Throughout the history of the Christian Church, the question of Israel’s place in God’s redemptive designs has been of particular importance. In modern history, with the emergence of dispensationism as a popular eschatological perspective and the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, theological theory The question of God’s intention for Israel has become even more pressing. After the Holocaust, with the Nazi effort to exterminate Jews across Europe during World War II, the problem of Israel-Israel’s relationship was again touched by the sad reality of anti-Semitism. , which many claim to belong to any Christian theology that insists on a single path of salvation through faith in Jesus Christ, whether for Jews or Gentiles.
To guide the discussion of this crucial dispute, we must begin with a clear understanding of the main views on this topic that are currently represented in the church. These views illustrate not only the importance of the topic, but also the wide variety of opinions. Positions.
Premilenial dispensationism: God’s special purpose for Israel
Although pre-millennium dispensationalism is a relatively new perspective in the history of Christian theology, its position on God’s special plan for Israel has shaped, and even dominated, recent debates among evangelical Christians about the relationship between the Church and Israel.
In classical dispensationalism, God has two distinct peoples: an earthly people, Israel, and a heavenly people, the Church. According to dispensationalism, God manages the course of redemptive history through seven successive dispensations (or economies of redemption). During each dispensation, God tests human beings by a separate revelation of His will. Of these seven dispensations, the three most important are the dispensation of the law, the dispensation of the gospel, and the dispensation of the kingdom. While it is not possible in a small essay like this to describe all the differences of these three dispensations, what matters is the insistence of dispensationalism that God has a separate purpose and a different way of dealing with his earthly people, Israel. Today, the dispensation of the Church, God? Discontinued? his special designs for Israel and directed his attention, as it were, to uniting pagan peoples by proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ to all nations. However, when will Christ ever return? Snatch? Church before a seven-year period of great tribulation, will resume God’s special program for Israel. This tribulation period will be the prelude to the inauguration of the future dispensation of the millennial kingdom on earth. For dispensationalism, the millennium marks the period when God’s promises to Israel, his earthly people, will have a distinct and literal fulfillment. It is only at the end of the dispensation of the millennial kingdom that Christ will finally defeat all his enemies and introduce the final state.
Although dispensationalism recognizes that all, Jews or pagans, are saved by faith in the one Mediator, Jesus Christ, maintains a clear and permanent distinction between Israel and the Church for God’s purposes. Old Testament promises do not come true by bringing together the Church of Jesus Christ among all the peoples of the earth. These promises are given to an earthly and ethnically distinct people, Israel, and will be fulfilled literally only during the dispensation of the kingdom following the present dispensation of the gospel.
The traditional reformed vision: a people of God
Contrary to the strict distinction between dispensationalism between the two peoples of God, Israel, and the Church, reformed historical theology emphasizes the unity of God’s redemptive agenda throughout history. When Adam, the covenant leader and representative of the human race, fell into sin, all human beings while their posterity was subject to condemnation and death (Romans 5:12-21). At the expense of Adam’s sin and its implications for the entire human race, all were subjected to the curse of the law and became heirs to a corrupt sin and nature.
According to the traditional reformed interpretation of the scriptures, God introduced the covenant of grace after the fall in order to restore His chosen people to communion and intimacy with themselves. Although the covenant of grace is administered in different ways throughout the history of redemption, one remains in substance, from the moment of its formal ratification with Abraham to the coming of Christ in the fullness of time In all the different administrations of the covenant of grace, God redeems His people by faith in Jesus Christ , the only mediator of the covenant of grace, by which believers receive the gift of eternal life and restore communion with the living God [see Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology (Sao Paulo: Editora Cultura Crist, 2013]).
