual architect of Nostra Aetate (1965). His major works include Art and Scholasticism (1920), The Degrees of Knowledge (1932), Integral Humanism (1936), Ransoming the Time (1941), The Person and the Common Good (1947), and The Peasant of the Garonne (1966).

Any reader approaching this anthology with the expectation of finding in Maritain a straightforward representative of the Adversus Judaeos tradition will be disappointed — and should be told so plainly from the outset. Maritain was, by near-universal assessment, the most outspoken Catholic opponent of antisemitism in interwar Europe. Before Mauriac, before Bernanos (who privately dismissed Maritain’s views on Israel as “rêveries femmelines”), Maritain broke publicly and at personal cost with the antisemitic current dominant in French Catholic intellectual life, and his lectures of 1937 and 1938 — L’Impossible Antisémitisme and Les Juifs parmi les nations — constitute the most sustained and principled Catholic refutation of racial antisemitism produced in that period. He explicitly and repeatedly condemned racial antisemitism, dismissed ritual-murder charges and the Protocols of Zion as forgeries, defended Jewish civic equality, and called for international solidarity with Jewish victims of Nazi persecution.

Nevertheless, within this philo-Semitic framework Maritain operates with a fully traditional Catholic theological vocabulary — the vocabulary of St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, chapters IX–XI — and it is from within that framework that he elaborates a theology of Israel which includes, without apology, the following classical elements of the Adversus Judaeos tradition: the supersession of Judaism by Christianity as its fulfilment and overflowing fulness; the “stumble” of the priestly leadership of Israel against the rock of Christ and the consequent bondage of the whole mystical body of Israel to the world it chose; the “unfaithful and repudiated Church” language for the Synagogue; Israel‘s fundamental incapacity to understand or accept the Cross as the root weakness of its mystical communion; the insolubility of the Jewish question in any secular or political terms, including Zionism, outside the eschatological reconciliation of the Synagogue and the Church; and a nuanced but real association between the Jewish vocation of earthly “leavening” and the commercial and revolutionary character which that vocation, in its darkened form, manifests in history.

The passages reproduced below are drawn exclusively from the two primary English-language texts — A Christian Looks at the Jewish Question (New York: Longmans, Green, 1939; translation and expansion of Les Juifs parmi les nations, Paris: Cerf, 1938) and “The Mystery of Israel,” Chapter VI of Ransoming the Time (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1941; translation by Harry Lorin Binsse of L’Impossible Antisémitisme, written 1937, published in H. Daniel-Rops, ed., Les Juifs, Paris: Plon, 1937) — both verified from the original printed editions. Where verified French originals of specific passages from the French-language editions have been established through peer-reviewed scholarly sources citing the Œuvres Complètes (Éditions Universitaires Fribourg / Desclée de Brouwer, 1982–2007) or the collected edition Le Mystère d’Israël et autres essais (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1965), those originals are supplied alongside the English.

I. Supersessionism: Christianity as the Overflowing Fulness of Judaism

A Christian Looks at the Jewish Question, p. 24 (Longmans, Green, 1939)

(Maritain sets out the foundational supersessionist claim from which all his theology of Israel proceeds: the Church has received from Israel the olive tree of election, and is the supernatural realisation of what Judaism was always ordered toward. The branches that did not recognise their own Messiah were broken off so that the Gentiles might be grafted in their place.)

“we gentile Christians have been grafted onto the predestined olive tree of Israel in place of the branches which did not recognize the Messiah foretold by the prophets. Thus we are converts to the God of Israel who is the true God, to the Father whom Israel recognized, to the Son whom it rejected. Christianity, then, is the overflowing fulness and the supernatural realization of Judaism.”

II. Israel‘s Blindness: The Testimony of Saint Paul

A Christian Looks at the Jewish Question, pp. 24–25 (1939); cf. Ransoming the Time, pp. 145–147 (1941)

(Maritain grounds his entire theology of Israel in the Pauline text of Romans IX–XI, which he cites at length and which he regards as the only adequate framework for understanding the Jewish question. The key Pauline doctrine of Israel‘s partial and temporary blindness, and of its enmity toward the Gospel, is presented as the indispensable presupposition of any Christian approach to the subject.)

“a blindness in part has happened in Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles come in. And so all Israel should be saved. . . As concerning the Gospel, indeed they are enemies for your sake: but as touching the election they are most dear for the sake of the fathers. For the gifts and the calling of God are without repentance.”

