|
Supersessionism (also called Covenant theology by some, e.g. Messianic Jews, Nazarenes) is a belief that Christianity is the fulfillment and continuation of the Old Testament, and therefore that Jews who deny that Jesus is the Messiah fall short of their calling as God's chosen people. This view holds that racial and ethnic divisions and boundaries are ended in Jesus Christ, and faith in Him unites all peoples, tribes and tongues into one new body, which is God's chosen people. Thus, according to supersessionism, the Jews are either no longer considered to be God's chosen people solely based on ethnicity, or their proper calling is frustrated pending their acceptance of Jesus as the promised Messiah. The first view, a theory that the promises made to the Jews are invalid and that the Christian Church is chosen instead, was a theory promoted by Marcion of Sinope for example, who rejected the Hebrew Bible. Marcionism is not properly supersessionism, because it holds the old promises were never valid; yet, such a view, that the promises to the Jewish people have become invalid, is necessary for any theory that the Christian Church is chosen and that the Jews are not. Critics of a complete supersessionism theory, just mentioned, might reason that the chosenness of the Christian believers is based on promises made to Israel concerning Christ. As the argument goes, Christians are 'in Christ' only as beneficiaries of the promises to Abraham, fulfilled in Jesus (grafted into remnant Israel, in the language of Romans 11:17). If the Jews as a whole could be rejected, then the Church would be rejected, since the promises upon which the Church stands were first given to the Jews, and have become theirs only through the Messiah promised to Israel. However, if as Christians believe, the election of the Christian Church is not reversible, then neither is the election of Israel, which is its basis. Note that election, or chosenness, in this sense is not equivalent to "saved"; rather, it means that the group in a corporate sense is looked upon by God as my people, and that the living God is to them our God, with attendant responsibilities. More accurately, however, is that both faithful Jews and faithful Gentiles have been joined together as one, and partake of the fatness with each other, by faith through Jesus Christ. No one therefore, is replaced, but race is a non-factor, and belief and faith in Jesus Christ becomes the uniting determination of whom God's Chosen People are. The traditional form of supersessionism does not on its own terms theorize a replacement; instead it argues that unbelieving Israel has been superseded only in the sense that the Church has been entrusted with the fulfillment of the promises of which Jewish Israel is the trustee: Israel is forever the chosen trustee of the promises concerning the Messiah, and yet has presently rejected the Messiah; but the Church receives the promised Messiah, although it consists of Gentiles (who were not entrusted with the promises, nor bound by the obligations of Judaism), as well as Jews. On this account, supersessionists traditionally style the Christian Church containing both Jews and Gentiles as New Israel, and insist that Jesus is "the Way, the Truth, and the Life", superseding the ordinances of Judaism, which are regarded as merely types and shadows of Christ. On its own terms then, supersessionism is a fulfillment theology, as it were; but from the standpoint of adherents to Judaism, or proponents of the sufficiency of the ordinances of Judaism, it is reviled as often misunderstood as beingReplacement Theology. Yet at its core, no believing Jew is ever replaced, and any unbelieving Jew (like Judas Iscariot, or Herod, or Ahab, etc...) were never God's chosen to begin with, because they never followed God to begin with, and race alone to the exclusion of faith is not meritorious on its own behalf. This mainstream belief has served as the explanation for why believers in Christ need not become Jews in order to keep God's covenant (pejoratively called Judaizing, the issue was addressed at the Council of Jerusalem), and is also the rationale for urging the conversion of Jews to Christianity. However, over the past several centuries a growing number of Christians began to reject the belief that salvation is possible only through professed faith in Jesus Christ, thus rejecting supersessionism. Supersessionism has also lost strength among twentieth century Protestant evangelicals, especially in the US, through the influence of Dispensationalism - which posits that the Jews will inherit the promises concerning the Messiah in a future restoration, and in the meantime are the subject of God's favor as a people under the same terms that applied to them prior to the coming of the Messiah. Several liberal Protestant groups have formally renounced supersessionism, and affirm that Jews, and perhaps other non-Christians, have a valid way to find God within their own faith. Many fundamentalist Dispensational Christian groups, including conservative Evangelical Protestants renounce supersessionism; and yet also maintain that faith in Jesus Christ is the only way to God (citing usually John 14:6). Some few groups assert a theory that their group is the chosen people, rather than those who are called Jews - technically, these groups emphatically reject supersessionism, but they do so by adopting for themselves the identity of true Israel so that the Jewish people are in some cases regarded as false Israel (see for example, Anglo-Israelism, and Christian Identity).
