Reformed Theology and Zionism
The Alternative to Dispensationalism is not Replacement Theology
I find it very disturbing that any time I advocate support for the Jewish people on X the only reason some people can imagine for me doing so is that I must be (consciously or unconsciously) a Dispensationalist. I also find it disturbing that so many younger pastors and theology students apparently think that being reformed in one’s theology should make one anti-Zionist and indifferent to, or even supportive of, the current tide of anti-Semitism engulfing the West. Let me explain why this is so disturbing from a theological perspective.
Implicit in this assumption is the idea that covenant theology justifies anti-Zionism. If the land promises are fulfilled in the eternal state (which is my view) some of these people seem to think that we must, therefore, be agnostic about Zionism and indifferent to whether the State of Israel continues to exist, at best, and actively hostile to Zionism and the State of Israel, at worst.
The Covenant is Eternal
My view is certainly the minority report for historic Protestantism, but it its roots go back centuries before Dispensationalism was invented. What I believe is that ethnic Jews are God's people and always will be. History is not over, and election is not finished being worked out in God’s providence. Jews should be respected and loved as the chosen people through whom have come the promises, the covenants, the law, the prophets, etc., as Paul says in Romans 9:1-5.
It is instructive to reflect on the fact that Paul says what he says here even though he himself has been beaten, rejected, and slandered by Jewish synagogue leaders in various cities. If anyone ever had a personal motivation to teach replacement theology, it would have been him. He knew by personal experience that most Jews in his day were rejecting their own Messiah and it grieved him. But it did not cause him to teach any form of supersessionism or replacement theology.
This Pauline philo-Semitism is the basis for my pro-Zionist views. The bedrock starting point is not Zionism, per se, but rather a love and regard for the Jewish people. The Jews have been treated horribly by Christendom for centuries and this has to be acknowledged as a blight on the gospel.
In the real world of the twenty-first century, we have a situation in which an irrational, demonic hatred of the Jewish people emanates from Islam, from Marxism, and from fascism, and it threatens to create the conditions necessary for a second holocaust. October 7, 2023 is a preview of what is coming if this tide of anti-Semitism is not pushed back. This is the historic situation we live in. It seems to me that a Christian West that permitted the Holocaust to occur should, at a minimum, be sympathetic to the idea of Jews building a Jewish state in their historic homeland. Why should a people with a three-thousand-year attachment to the city of Jerusalem and the land of Israel not have the right to build a Jewish nation in their land?
Zionism and Justice
The reflexive assumption that this is unjust to the Palestinian Arabs ignores two crucial facts. First, the Arabs conquered the land of Israel in the seventh century, so they do not have the same historic claim on the land as do the Jews, who were there 2000 years earlier. Second, most of the Jews have been open to living side by side with Arabs and others in the land in peace, but most of the Arab Palestinians have not. They have been and continue to be driven by a demonic and irrational hatred of the Jews and try to commit genocide of the Jews every chance they get. To be blunt, until this changes, they are to blame for all their own misfortunes. It is a cliché to say that “everyone wants peace in the Middle East,” but it is just not true. It should be, but it is not. And until it becomes true peace will not be possible.
Replacement Theology is Heresy
The mainstream church was sinful and wrong in teaching replacement theology, which became a justification for anti-Semitism in the context of Medieval Christendom. Not all guilt is false guilt. Some is real and it should be confessed, repented of, and dealt with in a healthy and realistic way. Christian support for Zionism is a positive way to address the problems bequeathed to us by history. This does not, in any way, negate the need to strive for a peace that is just to all.
But the issues of the conflict between Israel and its neighbours are complex and detailed discussion of the specifics are beyond the purpose of this short essay. Let me just say that Christian support of Zionism is not support for injustice in principle. It is a commitment to strive for justice and peace. What must be utterly rejected, however, is the idea that no just peace is possible without dismantling the Jewish state of Israel.
