Israel and the Church

Paul uses the metaphor of the olive tree in Romans 11 to explain the relationship between Israel and the Church.

Supersessionism (Replacement Theology)

Supersessionism, also called fulfillment theology by its proponents and replacement theology by its detractors, is the Christian doctrine that the Christian Church has supplanted the Jewish people, assuming its role as God's covenant people.

Terrence Donaldson defines supersessionism as 'denoting traditional Christian claims that the church replaced Israel in divine purposes and inherited all that was positive in Israel's tradition.'

Historical Development

Some scholars trace the earliest forms of supersessionism to the second-century Church Fathers, particularly Justin Martyr and Irenaeus of Lyon.

Justin Martyr elaborated his Dialogue with Tryphaon the Jew following the revolt of Bar Kochba in the Land of Israel in 135 AD. Here Justin presented his strong argument for a 'New Israel', a 'True Israel', replacing biblical Israel.

Often claimed by later Christians to have originated with the apostle Paul, supersessionism formed a central tenet of many Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Lutheran churches for most of their history.

Types of Supersessionism

•Economic Supersessionism: The view that the practical purpose of the nation of Israel in God's plan is replaced by the role of the Church.
•Structural Supersessionism: The de facto marginalization of the OT as normative for Christian thought.

Grafted, Not Replaced

The Church (Gentiles) was grafted into the olive tree (Israel). We do not replace Jewish roots; we are sustained by them. God did not reject his original people, but he temporarily hardened part of them for the entry of the Gentiles.

Post-Holocaust Reconsideration

After the establishment of the political state of Israel in the wake of the Holocaust, theologians and mainstream Christian denominations began to reexamine supersessionism, and some communities even rejected the teaching outright.

Since the early 1970s, the term supersessionism has gained steady ground among Anglophone scholars as a quasi-technical term identifying what they consider an inadequate or problematic account of the church's relationship with the Jewish people.

One People

God's ultimate plan is one flock, Jews and Gentiles reconciled in Christ, tearing down the wall of separation (Ephesians 2).

The Post-Holocaust Review and Contemporary Interreligious Dialogue

Overactionism — the belief that the Church replaced the Jewish people as the exclusive bearer of God's covenant — experienced a radical critical revision only in the 20th century, precipitated by the horror of the Holocaust. The discovery that anti-Semitic rhetoric had found fertile soil in centuries of replacement theology — present in Justin Martyr, Augustine, and the Reformers — forced American and European academia into an urgent methodological rethink. Research has documented high rates of American anti-Jewish prejudice even in 1945–1947, which resulted in the blossoming of interfaith friendships between Christian theologians, Assyriologists, and Semitists. Jewish scholars have come to actively engage in the field of systematic 'Biblical Theology'—once the exclusive domain of Christian intellectuals—producing interpretations that enrich and challenge the standard eschatological reading of the Christian Scriptures. The contemporary ecumenical movement has adopted the model of Receptive Ecumenism: instead of seeking forced confluences, it proposes a genuine receptivity to the salutary elements identifiable in the otherness of the other — including modern rabbinic Judaism, which rejects the fragmentation of the Torah into 'abolished' and 'current' parts as ahistorical and offensive.