"New Vision" - Benedict XVI Devalues Christ and the Church
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The letter was addressed to Vienna Rabbi Arie Folger. It was written in midst of an academic controversy with Folger.
Benedict does not confess Christ as God, instead he starts off with Moses whom he calls the "decisive form of hope" because Moses spoke to God face to face, like a friend.
Comparing Christ to Moses he writes that the Son of God "appears to us Christians" as the "central figure of hope," explaining this with the fact that Christ "stands on a first-name basis with God."
Benedict calls his strange theories "a new vision" and concludes from them that the time of the Church is "no longer" about the definite redemption of the world but regards only "us Christians" - as opposed to the Jews - and is the Christians what the "forty years in the desert" were for Israel - [as if the Church were not Israel].
Benedict further acknowledges Zionism, a controversial movement of secular Jewish nationalism. He calls Israel a State that has entirely legitimately "religious foundations” and even claims that in the formation of this State [by atheists] one can recognize in a "mysterious way" the "fidelity of God to Israel” - a thesis contradicted by a consistent part of religious Jews.
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