One of the things that I and my family have observed in recent months is the rise in churches and Christians accepting and teaching replacement theology (a.k.a supersessionism) or its close cousin, fulfillment theology. Unfortunately for us, this problem didn’t arise because of something we saw on the impersonal world of the internet, but in our home church, where we’ve become more aware of its influence elsewhere. Thus, since this has become such a hot button topic in the church, I figured I should jump in and give my two cents.
But what are these two views? To start with, replacement theology is the belief that the church has replaced Israel as God’s chosen people with Christ superseding the Mosaic Covenant, because the Jews rejected God too much, prompting Him to reject them. Some verses used to justify this view are Galatians 3:29, Galatians 6:16, Romans 9:6-8, Romans 11: 17-24, Matthew 21:43, 1 Peter 2:9-10, and Hebrews 8:8-13 amongst others.
Fulfillment theology, on the other hand, is an offshoot of replacement theology that takes it one step further, claiming that not only did the church take over Israel’s role of being God’s covenanted people, but that Jesus also fulfilled all the promises to Israel. To quote the Pastor’s Heart Column from my church, which sums this up perfectly:
“For the past few weeks, I’ve been explaining the Bible’s own method of interpretation, which is to see Jesus Christ as the fulfillment of everything God promised in the Old Testament. This includes the nation of Israel itself, and I suggested that even the Land Promise is included in this arrangement. Jesus, as the True Israel, inherits the Promised Land and then gives it to His people as God originally promised. […] Jesus now rules over the whole earth, and He intends for His kingdom to press into every corner. It’s a fulfillment far greater than Israel ever would have anticipated. Yet God was simply being faithful to give them what the Land Promise always foreshadowed.”
If you’re smacking your head in disappointment too, good for you. You’re also picking up on what’s wrong with these views.
While I think most of us can agree that being part of ethnic Israel will not get you into heaven (you can only get there by faith in the grace of God through Christ), this does not mean that the church has replaced Israel, nor is that the argument that Paul or any of the other apostles were making. Though verses from Romans are taken and used out of context to support this aberrant view of Israel, a contextual reading of Romans chapters 9-11 make it very clear that Israel isn’t being replaced by the church. In fact, God still has a plan for preserving Israel and saving a “remnant” of them. Romans 11:1-6 says:
I ask then: Did God reject his people? By no means! I am an Israelite myself, a descendant of Abraham, from the tribe of Benjamin. 2 God did not reject his people, whom he foreknew. Don’t you know what Scripture says in the passage about Elijah—how he appealed to God against Israel: 3 “Lord, they have killed your prophets and torn down your altars; I am the only one left, and they are trying to kill me”[z]? 4 And what was God’s answer to him? “I have reserved for myself seven thousand who have not bowed the knee to Baal.”[aa] 5 So too, at the present time there is a remnant chosen by grace. 6 And if by grace, then it cannot be based on works; if it were, grace would no longer be grace.
This directly refutes the replacement/fulfillment position, but let’s go back to Romans 9, specifically, Romans 9:27-28, in which Paul quotes Isaiah:
27 Isaiah cries out concerning Israel:
“Though the number of the Israelites be like the sand by the sea,
only the remnant will be saved.
28 For the Lord will carry out
his sentence on earth with speed and finality.”
This is important to understand because Isaiah did not exist during the time of Christ or the early church. In fact, he lived 700-750 years before Christ. This means that when he references the remnant of Israel being saved, he is not referring to the church. He is referring to the nation of Israel. But it’s not just Isaiah that speaks of a remnant of Israel being saved. Jeremiah speaks of it in Jeremiah 23:3, 7-8; 3:18; Jeremiah 31:7-8, and Jeremiah 16:14-15 (which were fulfilled in 1948 with the establishment of Israel as a nation). Micah also speaks of a remnant in Micah 2:12, 5:7-8; Zechariah in Zechariah 8:1-6, and Ezekiel in Ezekiel 6:8-10, 9:8 and 11:13. These all have in mind a national Israel, not one in which the church has replaced it. The only way I could see anyone justifying the replacement view in this light is if they were to say that it only applied to the exiles at the time, but this still does not answer for the verses in Jeremiah that refer to Israel returning from exile to the promised land, something that didn’t happen until relatively recently.
Understanding the view that the Old Testament writers had also sheds a light on Revelation, which builds on Old Testament end-times prophecy and speaks consistently about a remnant of Israel being preserved. To try to spiritualize Israel in this light as being a metaphor for the church not only makes Revelation completely nonsensical, but it also ignores everything that God had told the prophets earlier by default. If the replacement view is true, then we simply must ignore everything about a remnant of Israel existing because to bring it up within the context of the church makes no sense. While there are certainly people in the church whose salvation could be held in question, if we agree that everyone is saved through faith in the grace of God through Christ, then what is this remnant that’s just floating around? Is Jesus metaphorically missing a toe? A tooth? A finger? What is it? The only way it could make sense is if it’s referring to national Israel finally coming back to God.
Replacement theology becomes even dumber when it goes down the branch of fulfillment theology, saying that Jesus fulfilled all the promises to Israel. While it’s true that Jesus fulfilled the Law and some of the promises foreshadowed His coming and, to an extent, His kingdom, Jesus isn’t a land. Many of the promises made to Israel revolve around the land. Trying to skew this to mean something about Jesus and the church requires such a complex mental gymnastics routine that while I’ll give you the gold for talent, I’ll also be asking “Why?” (Hence the thumbnail).
Replacement/fulfillment theology also does something else, and that is it makes a joke of God’s character. God gave very specific promises to Israel about the land, what would come from them, etc. While it is true that Jesus fulfilled quite a bit of that and that they do foreshadow certain things, if you’re basically saying that Israel no longer matters because the church is here, then what does that say about God’s character? Basically, you’re saying that God made a promise, but changed His mind and flushed it down the toilet when it was convenient. That doesn’t line up at all with the God of the Bible’s character. To say that Israel, as the new church, has inherited greater blessings than Abraham could’ve ever imagined is something that also slanders God, as it ignores the last two thousand years of Jewish history, especially the history of what the Christian church unfortunately put them through. This view then opens up some major contradictions and plot holes within the Biblical text itself, calling into question the inerrancy of the Bible, and totally undermining the main tenants of what we as Christians believe, which not only destroys churches, but also destroys faith.
Obviously, this is just scratching the surface of the larger iceberg of why replacement/fulfillment theology is stupid. I am not an expert is systemic theology. However, for more reasons why it’s a dumb doctrine, I would direct you to these two videos embedded below.
Until next time,
M.J.
The Tanuki Corner 