religion & politics

Prepared for the upcoming book: “The Core Tenets of Radical Political Theology.”

The case against the de-judaization of Christianity and Supersessionism

Christianity cannot be separated from its Jewish roots; rather, it is the fulfillment of a distinctly Jewish story. The Christian faith is grounded in the covenant God made with Israel, beginning with Abraham and unfolding through the Law, the prophets, and the worshiping life of Israel. Jesus himself was a Jew, born under the Jewish Law, formed by synagogue worship, and understood by his earliest followers as the Jewish Messiah. The very title ‘Christ’ (Messiah) has meaning only within Jewish messianic expectations, and the Christian claim about Jesus presupposes the reality of Israel’s covenantal history.

Furthermore, Christianity is unintelligible without the Tanakh, which constitutes the theological backbone of the New Testament. Core Christian doctrines: creation, sin, redemption, sacrifice, resurrection, and the Kingdom of God, are inherited from Jewish theology and reinterpreted in light of Christ. Even central Christian practices, such as the Eucharist, are rooted in Jewish liturgical life, especially the Passover, which provides the covenantal and sacrificial relation to the Last Supper. This vital relationship is further underscored by New Testament scholar Brant Pitre, who emphasizes that Jesus cannot be understood apart from his Jewish identity and historical context:

“Jesus of Nazareth was a Jew. He was born of a Jewish mother, received the Jewish sign of circumcision, and grew up in a Jewish town in Galilee. As a young man, he studied the Jewish Torah, celebrated Jewish feasts and holy days, and went on pilgrimages to the Jewish Temple. And when he was thirty years old, he began to preach in the Jewish synagogues about the fulfillment of the Jewish Scriptures, proclaiming the kingdom of God to the Jewish people. At the very end of his life, he celebrated the Jewish Passover, was tried by the Jewish priests and elders known as the Sanhedrin, and was crucified outside of the great Jewish city of Jerusalem. Above his head hung a placard that read in Greek, Latin, and Hebrew: ‘Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews’ (John: 19:19).”[1]

It is precisely within this covenantal framework that St. Paul rejects any notion of replacement theology. The promises given to Israel are neither annulled or transferred to other people; rather, they are fulfilled and extended in Christ. Paul states this most concisely in the Epistle to the Galatians 3:29: “If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise.” This verse is decisive. Paul does not say that believers become a new Abraham, or that Israel is displaced; instead, he grounds Christian identity directly in Abraham’s own covenantal legacy. In Romans 2:28-29, St. Paul underscores that Christians are Jews adopted by faith: “A person is not a Jew who is one only outwardly, nor is circumcision merely outward and physical. No, a person is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is circumcision of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the written code. Such a person’s praise is not from other people, but from God.”

The key term here is “heirs” (κληρονόμοι). To be an heir is to stand in continuity with a prior promise, a prior household, and a prior family history. By identifying believers in Christ as “heirs according to promise,” Paul affirms that Gentile Christians participate in the very same Abrahamic inheritance that was first entrusted to Israel. Their status is not ethnic but covenantal; not biological, but juridical and spiritual. Christians, therefore, do not replace Israel as Abraham’s descendants; they are incorporated into Abraham’s household through Christ and thereby receive a share in the promises originally given to his seed. Israel remains the firstborn; the Gentiles are graciously included.

Consequently, antisemitism is not merely a moral failure but also a theological contradiction. To deny the Jewish roots of Christianity is to deny the covenant with Abraham that grounds Christian faith itself. If Christians are heirs of Abraham according to the promise, then that promise, and the people to whom it was first given, cannot be discarded without undermining Christianity’s own identity. To reject Israel is to reject the inheritance into which Christians claim to have been adopted. In this sense, antisemitism amounts to a denial of one’s own Christian lineage, for Christianity lives not by erasing Israel, but by confessing that it has been grafted into Israel’s enduring covenant through Christ. As Porter and Kuschner point out, suppressionism was widely considered as theological orthodoxy in the Christian world before the Second World War; it was only after shoah that the scholarly elite could understand the gravity of such theological endeavors.[2] It is important to recall the words of Eliezer Wiesel: “The reflective Christian knows that it was not the Jewish people that died in Auschwitz, but Christianity.”[3] One of the most prominent beacons of post-Auschwitz political theology, Moltmann, denies the punitive supersessionism, claiming that God has not rejected Israel; election is irrevocable:

