MISSION
Covenantal Language | Historical Facts
Political Issues | Futurism | FulfilledReplacing Replacement Theology: Part 1, 2, 3
(a statement from Dr. Gary DeMar of American Vision)
Dr. Gary DeMar on Replacement Theology, Promises Fulfilled, or Future Israel? (AUDIO)by Joel McDurmon
Even the extremes to which Jews were persecuted in the Middle Ages often came aftera priori. The Church, even in its most tyrannical episode, believed in evangelizing the ethnic Jews. Even the famous anti-Semitic tirades of Luther came aftercould be saved if and when they believed. Hardly the standard “replacement” theory. Not only this, but things in the world of Reformed theology—as we noted with the Westminster Larger Catechism earlier—greatly improved immediately after Luther as well in current times.
attempts at evangelism. Granted, it is deplorable that persecution followed at all, but the attempted conversions (or even forced conversions) at least falsify the idea that the church had written off the Jews he was disappointed with attempts to win over the Jews. He, naively, thought that his own version of the Gospel—much freer and less constrained by “works” and superstition than the Catholics which had persecuted the Jews for some time—would find an enthusiastic audience with the Jewish population. He was quite wrong; and, as Luther often did when gravely disappointed, he blew it up in print. But again, at least he first offered the Gospel, which proves that he believed that the Jews
Yet these critics continue their effort to tar and feather us as Jew haters. For example, Barry Horner, author of Future Israel, claims that “quite a few, by their derogatory manner have inferred that they would be delighted if the Arabs would push Israel into the Mediterranean Sea, repossess Palestine, and thus vindicate their Eschatology!”[1] Are you serious!? I know of no Protestant, Reformed, or Evangelical theologian who has said, or even “inferred” such nonsense. And I can understand the urge to use a weasel-word like “inferred,” since he cannot find a juicy enough quotation to justify “said,” but even “inferred” is over the line here. For his evidence Horner quotes from a debate: S. Sizer said, “the present brutal, repressive racist policies of the State of Israel would suggest another exile on the horizon rather than a restoration.”[2] Sizer’s comments are hardly diplomatic, but they hardly warrant Horner’s caricature of them. Sizer simply means, I think, that we ought to hold Israel as accountable as other nations for humanitarian affronts, instead of lauding the advance of every Israeli tank and bulldozer into Gaza as a move of God. Sizer (whom I don’t know or have any stake in defending) did not say that Israel should be wiped into the sea and the land parceled out to Arabs, and for Horner to say so is an affront to Christian scholarship and dialogue. Even if there were a few speakers using such hateful speech against modern Jews, this would not constitute grounds for denouncing an historical view of God’s plan. The abuse of a good thing is no argument against the good thing.
Horner provides one example of a theologian mentioning “replacement,” and it comes from the Dutch Reformed writer Herman Ridderbos in his classic work on Paul’s theology. Horner excerpts this part: “The church, then, as the people of the New Covenant has taken the place of Israel, and national Israel is nothing more than the empty shell from which the pearl has been removed, and which has lost its function in the history of redemption.”[3] Well, he did use the phrase “in place of,” which could qualify him as a “replacement” theologian. But it is difficult to ascertain the theology of such a giant as Ridderbos based on a single carefully chosen excerpt. Granted, Ridderbos does not promote the rosiest view of national Israel in redemptive history, but we should not scapegoat him with a mere sound bite. Later in the same chapter he adds much that would mitigate Horner’s implication. Among much else, he writes:
Thus, on the one hand Paul is able to see the church of the gentiles as endowed with all the privileges and blessings of Israel, and to see it occupy the place of unbelieving Israel, and yet on the other to uphold to the full continuation of God’s original redemptive intentions with Israel as the historical people of God. And all this because of the gracious character of God’s election and because of Christ, who is the seed of Abraham as well as the second Adam: the one in whom the whole church, Jews and gentiles together, has become one body and one new man.[4]
Clearly, then, Ridderbos is no “replacement” theologian in the sense of the term that dispensationalists have created for knocking down. He believes, as most Reformed thinkers do, that Jews are as equal as others: Jews are free to own property, do business, raise families, pursue education, build communities, write books, and get saved just like everyone else does. God has not jettisoned them to the trash heap of history. When Ridderbos (or anyone else) uses the phrase “in place of,” rival theologians need to spend more time fleshing out what exactly is meant instead of pouncing for a “raw meat” quotation. We should all seek clarity in our theological discourse, and quoting such a detailed theologian out of the large context of his technical, 600-page magnum opus is not very helpful in the end. (Besides, who’s ever left it up to the Dutch theologians to make difficult theological matters more clear? Ever read Van Til? Dooyeweerd? Enough said.)
R. Scott Clark, a Westminster West professor, has a concise blog finely summarizing the caricature of “replacement theology” that critics have wrongly foisted upon us Reformed believers. Clark notes (among other things) what I note here: not only is Reformed covenant theology not replacement theology, but “replacement” assumes a theology dominated throughout by the fate of ethnic-genetic Israel. As Clark writes, “the very category of ‘replacement’ is foreign to Reformed theology because it assumes a dispensational, Israeleo-centric way of thinking. It assumes that the temporary, national people was, in fact, intended to be the permanent arrangement.”[5] In short, only a premillennial (especially dispensational) mind would even conceive of something called “replacement theology.” Even shorter, the dispensationalists are begging the question.
Footnotes:
[1] Horner, Future Israel, xviii.
[2] Horner, Future Israel, xviii footnote 6.
[3] Herman Ridderbos, Paul: An Outline of His Theology, trans. John Richard W. De Witt (Eerdmans, 1975) 354-355.
[4] Ridderbos, Paul: An Outline of His Theology, 360-361.
[5] http://heidelblog.wordpress.com/2008/09/14/covenant-theology-is-not-replacement-theology/, accessed November 17, 2008.
