Replacing Replacement Theology: Part 3

Read Part 2

The aforementioned David Brog claims that “after the Holocaust, the Roman Catholic Church and most mainline Protestant denominations recognized the danger of replacement theology and formally rejected it.” Ironic, this. If this is so—if so much of Western Christianity has formally rejected “replacement”-why then do premillennialists continually bombard us with the imminent danger of this heresy? Sure enough, drawing from the impending doom on their prophetic horizon, some dispensationalists see us as leading the charge of the anti-Jewish antichrist forces: “Is old Satan rearing his head for one final assault upon the Jews? I am afraid to say, the case appears to be so.”[1] My question: Why would Satan bother to “assault” the Jews when he is already holding them captive in unbelief? Instead of tilting at the windmill of “replacement theology,” why not start preaching the gospel to the Jews? The dispensationalists won’t do this because, in their system, preaching the gospel to Jews before the return of Christ is nearly pointless. Their system gives them the excuse to escape the responsibility of the Lord’s Prayer, the Commandments, and the Great Commission towards the Jews while condemning those of us who take these things seriously as demonic, satanic, dangerous, subversive, heretical, anti-Semites. Feel the irony yet?

My proposal—which I shall keep modest—is for our dispensational brethren to begin by replacing the label “replacement theology” with something more accurate, charitable, appropriate to the real debate, and acceptable to us. The current label is too . . . well . . . wrong in every way. And since we know that all of us, on whatever side of the debate we fall, would agree that we want our respective cases to be as strong as possible, then we should start by removing things like straw men and epithets. So please, if dispensationalists do intend to carry this debate on as a helpful debate—one that is likely to advance Christian scholarship—then avoid trying to pigeon-hole us as something we are not.

But from what I’ve seen, this is unlikely to happen, if not because of want of theological accuracy, then because of just plain stubbornness. Despite his calls for a more charitable discourse on the subject, Horner wields a strong double standard in terminology. He pads his own case: he uses the term “anti-Judaism” instead of the more caustic “anti-Semitic,” surely because, among other things, he doesn’t want to appear too overt in playing the “race card.” He allows himself this space. Yet he tries to pin us down without the same favor: he charges those who object to his straw-man of “replacement theology.” No getting away from the horns of Horner’s dilemma, no. We closet anti-Semites have to engage in “verbal ducking and weaving,” according to him, in order to hide our true colors.[2]

We have asked, for a long time now, to be represented correctly. It is yet to come, and even the latest publications do not bend much if at all. Meanwhile, until our dispensational brethren decide to square up and fight fairly, my proposal will remain on the table.

As for replacement theology, it is worth considering that it is not we Reformed covenantal folk who bear the guilt, after all. The real replacement theologians are the dispensationalists. They are the ones who believe in replacement: each dispensation replaces the next as far as how God deals with that era. In that system there is no necessary connection between how God treats one dispensation as opposed to the next. Replacement is the keyword here, even if it is not used. As for the current era, in the dispensational scheme the church has indeed replaced Israel temporarily. Dispensationalist Thomas Ice admits this: “We dispensationalists believe that the church has superseded Israel during the current church age, but God has a future time in which He will restore national Israel ‘as the institution for the administration of divine blessings to the world.’”[3]

In the dispensational scheme, until Christ comes back any attempts to evangelize the Jews will prove insignificant at best. And then, when Christ does come back, of all these Jews that the dispensationalists would have us fawn over and usher back to “their land,” two-thirds will be slaughtered in the Great Tribulation (Zech. 13:8). This is according to their teaching, not mine. So, whose doctrine is anti-Semitic after all? It may be worth considering Horner’s label “anti-Judaism” in all of its implications. It just may be the way to go for those who believe, as I do, that a one-in-three chance of surviving a new holocaust is not exactly ­pro-Judaism, not exactly a blessing, not exactly the outpouring of God’s favor to His people, not exactly the “Future Israel” that dispensationalists lead us to expect.

This is because they don’t advertise the dark aspects of their love for God’s chosen race. They downplay the inherent racism, which Paul is so often at task to unlearn the church of. The dispensational version of Israel is a racist imposition on God’s plan, and it is a failure of vision among many of His people. The church has not replaced Israel, the church is and always was Israel and in the New testament incorporates, expands, fulfills, glorifies, and promotes Israel to all the fullness God intends for Israel to have. Christ is Israel, He was always intended to be. The Body of Christ is and always was Israel, and the tiny nation that God formed in Genesis was the vessel through which the seed of that Body was carried until Christ appeared. Jesus, John the Baptist, John, Paul and others spent plenty of time reminding “the Jews” that they were in fact not privileged just because of their family tree. Now the dispensationalists are essentially fighting to suppress these teachings of the inspired writers.

The dispensational error concerning national Israel is the error of the Pharisees, of following Abraham’s loins instead of his faith. Until Abraham’s faith replaces his bloodline as the channel of God’s grace in the thinking of dispensationalists, they will continue to exalt the man-centered kingdom of modern-Jewry. Has God cast them off? No, say we covenantal types. Yes, say the dispensationalists, until Christ finally returns. Will they continue to label us with “replacement theology”?