"Replacement Theology" - Is It Wrong to Use the Term? (Part 1)
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Recently I have been reminded of the Reformed community’s aversion to the label of supercessionism, or worse, replacement theology. In the last decade or so particularly I have read repeated disavowals of this term from covenant theologians. Not wanting to misrepresent or smear brethren with whom I disagree, I have to say that I struggle a bit with these protests.
“We are not replacement theologians” we are told, “but rather we believe in transformation or expansion.” By some of the objectors we are told that the church does not replace Israel because it actually is Israel — well, “true Israel” — the two designations are really one. This move is legitimate, they say, because the “true Israel” or “new Israel” is in direct continuity with Israel in the Old Testament.
In this series of posts I want to investigate the question of whether it is right; if I am right, to brand this outlook as replacement theology and supercessionism.
Basics: What Is a “Replacement”?
A good thing to do as we begin is to have a definition of the word at issue. Websters New World Dictionary defines the word “replacement” thus:
1. a replacing or being replaced 2. a person or thing that takes the place of another…”
The entry for “replace” says,
1. to place again; to put back in a former or the proper place or position. [obviously, this does not apply to our question.]
2. to take the place of… 3. to provide a substitute or equivalent for.
The synonym “supersede” means that something is replaced by something else that is superior. In the way I use the terms in a theological context I mean “to take the place of.” The third meaning (i.e. to substitute) is somewhat relevant since some may be claiming that OT Israel has been switched out for another Israel. By “supercessionism” then, I mean any theology that teaches a switching out of “old Israel” with “new,” “true Israel.”
The question before us is whether the Church takes the place of Israel in covenant theology, and if so how? To answer that question we must ask several more. These include such important questions as, ‘what exactly do covenant theologians say about the matter? And do they ever use replacement terminology themselves?’; ‘Can their understandings of Israel and the church, and so their “expansion” language, be supported from the Bible?’
If “Israel” and “the church” are the same thing then clearly we have our answer, and I can stop writing. If the church and Israel are the same any question of replacing one with the other starts and stops with the simple swapping of names.
Identifying “Israel”
In the Old Testament Israel is either a person, the man Jacob who was renamed “Israel” by God in Genesis 32:28, or the nation of people (sometimes a part of them either in rebellion or redeemed) who stem from Jacob who are called “the children of Israel” in Genesis 32:32 (Israelites), or a designation for the promised land (cf. Josh. 11:16, 21).
Covenant theology adds to these designations another. For example, an anonymous devotional at Ligonier’s website entitled “Who is Israel?” claims that,
Finally, the term Israel can also designate all of those who believe in Jesus, including both ethnic Jews and ethnic Gentiles. In Galatians 6:16, the Apostle applies the name Israel to the entire believing community—the invisible church—that follows Christ. Paul does not make this application specifically in Romans 11; however, this meaning is clearly implied in his teaching about the one olive tree with both Jewish and Gentile branches (vv. 11-24).
Although nowhere does the New Testament explicitly equate Israel with the church, the assumptions that lead the writer to his conclusion (not to mention his exegesis of Gal. 6:16 and his use of the Olive Tree metaphor) come into focus once his view of the church is understood.
Chapter Twenty-five of the Westminster Confession of Faith defines the Church like this:
I. The catholic or universal Church, which is invisible, consists of the whole number of the elect, that have been, are, or shall be gathered into one, under Christ the Head thereof; and is the spouse, the body, the fulness of Him that fills all in all.
II. The visible Church, which is also catholic or universal under the Gospel (not confined to one nation, as before under the law), consists of all those throughout the world that profess the true religion; and of their children: and is the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ,the house and family of God, out of which there is no ordinary possibility of salvation.
You will notice that this definition places every saved {elect} person in human history into the Church. It also places all the those elect who will be saved into the Church. The Church is also seen as the Body of Christ, as well as “the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ, the house and family of God” outside of which there is no salvation.
Acceptance of this definition pretty much wraps things up as far as OT Israel is concerned. The saved saints under the Mosaic covenant were simply the Church of the time. Also, the kingdom which was repeatedly promised to the remnant of Israel is, well, the Church. Not the land, not Jerusalem, not the national throne or the temple on Mt. Zion, just the Church.
There is reason to dissent from the honored position of the Puritans cited above, and I shall have to do so later on. But right here my intention is simply note that according to this way of thinking the elect Church and elect Israel are the same thing. If this is the right tack then there is nothing wrong with the following thought from Anglican theologian Gerald Bray:
As men and women who have been grafted into the nation of Israel by the coming of Jesus Christ, Christians…lay claim to [the] love and the promises that go with it. – God Has Spoken, 41
Very well, we are to believe that Christians have been grafted into Israel. Bray too is alluding to Paul’s metaphor of the Olive Tree in Romans 11. Again, “Israel” here must mean believers, therefore, all believers are “Israel.” That is, IF these claims are true.
