I am a Christian, and as such,
quite familiar with the Jewish Scriptures, which Christians refer to as the Old
Testament. Therefore, I am well-acquainted with God's calls to Abraham and his
descendants, and the covenants and promises he made to them. The most important
of these are that God would make of Abraham's descendants a great people and
that he would give them the area of land we sometimes refer to as The Holy Land
as their home. He would make them a light and a blessing to the nations and
because of them all nations would be blessed. This seems to be where many
Christians in the last century or so stop in their understanding of the Jewish
people and their place in history. This has thus become a particularly thorny
and sometimes divisive issue between some Christians and between some Christians and
Jews, particularly in the last 125 years or so.
This is because it has been during
this time that certain individuals gained influence for their belief that Jews
should still be in the lands now known as Israel and Palestine, a belief that
came to be known as Zionism, as Jerusalem, the putative capital, is seen by
some as being on Mt. Zion. This was initially a political agenda but when its
proponents got some of the Christians on board, thanks to a contemporaneous reinterpretation
of Scripture to support their beliefs, Zionism was augmented by Christian Zionism.
This relatively recent
understanding of the history of God's people within certain more conservative or fundamentalistic branches of the Christian church sees
Israel's living in this land as a necessary prerequisite for the end of history
as we know it and the dawning of God's new heaven and earth. This led people of
this persuasion to promote and support Israel's becoming a nation. When this
happened in 1948, almost 2000 years after Israel's defeat by the Romans around AD
70, these Christian Zionists, as they have come to be called, were elated. The
passage of time and some subsequent aspects of history such as what the early
Israeli settlers and their Army did to the Palestinian occupants of the land at
the time dampened the enthusiasm for this cause somewhat. However, when Arab
nations attacked Israel in 1967 to support the Palestinian cause, and Israel
handily won the famous so-called “Six-Day War” against them,” Zionism received
a great boost. This thinking has continued to be fueled ever since,
particularly with the ongoing and recently increasing hostilities of
increasingly radicalized Muslims and the predominantly Muslim nations around
Israel in the last 30 years or so.
There are a couple of points that
we need to remember at this time. The first is that these promises of God to
Abraham's descendants, the covenant, were always conditional. That is, there is
an ‘if’ attached. This is not spelled out in every instance in which some of
these promises are mentioned in the Bible and those texts are then often then
misused in such a way as to make the reader forget the conditions. The
condition was acceptance and belief in the one God and obedience to God's
commands. We know even from their own Scriptures how many times the Jews were
punished by the God the true Jews worship for their disobedience to God and the
conditions of the covenant from the time they left Egypt, known as The Exodus,
when the first Passover was instituted, until the great exile of 587 BC to
Babylon. The Old Testament Scriptures were closed shortly after that time, so
there is no such accepted and canonical authoritative source to evaluate
subsequent historical events that have affected the Jewish people, e.g. the
Roman defeat mentioned above, the Holocaust of World War II and even the
current events mentioned above.
However, if we apply the same
expectations with respect to the covenant that were repeated over and over again
in the Old Testament, I think it is quite clear to see that they are certainly
not being kept today. As a Christian, who believes in the same God and shares
part of the same Scriptures as the Jewish people, from whence comes our Lord
and Savior, I love the Jewish people. One has to look at their successes in
spite of the odds against them over time and see how successful in many ways
they are, as the world judges it. This makes one still wonder about their
status as Chosen People, given their stature in the world. But given what
follows, I think we have to leave that to God at this point and not to this
detailed time-framed understanding of history that has come out of some
branches of The Church since the late 19th century, known to some as ‘dispensationalism.’
The point that I want to remind
some readers of, which I know is very contentious for many, is that the
Christian church, by and large, and officially, seems to have taken the view
spelled out by New Testament writers such as The Apostle Paul in Romans. This
understanding was that, based on the teachings of Jesus and New Testament
writers, Abraham's status and being the recipient of the covenant with all of
its promises, including conditions, was because of his faith and that all of
those who have the same faith in God, are also equally part of God's people.
Essentially, the view was that The Church, whether Jew or Gentile, to use the
New Testament Language, now embodied The People of God and the same promises
that were given to the Jews in the Old Testament are given to The Church.
Indeed, The Apostle Paul, being a
devout Jew, anguished greatly over this whole affair, as we can see especially
in chapters 9-11 of Romans. However, even though he appeared to be unable to
let go of the idea that God still had a special affinity for the Jews and a
special place for them in the outcome of history, he settled with that on “the
back burner,” as it were. This is a question that to some extent though has
continued to challenge many in the church ever since. Of course, for those who
espoused Zionism in the late 19th century and subsequently, there is no trouble
for them. This is because they would appear to interpret the Old Testament as
being equally applicable in all of its "inerrant and literal"
presentation, as they would say, as to what the New Testament says. This is not
how The Church over most of its history and in most of its branches understood
the Bible and certainly not how Anabaptists/Mennonites have historically
understood the Bible. We believe that Jesus was the ultimate representation of
God and transmitter of his teachings and values and therefore try to look at
the Old Testament as it appears that Jesus did. As I suggested above, this has
historically been taken to mean that the promises of the Abrahamic and Davidic
covenants may no longer be as literally applicable as they were prior to Jesus'
coming. It is not as clear at all, based on the New Testament, what the place
of the Jews now is in God’s plans, if they are not Christian, as it appears to
be to the Zionists, if you still interpret the Old Testament with equal weight
to the new.
The Zionists like to criticize the
Christians who do not espouse their views as being anti-Jew, anti-Semitic. They
accuse them of being guilty of ‘replacement theology.’ Actually, the accused are just
continuing to believe what the Church has understood the Bible as a whole to
say since the time of Jesus. They have not adopted any new theology. The
Zionists have just given traditional orthodox beliefs a new name to look as though the non-Zionists are erring
and have adopted something new. This is not necessarily the case. We non-Zionist Christians are just
opposed to the injustices and propaganda they perpetrate and how they let themselves be used by the Israeli state for its own purposes. We should remember that not all of the
Jews in Israel even support their own government's anti-Palestinian policies. We non-Zionist Christians are just trying to point out to our brothers and sisters that they err, often unknowingly, in being drawn into a propaganda war against Palestinians, both Christians and Muslims, in the name of their interpretation
of Scripture, or for their political ends. That leads me to another blog instalment about the importance of
names and words used in this area. Come back for that another day.
