Christian Zionism
by: O. Kelly Ingram
November - November
1983
The Link - Volume 16, Issue 4
Regina Sharif in her comprehensive study, Non-Jewish Zionism: Its Roots in Western History, suggests that “...the terms ‘Gentile’ or ‘Christian’ Zionism are misleading because they now suggest a Christian enthusiasm for Zionism motivated essentially by biblical or theological reasoning.”1 She is convinced that political motivations are the essential considerations for non-Jewish Zionists. It is precisely because there is a sizable body of Christians who have adopted a Zionist platform for theological reasons that I have chosen to explore the phenomenon of Christian Zionism.
Christian Zionism seeks the return of Jews to Palestine as a necessary prelude to the Second Coming of Christ and expects the wholesale conversion of Israel to belief in Jesus as the true Messiah. As such, it is part of a movement begun in 17th-century England which Jewish historian Cecil Roth calls “philo-Semitism.” The movement, which has occurred only twice in the Christian era—in the 17th century and now in our time, has three characteristics: “A sympathy for Hebraic idealism as expressed in the Bible...”; an intense sympathy and even shame for Jewish sufferings, both past and present; and a fervid hope for the fulfillment of prophecy in the restoration of the Jews to Palestine and of Palestine to the Jews.”2 All Christian Zionists are philo-Semites, but not all philo-Semites are Christian Zionists.
To appreciate the novelty of Christian Zionism one has only to scan the 2,000-year history of Jewish-Christian relations.
The Roots of Christian Anti-Semitism
While most churches today seek amicable relations with Jews based on mutual understanding and respect, the church throughout most of its history has been anti-Semitic. The Christian church and the Jewish religious community were rivals during the first 300 years of the Christian era.3
Writing in the middle of the second century, Justin Martyr approved the destruction of the nation of Israel, reasoning:
The circumcision according to the flesh...was given for a sign in order that you should be separated from the other nations and from us [the Christians], and that you alone should suffer the thing you are rightly suffering now, and that “your country is desolate, your cities are burned with fire, your land, strangers devour it in your presence” [Isaiah 1:7], and that none of you should go up to Jerusalem.4
Justin Martyr denigrated the missionary efforts of the Jews in the diaspora, insisting that, while Christian martyrdom was winning converts, Jewish martyrdom was fruitless.5 Tertullian spoke of the Jews with undisguised hatred: as punishment, their temple and country were in ruins, and the people dispersed the world over.6
Hippolytus of Rome [d. 235] accused the Jews of collaborating with Gentiles in the persecution of Christians.7 Whereas the rabbis taught that a recovery of the earthly Jerusalem was a prelude to the experience of the heavenly Jerusalem, Origen referred to Jewish apocalyptic dreams as myths, saying, “the promise made to Israel, [Exodus 3:8] 'to bring them up out of that land into a good land and a large, into a land flowing with milk and honey’ was not uttered concerning the ‘Land of Judaea’ of this world except insofar as it was regarded as ‘a symbolical shadow of the pure land in heaven,’ and not after the manner of the ‘Jewish mythology.’”8 The Jews, on the other hand, were thinking in terms of a world order in the land of Israel that would be the kingdom of God, and chief in the leadership among the nations would be the people of Israel. Origen could see nothing but further decline for them because of the gravity of their sin.9
Eusebius of Caeserea in his Ecclesiastical History contended that Old Testament prophecies had been fulfilled in Jesus the Christian Messiah, and power and leadership in Israel had come into the hands of the Christian Messiah and Christian teachers and would remain there until the Messiah returned in triumph to claim his kingdom.10
It also seems as though Eusebius were writing a textbook for anti-Semitism:
The Jewish Laws, as given to them by their fathers, have become null and void, the ability to maintain their worship as prescribed has been taken from them; they have been deprived of political autonomy, and they are the slaves of their foes; their shrine is in ruins; their capital has been burnt down and settled by aliens; the Jews themselves have been scattered among all the nations throughout the world and have no hope that their disaster will end...; the historic world mission of the people of Israel has been taken from them and has been given to the Christian churches.11
Eusebius, far from expecting the restoration of Israel, foresaw its destruction. He said that the only reason Isaiah did not make this tragic end explicit was that he was concealing ”... the last defeat of the Jewish nation in order that they should keep the sacred writings and not destroy them when they understood that the prophecies would be fulfilled to their own detriment and to the benefit of those who were summoned from among the Gentiles.”12
After 313, Christianity, according to Y.F. Baer, “turned from a persecuted sect into a power that both persecuted and afflicted others.”13
Cecil Roth in A History of the Jews in England reports the nature of this persecution:
The Church (and its over-ready disciples, the Christian emperors) frowned on their intercourse with true believers on equal terms, hampered their ownership of land, and flatly forbade them not only to have Christians in their employment, but even to acquire moral authority over them in a professional capacity. Slowly, they were driven out of ordinary activities, and restricted to those for which their international connexions, their adaptability, and their acumen gave them perhaps special qualification.14
English Crusaders were especially cruel in their persecution of the Jews, whom they denounced for enjoying their ill-gotten wealth while the soldiers were fighting to recover the Holy Sepulchre, expelling Muslims from the Holy Land and avenging the Crucifixion. Entire Jewish communities were exterminated. Occasionally a community would save itself by submitting to baptism.15
In 1290 the Jews were expelled from England, in 1492 from Spain, and shortly thereafter from Portugal and Navarre. It was necessary for them to seek refuge in the Muslim Ottoman Empire, for Western Europe was closed to them.
Thus, while not denying Jews entrance into the kingdom of the Christian Messiah on an individual basis, provided they converted, orthodox Christianity denied them their exclusive claim to a national kingdom, their sacred claim to the land, and the expectation that a third temple would be built on the site of the other two. Instead, the church became the New Israel, composed of Gentiles and Jews who accepted Jesus as the Messiah; they, and they only, became the heirs of the promises in the old covenants, now spiritualized to avoid the old covenants’ nationalistic and territorial aspects.
After Constantine the church became so comfortable with this image of itself that it lost its longing for the eschaton, the End of Time, when Christ would come again in final glory. By the fifth century Augustine in the City of God advanced the theory that the Book of Revelation was to be understood as spiritual allegory. His view—that the millennium was inaugurated with the birth of Christianity and is fully realized in the church—immediately became orthodox doctrine.16 Millenarianism was ruled heresy: there was to be no earthly millennium to be presaged by the conversion of the Jews and their return to Palestine.
All of this is to say that anti-Semitism characterized the church from 135 C.E. until the 17th century. The church blamed the Jews for rejecting their true Messiah and crucifying Him, and church doctrines moved progressively away from Judaism to accommodate a preponderantly Gentile church.
The Roots of Christian Zionism
With the 16th century and the Reformation came some softening of the church’s traditional anti-Semitism, although S. Ettinger reports that the new century brought little relief to the Jews. He says that Reformation leaders “...saw religious tolerance as a Satanic principle enabling each man to go to hell in his own way.”17 Martin Luther held that Jews should be expelled from the country, forbidden to worship God, their prayerbooks and the Talmud confiscated, their synagogues burned, and their homes destroyed.18
On the other hand, it was during this century that the stage was set for the emergence of the philo-Semitism of the 17th century. With the Reformation came the replacement of an infallible Church as represented by the Pope in Rome with the infallible Word of God as represented by the Bible. Every person became responsible for reading and interpreting the infallible Word, opening the door to an infinite number of innovative understandings of Scripture, including millenarianism.
