Mark: And even from this one source, you have been selective. You quote Theodoret as saying "all Israel" means "all those who believe," but another quote from the very same homily, also quoted in the ACCS, says this: "Paul insists that only a part of Israel has been hardened, for many of them believe. He thus encourages them not to despair that others will be saved as well. After the Gentiles accepted the gospel, the Jews would believe, when the great Elijah would come to them and bring them the doctrine of the faith. The Lord himself said as much: 'Elijah will come and will restore all things.'"

So, even if Theodoret understands "all Israel" as meaning "all the faithful," he still believes that there will be a future conversion of the Jews to be grafted back into the true spiritual Israel of the Church.

R. Sungenis: Perhaps, but even in that case, Theodoret doesn't say that the Elijah to come refers to a future coming near the end of time. For all you know, Theodoret may be speaking of the time of Christ when he said that John the Baptist was Elijah. I'm not saying that he is, but only that the information in the quote is not definitive. In any case, I can simply say that Theodoret is working under the same notion of Elijah's future return that Ott said was a misinterpretation of Scripture.

Mark: I would suggest that this also applies to Augustine, who may recognize the Church as the true Israel, but also foresees a conversion of the Jews (indeed, the quote I produced from The City of God was a much more important source to future Church teaching than the quote in ACCS from one of Augustine's many letters.)

I also find that you have shortened the St. John Chrysostom quote in a way that reduces any suggestion of a future conversion ("does not apply it to some distant event in the future"). You quote Chrysostom as saying: "God's covenant will be fulfilled not when they are circumcised...but when they obtain the forgiveness of sins...it will certainly come to pass."

But the full quote is this: "God's covenant will be fulfilled not when they are circumcised, nor when they do other deeds of the law, but when they obtain the forgiveness of sins. If this has been promised but has not yet happened in their case, nor have they enjoyed the forgiveness of sins in baptism, it will certainly come to pass." This language of fulfillment of the covenant that "has been promised but has not yet happened in their case" (which you omitted) sounds more like "a distant event in the future."

R. Sungenis: But again, Mark, even this quote is not definitive, since Chrysostom says "IF....this has not yet happened in their case." But the point is that it HAS happened, and continues to happen, as Paul made clear in Romans 11:5, 14, 23, as a remnant of Jews, beginning at Pentecost, were added to the Church, and "some" of the whole nation is saved, and "regrafted" into the olive tree even though the whole nation was cut off.

Mark: So what do we have? Of the seven you cite, Cyril of Alexandria, Theodoret, Augustine, Chrysostom, and Jerome (the last three among the most important of all the Fathers) all believe in a future salvation of the Jews (although some in various places talk of the Church, not the Jews, as the true Israel). Origen is mystified, saying says "only God knows" what "all Israel" and "the fullness of the Gentiles" is supposed to mean. Only the heretical Pelagius overtly denies that the salvation of Israel is an event in the future.

R. Sungenis: There were other Fathers who had heretical ideas, but we don't reject their other views out of hand (Hippolytus, Theodore, et al).

Mark: Furthermore, I have found several other Fathers, including St. Gregory the Great and St. John Damascene, who predict a future conversion of the Jews. That makes seven Fathers for a future conversion, Origen neutral, and one heretic against. To me, that sounds like a consensus of the Fathers for a future conversion of the Jews.

R. Sungenis: Again, most of them are equivocal on the issue; they do not cite it as apostolic or early patristic doctrine; they do not exegete the passages in question; they base their interpretation on a faulty translation of Malachi 4:5, and in any case, they do not form a unanimous consent since they are very few in number and vary among themselves. That is why Ott says that such view are in "question," and that the view of Elijah returning is fallacious.

Mark: Now, let's see how this matter was treated by the Medievals.

The Venerable Bede says in his Explanation of the Apocalypse:

"...it is well believed that the wicked Jews will be deceived as well as deceive, but that others will understand the law spiritually through the instruction of the great prophet Elijah, and will be incorporated among the members of the Church, and bravely overcome the enemy."

In a letter to his Abbot Eusebius about his Explanatio, Bede also writes:

"He has foretold that the Jews are to be made subject to the Church, and that there is to be a trial of the world at large, and that He Himself will come quickly."

R. Sungenis: But what happened to Enoch? You quoted John Damascene earlier as saying that both Enoch and Elijah were returning. The coincidence about this is that Venerable Bede and John Damascene lived close to each other, but seem to be confused about who is going to be returning. This again reveals that there was no conclusive patristic support of the view.

