Has the Church Replaced Israel?
Every believer who reads the prophets meets the question sooner or later. God promised Israel a land, a King on David's throne, and a day when the nation would be cleansed and gathered home. Most of Israel rejected her Messiah, and the church today is made up mostly of Gentiles. What has become of the promises? Has the church taken Israel's place?
Covenant theology gives one answer and dispensationalism another. This study states the covenant answer as its own teachers state it, weighs the texts they rely on, and then gives our response from Scripture. It builds on Israel and the Church, which sets out the positive case that the church is a mystery revealed in the New Testament, and it does not repeat that case here.
The view that the church has succeeded national Israel as the people of God, so that the promises God made to Israel are fulfilled in Christ and His church. Its critics call it “replacement theology.” Most covenant theologians prefer to call it fulfillment.
The church has not replaced Israel, and Israel's promises have not been transferred to the church. Gentile believers are grafted in to share Abraham's blessing by faith, and that is a real and glorious fulfillment. But sharing a promise does not annul it for the people to whom God first gave it. God will keep His word to Israel as He gave it, when Israel looks in faith on her Messiah.
A Word About Words
Names matter in a discussion like this. Few covenant theologians call themselves replacement theologians, and many object to the label. They do not believe God threw Israel away and started over with someone else. They believe Israel's story reached its goal in Jesus, the faithful Israelite, and that the believing remnant of Israel, joined by believing Gentiles, continues as one people of God in the church. Some call this fulfillment theology. Others speak of Israel being expanded or transformed in Christ. Scholars use the older word supersessionism for the whole family of views.
We will use their own words wherever we can. The question that divides us is not whether Christ fulfills God's promises. All agree that He does: all the promises of God in him are yea, and in him Amen (2 Corinthians 1:20). The question is whether His fulfilling them means that the promises God made to the nation of Israel will never be kept with that nation.
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For Deeper Study
- Has the Church Replaced Israel? A Theological EvaluationAmazon Michael J. VlachA careful survey (2010) of supersessionism, its history and arguments, with a biblical case that Israel's promises still stand. Written from a dispensational view.
- The Israel of God: Yesterday, Today, and TomorrowAmazon O. Palmer RobertsonA Presbyterian scholar's biblical theology of Israel's land, people, and future (2000). Reformed and not dispensational; read it to hear the covenant view in its own words.
- The Puritan Hope: Revival and the Interpretation of ProphecyAmazon Iain H. MurrayA Reformed historian traces the Puritan expectation of a future conversion of the Jews and a wide spread of the Gospel (1971). Not dispensational, and critical of dispensationalism.
- There Really Is a Difference! A Comparison of Covenant and Dispensational TheologyAmazon Renald E. ShowersA plain, side-by-side comparison from a dispensational teacher, with careful chapters on Israel and the biblical covenants.
- Foxe's Book of MartyrsAmazon John FoxeThe classic Protestant record of those who died for the faith, from the early church to the English Reformation.
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What Is Covenant Theology?
Covenant theology is the Reformed framework that reads the whole Bible as God's work of redeeming one people, organized under three theological covenants it believes Scripture implies: a covenant of redemption, a covenant of works, and a covenant of grace.
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