The Reformation, consequently, was a time of Hebraizing or Judaizing of Christianity, and Protestants, preoccupied with the world to come, sought answers in the eschatology of the Judaic tradition. Instead of interpreting prophecies of Jewish return to Palestine as having taken place following the Exile, as had been the case in the church’s earlier interpretation, Reformation Bible literalists began to see the Jews as a nation set apart and due to return to the land of Palestine in order to prepare for the Second Coming.19
Latin, French and English were replaced by Latin, Greek and Hebrew as the languages of the well-furnished scholar. Christian laity, as well as clergy, joined the rabbis in the study of the Old Testament, rabbinical and Cabalistic literature, the last being a collection of the treasures of ancient wisdom whose messianism influenced Protestant eschatological thinking.20
The incorporation of Hebrew studies in Protestant universities was important for the development of eschatology and the corresponding interest in and affection for the Jews. In 1549 Hebrew studies began to be emphasized in England, and by 1600 the country could boast of a number of able Hebraists on whom King James could rely in the translation of the Old Testament into the Authorized Version of the Bible. They could not ignore rabbinical comments predicting a glorious future on earth for the Jews.21
Growing interest in Hebrew studies had three effects on eschatology and attitudes towards the Jews: the possibility for students to adopt Jewish interpretations of Old Testament prophecies of a future literal restoration of the Jews to Palestine; students could interpret the word “Israel” in Romans 11:25f to mean the total Jewish community, and the Geneva Bible was largely responsible for the diffusion of the doctrine of the conversion of the Jewish people; the rabbinical practice of translating a day in prophecy to mean a year enabled students who were convinced that the end of the world was upon them to determine the date of the millennium.22
There was within Reformed Protestantism a growing consensus that the Bible was the Word of God written under the direct verbal inspiration of the Holy Spirit, all books being equally inspired. The plain literal sense should be taken as the proper meaning of Scripture, allowing for allegory and metaphors. This principle of interpretation allowed students to despiritualize the Jewish eschaton [reversing Augustine] and to preach the literal restoration of the Jews instead of reinterpreting Old Testament prophecy to make it speak of a New Israel, i.e., the church.23
The Reformers, who believed that prophecies of the “last days” pertained to the age in which they were living, were led to the conclusion that Daniel and Revelation outlined church history from the beginning of the Christian era to the Last Judgment. They retained the Augustinian eschatology which held that the millennium equaled a thousand years of church history, but their interpretation of Revelation 13-19 was not very different from that of the millenarians who were to come later. Before the Last Day all the enemies of Christ were to be destroyed. They foresaw the defeat of the papacy and the Turks, so that there was eschatological relief from the Muslim encroachment upon Christian Europe and the threat of Roman Catholic resurgence.24
During the Reformation Protestant sects saw the end-times in the wars on the Continent, in the persecution they suffered at the hands of the Church, and in the Reformation itself. “In this context,” writes Regina Sharif, “the many biblical prophecies about Israel’s future took on a keen significance and many sects were convinced that the fulfillment of the prophecies would involve contemporary Jews in one way or another.”25
Towards the end of the 16th century there appeared on the Continent the first speculation on millennialism coupled with the idea of the restoration of the Jews. Michael Servetus, a Unitarian, believed that the ingathering of God’s Chosen People meant the Jewish people as a nation. He was accused of being an “anti-Trinitarian Judaizer” and was burned at the stake as a heretic. Not long thereafter, Francis Kett, an Englishman, echoed the same sentiments and came to the same fate as Servetus.26 But less than 10 years later Thomas Brightman (1562-1607) was to espouse a thoroughgoing millenarianism with impunity, as we shall see.
As we study the roots of philo-Semitism, which was to emerge in the 17th century, it should be noted that Cecil Roth largely attributes the outburst of that phenomenon to the biblicism growing out of the Reformation. The English, he wrote, found their self-definition in Scripture. Hebraic word and ideals came to permeate their speech, thought and politics.27
The Puritans especially identified with the vicissitudes of the Children of Israel. As Roth says, “Their own history was thus the continuation, their own lives the reflection, their own achievements the fulfillment, of the experience of a Palestine of so many centuries before; for they were, in very deed, the Jews.”28 The identification was so complete that some of the Puritans wanted to use Hebrew in their prayers and Scripture reading and to have the Mosaic law enforced in the land. Some even converted to Judaism. Roth concludes that at the very least there was a much increased sympathy for the so-called “ancient people of God.”29
Millennialism and Philo-Semitism
Above all, it was the new preoccupation with eschatology, usually millenarian, and a literalistic biblicism that formed the context in which philo-Semitism in the 17th century and the Christian Zionism in our time emerged.
Philo-Semitic elements in the thought of the 17th-century millenarians supported the readmission of the Jews to England. A Christian-Jewish coalition seemed to some European theologians the most likely route to the great Redemption. Any new tolerant millenarian society in which the Jews would be accepted, however, would be of brief duration, for the millenarians did not believe in the permanence and future of human political society. Ettinger states, “The acceptance of the Jews into this society was not for the sake of the Jews but in order to lead to the realization of their eschatological hope, to the abolition of the existing order.”30 Whenever Christians have had an intense interest in the Jews, it has been because Israel has figured so largely in their millennial hopes.
Peter Toon, editor of Puritans, the Millennium and the Future of Israel, gives a detailed account of the millennialism of the 17th century. He states that, while neither Augustine nor Calvin taught it, Calvinists, under the leadership of Theodore Beza, William Perkins, Elnathan Parr, and Robert Baillie, came to include the doctrine "...that near the end of the age large numbers of Jews, or perhaps the whole Jewish people, would be converted to Christianity from Judaism, and by their conversion bring great blessing to the Church on earth.”31 That doctrine, incorporated in the Geneva Bible, became the basis for most of the Puritan interest in the Jews.