In the reformed understanding of the history of redemption, there is therefore no radical separation between Israel and the Church. The promise God made to Abraham during the formal ratification of the covenant of grace (Genesis 12:15, 17), that is, that he would be the father of many nations and who in his?Descendant? all the families of the earth would be blessed, they would find their fulfillment in Jesus Christ. The descendant promised to Abraham in the covenant of grace is Jesus Christ, the true Israel, and all those who, by faith, are united to him and thus are made heirs to the promises of the covenant (Galatians 3:16, 29). From a reformed perspective, the gospel of Jesus Christ directly fulfills the promises of grace of the covenant for all believers, whether Jewish or pagan. Israel and the Church are not two separate peoples; Instead, the Church is the true Israel of God, a “chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people who belong exclusively to God” (1 Peter 2. 9).
The theology of the “two covenants”?
In the recent history of reflection on Israel and the Church, a new and more radical position has emerged. Often associated with the name Franz Rosenzweig, the Jewish author of a book written shortly after World War I entitled The Star of Redemption [1], the theology of the two covenants teaches that there are two distinct covenants, one between God and Israel and the other between God and the Church of Jesus Christ. Instead of having a single means of redemption through faith in Jesus Christ for Jews and pagans. believers, the relationship of God’s original covenant with his ancestral people, Israel, remains separate from his relationship with the new covenant with the pagan nations by the Lord Jesus Christ.
In the context of the second post-war period, with its concern about the legacy of anti-Semitism in the Christian Church, the theological position of the two alliances became increasingly popular among many important Protestant churches. Even within the Roman Catholic Church, some theologians have appealed to the statements of the Second Vatican Council and to pope John Paul II’s encyclical Redemptoris Missio (1991), which advocate dialogue between Christians and Jews, to oppose continued evangelization efforts. The two covenants, the Christian confession about the person and work of Christ as the sole mediator or redeemer remains true in the context of God’s covenant with the Church; However, because God’s covenant with Israel is a distinct covenant, which is not fulfilled at the coming of Jesus Christ in the fullness of time, Christians cannot impose on Israel the terms of God’s covenant with the Church.
Theology of radical substitution
The final position in the controversy over Israel and the Church to be mentioned is what we can call “theology of radical replacement. “Although dispensationists often insist that the reformed traditional affirmation of a single people of God, composed of Jews and pagans who believe in Christ, is a form of “replacement theology,” the reformed vision does not consider the gospel to “replace” the economy of the old covenant with Israel, before it “fulfills it. “The theology of radical substitution is the teaching that because many Jews did not recognize Jesus Christ as the promised Messiah, God replaced Israel with the Church of the Gentiles. The gospel of Jesus Christ calls all nations and peoples to faith and repentance, but leaves no room for any particular emphasis on God’s redemptive plan. for its ancestral people, Israel. Since the Church is the true Israel, the spiritual, no particular insistence is allowed on the question of God’s saving intention for Israel.
The theology of radical substitution represents in the spectrum the opposite end of the position of the two covenants. Instead of talking about a separate covenant relationship between God and Israel that continues even after christ’s coming and proclaiming the gospel to nations, alternative theology holds that God’s program and interest in Israel have ceased.
Conclusion
Does the diversity between these different positions on the question of Israel and the Church bear witness to the importance of controversy Does God have a separate purpose and program for Israel and the Church?Or does the gospel of Jesus Christ fulfill God’s plan to unite a people?of every tribe, language and nation, Jews and pagans, in a universal family?When the Apostle Paul declares in Romans 1 that the Gospel is: the power of God for the salvation of all who believe, first of the Jews and also of the Greeks?(Romans 1:16), declares that there is only one way of salvation for all who believe in Jesus Christ; However, he states at the same time that this salvation does not suppress or supplant God’s redemptive plan for the Jews, but that the ongoing debate on Israel and the Church must maintain an apostolic balance, not separate Israel from the Church, or replace Israel with the Church.
By: Cornelis P. Venema. © 2012 Ligonier Ministries. Original: The Church and Israel: the question.
This article is part of the October 2012 edition of Tabletalk magazine.
Translation: Vinícius Silva Pimentel. © 2014 Faithful Ministério. All rights reserved. Website: MinistryFiel. com. br. Original: Church and Israel: controversy.