(Romans XI:25–29, as cited by Maritain)

III. The Jewish Problem as Insoluble Until the Eschatological Reconciliation

A Christian Looks at the Jewish Question, p. 25 (1939)

(Having established the Pauline framework, Maritain draws out its most radical political implication: the “Jewish question” admits of no true solution — no secular, political, or nationalist resolution — before the eschatological event of Israel‘s reintegration into the economy of salvation. This entails a direct and principled rejection of all merely political solutions, including Zionism.)

“what is called the Jewish problem is an insoluble problem, that is, one without definitive solution until the great reconciliation foretold by the apostle, which will resemble a resurrection from among the dead.”

Ransoming the Time, p. 149 (1941)

“If Saint Paul is right, we shall have to call the Jewish problem a problem without solution — that is, until the great reintegration foreseen by the apostle, which will be like a ‘resurrection from the dead.’ To wish to find, in the pure, simple, decisive sense of the word, a solution of the problem of Israel, is to attempt to stop the movement of history.”

IV. Israel‘s Stumble: The Priestly Leaders’ Choice Against God

Ransoming the Time, pp. 152–153 (1941)

(This is the theological centre of Maritain’s account of Israel‘s fall. With a precision unusual in Catholic writing of the period, he locates the decisive act not at Calvary itself but in the prior act of will by which the priestly leadership of Israel, at the critical moment, chose the world — a choice that bound the entire mystical body of Israel to the world it preferred. He calls this choice “a crime of clerical misfeasance, unequalled prototype of all similar crimes.”)

“In one of those acts of free will which involve the destiny of a whole community, the priests of Israel, the bad watchers in the vineyard, the slayers of prophets, with excellent reasons of political prudence, chose the world, and to that choice their whole people was henceforth bound — until it changes of its own accord. A crime of clerical misfeasance, unequalled prototype of all similar crimes.”

Ransoming the Time, p. 153 (1941)

(Maritain then states the existential consequence of that choice: the mystical body of Israel is henceforth captive to the world it elected. This is the theological root of the permanent tension between Israel and the nations.)

[French original, from L’Impossible Antisémitisme (1937), p. 72–73, as established by Œuvres Complètes, vol. IV, and confirmed by Richard Francis Crane, Patterns of Prejudice, vol. 42, no. 4–5 (2008):]

« Les Juifs ont choisi le monde… leur peine est d’être retenus captifs de leur choix. Prisonniers et victimes de ce monde qu’ils aiment, et dont ils ne sont pas, ne seront jamais, ne peuvent pas être. »

[English translation, Harry Lorin Binsse, Ransoming the Time (1941):]

“The Jews (I do not mean the Jews individually, but the mystical body of Israel at the moment when it struck against the rock) the Jews at a crucial moment chose the world; they have loved it; their penalty is to be held captive by their choice. Prisoners and victims in this world which they love, but of which they are not, will never be, cannot be.”

V. Israel‘s Sacred Mission in the Night of the World

A Christian Looks at the Jewish Question, pp. 26–27 (1939)

(Maritain here states the double paradox that characterises his entire theology of Israel: Israel continues its sacred mission, but now in the darkness of the world it preferred to the darkness of God. Israel is in the world and not of the world — but whereas the Church is free of the world, Israel is bound and prisoner of it.)

“In the eyes of a Christian who remembers that the promises of God are irrevocable and without repentance, Israel continues its sacred mission but in the darkness of the world, preferred, on so unforgettable an occasion, to the darkness of God. Israel, like the Church, is in the world and not of the world. But since the day when, because its leaders chose the world, it stumbled, it is bound to the world, prisoner and victim of that world which it loves, but of which it is not, shall not be, and never can be.”

VI. The Blindfolded Synagogue

Ransoming the Time, p. 152 (1941)

(A condensed statement of what the iconographic tradition calls the Ecclesia et Synagoga theme: the Synagogue, blindfolded, continues to move through history under a guidance it cannot see clearly, acting in the divine economy without full knowledge of its own role.)