(To be continued…)
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It seems to me that replacement theology, like beauty, is largely in the eye of the beholder. To dispensationalists, the concept of the church being identified as spiritual Israel looks like replacement. Israel has been replaced by the church. To non-dispensationalists, this looks like fulfillment, not replacement. The church is the fulfillment of promises made to Israel. Israel has not been replaced, but promises God made to Israel have been fulfilled in spiritual Israel. Believers in Jesus Christ are the true children of Abraham, both Jews and Gentiles. Unbelievers are neither in the church, nor are they true Israel, whether Jews or Gentiles.
So, is this replacement theology? It all depends upon your presuppositions and interpretative conclusions. It doesn’t look like replacement to me.
G. N. Barkman
G. N. Barkman says that whether it is fitting to use the term “replacement theology” or not is in the eye of the beholder. While I understand his point, and I do not question his integrity, I think that to settle such an important theological point with such a relativistic slogan is unsound. The point of these articles is to achieve a bit more clarity on the issue. If “fulfillment” is something akin to a man predicting a set of defined events which he later claims have been realized in a form different than his original words led everybody to expect, then I suppose “fulfillment” can be claimed by anyone. E.g., the 144,000 Israelites in Revelation 7 are fulfilled by the Jehovah’s Witnesses, who were predicted in Isaiah 43.
To my mind this is not fulfillment, since nothing other than a realization of the things the words led one to reasonably expect could be a fulfillment. A better term for what the JW’s claim would be “replacement” or “supercession.”
Anyway, I appreciate the comment and I respect the one who made it, but I think these sorts of things are clarified in what is to come.
Dr. Paul Henebury
I am Founder of Telos Ministries, and Senior Pastor at Agape Bible Church in N. Ca.
What has always struck me as inappropriate about the term is that it seems to suggest a faulty parallelism; i.e., Israel and the Church can simply be swapped out for one another, as one might a tire, or a line worker. But the classic CT conception of the relationship between Israel and the church is much more complex than that—to say nothing of the relationship between Israel and the church suggested in the Baptist variant of CT, “1689 Federalism,” in which Israel is a fleshly “type” and the church is the substance.
If we thought “replacement theology” was an accurate term, we honestly wouldn’t have a problem with it. The fact that we reject it suggests there is something in it we might find objectionable. You don’t have to agree with our “fulfillment” language (equally value-laden), but neither does that mean we are going to embrace your term, which smuggles in a gratuitous oversimplification of our view .
While I don’t think that the issue is purely in the “eye of the beholder”, I will say that I have observed much of both sides talking past each other on this issue. The result is a lot of heat generated from the burning of straw men.
Reformed, or Covenant theologians usually eschew the term “replacement”, often with much vigor. This often happens because those using this term pejoratively are often referring to punitive supersessionism, which entails the idea that God cast away the Israelites for their rejection of Christ, and sought a people for His own possession from the Gentiles instead. Although this general idea had traction in varying degrees throughout much of church history, it is uncommon among the Reformed today. More from the dispensational side of the aisle should be knowledgeable of the ubiquitous “fulfillment” or “expansion” idea, which is a much gentler theology than many who use the term “replacement” recognize.
Conversely, however, most well-informed Dispensationalists are not willing to adopt the “fulfillment” or “expansion” descriptors for the reformed position, because of the necessary consequences of the theology. Even if ethnic Israel is not “replaced” wholesale under the New Covenant, there being a complement of every tongue, nation and tribe in the elect (including Jews), yet the consequence is that the term “Israel” is “replaced” with a different meaning than the apparent use throughout the OT, and many promises explicitly given to ethnic and national Israel are interpreted as typological rather than literal, the recipients of which are “replaced” by a group not necessarily composed of ethnic Israelites. Therefore, many on the covenant side of the aisle need to recognize the distinctions which are important to the dispensational perspective which often warrant the term “replacement”, even if not used in reference to punitive supersessionism.
I think the following articles will clarify my thesis, but you will find no straw men here. Although I don’t expect many CT’s to agree with me, I want to address this one question: whether replacementism is a real thing and where it is chiefly found. I think these are but two sides of the same coin. My object is not to settle whether those who employ supercessionist expressions will like my conclusions. To me at least, steering clear of certain words (“replacement”; “supercessionism”) is a coming to ones own ideas in a negative way. If ones theology involves ideas of replacement and supercession then what is to be avoided?
As for talking past each other, well again I think that this will be reduced if we avoided unsatisfactory synonyms and (if one is bothered by pejoratives) contemporary euphemisms.
I look forward to the continuing interactions which I hope this series produces.
Dr. Paul Henebury
I am Founder of Telos Ministries, and Senior Pastor at Agape Bible Church in N. Ca.
It seems to me, at the end of the day, that the issue is fairly simple. The OT promises were made to a particular group of people who are identified by their ethnicity and genealogy. Those promises . The idea, suspect as it may be in some instances, that some of the promises were typological does not change that. If those promises are not fulfilled with that group but rather fulfilled in some other group, then in some major sense the second group has replaced the first. To borrow from the Bard, a rose by any other name would smell just as sweet. So reject the name “replacement” if you wish, but it doesn’t change the fundamental issue.