As noted, less than a decade after Francis Kett was burned at the stake for preaching that the ingathering of God’s Chosen People meant the restoration of the Jewish people as a nation, Thomas Brightman was echoing the same thoughts. As early as 1609, he departed from Augustinian amillennialism to encourage Protestants by insisting that Christ would come soon to dispose of the papacy and destroy the Turks and Rome.32
Brightman was of the opinion that the resurrection foreseen by Daniel 12:2 referred to the restoration of the Jewish nation and their conversion to Christianity.33 He believed that the first millennium extended from the suppression of the heathen Emperors by Constantine, i.e., from the 4th century, until 1300. The invasion of Europe by the Turks in the 14th century was the “loosing of Satan for a little while.” It would not be long until the conversion of the Jews.34
The battle of Gog and Magog (the Turks and their allies) would take place during a second millennium. The Jews would become Christian, and the Turks would surround them in their ancient homeland. “At this point,” wrote Brightman, “God will intervene on behalf of his ancient people and His Church and destroy their enemies (Revelation 20:10) and cause the full conversion and restoration of the Jewish nation which will be as a great resurrection (Revelation 20:11, 12).”35
Brightman, who has been called the father of the British doctrine of the Restoration of the Jews, had many followers, among them Sir Henry Finch, the most eminent legal authority of his day. Sir Henry was jailed for inviting the Jews to reassert their claim to the Promised Land and for calling on Christian kings to pay homage to them.36 He joined William Gouge, lecturer at St. Anne’s, Blackfriars, to publish in 1621 The Calling of the Jews...which examined “...the passages in the Old and New Testaments which relate to the conversion of the Jews and their restoration to Palestine.”37
Finch promised the Jews “...that it was God’s intended purpose ‘to bring thee home againe, & to marry thee to himselfe by faith for euermore...To be the joy of the earth, the most noble Church that euer eye did see.’”38
The principle of biblical interpretation adopted by Finch and Gouge was that the words “Israel,” “Judah,” “Zion,” and “Jerusalem” refer to the fleshly descendants of Abraham or the places where they lived. “Therefore, passages which speak of a return of these people to their own land, their conquest of enemies and their rule of the nations are to be taken literally, not allegorically as of the Church.”39
A second principle they employed was that the one final enemy of Christ was called by various names in the Old Testament. “The Turks,” they said, “are thus called ‘Gog and Magog,’ ‘king of the north,’ and ‘Leviathan.’”40
Finch and Gouge set actual dates for the end-times and foresaw the conversion of the Jews:
The first to be converted will come from the North and East Quarters of the earth...and this conversion will occur when the Turkish tyranny in Europe had lasted 350 years...As they travel towards Canaan, the river Euphrates will open up before them even as did the Red Sea for Moses...When the Turks hear of this, they will be afraid and will, with their allies, form the armies of Gog and Magog to attack the Jews... But God will intervene miraculously to fight for His ancient people...and will destroy the Turks by the side of the Sea of Galilee... This battle will occur 45 years after the first conversion of Jews and 395 years after the coming to power of the Ottoman Empire...41
Brightman was writing his brand of millenarianism as early as 1609 and Finch and Gouge in 1621, but it was not until mid-17th century that the Golden Age of millenarianism dawned, ushered in by a mounting interest on the part of Puritans in the growing wave of Jewish Messianic expectations. Among Hebrew scholars there was a growing expectancy that the advent of the Messiah was imminent. Rabbi Menasseh ben Israel, highly esteemed in Amsterdam by Jews and Gentiles alike, refused to set an exact date for the end of this age, but he indicated that “...the time of redemption is at hand.”42 Interestingly, Christians and Jews agreed that the Messiah would reveal himself to Israel during the period 1650-1656.43
Conversion of the Jews was necessary before the kingdom of Israel could be restored, and the kingdom of Israel had to be restored in order for the kingdom of Christ to appear. As early as the first decade of the 17th century, Thomas Brightman was waiting expectantly for the conversion of Israel: “...These men beinge dispersed every where amonge all Nations, shall be at last converted to the true faith, and shall mourne with an earnest sorrowe, both for theire forefathers horrible wickedness, as also for theire owne so long obstinacy.”44 Like the millenarians of the 20th century, those of the 17th assumed that prophecy was to, for, and about Jews. For Brightman, the resurrection foreseen by Daniel referred to the restoration of the Jewish nation and their conversion to Christianity.
Sir Henry Finch concluded that the “fifth monarchy” in Daniel would be the kingdom of the Jews, and Ephraim Huit saw all of Daniel’s prophecies as predictions of Israel’s lot in the dispersion, its coming restoration, its conversion to the true Messiah (Jesus), its return to Judea, and “planting themselves a Christian church, exercising dominion over their former oppressors.”45
The millenarians put forth an interesting, if self-serving, rationale for the readmission of the Jews to England. Brian W. Ball says, “Both Christians and Jewish theologians agreed there was to be a gathering of the Jews from their dispersion, but since such a gathering could not transpire until the dispersion was itself complete it could be reasoned, with a degree of logic, that the Jews must first be admitted to England...”for England was considered one of the “four corners of the earth.”46
Pseudonymous J.J. Philo-Judeus argued that Jews should be readmitted to England on the ground that it was a necessary prelude to the Second Coming:
If any one that would truly further the coming of our Lord to judgment, and does desire that those evil days spoken of and predicted by him might be shortened; let him first study how to further their conversion, because the other cannot be accomplished until all the elect and chosen Hebrews be made vessels ready prepared to abide forever in those heavenly mansions above.47
Lucien Wolf declared, “...inasmuch as the conversion of the Jews was an indispensable preliminary to the millennium, their admission to England, where they might meet the godliest people in the world, was urgently necessary.”48 Edward Spencer wrote Rabbi Menasseh ben Israel that he “...believed the English were ‘the likelyest Nation under Heaven to doe it...,’”49 i.e., to convert the Jews.
Joseph Mede believed that the Jewish people in their entirety, wherever they were, would be transformed. Nathaniel Homes, both mystical and practical, believed Jesus would appear in the clouds to accomplish the universal conversion of the Jews, but he also advocated discussions with the Jews based on Jewish messianic expectations. “We all, both Jewes and Gentiles, that have been candid enquirers into the Scriptures, have from the beginning looked for His further coming...”50
The Restoration of Israel
Seventeenth-century millenarians expected the conversion of the Jews to culminate in the return of the Jews to Palestine. By the middle of the century the English were ready to hear a rabbi say what Christians had not been willing to hear for 1600 years, i.e., the Jews will return to Jerusalem. Some Protestant theologians had been saying this for half a century, but their emphasis had been on the conversion of the Jews.51
Events were taking place that were taken to be signs of the “soon” return of Christ. Rumors arose that Jews were mobilizing in Asia Minor to wage war against the Turks and that Judaeans had been delivered from a serious drought by prayer and fasting. The signs multiplied and they pointed to the year 1655.52
Ball sums up the mood of expectancy in the 1650’s:
The seventh angel, then, had long since begun to sound, the remaining vials were about to be poured forth, and the final blast of the seventh trumpet would soon be heard heralding the finished mystery. Everything pointed to an early transition of the earthly kingdoms to the righteous kingdom of God.53
The Turco-Judean war would dispose of the Antichrist, Turkey. Somehow, the demonstration of the superiority of English Christianity in bringing about the conversion of the Jews would be responsible for the collapse of the papacy.54 And, with the Antichrist removed, the way would be clear for the kingdom of Christ.
Thomas Goodwin calculated that the Jews would be converted in mid 1650’s, the destruction of the papacy and the Turkish Empire would occur before 1700 at the latest, “...after which, shall begin that great Resurrection, even at that last Period of 1335, falling out about 1700, which is the consummation of all.”55
Describing the End of Time event, the extreme millenarian, John Archer, said it would be like Old Israel in that the greatest glory would belong to the Jews, now converted to Christianity.56
Mention should also be made of the Fifth Monarchists, who combined political activism and avowed militarism with millenarianism. They were never actually violent. John Tillinghast, the most literate of this group, calculated the conversion and return of the Jews to occur in 1656, but Rome would not fall until 1701. He implied that an English army would overthrow the Ottoman Empire, preparing the way for the return of the Jews. Following their conversion Christ would return and reign a thousand years until the Last Judgment.57
The Fifth Monarchists fantasized rash action. In addition to expecting an English army to move against the Turks, one Fifth Monarchist thought the English should join Sabbattai Sevi, an Ottoman Jew with Messianic pretensions, because the Jews would have a major responsibility for setting up the Millennium.58 Jews throughout the Middle East joined Sevi expecting a triumphant return to Palestine, and lending some substance to the rumor that Jews were mobilizing in Asia Minor for war on the Ottoman Empire.
The rumor, it turned out, was false. The scenario was not carried out.