[French original, from Le Mystère d’Israël et autres essais (1965), p. 34, confirmed by Thérèse M. Andrevon-Gottstein, Recherches de Science Religieuse 101:2 (2013), p. 215:]

« La Synagogue aveuglée marche en avant dans l’univers des plans de Dieu. Elle n’est elle-même qu’à tâtons consciente de ce chemin dans l’histoire. »

[English translation, Ransoming the Time (1941):]

“Blindfolded, the Synagogue still moves forward in the universe of God’s plans. It is itself only gropingly aware of this its path in history.”

VII. The Unfaithful and Repudiated Church: The Mystical Body of Israel

Ransoming the Time, pp. 153–154 (1941)

(This is Maritain’s most formally explicit use of the Adversus Judaeos categories. He calls the mystical body of Israel “a Church fallen from a high place,” an “unfaithful and repudiated Church,” and draws on the Mosaic libellum repudii — the bill of divorce — to characterise Israel‘s present condition. The repudiation is, however, carefully qualified: it is repudiation “as a Church, not as a people,” and the Bridegroom “has never ceased to love her.”)

[French original, from Le Mystère d’Israël (1965), p. 34, confirmed by Andrevon-Gottstein, Recherches de Science Religieuse 101:2 (2013), p. 215, and Cairn.info (online edition):]

« Le Corps mystique d’Israël est une Église infidèle et répudiée […] répudiée comme Église, non comme peuple. Et toujours attendue de l’Époux, qui n’a cessé de l’aimer. »

[English translation, Ransoming the Time (1941):]

“The mystical body of Israel is a Church fallen from a high place. It is not a ‘counter’-Church, any more than there exists a ‘counter’-God, or a ‘counter’-Spouse. It is an unfaithful Church, (such is the true meaning of the liturgical phrase, perfidia Judaica, which does not at all mean that the Jews are perfidious). The mystical body of Israel is an unfaithful and a repudiated Church (and that is why Moses had figuratively given forth the libellum repudii) — repudiated as a Church, not as a people. And ever awaited by the Bridegroom, who has never ceased to love her.”

VIII. The Fundamental Weakness of the Mystical Communion of Israel: The Refusal of the Cross

Ransoming the Time, p. 155 (1941)

(Here Maritain identifies what he considers the deepest theological deficiency of Judaism in its present condition: not a moral failing in its members, but a structural, spiritual incapacity — the refusal of the Cross, which is the refusal of transfiguration. He extends this to describe how even the pious Jew, in whom grace operates, “carries the gentle Cross” without knowing it, and thus “betrays Judaism” in the very act of living according to his best spiritual impulses.)

“The basic weakness in the mystical communion of Israel is its failure to understand the Cross, its refusal of the Cross, and therefore its refusal of the transfiguration. The aversion to the Cross is typical of that Judaism of the Exile, which does not mean Christianity’s first outline and imperfect beginning, as Judaism is by essence, but which indicates the spiritual pattern which shapes Israel‘s severance from its Messiah. With all Jews in whom grace dwells, as with all souls of good faith and good will, the work of the Cross is present, but veiled and unperceived, and involuntarily experienced. Despite himself, and in an obscuring mist, the pious Jew, the Jew of the spirit, carries the gentle Cross, and thus betrays Judaism without realizing what he does. The moment he begins to be aware of this mystery of forgiveness and of this putting off of self, he finds himself on the road to Christianity.”

IX. Israel‘s Failure in the Spiritual Order

Ransoming the Time, p. 157 (1941)

(Maritain develops an explicit scheme of inversely corresponding failures: Israel failed in the supernatural and spiritual order; Christians have failed in the temporal order. The providential logic of history runs through both failures simultaneously toward the eschatological resolution.)

[French original, from Le Mystère d’Israël (1965), confirmed by Andrevon-Gottstein, Recherches de Science Religieuse 101:2 (2013):]

« c’est Israël comme Église, c’est le Judaïsme qui a failli (dans l’ordre spirituel) »

[English translation, Ransoming the Time (1941):]

“Israel failed in the spiritual and supernatural order; and when, through the breach offered by its fall, ‘the fullness of the Gentiles should come in,’ the Church, having reached its third epoch, and exulting in the return of the people of God, will know the fullness of its earthly dimensions and of its heroic pilgrimage. . . . it is Israel as a Church, it is Judaism which has failed (in the spiritual order)”

X. The “Carnal Jew” and the Naturalistic Corruption of Election

A Christian Looks at the Jewish Question, p. 16 (1939)

(In a striking passage on the affinities and ironies of the German-Jewish relation, Maritain introduces the distinction — fundamental in his theology — between “carnal” and “spiritual” Jews. Racial pride, in some carnal Jews, represents the naturalistic corruption of the supernatural idea of divine election: the Jew who has lost the spiritual content of election retains its sociological form as ethnic or national supremacism. Maritain notes that this same corruption has been imported wholesale by National Socialism from the Jewish Scriptures.)

