By John D. Spalding

Because evangelicals and Jews share values and a common heritage, they’ve successfully formed interfaith fellowship groups and coalitions around various social and political concerns. In such polite gatherings that are focused on common goals and interests, the two sides presumably avoid awkward discussions about things like the Messiah and the Trinity, or sin and salvation. I’m sure these get-togethers are cordial. Still, you have to wonder–or at least I wonder–how deep do the good feelings run?

Put it this way. Can, say, an evangelical pastor and a rabbi ever become real friends? I mean, the pastor will eventually either tell the rabbi he thinks his Hebraic brother or sister will burn in hell because he or she doesn’t know Jesus, at which suggestion the rabbi might understandably take offense, or the pastor will remain mum about his conviction, turning the whole matter into the elephant in the corner no one is talking about. What kind of friendship is that?

These questions are what make The Christian and the Pharisee, a new book by minister R.T. Kendall and Rabbi David Rosen, so fascinating. Published by FaithWords and subtitled, “Two Outspoken Religious Leaders Debate the Road to Heaven,” the book reproduces letters exchanged by the unlikely duo over the course of a year, discussing their religious differences.

In an example of what you can expect from the book, David Neff recently interviewed Kendall and Rosen for Christianity Today, evangelicalism’s flagship magazine. Neff describes the relationship of the two men as a “warm friendship,” but based on what I’ve read, I think “forced and intellectually unequally yoked” is more apt.

Clearly, Rosen’s grasp of Christianity far exceeds Kendall’s understanding of Judaism, and whereas Kendall is hell-bent on getting Rosen, who is the president of the International Jewish Committee for Interreligious Consultations, to heed the Holy Spirit and accept Christ, Rosen tries patiently to get Kendall to understand the paradigmatic differences between their beliefs.

Kendall often doesn’t seem to realize how simplistic and condescending he sounds. Take, for instance, his inane comment about Rosen, in Neff’s interview:

“When we started the book—don’t laugh—I wondered if he was a secret believer. I mean, his spirit is so great. I thought, You certainly do make Pharisees look a lot better.”

Jesus H. Where to begin? By a “secret believer,” of course, Kendall means he half-seriously suspected this rabbi of being a closet Christian. But he seems oblivious to the fact that his statement, however endearing to him, implies that Jews aren’t believers. Either that, or Kendall is oblivious to the fact that the non-believing Jew he’s referring to is sitting across the proverbial table from him. Even better, Kendall expresses surprise that a non-Christian can have a great spirit. If I were Neff, I’d have asked old R.T. just what kind of spirit he expected a Jewish rabbi to have.

To his credit, Rosen responded to Kendall with the patience of Job, commenting at one point:

“I want R. T. to be a good Christian. I don’t want him to change. I just want him to let me be a good Jew and to be satisfied that that’s my way to God and that God is very happy with me living the way I live.”

And just when you start to think, or hope, that Kendall might get Rosen’s point, the former minister of Westminster Chapel in London says to Rosen:

“… I pray for you every day. If I’m right, you will go to hell when you die, and I don’t want that. And so I want to do everything I can. Though you are adamant and lovingly hostile to all that I believe, remember that Saul of Tarsus was as well.”

To which Rosen replies:

“I wouldn’t call myself hostile. I just don’t understand what you’re talking about. But there is a history that could naturally lead to hostility. And certainly most Jews probably would be hostile to it.”

Then Kendall goes off about the blindness that has gripped Israel and that will be lifted prior to Jesus’ Second Coming “like a stack of dominoes falling all over the world, in New York and Miami Beach as in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, there will be a large-scale lifting of the blindness of Jews. It will be a sovereign work of the Holy Spirit.”

And these two guys are supposedly the best of pals? Hmm, I’m not sure I’d want to go on a hunting trip with them.

John D. Spalding is a contributing editor ofThe Revealer,editor ofSOMAreview.comand author of A Pilgrim’s Digress: My Perilous, Fumbling Quest for the Celestial City.