In 1649 two English Puritans residing in Amsterdam petitioned the English Parliament to join with the Netherlands in transporting Jews to Palestine. Joanna and Ebenezer Cartwright were the first to propose Jewish Restoration by human action. Before, Jews and Christians alike believed that any Restoration would occur only on divine initiative.59
With the death of Cromwell in 1658, the accession of the Stuarts to the throne in 1660 and the Glorious Revolution of 1688, Puritanism declined in England. Hebraism and millenarianism lost intensity, but the notion that Jewish Restoration was a necessary prelude to the Second Coming had found a secure place in a major strain of Protestant dogma, not only in England but also in other countries of Europe.60
Modern Christian Philo-Semitism
Christian Zionism was strengthened by the Enlightenment and Deism of the 18th century by adding a touch of realism. The idea of the Restoration “...was passed on steadily...from one generation to another until the French Revolution brought about a sudden radical metamorphosis.”61
Many philosophers of the 17th and 18th centuries espoused Jewish Restoration to Palestine, most notably John Locke who wrote, “God is able to collect the Jews into one body...and set them in flourishing condition in their own land.”62 Surprisingly, the philosophers of the Age of Reason adopted Hebraic accounts of eschatology and tried to find scientific interpretations for the return of the Jews to Palestine. Isaac Newton expected the Restoration but could suggest no manner in which it would be accomplished.63
Joseph Priestley, discoverer of oxygen and a Unitarian minister, prayed for the conversion of the Jews and their speedy restoration to Palestine. He was answered by Rabbi David Levi who said he had no intention of converting to Christianity and that the redemptive mission of the Jews could be accomplished in the dispersion, not in any Restoration.64 Again, Napoleon received little encouragement from Jews when he sought to muster Jewish support for his Oriental Campaign by offering to set up a Jewish state in Palestine.
If the Jews lacked ardor for the Restoration, there was no lack of enthusiasm among the millenarians. They set up their premise and demonstrated that a certain succession of military and political events were confirming their prognostications, “...thus engendering in the public the belief that what was happening before their eyes was the very apocalyptical sequence of events that had been predicted in the prophecies on the Latter Days.”65 The French Revolution and Napoleon’s Oriental Expedition provided the historical events that were taken as signs of the approaching end of the age.
Resurgence of Millenarianism
The French Revolution, then, was an invigorating tonic for millenarianism. E.R. Sandeen in The Roots of Fundamentalism wrote, “The violent uprooting of European political and social institutions forced many to the conclusion that the end of the world was near.”66 Students of prophecy were nearly unanimous in interpreting the elimination of papal power in France and the confiscation of church property as a fulfillment of prophecies in Daniel 7:15-28 and Revelation 13. It was the prophetic Rosetta Stone to crack the code between prophecy and history, says Sandeen, and with it there were no limits to the possibility of discovery.67
There was, for example, the newly rich Lewis Way, who, after carefully reviewing the prophecies relating to the Restoration of the Jews, bought up the London Society for Promoting Christianity among the Jews and turned it into “a missionary society devoted to the training and support of Jewish converts to Christianity, who were sent into eastern Europe, Russia and the Middle East.”68 The society, more successful in promoting Protestant Zionism than anything else, published the Jewish Expositor and was responsible to a large extent for getting established as a plank in the millenarian creed “...the restoration of the Jews to Palestine—the return of the chosen people to the promised land.”69
Sandeen agrees that Protestant Zionism, (what I choose to call Christian Zionism, a form of the more general phenomenon which I have termed philo-Semitism) is the result of literalistic biblicism:
...millenarian interest in the restoration of the Jews stemmed explicitly from the interpretation of prophecy. The prophetic text which described the cataclysmic events apparently fulfilled in the French Revolution also predicted the second advent of Christ and the restoration of the Jews. The prophetic timetable had joined the expectations inextricably. The millenarian accepted both events as the will of God, prayed for the coming of both, and, if he could not work for the accomplishment of the second advent, did what he could to aid the cause of Palestinian resettlement...There can be no question that the millenarian movement played a significant role in preparing the British for political Zionism.70
Notice the connection between philo-Semitism, now more focused on Zionism than in the 17th century, and the development of modern millenarianism. A series of articles, published pseudonymously under the name of Basilicus by Lewis Way in the Jewish Expositor, converted many of the subsequent leaders of the millenarian movement to the doctrine of the premillennial advent.71
During the first week in Advent in 1826, a score of millenarians gathered at the Albury Park estate of Henry Drummond to discuss prophetic truth. According to Sandeen, “the Albury conferences, more than any other event, gave structure to the British millenarian revival, consolidating both the theology and the group of men who were to defend it.”72
The Albury conferences were shaped by Christian Zionistic as well as millenarian influences. Henry Drummond, host for the Albury conferences, was the grandson of Henry Dundas, in whose home he grew up. Henry Dundas was closely associated with the London Society for Promoting Christianity among the Jews, as were many of those attending the conference at Albury.73 One might say that early fundamentalism and Christian Zionism had interlocking boards of directors.
The Albury conference was made up mostly of Anglican clergymen with very few Methodists or dissenters, whereas the millenarians of the 17th century were mostly Puritans. Their main topics of discussion included prophetic chronology, the second advent and the restoration of the Jews.74
A published summary by Henry Drummond of conference agreements appeared in 1829:
1. This “dispensation” or age will not end “insensibly” but cataclysmically in judgment and destruction of the church in the same manner in which the Jewish dispensation ended.
2. The Jews will be restored to Palestine during the time of judgment.
3. The judgment to come will fall principally upon Christendom.
4. When the judgment is past, the millennium will begin.
5. The second advent of Christ will occur before the millennium.
6. The 1260 years of Daniel 7 and Revelation 13 ought to be measured from the reign of Justinian to the French Revolution. The vials of wrath (Revelation 16) are now being poured out and the second advent is imminent.75
While Sandeen is of the opinion that the future shape of fundamentalism was determined in these Albury conferences, the dispensationalist brand of premillennialism that was to have such an extensive effect upon American fundamentalism traces back to the futurism of John Nelson Darby. Darby was at first a Church of Ireland clergyman and later one of the main founders of the Plymouth Brethren, and his theology gained vogue in America in the Scofield Reference Bible published in 1909.76
Darby disagreed with the Albury historicist interpretation of the Book of Revelation which held that the first fifteen chapters of Revelation had already been fulfilled and that, in 1827, European history was hovering somewhere between the twelfth and seventeenth verses of Revelation 16.77 Taking his new futurist position, Darby claimed that none of the prophecies after the third chapter of Revelation had been fulfilled and that this dispensation (hence the name of his party) would have to end before any of them would be fulfilled. Furthermore, he rejected the year/day theory that the 1260 days ended in 1798.78
Darby then introduced two new ideas: that the dispensation of the church is a sort of “parenthesis” in the calendar of prophetic fulfillment between the sixty-ninth and seventieth weeks of Daniel; and that there will be a secret rapture of the church. He said that there would be two second comings. The first, the secret rapture, will occur when the church will be removed from the earth secretly. The second, the public appearance of Christ, would occur in the manner of Matthew 24.
It is this secret rapture, this “any moment coming,” which proved one of the greatest attractions of dispensational theology. According to Darby, when the church was founded, the fulfillment of prophecy ceased and will not recommence until the secret rapture. In other words, the history of the church is a great gap in the history of prophetic fulfillment about which the prophets knew nothing.79
By taking present and past events since the founding of the church out of the realm of prophecy Darby thus relieved himself of the responsibility of fitting them into any kind of prophetic timetable. While historicists were always looking for another prophecy to be fulfilled as a herald of the Second Coming, Darby did not consider that any event stood between him and the rapture.
Darby summarized his ecclesiology:
The church in this new dispensation of grace was so much a mystery that it had been hidden even from the prophets of the Old Testament. Israel had been a worldly kingdom with material promises and blessings. The Messiah had come to fulfill that worldly kingdom but had been rejected by his people. When that happened, God had broken the continuity of history, stopped the prophetic clock, and instituted the church. When the church is raptured out of the world, this clock will start again and God will return to the task of dealing with the earthly problems of Israel. Only then will the final events predicted in Daniel—the events of the seventieth week—occur.80
It should be noted that Darby did not abandon the essential concerns of millenarianism, i.e., prophetic chronology, the Second Coming, and the restoration of the Jews to Palestine. Indeed, his insistence that prophecy was to the Jews set the stage for a more intense form of Christian Zionism in the 20th century.