”If the Jewish No to Jesus’ messiahship is due to inability, as Buber said, and not to unwillingness or ill-will, then there is no reason for Christians to deplore this No or to make it a reproach. Israel’s No is not the same as the No of unbelievers, which is to be found everywhere. It is a special No and must be respected as such. [...] Hardness of heart is not the same thing as rejection, and has nothing whatsoever to do with a moral judgment. To harden the heart is a historically provisional act on God’s part, not an eschatologically final one. It is an act performed for a particular purpose, as the story of Moses and Pharaoh shows. [...] There can be no question of God having finally rejected the people of his choice—he would then have to reject his own election (11:29)—and of his then having sought out instead another people, the church. Israel’s promises remain Israel’s promises. They have not been transferred to the church. Nor does the church push Israel out of its place in divine history. From the perspective of the gospel, Israel has by no means become “like all the nations.”[4]

Although not as systematic as Moltmann, practical theology of Metz was on the similar trail where shoah becomes a dangerous memory (memoria passionis) which underlines the opposition of strictly abstract, triumphant and dogmatic discourse that contributed to anti-semitism, as Prevot observes: “It seems clear that the historical wrong closest to his heart was the anti-Semitic rage that blotted out the lives of millions of God’s chosen people and corrupted the Christian tradition virtually from its inception”[5] For Metz, going back to the anamnestical nature of Christianity represents the return to the Judaic roots of Christian tradition where remembrance is one of the most important contributions of Judaism to Christian epistemology and rationality.[6] Ultimately, as Christians dedicated to persevering alongside the oppressed and acknowledging historical injustices and atrocities, particularly the Shoah, we must reject the theological fallacy of punitive supersessionism, as it perpetuates anti-Semitism. The theological shift in renouncing the supersessionism became more prominent in the decades after the war, as this declaration from the Presbyterian Church of America testifies:

“Supersessionism maintains that because the Jews refused to receive Jesus as Messiah, they were cursed by God, are no longer in covenant with God, and that the church alone is the “true Israel” or the “spiritual Israel.” When Jews continue to assert, as they do, that they are the covenant people of God, they are looked upon by many Christians as impertinent intruders, claiming a right which is no longer theirs. The long and dolorous history of Christian imperialism, in which the church often justified anti-Jewish acts in the name of Jesus, finds its theological basis in this teaching. We believe and testify that this theory of supersessionism or replacement is harmful and in need of reconsideration as the church seeks to proclaim God’s saving activity with humankind”[7]

Soulen rightly underscores the theological contradiction of supersessionism that throws the entire theology off balance: “If Christians nevertheless claim to worship the God of Israel while teaching God’s indifference toward the people of Israel, they are engaging in a massive theological contradiction. Moreover, they throw the credibility of the Christian confession itself into doubt. If the God of Israel is ultimately indifferent even to the existence of the Jewish people, how seriously can one take God’s engagement with the rest of creation?”[8] In other words, to confess fidelity to the God of Israel while denying God’s fidelity to Israel is self-contradictory. With that said, it is important to address the famous verse from Genesis 12:3: “I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” Dennis Prager, popular radio host and founder of Prager University is referring to this verse when states the following: “America has been one of the most blessed countries in the world, but it was also one of the biggest supporters of Israel [...] should America stop supporting Israel and Jewish people - which is essentially the same thing, so too will America’s fortunes.”[9] Here, Prager directly associates the nation of Israel with the state of Israel and interprets God’s promise to Abraham as a reason why the United States has been the most successful country in history. Furthermore, he directly relates Abraham’s lineage to the Jewish people. While that is the case, the Christian tradition is adding additional understanding of this verse and expanding this lineage to the entire population of Christian believers. Galatians 3:8 affirms that the inclusion of the Gentiles was not a later innovation but was anticipated from the beginning, since Scripture already proclaimed to Abraham that God would justify the nations through faith by promising that all peoples would be blessed through him: “Scripture foresaw that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, and announced the gospel in advance to Abraham: “All nations will be blessed through you.” Although the expression “seed of Abraham” can denote Abraham’s physical descendants and the nation of Israel, its fullest and decisive meaning points to Jesus Christ as the true seed. Those who belong to Christ, namely, believers, participate in this promise. Consequently, while contemporary Jewish people are Abraham’s descendants according to the bloodline, the covenantal inheritance belongs to all who believe in the Messiah, whether Jew or Gentile, who together constitute the people of God.