“the Germany of Hitler, in seeking to reject Israel, has embraced the very worst of Israel. I mean that sentiment of racial pride which is, in some carnal Jews, the naturalistic corruption of the supernatural idea of divine election. The racists are indebted to the Old Testament, as the Communists are to the New. It is the Scriptures of the Jews from which the former drew, only to corrupt it, the idea of a chosen people, a people of God.”

XI. Materialistic Messianism as the Dark Face of Israel‘s Vocation

A Christian Looks at the Jewish Question, p. 32 (1939)

(Maritain accounts for the variety of Jewish historical manifestations — including those that are commercially predatory, revolutionary, and secularist — as the ambivalent expression of an unquenchable and essentially supernatural vocation, when that vocation is lived out without its supernatural content. The phrase “materialistic messianism” is his precise theological term for this condition.)

“the Jewish people bears witness to the divine in human history? Thence come the conflicts and the tension which, under all sorts of masks, necessarily prevail between Israel and the nations. . . . often despite itself, and while manifesting, sometimes in contrasting forms, a materialistic messianism which is the dark face of its vocation to the absolute”

XII. The Permanent Tension Between Israel and the Nations

A Christian Looks at the Jewish Question, p. 32 (1939)

(A direct statement that the tension between Israel and the nations is not an accidental or contingent feature of history, but is structurally necessary and insoluble short of the eschatological resolution — and that any attempt to abolish it by antisemitic violence is simply villainy.)

“It is an illusion to believe that such tension can completely vanish.”

Ransoming the Time, p. 169 (1941)

“It is an illusion to believe that this tension can disappear (at least before the fulfilment of the prophecies).”

XIII. Israel as an Alien Body and Fermenting Leaven in the World

A Christian Looks at the Jewish Question, pp. 28–29 (1939)

(Maritain describes Israel‘s temporal vocation as a kind of metaphysical irritant: Israel is placed at the “very heart of the world’s structure” to give it no peace, to prevent it from resting in itself, to “stimulate the movement of history.” The language of the “alien body” and “activating ferment” is used approvingly — this is Israel‘s providential function — but it is precisely this function that provokes the world’s hatred.)

“Israel, we believe, is assigned, on the plane and within the limits of secular history, a task of earthly activization of the mass of the world. Israel, which is not of the world, is to be found at the very heart of the world’s structure, stimulating it, exasperating it, moving it. Like an alien body, like an activating ferment injected into the mass, it gives the world no peace, it bars slumber, it teaches the world to be discontented and restless as long as the world has not God, it stimulates the movement of history.”

XIV. Hatred of Jews and Hatred of Christians Spring From One Source

A Christian Looks at the Jewish Question, pp. 29–30 (1939)

(Maritain makes one of his most characteristic moves: he identifies the root of antisemitism as identical with the root of anti-Christianity. Both are expressions of the world’s refusal to be “wounded” — by the goad of Israel in the temporal order, or by the Cross of Christ for eternal life.)

“Thus hatred of Jews and hatred of Christians spring from a common source, from the same recalcitrance of the world, which desires to be wounded neither with the wounds of Adam nor with the wounds of the Savior, neither by the goad of Israel for its movement in time, nor by the cross of Jesus for eternal life.”

XV. The Reconciliation of the Synagogue and the Church as the Sole Resolution

A Christian Looks at the Jewish Question, p. 33 (1939)

(The Adversus Judaeos framework reaches its dénouement in the explicit assertion that the Jewish question will be resolved only in the event — eschatological, not political — of the Synagogue‘s reconciliation with the Church.)

“On the spiritual plane, the drama of love between Israel and its God, if we are to believe St. Paul, will reach a dénouement only with the reconciliation of the Synagogue and the Church.”

Ransoming the Time, p. 169 (1941)

“the drama of love between Israel and its God, which makes Gentiles participate in the economy of salvation, and which is but one element in the universal mystery of salvation, will be resolved only in the reconciliation of the Synagogue and the Church.”