Darby spent seven years in the United States and Canada between 1862 and 1877. His most influential convert was James H. Brookes, pastor of two large Presbyterian churches in St. Louis. It was Brookes who tutored a young lawyer, Cyrus Ingerson Scofield, in Darbyism. Scofield, with much help from Arno C. Gaebelein, a German immigrant who was one of the most able apologists for dispensationalism, published the Scofield Reference Bible in 1909. The work met with immediate success.
“The section headings and parallel passages opened up the format of the text and made reading much easier,” says Dewey M. Beegle.” The notes and references laid out in clear fashion the dispensational system of prophecy.”81 Without the Scofield Reference Bible it is doubtful that dispensationalism would have captured the fundamentalist rank-and-file as it has.
Israel, Fulfillment of Prophecy
The Zionistic expectations of millenarianism changed during the 19th century. The millenarianism of the early 19th century was historicist, resuming the 17th century assumptions that, before the Second Coming, would come the conversion of the Jews and their restoration to Palestine. By the end of the 19th century, the futurist party of John Nelson Darby dominated millenarianism, and, according to them, all prophecies concerning Israel that were not fulfilled before the beginning of the church will not be fulfilled until after the Second Coming, conversion of the Jews coming in the tribulation (a period of suffering at the end of the present age of seven years duration foretold by Daniel and from which the church will be rescued) and restoration coming in the millennium.
If that is true, then modern Israel cannot be a fulfillment of a prophecy, unless there is a community of unconverted Jews in Jerusalem at the time of the Second Coming. J. Barton Payne in Encyclopedia of Biblical Prophecy suggests that Zechariah 12:10b is speaking of the Jews when the prophet writes, “’The house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem’...shall look upon the divine Messiah whom they have pierced.”82
By placing the conversion of the Jews in the tribulation and outside the age of the church, millenarians are relieved of the responsibility for the conversion of Israel. Indeed, this interpretation of Zechariah 12:10b, suggesting as it does the existence of a community of unconverted Jews in Jerusalem to be witnesses to the Second Coming, legitimizes the modern state of Israel, on the one hand, and removes that nation as an object of evangelism, on the other, since success in converting Jews would be a hindrance to the fulfillment of prophecy. Although millenarians no longer emphasize their role in the conversion of the Jews, most do see Israel as a necessary reality before the Second Coming.
Instead of seeking the conversion of Israel, Christian millenarian Zionists wait for the fulfillment of that prophecy in the millennium. Instead of expecting the restoration of Israel, they have become apologists for the state of Israel in the United States. Their efforts are calculated to achieve: the legitimization of the modern state of Israel on the grounds that it is divinely ordained by prophecy; the affirmation of Israel’s right to eretz Israel, including the West Bank; the assurance of Israel that the Conservative Evangelicals are committed to work in America for Israel’s security; and the affirmation of the Jews as God’s Chosen People—that God blesses those who bless the Jews and curses those who curse the Jews.
The Legitimation of Israel
We have seen how Zechariah 12:10b has been used to legitimize the present state of Israel. The most easily documented fact is that the Dispensationalists, who designate themselves as “Conservative Evangelicals,” hail the modern state of Israel as an unmistakable sign of the imminent Second Coming of Jesus Christ. Prominent representatives of the Conservative Evangelicals met in Washington, D.C. on November 11, 1982, following the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, and adopted an Evangelical Christian Declaration of Support for Israel and the American Jewish Community asserting, among other things:
We are committed to the security of Israel. We believe all of the Holy Land is the inalienable possession of the Jewish People; that the promises made to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob have never been abrogated; and that the establishment of modern Israel is an undeniable fulfillment of biblical prophecy, the herald of the Coming Messiah....We believe that Jews everywhere remain “the Chosen People of God” and that God blesses those who bless them.83
At the Blair House in Washington, D.C., before Carter’s term had ended, eight influential Conservative Evangelical preachers listened to Menachem Begin, and then heard Rev. Jerry Falwell, leader of Moral Majority, read a letter to Mr. Begin that said, “We proclaim that the Land of Israel encompasses Judea and Samaria as integral parts of the Jewish patrimony, with Jerusalem as its one and indivisible capital... Israel stands as a bulwark of strength and determination against those, who by terror and blackmail, threaten our democratic way of life.”84
In fact, Falwell became so expansive in his interpretation of Genesis 15:18 that he foresaw boundaries of the state of Israel extending from the Euphrates in the north to the Nile in the South, encompassing present-day Iraq, Syria, Turkey, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Sudan, Lebanon and Kuwait. But, according to Falwell, all Menachem Begin has tried to do, as an instrument of God, is preserve that which has already been delivered to them.85
Where Israel’s security is concerned, Falwell is in an unacknowledged dilemma. He zealously assures Israel that the United States will not desert it, and he seeks to rally American support, warning that, without that support, Israel would be driven into the Mediterranean overnight. From a faith perspective, however, he is sanguine about Israel’s prospects for survival with or without our help; he firmly believes that the United States and the Soviet Union combined could not defeat Israel because God Almighty has His hands upon them.86
So enthusiastic is Jerry Falwell in his estimation of the Jews that he relegates Gentile Christians to the role of second-class citizens in the present dispensation. The value of Christians lies in the support they provide for Israel. “God deals with nations in relation to how nations deal with Israel,” he contends. “I believe God blesses America and has blessed America because we have blessed Abraham and have blessed the Jews. I think if America, for example, turned against Israel, our value to God would cease to be. We are important to God only if we are meeting God’s priorities on this earth.”87
What Falwell and others have accomplished in reaching the masses via television and radio, Hal Lindsey has accomplished via the printed word in his numerous publications. Lindsey, in referring to the significance of Israel for prophecy, writes, “The one event which many Bible students in the past overlooked was this paramount prophetic sign: Israel had to be a nation again in the land of its forefathers.”88 He sees Israel involved in three ways in the later days: “First, the Jewish nation would be reborn in the land of Palestine. Secondly, the Jews would repossess old Jerusalem and the sacred sites. Thirdly, they would rebuild their ancient temple of worship upon its historic site.”89 J. Barton Payne in Encyclopedia of Biblical Prophecy places all three of the predictions to which Lindsey refers in the millennium.90
According to Lindsey, two of these events have already taken place. The nation of Israel is a reality. In 1967, Israel took possession of East Jerusalem, i.e., the Old City and the sacred sites. And today there are dedicated millenarians who are collaborating with radical Zionists to fulfill the third event, the millennial temple of Ezekiel 40.
An American businessman and Christian fundamentalist, Terry Reisenhuver, is said to be involved in the purchase of land in the West Bank and Jerusalem for the Israelis, but his primary objective is to carry out biblical prophecy “by rebuilding in Jerusalem the Third Temple on the site now occupied by the Dome of the Rock mosque, the second (sic) holiest spot in Islam.”91 An organization has been created called the Temple Mount Foundation whose objective is “...the building of the Third Temple on Temple Mount,” this according to a report in Davar dated January 23, 1983. Davar quoted Yehuda Perach, a Knesset member, as saying that the foundation has already “tens of millions of dollars” at its disposal and that it has 20 American millionaires ready to provide additional support.”92
Two violent attempts to “liberate the Temple Mount” recently have taken place. Last year Alan Harry Goodman, an American, stormed into Al-Aqsa Mosque, armed with an army-issued M-16 rifle, killed a guard and wounded 4 other Arabs.93 Another attack on the same area was repulsed on March 10, 1983, when police arrested 42 Jewish settlers involved in the Kach movement which has as its goal the expulsion of all Arabs from so-called “Greater Israel.”94 According to Middle East correspondent Grace Halsell, “Increasingly Zionist fanatics—Israelis and Americans—are plotting to destroy Islam’s sacred Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem. It is said that many of Israel’s highest officials sanction Zionist plans to destroy the mosque, the site from whence Prophet Muhammad ascended into heaven, and to build a Jewish temple there.”95
Christian Zionists, uncritical of any action undertaken by the Israeli government, apparently have the same rationale for supporting such actions.
