Ben Shapiro on Christianity vs Judaism | Collision w/ Jeff Durbin

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So today we are interacting with Ben Shapiro. Everyone knows who Ben Shapiro is. We've had Ben Shapiro on some of Apologia Studios' content before, had him on as a guest to do an interview with them.

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I would love to interact with him personally on this particular issue dealing with Jesus as Messiah, whether or not

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Christianity is the fulfillment of the promises that God made to Abraham and to David and through the prophets.

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It would be a great conversation. But we're going to interact a bit with some of his comments on the Rubin Report dealing with Christianity, and so let's get into it.

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So this is why I think it's really fascinating having spent a lot of time with Christian theologians in the past couple of years writing this book, is that the original conceit,

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I think, when you talk with people who are Christian and Jewish and you have sort of interfaith conversations, the original one -sentence conceit and the difference between them is that what you hear from Jews is

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Judaism is acts -based and Christianity is faith -based. Christianity is about the acceptance of Christ. When you accept Christ, then you've accepted what you need to accept and everything flows therefrom.

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And Judaism says it's not just about accepting God, it's all these mitzvot, right? There are all these commandments that you have to do and these are what perfect you as a human being.

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It's the performance of these commandments, accepting God's sovereignty because he's the one who gave the commandments, but you actually have to act in the world.

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And if you don't act in the world, then you haven't fulfilled your responsibility in the world. This could also be an argument why you could have, although I know you wouldn't be throwing them in per se, you could have

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Jewish atheists and that they believe that it's just their actions here. Yes, a hundred percent.

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So this is why Jews have had very, and I think most Christians believe this too. The idea of having a moral atheist is not really a difficult idea.

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It's the idea of having a system built on atheism that's completely immoral and will fall apart almost immediately. And the idea of having a moral system built on atheism, if you examine your atheism closely enough,

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I think falls apart. I think that moral atheism is basically you separating your morality from your atheism and then ignoring your atheism in pursuit of the morality, which is, well, you can live fine that way.

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That's fine. But I don't think that that's psychologically sustainable if you actually examine the core of your ideas.

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But with that said, I think that Christianity after its original millenarian viewpoint, when

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Christianity first came about. Well, let's stop there. So really important to address.

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I think what in some ways is a complete misunderstanding of the

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Tanakh, the Torah, what Christians would call the Old Testament in terms of what makes somebody truly

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Jewish. And are they truly Jewish because they happen to do some of the things that the

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God of the Old Testament says to do in terms of what is just and right and good. Like if I do those things externally, like if I pray like I'm supposed to, if I go to temple and do the temple sacrifices and everything

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I need to do there. As long as I do that externally, am I actually good with God?

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Is that something that God accepts? It's really important because actually it's something that Jesus addressed in his day was people who thought that because they were physically descended from Abraham or because they were really performing all of the commandments and the things that look like personal piety, whether it was praying or fasting or whatever the case may be.

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Jesus addressed that idea that what made you truly Jewish or a follower of God was the externals.

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Jesus referred to it as hypocrisy. He says, you're pretending. Inside you're full of dead men's bones.

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And Jesus addresses the issue that I think is very, very important here. And it's in this discussion with Ben Shapiro.

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He addresses the issue of whether or not you truly mean what you're doing and whether or not what's happening is truly wrought from the spirit or the heart, which is something that is absolutely, absolutely focused upon in the

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Old Testament. God talks a lot about the heart and he talks a lot about the true spirit motivations behind doing what

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God commands you to do. I mean, the idea that God can somehow in the Old Testament accept that people were doing actions that were in accordance with his commandments, but their hearts were far from God is just not an accurate portrayal of what

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God says about himself or his law in the Old Testament. And this idea that Judaism is focused on acts, actions in the world, good works, and Christianity is based upon faith is actually not accurate either.

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Because if you, if we look at the father of our faith, we would say Abraham, both

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Christians and Jews would say, Abraham is the father of our faith. When you look at the covenant that God makes with Abraham and the promises that God makes to Abraham about Mashiach coming into the world and all that's coming through Abraham, through Isaac, all that through that seed, you see that that whole entire relationship with Abraham begins with the foundation of faith and the works come later.

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As a matter of fact, this covenant that God makes with Abraham in the Old Testament is unilateral. It's one way.

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It's God making the promise himself. It's God swearing by himself to accomplish this.

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It's all an act of God's grace and gift. And mind you, this is very, very important in terms of addressing

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Ben's argument here. All of this takes place with Abraham, the father of our faith, before circumcision, before any actions on his part in terms of offering his son

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Isaac on the altar. It also takes place hundreds of years before Moses and the law was given.

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So Abraham, the father of our faith, is justified before God how?

