Mark Kinzer

Mark Kinzer (born 1952) is an American Messianic Jewish clergy person, author, and theologian.

Biography
Mark Kinzer was born in Detroit, Michigan in 1952 to a Conservative Jewish family. He became a Messianic Jew in 1971.

He earned a Ph.D. in Near Eastern Studies in 1995 from the University of Michigan.

In 1997, Kinzer co-founded Hashivenu, a Messianic Jewish movement that seeks a more serious engagement with the Jewish intellectual tradition. Hashivenu advocates for engagement with post-Biblical Rabbinic tradition and discarding certain post-scriptural Christian writings deemed irrelevant. Kinzer has served as the chair of Hashivenu since 2000.

He was ordained as a rabbi by the Union of Messianic Jewish Congregations in 2001. Kinzer was one of the founding members of the Messianic Jewish Rabbinical Council in 2006.

Kinzer has taught at the University of Michigan, Michigan State University, and Fuller Theological Seminary. He is President-Emeritus and a Senior Scholar at the Messianic Jewish Theological Institute, a graduate and rabbinical school which he founded in 2002.

He is Rabbi Emeritus of Congregation Zera Avraham in Ann Arbor, Michigan, leading the congregation that he founded from 1993 to 2018.

Thought
Kinzer is an advocate for a Torah-observant Messianic Judaism engaged with Jewish tradition and heritage, as opposed to more evangelical strands.

In 2005, he published Post-Missionary Messianic Judaism: Redefining Christian Engagement with the Jewish People, which seeks to refute supersessionist theology. Kinzer coined the term “bilateral ecclesiology”, expressing the idea that the Church is made up of two distinct but united Jewish and Gentile bodies, as God's covenant with the Jewish people is everlasting and cannot be broken. Kinzer therefore argues Jewish law and practice is still binding for Jews. While believing in Jesus, Jewish people should maintain a separate religious and national identity without assimilation.

Kinzer is also known for his dialogue with the Catholic Church. He presented a paper at the Messianic Jewish-Roman Catholic Dialogue Group in Vienna in 2008 which was adapted into a First Things essay.

Kinzer's theology has been explored by Catholic priest Antoine Lévy in his 2021 book Jewish Church: A Catholic Approach to Messianic Judaism.

Works

 * Besorah: The Resurrection of Jerusalem and the Healing of a Fractured Gospel with Russell Resnik, Cascade Books, 2021
 * Jerusalem Crucified, Jerusalem Risen: The Resurrected Messiah, the Jewish People, and the Land of Promise, Cascade Books, 2018
 * Taming the Tongue, First Fruit of Zion, 2015
 * Searching Her Own Mystery: Nostra Aetate, the Jewish People, and the Identity of the Church, Cascade Books, 2015
 * Israel's Messiah and the People of God: A Vision for Messianic Jewish Covenant Fidelity, Cascade Books, 2011
 * Postmissionary Messianic Judaism: Redefining Christian Engagement with the Jewish People, Brazos Press, 2005