Israeli officials and other pro-Israel supporters are confident that there is much potential and actual support among the 40 million (their estimate) Conservative Evangelicals in America, and the potentially 70 million worldwide. While many liberal American Jews and Israelis do not subscribe to the methods of biblical interpretation and the eschatological conclusions of the Christian Right, they consider it expedient not only to accept but also to cultivate support among the Evangelical Right.” Given our problems,” one Israeli official said, “we can’t afford to be too picky about accepting support. We’ll take it from wherever we can get it.”96 At a meeting of the National Jewish Community Advisory Council, held as long ago as June 1970, Rabbi Marc Tannenbaum said that the American Jewish Committee, “spends 50 percent of our funds to improve the image of Israel among conservative Christians and receives 70 percent support from them.”97 Israeli officials “...do not believe that the Christian Right should be neglected even if many liberal American Jews and Israelis may be turned off by the Moral Majority positions on such sensitive issues as abortion, prayers in public schools and women’s rights.”98
Critique of Christian Zionism
Millenarianism develops when a community experiences a historical event that is seen as having prophetic significance. Philo-Semitism, or Christian Zionism, is inherent in any literal interpretation of Old Testament prophecies; those prophecies were to, for, and about Israel. When Christians interpret the Old Testament literally and fail to avail themselves of New Testament understandings of Old Testament prophecy and apocalypse, they become Judaized and philo-Semites. Christians, in general, however, need to be concerned about the phenomenon because it has dangerous potentials and because it represents heresy so far as doctrine is concerned.
As to the dangers: if the radical Christian Right were to succeed in taking over the Temple Mount, it would prompt Islam to embark upon a “holy war.” Second, latent anti-Semitism could emerge when prophecy, for some reason, is interpreted in a way that disinherits Israel. And, third, Christian Zionism provides an ever-ready excuse for Israel’s violation of human rights, dispossession of land, expulsions, torture, and economic strangulation of Palestinians in the West Bank, to say nothing of the bombing of the Iraqi nuclear reactor and the invasion of Lebanon.
In conclusion, it is necessary to critique Dispensationalist Christian Zionism as a theological position. One could dismiss the entire system of thought with the valid claim that its method of biblical interpretation is flawed. As Dewey Beegle has pointed out in Prophecy and Prediction, the Dispensationalists employ a double standard: literalism in the interpretation of prophecy and figuratism in the interpretation of history. Actual historical persons and events are treated as unimportant in themselves but only so as “types.”99 Daniel P. Fuller finds their interpretive methods faulty, “...both internally inconsistent and unable to harmonize itself with the biblical data. The problem is that its adherents have proceeded non-inductively in that they have accepted the distinction between Israel and the church before examining all the relevant data on the question.”100
Israel and the Church
The most crucial question in the critique of Christian Zionism has to do with the doctrine of the church. Are Israel and the church two separate entities, with God dealing with the church in this dispensation and committed to dealing with Israel as His Chosen People in the tribulation and the millennium, as the Dispensationalists teach? Or is the church the New Israel, the inheritor of the promises made to Israel in the Old Testament, so that any future dealing with Israel as a nation is obviated, as the church has traditionally believed?
Over against the Dispensationalist view of Israel as separate from the church and inheritors of an unconditional and everlasting promise of the land in the Abrahamic covenant there is Dewey Beegle’s argument that the promise was time-limited. Beegle acknowledges that the English rendering of the Hebrew Genesis 13:15 is “I will give to you and your descendants for ever,” but he points out that a proper rendering of the Hebrew is “until a long time,” a term relative to the horizon of the speaker. It could mean for a life time or until the end of an age.101
Furthermore, Beegle denies that the promise was unconditional. Genesis 18:19 makes that clear: Abraham is to instruct his people in the way of the Lord, “so that the Lord may bring Abraham what he has promised him.”102 Beegle goes on to demonstrate how Israel failed to keep the terms of conditional covenants and how their tenure in the land was limited.
Rabbi Elmer Berger in “Jerusalem in Jewish Perspectives” implies that the covenants are conditional. He argues that prophecy is not validated by the land and that “...the sanctity of the land is not intrinsic to the soil and the sanctity of the people does not derive from its physical presence on the soil. Both were sacred, worthy of Zion, only when the Divine Covenant was visibly operative, fully sustained in the people’s conduct.”103 Promises of land as an eternal possession, then, are conditioned upon Israel’s meeting the terms of the covenant. Rabbi Berger makes the telling point that Israel is not above judgment, saying, “...only a twisted logic or a prostituted theology or a corruption of the genuine prophetic tradition can employ some different criteria to judge Israel’s world politics and diplomacy on the grounds that this state is integrally a part of the Messianic tradition and therefore its actions are the unfolding of the Divine plan.”104 And, yet, that is precisely what the dispensational Christian Zionists are doing!
Charles C. Ryrie in Dispensationalism Today says that Israel and the church must be continually distinguished from one another. “All of God’s promises to Abraham and his seed,” he continues, “must be literally fulfilled in the actual people of Israel, the nation.”105 Not so, say Albertus Pieters and W.D. Davies.
Dr. Albertus Pieters, Emeritus Dosker-Hulswit Professor of Bible and Missions in the Western Theological Seminary of the Reformed Church in America, is author of The Seed of Abraham, an expansion of his T.V. Moore Lectures at San Francisco Theological Seminary in 1950. He argues that the covenant was not established with all of Abraham’s descendants—twenty tribes can be traced to him of which Israel was only one. The covenant was established with a community associated with Abraham and their descendants, so that religion became an affair of the group. “Seed of Abraham” actually denoted “...all who were within the covenant whether physically descended from Abraham or not.”106
The promises were not made to any race but to the continuing covenanted community to whom the Sinaitic covenant was given later to train them to carry on God’s redemptive enterprise, according to Pieters, and individuals could refuse to be bound by that covenant only at the cost of surrendering membership in the “Seed of Abraham.”107
More convincing is Pieter’s argument based on Jeremiah’s promise of a new covenant. Jeremiah prophesied that God would make a new covenant with Israel and Judah: “Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah...I will put my law within them, and I will write it upon their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people” (Jeremiah 31:31, 33b, RSV). The term “New Testament” is more properly rendered “New Covenant” and derives from this passage in Jeremiah, for very early in the history of the church Christians were teaching that the prophecy was fulfilled in Christ.108 Such was the unchallenged doctrine of the church until the 19th century when John Nelson Darby began teaching that the New Covenant will only be established with the Jewish people in the millennium.109
The faith of the Christian church at large is that Jeremiah’s prophecy was fulfilled at the coming of Christ who initiated the new covenant before his death and that the New Covenant Israel is the church, the heir of the spiritual promises made to Israel. To support his belief Pieters cites the testimony of Hebrews 8-10, perhaps the most unambiguous proclamation of the church as the New Israel. Here Jesus is seen as the mediator of the new and superior covenant (8:6). There can be no doubt that the covenant in Christ is the one Jeremiah promised, so far as the writer of Hebrews is concerned, for he quotes practically in its entirety Jeremiah 31:31-34, ad he goes on to say that the “old” Sinaitic covenant is “...ready to vanish,” so that the covenant of law was superseded by the new covenant of Grace in Jesus Christ.110
Again, II Corinthians 3 represented the gospel as tables of flesh which have taken the place of tables of stone, the Decalogue. The latter “passeth away” but the former remaineth. “There has been a change of covenants,” writes Pieters. “The Old Covenant of the Law, given to Israel on Mt. Sinai, is done away, and the New Covenant promised through Jeremiah the prophet has taken its place.”111 Dispensationalists contend that the New Covenant is yet to come into being and will be established with Israel in the millennium, despite the fact that, when he instituted the Lord’s Supper, Jesus said, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood” (Luke 22:20).