Replacement theology says the gentile church replaces ethnic Israel. One implication of replacement theology is that Jews who convert must, in effect, become non-Jewish. I have known Jewish converts who have done precisely this. To join the church, in many times and places in history, has meant becoming a gentile. This is not an accident. It is because replacement theology sees ethnic Israel, not as neutral, but as under God's curse. The destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70 is seen as God rejecting ethnic Israel and cursing it forever. In other words, the Book of Hosea comes with an expiration date and that date is AD 70. After that point, ethnic Jews are pariahs who should wander the earth as exiles as their punishment for not converting. This view can easily morph into the extreme view that Jews should be ostracized, persecuted, hated, and despised just because they are Jews.
Every time I enter Yad Vashem in Jerusalem I cringe when I note one of the very first signs that speaks of the role of the church in promoting anti-Semitism throughout church history. I always find it jarring and it hurts. But I do not deny the truth. It is simply impossible to maintain that replacement theology has not fed anti-Semitism historically. If the church had consistently spoken lovingly of the Jews (like Paul in Rom 9:1) and spoken hopefully for their future turning to Christ (like Paul in Rom 11:26), much anti-Semitism would have been mitigated. If you really think someone might in the future accept Christ, you don’t spit on him and treat him like dirt. Hope manifests itself in patience and longsuffering rather than anger and hate.
Dispensationalism is Not the Only Danger
I would suggest that the debate is not a two-way debate between Dispensationalism, on the one side, and historic Reformed theology, on the other. Instead, I would argue that it is really a three-cornered debate between Dispensationalism, historic Reformed Theology, and modern Liberalism. Liberal Protestantism is more dangerous than Dispensationalism and, in fact, much more of a temptation for upwardly mobile Evangelicals today.
Nineteenth-century German higher criticism is, historically, the ultimate culmination of replacement theology and manifested itself most fully in the German Christian movement of the 1930’s. It was shaped by and it fed into the worst of twentieth-century anti-Semitism, as seen both in the Nazi movement itself and also in the reluctance of much of the Western world to take in Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany as well. Anti-Semitism manifested itself in all of Europe and in North America, as well as other places, not just in Germany.
But, at the same time, it is no accident that Nazism arose in Germany. Many say it is hard to understand how the most scientifically advanced country in Europe fell for a pagan mythology. But there are complex historical reason why it makes sense that it did. As far back as Schleiermacher there was a desire to “unhitch from” the Old Testament and “de-Judaize” Christianity. The work of Eric Voegelin is important in helping us understand that ancient Gnosticism (in a modern form) made a comeback in Nazism. And Gnosticism is far worse than Dispensationalism.
Gnosticism detaches Jesus from history and makes him the symbol of whatever ideology or cult currently reigns in society. It eviscerates Christianity of its historical particularity and thus undermines the Incarnation. German higher criticism dissolved the special revelation of the Old Testament into the pagan mythology of the ancient Near East and reduced the status of biblical Israel to that of being just another nation. If biblical Israel is nothing special, why should modern Israel be of any importance? Liberal Protestantism provided the ultimate justification for anti-Semitism in that it detached Christianity from Israel altogether. To fall into this trap is to allow anti-Semitism to discredit the Gospel.
What we need is wisdom to avoid falling into liberal Protestantism in our desire to get past Dispensationalism, lest we end up incorporating Gnostic ideas into our theology without understanding what we are doing. Some younger pastors and students today seem to think that the only threat to orthodoxy is Dispensationalism. Wider knowledge of church history would reveal that there are several ways to go wrong on Israel, not just one.
Conclusion
We gentile Christians should honour and respect ethnic Jews and recognize that they do not need to erase their Jewishness and become gentiles to be saved. They simply have to recognize the Jewish Jesus as their own Messiah and thus become Messianic Jews. Messianic Jews and gentile Christians form one people of God - the children of Abraham. Paul’s teaching that the dividing wall has been broken down is enacted in the common confession that Jesus Christ is Lord, which makes us one body in Christ.
We should readily admit that Dispensationalism has had at least one good effect on Protestantism. It has tempered anti-Semitism and made conservative Protestants the most philo-Semitic people in Christendom. Being philo-Semitic is a good witness to Christ. Christians should not be known as the people who hate the Jews. Roman Catholics, Lutherans, Anglicans, and Reformed Protestants should humbly admit that Dispensationalists have shown love and support to a persecuted and despised people and have stood firm against a cultural consensus that despised them. Without ignoring the hermeneutical flaws in Dispensationalism, we should be generous enough to give credit where credit is due.