Mark: The 10th century French Abbot Adso wrote a treatise of the Antichrist that became very influential in the Middle Ages. In it he wrote:

"Lest the Antichrist come suddenly and without warning and deceive and destroy the whole human race by his error, before his arrival the two great prophets Enoch and Elijah will be sent into the world. They will defend God's faithful against the attack of the Antichrist with divine arms and will instruct, comfort, and prepare the elect for battle with three and a half years teaching and preaching. These two very great prophets and teachers will convert the sons of Israel who will live in that time to the faith, and they will make their belief unconquerable among the elect in the face of the affliction of so great a storm. At that time what scripture says will be fulfilled 'If the number of sons of Israel be like the sand of the sea, their remnant will be saved'."

R. Sungenis: The problem here, Mark, is that the abbot has misread the passage. There are only two passages in Scripture that have these elements, Isaiah 10:22 and Romans 9:27. Isaiah 10:22 reads: O Israel, may be like the sand of the sea, Only a remnant within them will return; A destruction is determined, overflowing with righteousness. Romans 9:27 quotes from Isaiah 10:22. But you'll notice that neither passage predicts a massive conversion of the Jews, but only what I've been saying all along -- that only a "remnant" will be saved.

Mark: St. Thomas Aquinas wrote a Commentary on Epistle to the Romans, in which he wrote:

"The blindness of the Jews will endure until the fullness of the gentiles have accepted the faith. And this is in accord with what the Apostle says below about the salvation of the Jews, namely, that after the fullness of the nations have entered, 'all Israel will be saved', not individually as at present, but universally."

He goes on to make it clear that he is referring here to "the conversion of the Jews at the end of the world."

R. Sungenis: Thomas has every right to his opinion, just as he did with the Immaculate Conception, but that fact is he offers no exegesis or patristic support for the idea of a "universal" conversion. In fact, he is the first to use the word "universal," and thus, it is quite unprecedented.

Mark: Moving on to the Counter Reformation era, the great Jesuit apologist St. Robert Bellarmine writes in De Summo Pontifice (I, 3) about "the coming of Enoch and Elias, who live even now and shall live until they come to oppose Antichrist himself, and to preserve the elect in the faith of Christ, and in the end shall convert the Jews, and it is certain that this is not yet fulfilled."

R. Sungenis: First, if this concept is being based on Scripture, as most of them do in reference to Romans 11:25-26, then where is the Scripture that says Enoch is going to return to earth to convert the Jews? There is no such passage in Scripture. Enoch is mention only in Hebrews 11:5 and Jude 1:14 (outside of his OT references), but neither of them speak of him returning. Second, Bellarmine cites no Scripture, nor any patristic witness, to back up the claim.

The only place in Scripture that even remotely suggests something along these lines is Apocalypse 11:5-6, which reads: "And if anyone wants to harm them, fire flows out of their mouth and devours their enemies; so if anyone wants to harm them, he must be killed in this way. These have the power to shut up the sky, so that rain will not fall during the days of their prophesying; and they have power over the waters to turn them into blood, and to strike the earth with every plague, as often as they desire."

The problem with this, however, is that the passage does not specifically name Enoch or Elijah. Elijah is sometimes associated with the passage only because he once prayed that it would not rain in Israel (James 5:17-18). But Enoch is not even alluded to, since there is no such action he performed during his lifetime. This is why Enoch is sometimes left out of the predictions (as is the case with Venerable Bede). The only other personage that could fill the description is Moses, since Exodus records him as turning water into blood, yet curiously, none of the aforementioned interpreters mention Moses as a possibility, even though he fits the description better than Enoch.

So what you have, Mark, is a confusing assortment of ideas, with little, if any, Scriptural backing, and that from the very people who claim to be getting their ideas from Scripture, not Tradition. In addition, the Apocalypse is a highly symbolic treatise, especially Chapter 11, of which many exegetes have seen as a symbolic representation of the Church preaching the gospel during the New Testament era, signified by the "two-by-two" formula used in the passage (cf., Mark 6:7; Luke 10:1; 2 Cor 13:1; Eph 2:15; 1 Cor 14:29).

Mark: The great exegete Cornelius a Lapide has a commentary on Romans, but I could only find it in Latin. My Latin is rusty, but he seems to say that "all Israel" can be understood either spiritually as meaning all the elect -- whether Jew or gentile -- or literally as meaning all the Jews who will be converted at the end of time, quoting various Fathers and Doctors on both sides.

