Abstract
In this article, the question is asked whether replacement theology is anti-Semitic – a critique that is often advanced in discourse on replacement theology. In answering this question, the definitions of antisemitism and replacement theology are revisited and the question whether replacement forms part of the hermeneutic of the New Testament writers is addressed. Subsequently, the core of what is actually replaced is determined, as well as the hermeneutic principles that distinguish replacement and anti-replacement approaches. It is found that the notion of replacement is inevitable, in the way in which writers of the New Testament convey concepts such as fulfilment, messianism, eschatology and newness. It is argued that at heart, the criteria of identity and covenant membership are replaced in the new eschatological epoch in Christ, which exclude race, biological descent or ethnicity and thus cannot be anti-Semitic.
Highlights
In the preface of an edited publication that appeared recently, titled Israelism and the place of Christ: christocentric interpretation of biblical prophecy, the editor, Steven Paas (2018:10), writes that the authors in this work ‘categorically denounce the ideas of antisemitism and replacement theology, which in the course of the centuries have damaged the relationship between Jews and Christians’
Paas (2018:28) distantiates himself from ‘the idea of replacing Israel by the Church’ and antisemitism. He states that ‘adherence to the ‒ disgraced ‒ replacement theory can go hand in hand with anti-Jewish sentiments’ (Paas 2018:36). From these quotes it can with reasonable certainty be concluded that Paas identifies the idea of the so-called replacement theology or supersessionism with antisemitism
The element of replacement is especially present in the way in which the criteria for identity and covenant membership in the eschatologically new epoch is defined
Summary
In the preface of an edited publication that appeared recently, titled Israelism and the place of Christ: christocentric interpretation of biblical prophecy, the editor, Steven Paas (2018:10), writes that the authors in this work ‘categorically denounce the ideas of antisemitism and replacement theology, which in the course of the centuries have damaged the relationship between Jews and Christians’. Apart from the way in which messianic fulfilment is portrayed, the eschatological realisation of the new era in Christ is explicitly mentioned in 1 Corinthians 10:11, where Paul writes that ‘the end/culmination of the ages has come/arrived’ (τὰ τέλη τῶν αἰώνων κατήντηκεν) on believers (Fee 2014:506–507; cf Gardner 2018:437). In Romans 3:21, a major turning point in Paul’s argument occurs when he states that righteousness has ‘now’ (νυνί) been manifested apart from the law, where νυνί indicates the salvation-historical contrast between the old era and identity under the law, and the new era and identity in Christ (cf νῦν or νυνί in Rm 5:9–11; 16:25–26; 2 Cor 6:2; Eph 2:13; 5:8; Col 1:22).
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