Roman Catholicism Supersessionism was traditionally considered by the Roman Catholic Church to be its ex cathedra irreformable position on the relationship with post-Messianic Judaism. The Council of Florence of the 15th century solemnly defined, that "(...) and Jews (...) are damned to the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels" if they consciously and obstinately refuse to embrace the Catholic Christian Faith. The only logical explanation for this teaching then was, that Judaism of the Old Testament had been replaced by or rather transferred to the New Testament with its own law and sacred rites. In fact this is what Popes taught throughout all centuries. Pope Pius XII also re-affirmed this doctrine in his encyclical Mystici Corporis (June 29th, 1943), when he authoritatively taught, that "the New Testament took the place of the Old Law which had been abolished" and that "on the gibbet of His death Jesus made void the Law with its decrees fastened the handwriting of the Old Testament to the Cross, establishing the New Testament in His blood shed for the whole human race. 'To such an extent, then,' says St. Leo the Great, speaking of the Cross of our Lord, 'was there effected a transfer from the Law to the Gospel, from the Synagogue to the Church, from the many sacrifices to one Victim, that, as Our Lord expired, that mystical veil which shut off the innermost part of the temple and its sacred secret was rent violently from top to bottom.'" Pope Pius XII also clearly condemned the two-path approach dividing Gentile and Jew once again as in the Old Testament, when he taught, that "Christ, by His blood, made the Jews and Gentiles one 'breaking down the middle wall of partition...in His flesh' by which the two peoples were divided; and that He made the Old Law void 'that He might make the two in Himself into one new man,' that is, the Church, and might reconcile both to God in one Body by the Cross." Hereby Pope Pius XII doctrinally affirmed, that the Church was from the beginning established for the salvation of all people, both Jews and gentiles, thereby excluding the possibility of a two-path-approach for all Roman Catholics. In the 20th century, certain hierarchs of the Roman Catholic Church issued a number of theological position papers which appear to reject this concept outright, and affirm that the Torah is a valid path for Jews and Jewish proselytes to achieve salvation, that their covenant with God is still valid, and that the Jews of modern times are a direct unbroken continuation of the ancient Children of Israel. This view is not accepted by all Roman Catholic theologians, and it is rejected outright by traditional Catholics though it has been reaffirmed several times by various contemporary Catholic hierarchs. The Catholic Church no longer proclaims - according to some - Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus, supposedly subtly shifting, in the teaching of Pope John Paul II, to the axiom "Sine Ecclesia Nulla Salus"- that is, that although the presence of the Church in the world makes salvation possible, membership of the Church is by no means required in order for individuals to be saved. The Catholic Church however recently affirmed the necessity of Jesus for salvation in the declaration Dominus Iesus. However, although salvation comes from Christ, the teaching of the Church expressed in the Vatican II document Lumen Gentium is that those "who through no fault of their own do not know the Gospel of Christ or His Church, yet sincerely seek God and moved by grace strive by their deeds to do His will as it is known to them through the dictates of conscience" may by some extraordinary way achieve salvation - the conditions for which however are traditionally believed to be very strict and implying isolation and invincible ignorance. Furthermore, another Vatican II document Nostra Aetate, as well as the repeated comments of Pope John Paul II, according to some clearly repudiate supersessionism by insisting that the divine covenant which constitutes Israel as a nation remains permanently in force. However at the time of its approbation at Vatican II it was not understood as dispensationalist at all, mainly as affirming that the Old Testament's promise was never taken away, but was "perfected" in the New Testament religion and thus, that the Old Testemant had been transferred into the New Testament, while being abolished and void of salvification if taken only by itself. Restorationism Jewish restorationism is the belief of some Christians concerning the end times when they believe that certain Old Testament prophecies concerning Israel will be fulfilled in their return to their ancestral home, and ultimately in a large-scale conversion of