Book Review: Aquinas on Israel and the Church: The Question of Supersessionism in the Theology of Thomas Aquinas

Abstract

Aquinas on Israel and Church: The Question of Supersessionism in Theology of Thomas Aquinas. By Matthew A. Tapie. Eugene, Ore.: Pickwick Publications, 2014. xiv + 198 pp. $24.00 (paper).In this well-researched and thoughtful book, Matthew Tapie provides us with most thorough exposition to date of Thomas Aquinas's theology of Israel and church, specifically on issue of ongoing significance of Jewish ceremonial law. Tapie approaches Aquinas from perspective of church's post-holocaust, post-Vatican II rethinking of Christian teaching about Israel. While repudiation of supersessionism is now widespread among Christian churches, theological tradition prior to last hundred years was fairly uniform in its denunciation of Jews as a people judged and rejected by God. The church was understood to be new people of God who had replaced Israel in God's plan of salvation.Almost twenty years after Vatican II's Nostra Aetate, Declaration on Relation of to Non-Christian Religions, Orthodox Jewish theologian Michael Wyschogrod argued that Aquinas's view of old as not only dead but deadly (that is, a mortal sin when practiced after coming of Christ) stood in way of further progress in Jewish-Christian relations. Tapie takes Wyschogrod's argument as a challenge and returns to Thomas to see if he can find resources for a different interpretation that would allow him to marshal Aquinas's support for this new era of Jewish-Christian cooperation.Tapies book proceeds in two main parts. First, he seeks to clarify definition of supersessionism, a term that, he notes, has become widely used even as it has been vaguely defined. Second, he returns to Aquinas's biblical commentaries to see if he can find a more nuanced view of Israel and Mosaic law than that to which Wyschogrod objected in Aquinas's Summa Theologica.Drawing on Kendall Soulen and Jules Isaac, Tapie defines supersessionism as the Christian claim that with advent of Christ, Jewish Law is fulfilled and obsolete, with result that God replaces Israel with Church (pp. 23-24, emphasis in original). This is not same as antiSemitism or anti-Judaism, nor is supersessionism to be confused with straightforward religious disagreement. The specific nature of supersessionism is that Christians claim Israel's law is both dead and deadly. In making this claim, Christians rob Israel of any ongoing religious significance and indeed read current practices of Judaism as acts of unfaithfulness.Tapie admits prima facie evidence for Wyschogrod's claim that Aquinas is supersessionist in this sense (pp. 169-175). In Ia-IIae, q. 103 of Summa, Aquinas asks question, Whether since Christ's passion legal ceremonies [of Jewish law] can be observed without committing mortal sin? In his response he makes clear that answer is no. With completion of Christ's work, all ceremonial acts that prefigured his coming are not only obsolete but constitute explicit rejections of claim that Christ has accomplished God's salvific work, and are therefore acts of mortal sin. But Tapie theorizes that one might find a more nuanced account of Israel and its ceremonial law in commentaries on Hebrews, Galatians, Ephesians, and Romans that might provide positive resources for a post-supersessionist theology.Tapie notes that in commentaries on Hebrews and Galatians, Aquinas essentially mirrors his supersessionist teaching from Summa. …