The Israel Matter

As I write this blog on a snowed-in Sunday, the war between Israel and Hamas centered in Gaza has hit the 100-day mark.  The death toll, including vast numbers of children, is beyond devastating.  But in this time some of us have witnessed a recurrence of a perennial theological confusion among many in the church, including in traditions like the Reformed one whose theology is solid on precisely this point.  But some of us have heard pastoral prayers in worship services praying about the war but largely leaving prayers for the Palestinians out.

Instead the prayers are for Israel.  “Dear God, be with your chosen people, Israel.  O God, we know Israel is close to your heart.”  Of course, what needs to be pointed out is that the chosen people of Israel has now become the New Israel of the Church.  As Matthew more than the other evangelists worked hard to point out, that New Israel is now transnational and includes all people (Matthew is careful to include four foreign-born women in Jesus’s family tree and brings the Persian Magi in as the first to honor the incarnate Son of God).  The Church is what Paul calls at the very end of the Letter to the Galatians “the Israel of God.” 

But ever since 1948 Israel came into existence after World War II and particularly in the wake of the horrors of the Holocaust, this has been a point of fundamental confusion for many Christians.  Some from the more dispensationalist theological camp have it all worked out in terms of how a political Israel now will somehow be a key player when the end comes and Christ returns.  Many of us disagree with dispensationalism but at least they are up front about why they think support of Israel is theologically and biblically necessary.  Israel has to exist or the End Times cannot come as they are supposed to.

Before I go any further in this blog let me be clear: the political nation of Israel founded in 1948 has, as a sovereign country, the right to defend itself.  The October attack by Hamas was a wanton attack of terrorism and was brutal in slaying men, women, and children who were doing no more than going about their daily lives.  Israel had to respond.  But yes, there has been a sad track record of how Israel displaced and has subsequently treated the Palestinians who had been living there for centuries.  And lest we forget, many of the Gazans and other Palestinians who have been killed are sisters and brothers in Christ with whom we share a bond of faith in ways we do not with Jewish people who have not accepted Jesus as the Messiah.  How can we fail to pray for our fellow Christ followers in our worship services?

Back to the larger point, however: people in the Reformed tradition (and any tradition that does not subscribe to dispensationalism) should know better than to treat the modern nation of Israel as “the chosen people” in ways that ignore how in Christ a New Israel has been formed.   Some call this “replacement theology” or some kind of supercessionism.   But it is not precisely either of those things.  The New Israel builds on and includes many from Ancient Israel—many of the earliest Christians still saw themselves as Jewish but with a major added dimension to their faith and relationship with God.  The Church is not a replacement or a displacement but the next stage of God’s fulfilling his Genesis 12 promise to Abram that through his descendants all nations of the earth would be blessed, all nations would be included in the covenant.  The New Israel is a continuation of Ancient Israel.

It’s easy to see how this confusion, this eliding of Old and New, happens.  My preaching students have to be mindful of this whenever they preach from the Old Testament and particularly the Prophets.  Hermeneutically and homiletically preachers need to understand and keep at the forefront of their hearts and minds the proper connections between the Old Testament and the New Testament, the theology of Promise and Fulfillment, lest language about “Israel” in Scripture get misapplied.

Probably nowhere does the agonizing struggle of differentiating Old Israel and New Israel get displayed better than in Romans 9-11.  Paul loves his Jewish heritage and his fellow Jews.  And like Paul, many had embraced Jesus of Nazareth as the Christ of God after all.  But not all did.  And what of them?  Paul is tortured by this question.  He cannot countenance their being erased from the covenant but knows that a rejection of God’s Christ has consequences.  Big ones.  Yet he prays earnestly that somehow, some way, some day all Israel will be saved.  But in the end Paul can only hope.  He cannot know the mysteries of God’s plans and so long about the time his three-chapter-long tortured argument with himself on these matters comes to a climax, Paul just stops and sings a doxology.  “For from him and through him and for him are all things. To him be the glory forever! Amen.”  (When your theology hits a wall, just sing!)

If we are to share Paul’s hope that somehow, some way the people of “Israel” (broadly defined and not a political-only Israel) may yet be saved in Christ Jesus the Lord, then we need to do so keeping it straight as to who is the New Israel now and who is not.  To think otherwise and so to confuse and mix up our “Israels”–while at the same time in this difficult moment of war failing to pray for fellow Christians caught up in the conflict–is something we all need to guard against.

Again, this is difficult.  A pastor friend contacted me last month and wondered if even a line like “and ransom captive Israel” needed to be explained correctly before singing “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” in Advent since many people might be thinking of “captive Israel” as the folks led by Benjamin Netanyahu.  And there are lots of songs about Zion and such that can contribute to leading people to theological errors.  There is work that needs to be done on this.  And it may be the case that there is no quick and easy way to straighten all this out.  But we do our best.