Pieters engages in a line of reasoning designed to establish the church as the “Seed of Abraham.” He concedes that Jeremiah’s promise in 31:31-34 was to the “house of Israel and the house of Judah,” but said he, “...the Christian church in its origin was an Israelitish body, fully qualified to claim the promises made to Israel.”112 These “Israelitish” members of the first church—all of whom were Jews—were “the remnant that shall be saved” (Romans 9:27) to whom Jesus promised, “Fear not little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom” (Luke 12:32).
Paul’s line of reasoning in Romans II is essentially the same as that above. The “Seed of Abraham” is the good Olive Tree, the covenanted people of God. Those who refused to accept Christ had been pruned and no longer counted among the “Seed of Abraham,” while those who accepted Christ were the saving remnant, the tree that remained. The pruned tree represented the “Seed of Abraham,” the houses of Israel and Judah, for they had come under the new covenant which was just as necessary for them, if they were to remain “Seed of Abraham,” as it had been for their forefathers to accept the Sinaitic covenant in order to remain Israelites. Later other branches, the Gentiles, were grafted in, but the tree remained what it had been, Israel, the “Seed of Abraham.” “With them our Lord established the New Covenant. This New Covenant Israel is therefore identical with the Christian church.”113 which is composed of Jewish and Gentile believers.
Even more cogent is the interpretation of the church as “the people of God” by W.D. Davies. Dr. Davies has been professor of Christian Origins at Union Theological Seminary in New York City and George Washington Ivey Professor of Christian Origins at Duke University. In his book The Gospel and the Land he effectively counters Ryrie’s contention that the church is not equated with a new Israel and that “...means all of God’s promises to Abraham and his seed must be literally fulfilled in the actual people of Israel, the nation.” As a matter of fact, writes Dr. Davies, Paul had to deal with Christians who shared Ryrie’s understanding of the favor in which Israel stood, who considered circumcision and adherence to the Law essential for salvation. The Jerusalem Talmud (10:1) promised all Israelites a place in the coming kingdom, and many Christians wanted to share in this promise by becoming Jews.114 Thus, there was lively interest in the question, “Who are the true sons of Abraham?” It was John the Baptist who greeted Pharisees and Saducees when they came for baptism with the singularly uncordial words,
You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruit that befits repentance and do not presume to say to yourselves, “We have Abraham as our father”; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire (Matthew 3:17-10).115
The question “Who are the sons of Abraham?” was being asked, then, before the baptism of Jesus. The more Gentile the church became as time went on the more crucial became the answer to the question. The Gentile Christians were obviously neither physical descendants of Abraham, nor were they circumcised, nor did they observe the Law. How could they claim to belong to the people of God and partake in the promised heritage?
On the other hand, had Jewish Christians forfeited membership in the “Seed of Abraham” by grounding their faith in Christ? The church needed to clarify the criteria by which one gained membership in the chosen people.116 If membership was not rooted in the response to the Gospel or incorporation “in Christ,” what was the relationship of the community formed through such a response to the Israel that claimed physical descent from Abraham?117
It was a weighty question, indeed, for Paul because he was dealing with “...the nature and constitution of the people of God—its continuity and discontinuity with the Jewish people of history.”118 He was not prepared to say offhand that a New Israel had superseded the Old. Instead, as Davies said, Paul “...came to terms with Abraham...(concentrating) with directness on one thing, that is, on the patriarch’s role in history as the one who had received the divine promise, had responded to it by faith, and had thereby been justified and became the father of many nations.”119 It was God’s free grace and election that justified Abraham, but it was by Abraham’s faith and obedience that the promise was appropriated.120
God’s gracious promise to Abraham and Abraham’s faith were the basis of the Patriarch’s fatherhood of many nations and were and are the grounds of sonship to Abraham. The inheritors of the promises are those who share Abraham’s faith (Galatians 3:9, 14, 18, 22; Romans 4:11-13,16). All who believe in the promise are children of Abraham whether circumcised or not (Romans 4:10-12),121 and those who do not believe are not his children even though they may be circumcised, for “...only those who share in Abraham’s faith are truly descended from him (Galatians 3:8, 14).122
Davies presses his point that believing Christians are the new sons of Abraham:
In Galatians 4:21-31 Paul uses an allegory—that of the two women, Hagar and Sarah, and their offspring—to bring his meaning home. Abraham had two sons; one born after the flesh (that is, by the ordinary processes of nature) to Hagar, his slave; the other born after the promise (that is, by the divine intent and contrary to the natural processes) to Sarah, his wife, who like Abraham had become aged. But natural generation signifies not: what matters is that one should be a child of the promise by faith. Such are those who are “in Christ” and they, therefore, are the true inheritors of the promise, the true children of Abraham. Through faith in Christ they share in the faith of the Patriarch himself and thus become his sons (Galatians 3:29; 4:31...). For Jews and Gentiles, therefore, faith is the condition of sonship.123
The sons of Abraham, then, are people of faith. Writing to the Galatians, Paul said in this regard, “and the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, ‘In you shall all the nations be blessed.’ So then, those who are men of faith are blessed with Abraham who had faith” (Galatians 3:6-9). Again, in Romans 4:16-18, Paul says that the promise rests on grace and depends on faith in order that all of Abraham’s descendants might receive it, not only adherents of the Law, but all who share Abraham’s faith, for God had made him the father of “many nations,” the inescapable implication being that he is not merely the father of the Jews. Thus, Davies concludes that the promise is “panethnic.”124 The promise “...’in the fullness of time’ had brought forth ‘a seed,’ Christ, through incorporation in whom (a society, the true people of God, in which there was neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female) had emerged: its members without distinction, were the heirs of the promise and, like Christ himself and in unity with him, constituted the ‘seed’ of Abraham (Galatians 3:27-29; Romans 4:13-16).”125 Both Jewish and Gentile Christians, then, are included in “the Seed of Abraham,” the New Israel which is the heir to the prophetic promises, contrary to the contention of Christian Zionists who claim that only national Israel can claim the Old Testament promises.
Summary
Promises, promises, who gets the promises, national Israel or the church as the New Israel? Are Christians to treat Old Testament prophecies in Old Testament terms only, or are they to accept New Testament interpretations of those prophecies? Christians traditionally have done the latter. Christian Zionists do the former.
Christian Zionists consider the promises couched in the Abrahamic covenant to be unconditional and everlasting. Dewey Beegle says that the promises to Abraham were not intended to be never-ending—only so in terms of the time-frame of the recipient of the promise, so that there came a time in history when the “foreverness” ran out.
Christian Zionists claim the promises are unconditional, while Dewey Beegle and Elmer Berger persuasively present the traditional Christian view that the covenants were conditional and that Israel did not keep its end of the agreement, thus voiding the contract.
In response to the Christian Zionists’ claim that for Israel the nation alone will there be any further fulfillment of prophecy, Albertus Pieters and W.D. Davies set forth the traditional Christian position that the church by faith is the “Seed of Abraham,” the inheritor of any promises as yet unfulfilled.
