“Nazi antisemitism… could never have arisen without the Christian past, of which it was the secularized offspring... The lesson of the Holocaust has not been learned.” (p.xxii)

“The people of Europe had been taught by the Church that “the Jews” were bad because they had killed Christ, rejecting the divine revelation he brought. The conviction that Jews were bad was instilled in every Christian child at an early age… Even when, in adult life many of these children abandoned the Christian dogma of their upbringing, they were seldom able to rid themselves of a deep conviction that Jews were bad and not to be trusted…As a result of this millennial conditioning [they] always knew without being told that Jews were bad.”

“Hitler had a Catholic childhood, and indeed (like several of his closest associates) he died still nominally a Catholic, paying his church taxes and technically in good standing, never having been excommunicated.” (p. 348)

“We are now in a position to see clearly that the Nazi onslaught on the Jews was the ultimate expression of a much older hate, transmitted from generation to generation, and by this time altogether unrestrained by Christian limits. But this hatred of, or at least indifference to, Jews was not confined to the Nazis, though it reached its extremity in them. It was endemic in the Western world. It influenced not only the perpetrators but the spectators as well, and it continues to influence the reaction of the Christianized world to events decades later.” (p.351)

Turning to anti-Judaism in terms of Christianity Nicholls is no more optimistic than Ruether in the possibility of excising anti-Judaism from Christian scripture and theology:

“If Jesus was indeed God incarnate, it follows that in becoming a believing and observant Jew God must have validated Judaism for all time against its religious rivals, including Christianity. This is not a contradiction the Christian mind can tolerate.” (p.427)

“Today, the task for Christian theologians is to rethink from the foundations up the relationship of Christianity to Jesus, and to Judaism, the religion of Jesus. This course is most risky, for Christianity may not survive it.” p.429)

Chapter One: A Christian Introduction to Christendom’s Jewish Problem