I was fortunate to have learned about the continuity of entire Bible throughout my childhood, and about how the events and stories of the New Testament are fulfilments of the prophecies and promises chronicled in the Old Testament – it’s one ongoing story, not two disconnected ones. The Jewish heritage and identity of Christ was also always mentioned, and was a topic explored deeply throughout books like “Jesus and the Jewish Roots of the Eucharist”. However, I enjoyed being directed to read Nostra Aetate in this course, because I had not really encountered supercessionism (either for or against it) in the past. The Jewish roots of my Catholic faith were obvious, but the specific question of whether God had transferred His covenant with the Jews, to the Christians, was never asked and therefore never answered. Reading the explicit “God holds the Jews most dear for the sake of their Fathers; He does not repent of the gifts He makes or of the calls He issues…” in the encyclical was very clarifying.