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Based upon his actions? Based upon his obedience? Based upon his works?

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Is that how Abraham was justified before God? Is that how Abraham was shown to be right before God?

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No, actually Genesis 15 6 says Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness.

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And that again takes place before the law, before circumcision, before offering Isaac on the altar.

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It is this gracious gift of God to Abraham, the father of our faith.

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Now, here's what's important to recognize, is that both Jews and Christians call

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Abraham the father of our faith. Many Jews would say, well, that's because we are physically descended from Israel, physically descended from Abraham.

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But we would say, is that what makes you truly Jewish? Is the circumcision a matter of just the flesh or is it really a matter of the heart?

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And one of the things you see the Jewish writers of New Testament saying is that no, circumcision is a matter of the heart.

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It's an internal thing. It's not merely external. And this is, of course, why the question comes up.

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And I hope you all caught it. The question comes up, well, can you be a Jewish atheist? I mean, you don't believe there's a real

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God anyways, but as long as you're doing and performing these Jewish actions in the world in accordance with Jewish law and God's commandments, you know, you're a

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Jewish atheist because at least you're in conformity with what the standards are and the commandments are.

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And, you know, a hundred percent, yeah, sure you could do that, but it's inconsistent. And of course, Ben sees the inconsistency there.

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Like the atheist is just borrowing from scripture in order to live a life that is in conformity with justice and righteousness and God's statutes.

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Ben recognizes, of course, the inconsistency in the foundations that the atheist is appealing to.

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But here's what's really, really important to recognize is that according to the scriptures, there is none righteous.

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No, not one. None righteous. No, not one. None who does good. All have turned aside.

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They've all gone astray. Now I'm quoting from the old Testament here. I'm quoting from the scriptures that Ben actually agrees with.

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These are the words of God. These are the revealed words of God. And so actually the problem or the distinction between Christianity and Judaism isn't really about works versus faith alone, because actually the entire argument of the

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New Testament is that it's all of grace. It is all faith in God through what he does in Messiah.

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It is all a gracious gift of God. But if it's a true faith and if you truly are in Christ and truly are saved, then you will desire to obey

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God because that's what God promised he was going to do in the Old Testament. Ezekiel 36.

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I'll just lay this down at the beginning of this because it's vitally important. Ezekiel 36 is from the

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Old Testament. These are scriptures that both Jews and Christians agree are the words of God.

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In Ezekiel 36, it actually says that one of the promises of the New Covenant was that God was going to put his spirit within people.

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He was going to cause them to observe his statutes. He was going to cleanse them from all their idols.

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The promise was Jeremiah 31, that God was going to put his spirit within people.

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He was going to write his law within them and that they would be careful to observe his statutes because now it would go from stone tablets outside of the people of God, applying pressure from the outside, to now

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God was going to do something spirit wrought within the people of God where that law would be written on the tablets of their hearts.

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So this idea that it's works and actions based versus faith based is actually a false dichotomy.

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It's just it's not true. It's not an accurate representation of true Christian faith and what the

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Jewish writers of the New Testament said about the faith. Because Jesus, let's be clear,

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Jesus said, if you love me, obey me. And the Great Commission, actually the final words in Matthew's gospel,

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Matthew 28, 18 through 20, when Jesus claims to have accomplished all that God gave him to do, when he claims to now have all authority in heaven and on earth, he says to his disciples, these are their marching orders.

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So here's the Jewish Messiah giving now the disciples the marching orders in consistency with Daniel 7, 13 through 14,

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Isaiah 9, 6 through 7, all the promises of what God was going to do, bringing all the tribes, tongues, peoples, languages, and nations to God.

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He says to his disciples, go now and get the nations, disciple them.

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And what does he say? Teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. So discipleship, of course, bringing people to God, teaching them to obey the laws of God.

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And of course, Jesus comes in, and he is very clear, abundantly clear in the

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Sermon on the Mount. Contrary to what's being suggested here about the Christian faith,

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Jesus says in Matthew 5, in the Sermon on the Mount, he says, do not even begin to think.

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Do not think. In the Greek, it says, don't even let it into your mind.

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Don't even begin to think that I have come to abolish the law of the prophets. I have not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them.

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And he says that if anybody teaches anyone to disobey even the least of these commandments, they'll be called least in the kingdom of heaven.

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But whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. So this idea that Judaism is concerned with the actions, doing good works, and obeying

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God, and Christianity is just about faith is something that is, honestly, it's a fiction. It is not consistent with what the

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New Testament record written by Jewish apostles and believers says.