There are some very serious consequences to Christian Zionist thinking, such as, the dangerously provocative destruction of Muslim sacred places on Temple Mount to make way for a third temple, the potential for an unleashing of anti-Semitism; and the justification of continuing violations of human rights by the Israelis. It is, therefore, time for responsible Christians to expose the egregious errors in the methods of scriptural interpretation employed by the Christian Zionists and the doctrinal conclusions they are all too successfully disseminating.
Dr. O. Kelly Ingram is Professor of Parish Ministry at the Divinity School of Duke University, Durham, NC.
NOTES
1Sharif, Regina S., Non-Jewish Zionism: Its Roots in Western History, Zed Press, London, 1983.
2Roth, Cecil, Essays and Portraits in Anglo-Jewish History, The Jewish Publication Society of America, Philadelphia, 1962, pp. 11,12.
3 Baer, Y.F., “Israel, the Christian Church, and the Roman Empire” in Scripta Hierosolymitana, Vol. VII, Studies in History, Magnes Press, Jerusalem, 1961.
4 Ibid., p. 83.
5Ibid.
6Ibid., p. 88.
7Ibid., p. 103.
8Ibid., p. 108.
9Ibid., p. 111.
10Ibid., p. 132.
11Ibid., p. 136.
12Ibid., p. 137.
13Ibid., p. 144.
14Roth, Cecil, A History of the Jews in England, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1948, pp. 2,3.
15Ibid.,, pp. 20-23.
16Cohn, Norman, The Pursuit of the Millennium, London, Secker and Warburg, 1957, p. 14.
17Ettinger, S., “The Beginnings of Change in the Attitude of European Society towards the Jews,” in Scripta Hierosolymitana, Vol. VII, Studies in History, Magnes Press, Jerusalem, 1961.
18Ibid.
19Sharif, op.cit., p. 12
20Ibid., p. 15.
21Toon, op. cit., p. 19.
22Ibid., pp. 23,24.
23Ibid., p. 25.
24Ibid.
25Sharif, op.cit., p. 17.
26Ibid.
27Roth, op. cit., p. 13.
28Ibid.
29Ibid.
30Ettinger, op.cit., p. 202.
31Toon, op. cit., p. 6.
32Ibid., p. 27.
33Ball, Bryan W., A Great Expectation: Eschatological Thoughts in English Protestantism to 1660, Leiden, E.J. Brill, 1975, p. 150.
34Toon, op. cit., p. 30.
35Ibid.
36Roth, op. cit., p. 160.
37Toon, op. cit., p. 32.
38Ball, op. cit., p. 146.
39Toon, op. cit.p. 33.
4040 Ibid.
41Ibid.
42Ball, op. cit., p. 147.
43Ibid., p. 148.
44Ibid., p. 150.
45Ibid.
46Ibid., p. 151.
47Ibid.
48Ibid.
49Ibid.
50Ibid., p. 152
51Ibid.
52Ibid., p. 154.
53Ibid.
54Ibid.,, p. 155.
55Ibid.,, p. 156.
56Toon, op. cit., p. 67.
57Ibid., p. 72.
58Ibid.
59Sharif, op.cit., pp. 24,25.
60Ibid., pp. 26, 27.
61Franz Kobler, The Vision Was There, London, 1956, p. 35. Quoted by Sharif, op. cit., p. 34.
62Locke, John, Commentaries on St. Paul’s Epistles, quoted by Sharif, op. cit., p. 36.
63Sharif, op. cit., p. 34.
64Ibid., p. 35.
65Verete, Mayir, “The Restoration of the Jews in English Protestant Thought, 1790-1840,” Middle East Studies, Vol. 8, No. 1, p. 5. Quoted by Sharif, op. cit., p. 38.
66Sandeen, Ernest R., The Roots of Fundamentalism, British and American Millenarianism 1800-1930, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1970, p. 5.
67Ibid., p. 7.
68Ibid., pp. 9,10.
69Ibid., p. 11.
70Ibid., pp. 11,12.
71Ibid., pp. 12.
72Ibid., pp. 18,19.
73Ibid, p. 19.
74Ibid., p. 20.
75Ibid., p. 21.
76Barr, James, Fundamentalism, SCM Press Limited, London, 1977, p. 191.
77Sandeen, op. cit., p. 37.
78Ibid.
79Ibid., p. 63.
80Ibid., p. 67.
81Beegle, Dewey M., Prophecy and Prediction, Pryor Pettengill, Ann Arbor, 1978, p. 162.
82Payne, John Barton, Encyclopedia of Biblical Prophecy, the Complete Guide to Scriptural Predictions and Their Fulfillment, New York, Harper and Row, 1973, p. 466.
83“Evangelical Christian Declaration of Support for Israel and the American Jewish Community,” adopted at a conference held in Washington, D.C., November 11, 1982.
84Granberg-Michaelson, Wesley, “The Evangelical Right and Israel: What Place for the Arabs?” in ADC Issues, No. 8.
85Pratt, Tom, “Falwell: Israel Needs U.S. Support,” in Tyler Courier Times Sunday Telegraph, Vol. 105, No. 136, Tyler, Texas, February 6, 1983.
86Ibid.
87Ibid.
88Lindsey, Hal, The Late Great Planet Earth, Zondervan, Grand Rapids, 1970, p. 43.
89Ibid.,, pp 51, 52.
90Payne, op.cit., pp. 656, 657.
91Coker, Nancy, “U.S. Christian Fundamentalists Front for Israel’s Begin on the West Bank,” in EIR International, January 18, 1983, p. 41.
92Halsell, Grace, “Americans Waging Zionists’ Al-Aqsa War,” in Arab News, April 27, 1983.
93Ibid.
94Ibid.
95Ibid.
96Quoted by Wolf Blitzer in “Political Partners: Evangelical Christians and Jews” in The Cleveland Jewish News, Friday, February 19, 1982, p. 11.
97Ibid.
98Ibid.
99Beegle, op. cit., p. 181.
100Fuller, Daniel P., The Hermeneutics of Dispensationalism, p. 386. Quoted in Beegle, op. cit., p. 182.
101Beegle, op. cit., p. 183.
102Ibid., p. 184.
103Berger, Elmer, “Jerusalem in Jewish Perspectives” in Jerusalem: Key to Peace in the Middle East, Ingram, Kelly, editor, Triangle Friends of the Middle East, Durham, NC, 1978, p. 18.
104Ibid., p. 21.
105Ryrie, Charles C., Dispensationalism Today, p. 140. Quoted in Erickson, Millard J., Contemporary Options in Eschatology: A Study of the Millennium, Baker Book House, Grand Rapids, 1977, p. 119.
106Pieters, Albertus, The Seed of Abraham: A Biblical Study of Israel, the Church and the Jew, Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, 1950, p. 17.
107Ibid.
108Justin Martyr, Ante Nicene Fathers, Vol. 1, p. 260. Quoted in Pieters, op.cit., p. 61.
109Pieters, op. cit., p. 65.
110Ibid., p. 68.
111Ibid., p. 69.
112Ibid., p. 71.
113Ibid., p. 75.
114Davies, William David, The Gospel and the Land: Early Christianity and Jewish Territorial Doctrine, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1974, p. 169.
115Quoted by Davies, op. cit., p. 169.
116Davies, op.cit., p. 170.
117Ibid.
118Ibid.,, p. 171.
119Ibid., p. 172.
120Ibid.
121Ibid., p. 175.
122Ibid.
123Ibid., pp. 175, 176.
124Ibid., p. 176.
125Ibid., pp, 176, 177.