the Jews to Christianity. Many conservative Christian groups anticipate a future time, when God will return his focus to the Jewish nation, whence a national conversion will take place where all or almost all Jews will miraculously convert to Christianity, citing the book of Romans chapter 11 and verse 26 which says: And so all Israel shall be saved: as it is written, There shall come out of Sion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob: (KJV) Usually those who hold this view note that it does not say every Israelite shall be saved (in Romans 11:26); the nation as a whole will be saved, just like the nation as a whole committed the unpardonable sin. It will still be up to individuals to accept the Gospel of the Kingdom or reject it, but the nation as a whole will be blessed, perhaps in the sense that its representative leadership is blessed. This hope of a "Jewish restoration" has an especially prominent place within dispensationalism. The distinctive dispensationalist scheme conceives of the Christian Church and the Church Age as primarily an arrangement through which God gathers in the Gentiles, a "parenthesis" in God's dealing with the Jews, which has been instituted because the Jewish people rejected the Messiah. Dispensationalists classically believe that the acceptance of Christ by the Jews will come about as a distinct group, after the age of the Christian Church. In other words, they believe that Jews are a permanent feature of God's plan, apart from the Christian Church; and it is in this sense that they "deny supersessionism". They nevertheless believe that the Jews are in need of conversion to Christianity, and this conversion will signal their "restoration" - unlike others who would use the language, "to reject supersessionism". Like the dispensationalists, some supersessionists commonly anticipate a momentous future conversion to the Church of the Jews, on the basis of Romans 11, especially verse 26. Dispensationalism's distinctive difference from the common view of this "mystery" is in its idea that the Church is primarily intended for the salvation of the Gentiles, and that the Jews have a separate destiny that cannot be fulfilled in the "church age". In the dispensationalist scheme, the Jewish restoration and acceptance of Christ will be as a people distinct from the Christian Church (which by that time will have ceased to exist on the earth, having been removed by a miracle called the Rapture). Most dispensationalists believe that 144 000 from the tribes of Israel, spoken of in the Book of Revelation, are either the literal or symbolic number of ethnic Jews who will be followers of Christ during the Great Tribulation. In the meantime, dispensationalists typically hold that the promise "I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse" (Genesis 12:3) has abiding reference to the Jewish people and the modern, political state of Israel. Such ideas are often used in support of Christian Zionism. Yet most non-Dispensationalists have held throughout church history, that the salvation of Israel is not postponed until the 2nd Coming as Dispensationalists speculate, but rather, as the Apostle Peter stated in Acts 2:36-39, the salvation of Israel has been occuring, and continues to occur throughout the New Testament Harvest period, and will be completed at the 2nd Coming. Covenant Theology Covenant theology, a dominant theological schema within historical Calvinism, has as one of its core teachings the idea that the covenant with the Old Testament nation of Israel is continued in the historical Christian church, and that most prophetic reference to a promised exaltation of Israel is fulfilled in the ascension of Jesus and in the Christian Church, and otherwise will be fulfilled in the endless age after Christ's return and the resurrection of the dead. It holds that God's original purpose was to create for himself one covenant people, which was to be found in the people of Israel in the years before Christ, and in the international church in the years after Christ. Adherents of this view cite Romans 9:6ff, 11:1-7 to substantiate their belief that only the elect of both covenants are God's chosen people — that even prior to Christ, not all who belonged to the nation of Israel were "children of the promise". So while unbelieving Jews are still considered "blessed" (because they have the Old Testament) they are, in the end, no different from unbelieving Gentiles in their position before God. Jesus Christ, not Jerusalem, and Immanuel not Israel becomes the true focal point. Race and Ethnicity are irrelevant to God, and faith in Christ becomes the key for all humankind. Relevant New Testament passages Trivia See also Notes | ||||||||
|
| |||||||||
 |
|
| |