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And it's, of course, not consistent with Orthodox Christian faith. Now, mind you, I will grant this to Ben. And if I was sitting in front of him right now,

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I would say this. I grant Ben that today you can find aberrant

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Christian theology in the West, like you would also find it in Judaism. I'm sure that Ben thinks that there are people who say they are

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Jews and they're not. There's aberrations even there. But can you find

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Christians today, professing Christians today in the West, giving you some sort of idea that the law of God is defunct and it's no longer relevant?

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And we're just about this professed faith commitment, and that's all there is. Sure, you can find them.

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And they're not Orthodox. They're not biblical. They're not representative of what

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Christianity has taught. And to make this point, let me just say this, and I'll go into the next part of the video here.

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To make this point, when the apostle Paul, who was of the tribe of Benjamin, as to the law, he was a

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Pharisee, the highest school of law in Judaism in the first century, most conservative, rigorous commitment to the law.

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He was trained in a Gamaliel. He knows the Jewish law. When he says that this is all a gift of God's grace in terms of redemption and forgiveness in Christ, when he says that, he then goes on to say, after saying that it's always been through faith for Abraham, David, all the prophets, that's how people are justified before God.

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He then makes the argument in Romans 3 .31, do we then make void the law through faith?

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So that's the question, right? Is it just about faith, or is it about law keeping? Is it about the commandments and actually doing the commandments, or is it just about faith?

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Paul, a Jew who believes in Jesus as Mashiach, says, do we then make void the law through faith?

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And he says, he says, actually, we established a law because we have faith in Jesus, because it's a fulfillment of all that God has said he was going to do in the world.

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We actually established a law. We are about good works because there's a new heart, because there's a new birth that God promised in the

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Old Testament. Ezekiel 36, that God was going to, the new birth regeneration, he was going to cleanse, he was going to regenerate.

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And that's what Jesus promised, you must be born again. And that's what happens in the gospel. So I think that it's a bit of a fiction here to portray the distinction between Judaism is about actually obeying

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God's commands, and Christianity is just about faith. I think that that's not accurate. The idea of Christ on earth was that he had ushered in the messianic era, because this was, it was a new era, it was a new day.

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And then it turns out that people looked around, they went, well, this looks a lot like the old day, right? Not that much has changed. Did it? This is an important one.

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And I want to say to this question about Jesus coming in and fulfilling the messianic prophecies, this is the singularly most important thing to address.

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Did Jesus actually fulfill those prophecies? And we can't do everything in this short video today, but I'd love to have a face -to -face conversation with Ben to talk about some of these things.

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Did Jesus actually fulfill the messianic prophecies? Did he come as planned and on time?

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And so when we talk about Jesus coming in, in Daniel chapter nine, there's actually a prophecy about when

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Mashiach is going to come into the world, when he's going to come into his ministry and what's going to be accomplished.

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And in Daniel chapter nine, it promises some things that are going to take place in the Messiah's ministry.

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There's going to be atonement for iniquity. He's going to make an end of sin. He is going to bring in righteousness.

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And there's so many promises there related to redemption and that whole redemptive story about Mashiach, but it says that he's going to come and be cut off.

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And you can do a word study on this. He's going to come and do, he's going to die a violent death. And then it says that the second

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Jewish temple is going to be destroyed. When Daniel nine is written, there is no second Jewish temple.

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Okay. So it's prophesying that there will be a second Jewish temple and that Mashiach is going to come and accomplish all the promises of redemption, including atonement for iniquity.

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And then he's going to be a cut off. And then the second Jewish temple is going to be destroyed.

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So related to Ben's point here, and I'll just make this singular point. There's so many prophecies we can go through, but related to Ben's point here, when he says, you know, they're claiming that Jesus came and then, you know, he brought in this, this, this messianic kingdom, but then people looked around and goes, well, everything looks the same.

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Is that really true? Were the Jews of the first century really looking around saying everything looked the same?

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Because Jesus, when he arrived, had warned them that before that generation all passed away, that their temple was going to be taken apart stone off of stone.

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It was going to be destroyed before they all died. And so I don't believe it's accurate to say that the

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Jews of the first century actually learned, looked around after the ministry of life and death and resurrection of Jesus.

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And after that temple was destroyed, that they looked around and said, well, it all looks the same. I would say to Ben, very respectfully,

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Ben, where's your temple? Where's your temple today? Um, where, where are the sacrifices?

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Where's the, where's the priests? Um, what about the day of atonements? Um, Leviticus 16.

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That's something that God prescribed for the Jewish people in terms of portraying for them, the need for a substitute and a sacrifice because of, of sin and iniquity.

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Hey, what's up guys. This is pastor Jeff Durbin. Thank you for watching collision. We wanted to provide a solid resource to help you to respond to anything coming into collision with the

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Christian worldview. There's more as a response to this video and others at apologies, all access at apologia studios .com.

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