It is obvious that differing views exist within the Church concerning the theological place and role of the Jewish people, their right to live in their ancient homeland and their relationship to the Hebrew scriptures in light of the New Covenant.
One widespread view pervading most Christian denominations is that the Church has supplanted the biblical role of Israel in the purposes of God.
The Church is thus viewed as ‘spiritual Israel’ and ‘spiritual Jerusalem’. The biblical prophecies, promises and blessings given to Israel now belong to the Church while Israel and the Jewish people retain the curses and judgments and/or are now theologically irrelevant.
These ideas are popularly known as ‘Replacement Theology’ or supercessionism, a set of beliefs which date back to the 1st Century AD and the break between Jewish and Gentile Christianity.1 As will be shown, Replacement Theology is based on departures from both the scriptures and history. The following outlines the six major errors of thinking from whence Replacement Theology arises.
1. Israel Used and Discarded
Replacement Theology contends that the Jewish people were used to prepare the way for the Messiah, but with Jesus’s coming, this particular period of salvation history came to an end and the Church became the new expression of God’s election and saving power.
In the extreme, this view is used to preface the argument that as the Jews rejected Jesus, God has now rejected them. They have forfeited the scriptures and the prophets, which are now the property of the Church (as the Church’s first apologist, Justin Martyr, argued in the 2nd Century). They have ‘lost’ the covenants (according to the popular apocryphal ‘Gospel of Barnabas’, written around 130 AD). The Jewish people have no destiny, no elective distinction, no calling and no future.
In this view, we should no longer speak of the Jews in terms of salvation history. Jews who live in Israel are Israelis, Jews in America are Americans, Jews resident in France are French, and so on. The only way a Jew has any distinct theological relevance is if he accepts Jesus as personal Saviour and becomes a member of the Church.
Replacement Theology is based on departures from both the scriptures and history.
Yet Paul commences his discourse on the Jewish people and their salvation in Romans 9-11 with the clear statement, “Did God reject his people? By no means!” (Rom 11:1)! And in the New Testament, the term ‘Israel’ is used on 79 occasions - in every case to refer to the physical people of Israel and never as a substitute term for the Church. The expressions ‘New Israel’ and ‘Spiritual Israel’ cannot be found within the New Testament.2
To bolster itself scripturally, Replacement Theology must insist that all biblical prophecies about Israel have already been fulfilled. Thus, it insists that passages such as Isaiah 11:11-12, Isaiah 43:4-8; Jeremiah 23:3-8, Jeremiah 31:7-11, Jeremiah 32:37-42; Ezekiel 11:17-19, Ezekiel 20:41-42, Ezekiel 36:16-38 and Zephaniah 3:19-20 were fulfilled following the return from the Babylonian exile in the 6th Century BC. But this interpretation is a misreading.
For example, only a representation of the southern tribes of Benjamin and Judah returned to the land, along with a number of priests and Levites (the number of returnees was somewhere between 15,000 and 55,000 (Neh 7:8f; Ezra 8:1f). The prophecies of restoration concern all the tribes and speak of their regathering from “the four quarters of the earth” (Isa 11:12). A straightforward reading of Scripture builds an expectation of a second exile following that to Babylon (this time all around the world) and a second return (this time of all the tribes). The weight of history, of course, supports this claim.
2. Occupiers of Palestine
A second stream of Replacement Theology is not based so much in theology as in a misunderstood, misread or revisionist history of the Arab-Israeli conflict which is dragged into the theological arena under the guise of ethics and justice. In this schema, the Jews are evil oppressors who have no right to the land – while the Palestinian people have the primary moral claim on Christians.
A central problem with this approach is that it is selective and based on a very partial, warped understanding of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Another problem is that it applies the notion of justice in a secular fashion and not by biblical standards.
To bolster itself scripturally, Replacement Theology must insist that all biblical prophecies about Israel have already been fulfilled.
3. Israel Not Relevant…Yet
A third stream of Replacement Theology is eschatological (i.e. concerning the end times) and arises out of the doctrine of ‘dispensationalism’. Briefly, this doctrine originated in the 1880s and early 1900s from JN Darby, CI Scofield and other Christian clergymen. It proposes that there are seven dispensations of God’s dealings with mankind. We are living in the sixth dispensation, the seventh being when Jesus returns. In this scheme of things, the Jewish people return to the land and find salvation after the Second Coming.