XVI. Zionism as a “Tradition Devoid of Faith”: The Insufficiency of Any Nationalist Solution

A Christian Looks at the Jewish Question, p. 46 (1939)

(This is the most direct expression of Maritain’s theological anti-Zionism: not a political opposition to Jewish national aspirations, but a theological insistence that Zionism, by preserving only the “dead bones” of the tradition without its living faith, cannot constitute a true solution to the Jewish question — and that there is, in fact, no Jewish people without the God of the Scriptures.)

“there is no Jewish people without the God of the Scriptures, if His presence be only in the dead bones of a tradition devoid of faith, such as Zionism, at least, respects and collects.”

Ransoming the Time, p. 165 (1941)

(Maritain lists the three inadequate “solutions” to the Jewish problem — assimilation, Yiddishism, and Zionism — and dismisses all three as partial accommodations at best.)

“Assimilation is not the solution of Israel‘s problem, any more than is Yiddishism or Zionism; but assimilation, like autonomy and Zionism, is a partial accommodation, a compromise solution, good and desirable to the extent that it is possible.”

Ransoming the Time, pp. 165 (1941)

(Maritain goes further: the Zionist project carries within it a specifically spiritual danger — the risk that the Jews, having “settled down,” become spiritually like other nations and lose the vocation of exile and disquiet that is constitutive of the mystical body of Israel.)

“it carries with it a risk — as does also Zionism (as a state) — the risk of the Jews becoming settled, becoming like others (I mean spiritually). It is the risk of losing the vocation of the house of Israel. Their God then strikes them down by the vilest of instruments.”

Ransoming the Time, p. 173 (1941)

(The most developed anti-Zionist passage, in which Maritain denies that the Zionist state can dissolve the providential law of exile that is essential to Israel‘s mystical vocation.)

[French original, from Le Mystère d’Israël (1965), confirmed by Andrevon-Gottstein, Recherches de Science Religieuse 101:2 (2013), p. 226:]

« L’État sioniste ne peut abolir la loi du désert, et de la Galuth, qui n’est pas consubstantielle au peuple juif — cette loi aura une fin — mais qui est essentielle au corps mystique et à la vocation d’Israël dans l’état de séparation. »

[English translation, Ransoming the Time (1941):]

“No more than individualist liberalism or than the pluralist regime we have been discussing, can the Zionist State do away with the law of the desert and of the Galuth, which is not consubstantial with the Jewish people — this law will come to an end — but is essential to the mystical body and the vocation of Israel in the state of separation.”

XVII. Israel‘s Deep Disinclination to Become a Nation or State

Ransoming the Time, p. 148 (1941)

(Maritain derives from his theology of exile the following sociological-theological claim: Israel is, by its very mystical constitution, averse to becoming a nation-state — at least until it has completed its mysterious historical mission. This aversion is not a defect but a structural characteristic of its providential vocation.)

“By reason of a deep vocation and by its very essence, Israel is disinclined — at least, so long as it has not brought to completion its mysterious historic mission — to become a nation, and even more, to become a state. The harsh law of exile, of the Galuth, prevents Israel from aspiring toward a common political life.”

XVIII. The Medieval Ghetto as Proceeding From a “High Concept”

Ransoming the Time, pp. 170–171 (1941)

(In a passage that represents perhaps the most striking point of continuity between Maritain and the traditional Adversus Judaeos framework, he describes the medieval policy of the ghetto as having proceeded from a “high concept” — one based on the presupposition that a sacred penalty weighed on the destiny of Israel — and explicitly pronounces it superior to the “bestial materialism” of Nazi racial law.)

“The Middle Ages tried a ‘sacral’ solution, in accordance with the typical structure of the civilization of that time. This solution, which was based on the presupposition that a sacred penalty, inflicted by God, not by men, weighed on the destinies of Israel, and which gave Jews the status of foreigners in the Christian community, the solution of the ghetto, was hard in itself and often iniquitous and bloody in practice. Yet it proceeded from a high concept, and was in any case better than the bestial materialism of the racist laws initiated in our own day by Germany. It was on the religious, not at all on the racial, level.”

