As Barth rightly argues, the Jewish people have been a non-people while at the same time the people of God throughout the millennia. Particularly after the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD, by Titus Vespasian of the Roman empire, the Jewish people strangely have wandered about throughout the nations, seemingly in a continued exile and disrepute, such that they are scorned; but mysteriously so. People don’t really understand why they are anti-Semitic versus being anti-Laotian, or against some other identifiable people group. There is something much deeper, much more spiritual to anti-Semitism than the profane mind could come to fathom. The Jewish people were unconditionally and freely chosen of God to mediate the Savior of the world to the nations. Their existence is not contingent upon their own inner-existence, but upon God’s continuing choice to uphold them as His elect people within their vocation to bring the Son of David, Jesus Christ to all the nations. That is to say, the Jewish people haven’t remained the enigmatic people that they are for all these years because of something “special” about them per se. They have remained a people, in spite of themselves, purely because God freely chose to covenant with them in a way that was as peculiar to them, as it was for Him to choose Mary to birth the Theanthropos into the world so that the world, including the Jews, might be saved. Barth says it like this:
. . . And from the standpoint of the Christian message the reason for this is that God’s decree in His election of this people and covenanting with it is an eternal unshakeable decree. The people was an unfaithful people. From the very first it willed to be a people of like others, to have a king and a history like others. But this could not alter the faithfulness of God, and it has not altered it right up to the present time. It was not altered even by the provisional judgments and finally the definitive judgment which in the year 70 ended its existence in identity, or at any rate similarity, without her peoples. . ..[1]
“for the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable.” –Romans 11:29
[1] Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics III/3 §49 [217] The Doctrine of Creation: Study Edition (London: T&T Clark, 2010), 219.