To uphold this teaching, the scriptures are divided into three groups: those for the Church, those for the Jews and those for unbelieving Gentiles. The Scofield Bible lets the cat out of the bag with its chapter heading for Isaiah 40, ‘God comforts his Church’, whereas the passage specifically applies to the nation of Israel.
4. Abrahamic Covenant Obsolete
Replacement Theology’s fourth strand is an essential misunderstanding of the biblical concept of ‘covenant’. A covenant is far more than a handshake agreement. Covenants were for the safety and protection of participants. God’s covenants with his people called for exclusive worship and obedience in exchange for their protection and blessing.
His covenant with Abraham concerning the land was eternal, as is indicated (not least) in Psalm 105. The Davidic Covenant, some 1,000 years later, did not replace the Abrahamic Covenant but simply added to it. The New Covenant, first introduced not in the New Testament but in Jeremiah 31, replaces the Mosaic covenant – but not the Abrahamic, nor the Davidic.
Indeed, the New Covenant is directed first to the Jews, even though Gentiles were to benefit from it. As British scholar John Wilkinson pointed out over 100 years ago (long before Israel became a nation again), the Gentiles were never meant to monopolise the spiritual blessings in Christ – only to partake of them.
The Gentiles were never meant to monopolise the spiritual blessings in Christ – only to partake of them.
5. Blessing for the Church, Judgment for the Jews
Another assertion concerns the twin concepts of judgment and blessing in prophecy. Nearly all biblical prophecy contains these two elements operating in concert with each other. Supporters of Replacement Theology fall into the same error as the early Church Fathers by separating these two elements of prophecy rather than leaving them co-joined, as originally intended.
In this thinking, all the Bible’s blessings and promises are allocated to the Church, which should now be considered as Israel, while all the judgments are retained or directed to the Jewish people and the nation of Israel, who are outside the scope of any spiritual blessing.
But for a prophecy to find its authentic fulfilment, it must, in most cases, be realised within the community towards which it was originally directed. Prophecies concerning the land of Israel and the Jewish people cannot simply be removed from their context and reapplied en bloc elsewhere. And in the same way that the promises are to be realised in the land, the judgments will also be enacted in the land, or against the people group to whom the judgments were made.
6. Anti-Semitic Impulse
Replacement Theology’s sixth strand is less the result of distorted Bible teaching or ignorance than plain old anti-Semitism, often very thinly disguised. An example is South Africa's Anglican Church using denial of modern Israel's link with the people of the Bible to justify support of the anti-Semitic BDS campaign (see 'Blind Guides' elsewhere in this week's edition).
Modern Christian anti-Semitism is usually shrouded in left-wing anti-Zionism, which many have noted shades all too easily into and covers for age-old anti-Semitic tropes and conspiracy theories.
But when we turn to the scriptures we find a very different picture. The burden of the prophets is the return of the Jewish people to the land of Israel by grace, there to be reconciled to God in the Messianic Kingdom. Passages such as Jeremiah 32:37-41, Jeremiah 33:24-26 and Ezekiel 36:16f express this burden most lucidly.
In conclusion, those who hold that God is not faithful to, or capable of fulfilling, his word to Israel have a theology built on sand.
For scriptures used to support Replacement Theology and also its refutation, see Words from the Scroll of Fire, Father Forgive Us and Within the Pale by Fred Wright, available online and by contacting Ezra UK.
Fred Wright and his wife Maria have worked with the Jewish people, with emphasis on their return, for the past 33 years. Fred is considered a pioneer and leading authority in the study of Christian anti-Semitism and post-Auschwitz theology. He now serves as advisor to Ezra UK.
Notes
1 Replacement Theology actually goes back even farther than this, to the Second Temple period (from 400 BC to 70 AD) and the failure of the Second Jewish Revolt against Rome in 135 AD, when different Jewish groups were asking the question, ‘Who is the true Israel?’ internally of their own people. The matter of Israel’s right to the land was not really an issue until the 20th Century, when the idea of a national Jewish homeland began to emerge as a reality.
2 The one reference which is sometimes cited is Romans 9:5, where Paul uses the expression “the Israel of God”. But in view of the fact that ‘Israel’ never refers elsewhere in Scripture to the Christian Church, it is far wiser to interpret this passage as referring to the body of Jews who believe in Jesus. A believing Jew is a member of two covenant peoples – the Church and Israel.