XIX. The Jewish Vocation and Commerce: A Symbolic Affinity

Ransoming the Time, pp. 158, and footnote 12, pp. 158–159 (1941)

(Maritain identifies the Jewish “famous fondness for business” as symbolically significant: the commerce that has been Israel‘s principal occupation since the Babylonian captivity is not merely a sociological accident but carries a “richly symbolic value” in the context of Israel‘s earthly vocation of activating the movement of history. In a lengthy footnote he acknowledges — citing Marx’s formula from Zur Judenfrage — the structural affinity between Jewish economic conceptions and the advent of capitalism.)

“Consider, in this connection, of what richly symbolic value is the famous fondness of the Jews for business, and the fact that, since the Babylonian captivity, commerce is their principal occupation, wherein they do not merely excel, like other oriental peoples, but wherein they find the mental stimulation which they need, and even a sort of spiritual satisfaction.”

“Be it a matter of free competition, or of interest on borrowed money, or of price conceived as the result of bargaining, rather than as the expression of the objective value of a thing (‘fair price’), these are ideas that fit in with the Jewish economic conceptions (more generally, with the Oriental economic conceptions) which the shift from the mediaeval system of guilds to the capitalist system has made predominant. . . . it has been possible to say that the ‘commercial practices of the Jews found themselves rehabilitated’ by the advent of capitalism, ‘since the search after profits and free competition became the bases of the capitalist system.’ . . . ‘Das Judentum erreicht seinen Höhepunkt in der Vollendung der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft,’ wrote Karl Marx in Zur Judenfrage.” (footnote 12)

XX. Money as the Illusory Image of the Son of God: Bloy’s Theme Adopted

Ransoming the Time, pp. 160–161 (1941)

(Maritain explicitly adopts — though with greater reserve than Bloy himself — the most paradoxical and most characteristic theme of Le Salut par les Juifs: the mystical attraction of money for Israel, money being “the palest and the least real image of the Son of God.” Léon Bloy’s theology of money is cited by name and incorporated into Maritain’s own account of Israel‘s ambivalence.)

“To the extent that Israel has quit reality for an illusory image, money (here is one of the most profound themes of Léon Bloy, and certain of Karl Marx’s phrases have a similar sound) has for Israel a mystical attraction, for money among the world’s most shadowy shadows is the palest and the least real image of the Son of God. Léon Bloy used to say that money is the poor man’s blood, the Poor man’s blood transmuted into a sign. In that sign and through that sign, and the signs of that sign, man serves an inert omnipotence which does everything man wants; he ends up in a kind of cynical theocracy, the ultimate religious temptation of whoever refuses the reality of the gift of God.”

XXI. Israel‘s Passion: Not Co-Redemptive, But the Passion of a Scapegoat

Ransoming the Time, p. 156 (1941)

(Maritain distinguishes carefully between the passion of the Church — which is co-redemptive, ordered to the eternal salvation of souls — and the passion of Israel, which is ordered to the “goading on of the world’s temporal life.” Israel‘s suffering is the passion of a scapegoat caught in the earthly machinery of history, on which the world’s resentment strikes back when it feels the activation Israel‘s vocation imposes on it.)

“Israel‘s passion is not, like that of the Church, a passion of co-redemption, completing what is lacking in the sufferings of the Saviour. This passion is not suffered for the eternal salvation of souls, but for the stimulation and emancipation of temporal life. It is the passion of a scapegoat, enmeshed in the earthly destiny of the world and in the ways of the world mixed with sin, a scapegoat against which the impure sufferings of the world strike back, when the world seeks vengeance for the misfortunes of its history upon what activates that history.”

XXII. The Passion of Israel Taking on the Form of the Cross

Ransoming the Time, pp. 178–179 (1941)

(The climax of the theology of Israel‘s passion: Maritain sees in the persecution of the Jewish people in his own day a providential conformation to the Cross — Israel being drawn, despite itself, along the road to Calvary, side by side with persecuted Christians, both being gradually conformed to the suffering Messiah as the condition of their eventual reconciliation.)

“The central fact, which has its deepest meaning for the philosophy of history and for human destiny — and which no one seems to take into account — is that the passion of Israel today is taking on more and more distinctly the form of the Cross.”

Sources

All passages are transcribed verbatim from the following primary editions, verified as indicated. Where French originals have been established from the Œuvres Complètes via peer-reviewed scholarship, those are noted separately.

Primary Works of Jacques Maritain

Secondary and Reference Sources Used for Verification of French Originals