future of Israel as a theological question, The

Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, Sep 2001 by Blaising, Craig A

My topic for this address is "The Future of Israel as a Theological Question."1 We may rephrase the topic in the form of a question: Are there theological reasons to believe that Israel has a future? And if so, what does it mean theologically to speak of a future for Israel? That is, what are the theological implications of Israel having a future in the plan of God? Or, how does the affirmation of a future for Israel affect other beliefs in an evangelical systematic theology?

I need to clarify at the outset what I mean by "Israel." I am using the term Israel in its primary sense, which designates the descendants of Jacob as an ethnic, cultural, and national entity. So, the question about the future of Israel is a question about the national future of the descendants of Jacob. Let me also clarify that I am not asking about the future prospects of the present state of Israel or of any of the main forms of Judaism. I am asking the deeper question, whether in Christian theology there is a future for any ethnic, national Israel at all. From a theological standpoint, does such an Israel have a future, and if so, what is it?

1. SUPERSESSIONISM

The traditional answer through the history of the Christian Church has been, no. If you mean by Israel the actual descendants of Jacob and if you are asking about their ethnic, cultural, and political future, then, no, they do not have a future except to linger on earth like refugees until the end of time as a witness to divine judgment. Why? Because God has disinherited them as a punishment for their rejection of Jesus, and he has replaced them with a new Israel, the Gentile Church.

This traditional answer to the question of Israel's future is what is known as supersessionism. Israel has been replaced or superseded by the Gentile Church. Supersessionism first arose after the suppression of the Bar Kochba revolt in AD 135. It was expressed in the writings of second-century Christians, such as Justin Martyr and Melito of Sardis, and also in the Letter of Barnabas.2 It quickly spread to become the prevailing viewpoint of the Christian Church.

R. K. Soulen, in his work The God of Israel and Christian Theology, suggests that we understand supersessionism in three types.3 First, there is punitive supersessionism, which says that God has rejected the Jews because of their rejection of Christ. The catastrophes Of AD 70 and AD 135 were the political expressions of a fundamental divine abandonment of Israel in punishment for her rejection of Christ. As a result, God has turned his back on the Jews and has embraced the Gentile Church in their place. More potent and far-reaching than punitive supersessionism, however, is economic supersessionism, which argues that the entire economy (or dispensation) of Israel from Sinai to Christ was designed by God as a transitory symbol or type of an eternal, spiritual religion revealed by Christ and embodied in Christianity. The nationalist, ethnic, physical defining features of Judaism are all, like the entire story of OT Israel, a carnal symbol divinely intended to pass away when God brought the eternal spiritual antitype, the Church, into being. Finally, Soulen notes, we pass on to the most deeply embedded form of supersessionism-structural supersessionism-in which Scripture is habitually read with the distinctly Jewish or Israelite elements of Scripture as a mere background to the Biblical story, which moves primarily from universal creation to universal consummation by way of universal sin and universal redemption. Israel per se is not really even in the main story of the Bible.4

Because of the fact that supersessionism is traditionally structured deeply into Christian thought, the question of a future for Israel is traditionally met with automatic rejection if not incomprehension. However, supersessionism lives in Christian theology today purely on the momentum of its own tradition. Developments in the twentieth century have undercut its supposed historical and Biblical bases.

Supersessionists believed that the catastrophes of AD 70 and 135 signaled God's intention to make a complete end of Israel as a political, national entity. The dramatic establishment of the state of Israel in 1948 under God's providence has belied that notion. Supersessionists developed ways of reading the Bible that not only eliminated Israel from the main story, but turned it into a symbol of the Gentile Church and the spiritual realities that characterized the Church's supposed future. They believed that the NT clearly set forth the spiritual religion of Christianity to which the OT covenants, promises, and narrative related as a symbol. Revisions to this supersessionist way of reading Scripture, however, began to appear as early as the seventeenth century as newly emerging millennial views began to argue for a future for ethnic, national Israel in the coming kingdom of Christ.5 In the late nineteenth century and throughout the twentieth century, belief in a future for Israel based on a literal rather than symbolic fulfillment of OT prophecy became more widespread through the impact of premillennialism.6 Finally, after the awful tragedy of the Holocaust, many Biblical scholars have reassessed the anti-Jewish bias by which Scripture has been read, with the consequences being a major shift of opinion on the NT expectation of a future for Israel. Key to this has been the development of a consensus regarding Paul's teaching in Romans 9-11 that there is indeed a future in the plan of God for Israel-not a redefined Israel, but ethnic-national Israel.7