Replacement theology, therefore, is theologically untenable. The Israelites still remain God’s chosen people, as God does not revoke or abandon His covenant. At the same time, Christians are chosen by their faith through the New Covenant. As St. Paul teaches, Gentile Christians are not replacements for Israel but adopted heirs, grafted into Israel’s covenantal life through Christ. This adoption is not ethnic but covenantal and spiritual: Gentile believers are incorporated into the family of Israel without displacing the people to whom the promises were first given. This effectively means there is no theological ground to remove and denounce Jewish heritage from the Christian tradition and culture, which is why the appropriate term to use is Judeo-Christian culture. In other words, Christians should pray for the peace of Jerusalem and be guardians of the Jewish people, not only because that the Abrahamic blessings are still in effect, though they are now expanded to Christians as well, but also because we share the same enemy, which is Radical Islam or Islamism, which has a common goal, to subdue, enslave or annihilate Jews and Christians from the site of the earth. Naturally, one might ask about Judaism, which denies Christ as Messiah and God; furthermore, there are references in the Babylonian Talmud that are highly derogatory towards Christ. Doesn’t Judaism, by rejecting Christ, effectively renounce the blessings promised to Abraham?

Paul’s reasoning necessitates careful distinctions. From a Christian perspective, rejecting Christ constitutes a refusal of the covenant’s telos, its culmination, since Christ is regarded as the fulfillment of Israel’s promises rather than their cancellation. However, Paul does not interpret Israel’s current unbelief as the revocation of election. Although Israel may be described as “enemies … for your sake” in relation to the gospel, it remains “beloved” concerning election.[10] This asserts that Judaism does not hold the soteriological implication apart from Christ, but rather that Israel’s covenantal status persists despite Christian confession of Christ’s universal lordship.

The polemical materials found in the Babylonian Talmud, though sometimes cited in contemporary debates, do not fundamentally alter the Pauline framework. While several rabbinic passages are interpreted by scholars as late-antique counter-narratives responding to Christian claims about Jesus, often in unflattering terms, these texts are more accurately viewed as products of intercommunal conflict and religious rivalry in late antiquity rather than as sources for Christian doctrine regarding Israel[11] and the polemical claim that the old covenant is still valid as Schäfer observes: “And at precisely the time when Christianity rose from modest beginnings to its first triumphs, the Talmud (or rather the two Talmudim) would become the defining document of those who refused to accept the new covenant, who so obstinately insisted on the fact that nothing had changed and that the old covenant was still valid.”[12] Furthermore, scholarship highlights that such passages do not provide direct historical testimony about Jesus but instead reflect attitudes and polemical strategies within specific contexts, with transmission histories marked by later censorship and redaction, “scattered throughout the rabbinic literature”[13], including radical and rather offensive disputes of Christ’s royal lineage.[14] Consequently, the theological question of Israel’s election should be addressed primarily through the internal logic of Scripture, particularly Paul’s sustained argument in Romans 9–11, rather than through selective reference to later rabbinic polemics, which interpretation would historically often serve as a source of anti-Jewish sentiment.[15]

This discussion raises a further question: Should Christians support the state of Israel or its government? The issue is complex. The modern state of Israel is home to the majority of Jewish people. If Israel were to cease to exist, Christian and Jewish holy sites could be destroyed, and Jewish people would face the threat of annihilation. Consequently, it is in the interest of the United States, on behalf of humanity, to protect Israel’s right to exist. However, concerns arise regarding the treatment of Palestinians and the situation in Gaza. Should the United States endorse the actions of the Israeli government when they exceed reasonable limits, even if the response to the attacks after October 7 is considered justified? The answer is no; rather, the United States should condemn any use of excessive force that puts the lives of the innocent in danger. Support should be directed toward a two-state solution, enabling peaceful coexistence between Palestinians and Jews. Achieving this outcome is contingent upon the removal of Hamas from the equation. This requirement contributes to the ethical complexity of the situation. Israel recognizes that peace is unattainable with an armed Hamas. Even a disarmed Hamas remains problematic due to its extremist, anti-Semitic, anti-Christian, and anti-Western ideology, which results only in despair and suffering for both its own people and neighboring Jews. Christian solidarity with Israel should be rooted in scriptural indebtedness to the Tanakh and in the moral imperatives of compassion and love emphasized in Jesus’ teachings. These teachings also inform our understanding of the conflict with Palestine, including the tragedy of innocent women and children who become victims of ideological religious extremism. Such extremism perpetuates the conflict, leads to further suffering, and destabilizes the region with the support of certain Middle Eastern countries that harbor and promote these ideologies.