However, in his commentary on Matthew, which I did find in English, he teaches clearly about the conversion of the Jews at the end of time. Writing on Matthew 17:11-12 ("Elijah does come, and he is to restore all things; but I tell you that Elijah has already come, and they did not know him, but did to him whatever they pleased. So also the Son of man will suffer at their hands."), Lapide says that Elias will: "Restore all things: that is, convert the Jews to Christ as the Messiah promised to themselves and there forefathers." He goes on to say that: "Falsely do the Calvinists refer all these things to the first Advent of Christ, and explain both mentions of Elias" viz., in verses 11 and 12 to mean John the Baptist. For they think that Elias, whom Malachi predicted shall come as the precursor of Christ (Mal. 4:5), is John the Baptist, and there is no other who shall come with Enoch before Christ's second Advent."

R. Sungenis: If that is the case, Mark, then why would Ott say that such a view was erroneous?

Mark: Writing on Matthew 23:37-39 ("O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, killing the prophets and stoning those who are sent to you! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not! Behold, your house is forsaken and desolate. For I tell you, you will not see me again, until you say, 'Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.'"), Lapide writes:

"It is possible that this passage may be understood of the Jews, who about the end of the world shall be converted to Christ by the preaching of Elias, and who, when He shall presently come to judgment, will acknowledge Him to be the Messiah, the Blessed of the Lord."

R. Sungenis: Mark, did you catch the words "It is possible" in the first part of his sentence? Obviously, Lapide is not offering this as the definitive interpretation for the Church. He is smart enough to know that all this is quite speculative, since there is very little information to go on. And since he, as you already admitted, equivocates between a literal and spiritual interpretation, he certainly isn't the definitive witness you are looking for. And again, notice that he leaves out Enoch. I think this lack of conviction is even more significant in the case of Lapide, since of all the medievals, he would be the one person who would know what the patristic and medieval consensus was, since he catalogued most of it.

Mark: In summary, it looks to me like the vast majority of the Fathers, the Medievals the and Counter-Reformation doctors, and recent pre-Vatican II exegetes are all in agreement about a conversion of the Jews before the end of the world (possibly converted by the preaching of Elijah and Enoch as prophesied in Malachi and Revelations) as a sign of Christ's coming.

With St. Augustine, St. Jerome, Pope St. Gregory the Great, St. John Chrysostom, the Venerable Bede, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Robert Bellarmine, and Cornelius a Lapide on my side of the argument, and having shown that all but one of your quotes are from one modern source that gives only snippets of the Fathers, I think the onus of showing that the Fathers and Doctors did not believe in a future mass conversion of the Jews now falls on you.

My other question is, given the broad consensus I have found in Catholic sources saying that there will be such a future conversion of Jews to the faith, some from sources that you must have seen before in your wide reading, why are you so keen to deny this teaching? I do not claim that belief in the future conversion of the Jews, or a future coming of Elijah before the Second Coming, for that matter, are de fide teaching. But they certainly seem to represent the consensus of two millennia of Catholic exegesis. What is the purpose in trying to deny this?

R. Sungenis: You don't have a "broad consensus," you have merely a half dozen or so citations, many of which are equivocal, all of which offer no exegesis, little of which cite early patristic support for their view, some of which can be taken in a spiritual as well as literal sense, many of which leave out crucial details (e.g., Enoch), all of which have only the obscure passage of Romans 11:25-26 as their Scriptural base; all of which base their view on the highly symbolic passage in Apocalypse 11:5-6; many of which ignore those against their view; and all who are summed up by one of our greatest theologian/historians as holding a "questionable" view of universal conversion of Jews, and an erroneous view of Elijah, namely, Ludwig Ott.

Mark: I can understand the desire to refute Protestant fundamentalist "dispensationalist" theology, or Catholic modernists like Cardinal Kasper who suggest that the Jewish covenant remains salvific. But these teachings, while they certainly try to use Romans 9-11 to establish their erroneous theology, go far beyond the standard, orthodox Catholic teaching of an eventual conversion of the Jews in the last times. This does not imply a millennial Jewish kingdom or the ongoing salvific validity of the Old Covenant, simply that the Jewish people who were pruned off of the olive tree due to their infidelity at the time of Christ will at the last, in God's mercy, be engrafted back on. I fear that in your desire to refute certain wrong elements of modern theology you are running the risk of throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

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