Quite so
Dr. Paul Henebury
I am Founder of Telos Ministries, and Senior Pastor at Agape Bible Church in N. Ca.
[Larry]To borrow from the good Dr. Johnson, words have meanings. ;)It seems to me, at the end of the day, that the issue is fairly simple. The OT promises were made to a particular group of people who are identified by their ethnicity and genealogy. Those promises . The idea, suspect as it may be in some instances, that some of the promises were typological does not change that. If those promises are not fulfilled with that group but rather fulfilled in some other group, then in some major sense the second group has replaced the first. To borrow from the Bard, a rose by any other name would smell just as sweet. So reject the name “replacement” if you wish, but it doesn’t change the fundamental issue.
To borrow from the good Dr. Johnson, words have meanings.
Exactly my point.
But what if someone tries using the Bible itself to define the terms? I’m sure these verses will be covered in the series, so they do not need to be examined in this thread, but Galatians 3:16 says ‘The promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. The Scripture does not say, “and to seeds,” meaning many, but “and to your seed,” meaning One, who is Christ.’ And verse 29 says “And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed and heirs according to the promise.”
I can certainly see, from an initial reading, how a person could come to think that the church fulfills the promises.
Looking forward greatly to the rest of the series.
Thanks for the comment. Unfortunately my purpose here is more modest than to examine the biblical foundations for this form of theology. I am here concerned about whether it is proper to call this theology by terminology of replacement.
As for Galatians 3, I tried to address some of the issues in my article “Galatians 3, the Land and the Abrahamic Covenant”
Dr. Paul Henebury
I am Founder of Telos Ministries, and Senior Pastor at Agape Bible Church in N. Ca.
[Paul Henebury]Ah, I see. Thanks for the link.Thanks for the comment. Unfortunately my purpose here is more modest than to examine the biblical foundations for this form of theology. I am here concerned about whether it is proper to call this theology by terminology of replacement.
As for Galatians 3, I tried to address some of the issues in my article “Galatians 3, the Land and the Abrahamic Covenant”
[Larry]It seems to me, at the end of the day, that the issue is fairly simple. The OT promises were made to a particular group of people who are identified by their ethnicity and genealogy. Those promises . The idea, suspect as it may be in some instances, that some of the promises were typological does not change that. If those promises are not fulfilled with that group but rather fulfilled in some other group, then in some major sense the second group has replaced the first. To borrow from the Bard, a rose by any other name would smell just as sweet. So reject the name “replacement” if you wish, but it doesn’t change the fundamental issue.
We might like it simple but it’s not. Ethnicity and genealogy meant nothing apart from faith in the OT. There’s only one group that counts, the by faith group. The NT makes it clear that promises were fulfilled in the quintessential only obedient Israelite who is the final sacrifice, the Temple, the inaugurator of the one New Covenant, etc. Those who have the faith of Abraham are Abraham’s true descendants regardless of ethnicity but including ethnic Jews who believe. I wouldn’t call it replacement but expansion. The Church is the chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his possession. OT language for NT believers. Those OT descriptors describe the Church where there are both Jews and Gentiles and in which there is neither Jew not Gentile.
I disagree with Steve’s opening remark about ethnicity. Where does he get that from? (though I think I know). This looks like a good statement of supercessionism to me. Not of the bald “the church supplants Israel” variety, but what I will call “conceptual replacementism”.
I disagree also when Steve dogmatically asserts:
“The NT makes it clear that promises were fulfilled in the quintessential only obedient Israelite who is the final sacrifice, the Temple, the inaugurator of the one New Covenant, etc.”
The NT makes it clear? I think it does not do anything of the kind. What makes it clear is the theological interpretation which Steve is employing. But this is not a series about that subject per se. Those interested might care to read the posts on “Disingenuousness” beginning with this one: https://drreluctant.wordpress.com/2011/09/15/disingenuousness-and-expansion-language/
I should say that I do not agree with those dispensationalists who use the term as a club or a put down. Rather, I use it as many CT’s themselves have used it, and as Kendall Soulen, Michael Vlach and Ronald Diprose use it - to describe what the theology does.
Dr. Paul Henebury
I am Founder of Telos Ministries, and Senior Pastor at Agape Bible Church in N. Ca.
“What makes it clear is the theological interpretation which Steve is employing.” And what makes it obscure is the theological interpretation that Paul is employing.
I find the New Testament’s handling of OT texts definitive in the way I must interpret the OT. DT begins with its interpretation of the OT, and rejects any NT interpretation which calls its OT interpretations into question. In my earlier years, I accepted that hermeneutic. The more I studied, the less acceptable it became. When I began to understand how NT authors interpreted the OT, I was compelled to revisit my OT interpretation in the light of NT revelation. I am convinced that NT revelation must clarify the way we understand the OT.
G. N. Barkman
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