The Gentiles Have Already Been Called: An Argument from Athanasius 

I sometimes try to imagine what I’d think about Jesus if I had been raised in a different religion. I can relate to the words of Blaise Pascal as he considered the potential prejudice that can arise from within one’s reflection on their own religion:

There is no denying it; one must admit that there is something astonishing about Christianity. ‘It is because you were born in it,’ they will say. Far from it; I stiffen myself against it for that very reason, for fear of being corrupted by prejudice. But, though I was born in it, I cannot help finding it astonishing.

I agree with Pascal that there is something astonishing about the Christian religion, and even when I in some way “stiffen myself against it” in my reflections, I can’t help but be astonished. 

With these types of thoughts in mind, I believe that one particular aspect of Christianity would make me more uncomfortable than any other were I a Jew considering the claims of Christianity. That is not to say it is the only aspect, but I believe that more than anything I would be very uncomfortable with my Jewish faith due to the fact that so much of the gentile world has come to believe in Jesus Christ and claim to be following the God of Abraham, Issac, and Jacob. 

Beginning with the call to Abraham, there are numerous scriptures within the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) that clearly claim that the gentiles will be blessed by and come to hope in the only true God of Israel. Consider just a few: 

Genesis 12:3

And in you [Abraham] all the families of the earth will be blessed.

Genesis 18:18

Abraham will surely become a great and powerful nation, and through him all the nations of the earth will be blessed.

Genesis 22:18

And through your offspring all nations of the earth will be blessed.

Psalm 2:8

Ask Me, and I will make the nations Your inheritance, the ends of the earth Your possession.

Psalm 22:27

Isaiah 49: 6-7: 

He says, “It is too small a thing that You should be My Servant 

To raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the preserved ones of Israel;

I will also make You a light of the nations

So that My salvation may reach to the end of the earth.”

Roughly, 2,500 to 4,000 years have gone by since these declarations have been made, and a curious thing has happened across the world. Men and women from every nation and tongue and tribe have cast down their idols to believe in and follow the God of Abraham, Issac, and Jacob. Indeed, Western civilization as we know it has been fundamentally formed by these beliefs. And even as the fires of belief wane in the West they grow with intensity in the East and in Africa. Millions and millions, no, even billions and billions, have and do confess to the believe in the God revealed in the Old Testament. 

And these believers confess that he has been revealed by the Messiah, by God himself incarnate.² There are other scriptures to be found which support this view, but even assuming a Jew was unconvinced by those, would it not be unnerving at just how successful the message of Jesus Christ has been? The people of the world have turned to God. The name of God is glorified among the gentiles. The whole earth is overflowing with those who place their faith in the God of Abraham. 

One of the proofs of Jesus’s true place as the Messiah is that the nations believe. The sheer volume, prevalence, pervasiveness, and influence of Christianity, a belief which claims to be the fulfillment of God’s promises in the Old Testament, should warrant special consideration for those who are still waiting for that fulfillment, who think a messiah has yet to come. I am confident that even if I were not raised as a Christian and was raised as a Jew instead, this argument would unsettle me greatly at the very least.³ 

Saint Athanasius (299-373) made this observation 1,700 years ago:

And who was such a king in Israel and in Judah—let the Jews who have searched this out tell us—in whom all the nations placed their hope and had peace?… It is worthwhile seeing, then, who it is upon whom the Gentiles have placed their hope. He must exist, as the prophets cannot lie… So all Gentiles from everywhere, rejecting the inherited customs and the godlessness of idols, place their hope henceforth in Christ and dedicate themselves to him, so that one can also see such things with the eyes themselves…

If the Gentiles worshipped another God and did not confess the God of Abraham and Issac and Jacob and Moses, they [the Jews] would do well in alleging that God had not come. But if the Gentiles are honoring the God who gave the law to Moses and the promise to Abraham, and whose Word the Jews dishonored, why do they not know, or rather why do they willingly ignore, that the Lord who was prophesied by the scriptures has illumined the inhabited world…

They are suffering like one, maimed in mind, who might see the earth illumined by the sun, but denies the sun which illumines it. For what more has he who is expected by them to do when he comes? Call the Gentiles? But they have already been called… the whole world is filled with the knowledge of God, and those from the Gentiles are…taking refuge in the God of Abraham through the Word, our Lord Jesus Christ.⁴

1,700 years later, and with the dominance of Christianity over the the last two millennia, does this argument not even hold more persuasive force now than it did then?

Notes:

1. Blaise Pascal, Pensees, edited by A. J. Krailsheimer, Penguin Books (Hudson Street, New York, 1995), 246, (615)
2. A potential counter argument could be raised here that could make the point that such a belief in the incarnation proves that Jesus wasn’t the Messiah for such a teaching is in contrast to the teachings of the Hebrew Bible. However, that misses the point of this particular argument. Whether or not the Hebrew Bible is consistent with a belief in the incarnation is not the point. Rather, the point is that the Gentiles do believe in the God of Abraham. For 2,000 years they have been casting away their idols to follow him. The core element of this argument is that it should be unnerving that this is a historical fact as it appears to present a case of the Gentiles calling upon the only God and to be a fulfillment of this promise. 
3. A counter argument to this point would be to bring up Islam as Muslims also confess to believe in the God of Abraham. However, it can be argued that Islamic belief is a sort of Christian heresy. It claims Jesus was the Messiah, but denies central truths of the message that Jesus claimed. Additionally, Jesus, as the Messiah, clearly taught that false teachers would arise and deceive many. Therefore, it is not at all surprising for there to be a religion such as Islam in the world from a Christian perspective, actually such a happening could be expected. 
4. Saint Athanasius, On the Incarnation (Yonkers, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2011), 87  

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