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Bibliography

Barth, Karl. Church Dogmatics. Vol. II/2. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1957.

Buber, Martin. Two Types of Faith. Translated by Norman P. Goldhawk. New York: Harper & Row, 1961.

Metz, Johann Baptist. Faith in History and Society: Toward a Practical Fundamental Theology. New York: Seabury Press, 1980.

Metz, Johann Baptist. “Anamnestic Reason: A Theologian’s Remarks on the Crisis in the Geisteswissenschaften.” In Cultural-Political Interventions in the Unfinished Project of Enlightenment, edited by Axel Honneth, 1261–1265. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992.

Moltmann, Jürgen. The Way of Jesus Christ: Christology in Messianic Dimensions. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1990.

Pitre, Brant. Jesus and the Jewish Roots of the Eucharist: Unlocking the Secrets of the Last Supper. New York: Doubleday, 2011.

Porter, Stanley E., and Alan J. P. Kurschner, eds. The Future Restoration of Israel: A Response to Supersessionism. Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2023.

Soulen, R. Kendall. The God of Israel and Christian Theology. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996.

Schäfer, Peter. Jesus in the Talmud. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007.

Wiesel, Elie. Night. Translated by Marion Wiesel. New York: Hill and Wang, 2006.

Prevot, Andrew. “Apocalyptic Witness: Johann Baptist Metz (1928–2019).” Political Theology Network, December 14, 2019.

https://politicaltheology.com/apocalyptic-witness-johann-baptist-metz-1928-2019/.

Boyarin, Daniel. Border Lines: The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004.

Novak, David. The Election of Israel: The Idea of the Chosen People. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.

Soulen, R. Kendall. The God of Israel and Christian Theology: The Incoherence of Supersessionism. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996.

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[1] Brant Pitre, Jesus and the Jewish Roots of the Eucharist: Unlocking the Secrets of the Last Supper (New York: Doubleday, 2011), 11.

[2] Alan E. Kurschner and Stanley E. Porter, eds., The Future Restoration of Israel: A Response to Supersessionism (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2023), 2.

[3] Johann B. Metz, „Anamnestic Reason, A theologian’s Remarks on the Crisis in the Geisteswissenschaften” in Cultural-political interventions in the unfinished project of enlightenment, ed. Axel Honneth, (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1992), 1261-1265.

[4] Jürgen Moltmann, “Israel’s No: Jews and Jesus in an Unredeemed World,” The Christian Century, November 7, 1990, 1021–1024. Excerpted from The Way of Jesus Christ (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1990). Reproduced with permission; article prepared for Religion Online by Ted and Winnie Brock. See also: Johann Baptist Metz, Faith in History and Society: Toward a Practical Fundamental Theology (New York: Seabury, 1980).

[5] Andrew Prevot, “Apocalyptic Witness: Johann Baptist Metz (1928–2019),” Political Theology Network (December 14, 2019), para. 58, https://politicaltheology.com/apocalyptic-witness-johann-baptist-metz-1928-2019

[6] John S. McClure, Other-Wise Preaching: A Postmodern Ethic for Homiletics, (Chalice Press, 2001), 106.

[7] R. Kendall Soulen, The God of Israel and Christian Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996), 3.

[8] Ibid, 4.

[9] Dennis Prager, “Dennis Prager Reflects One Year After His Injury—and Warns of America’s Moral Crisis,” Real Talk, PragerU, video interview, Accessed December 17, 2024, https://www.prageru.com/videos/dennis-prager-reflects-one-year-after-his-injury-and-warns-of-americas-moral

[10] Romans 11:28–29

[11] Peter Schäfer, Jesus in the Talmud (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007)

[12] Ibid, 2.

[13] Ibid, 2.

[14] Ibid: 21-22.

[15] Ibid: 4.