Replies

I merely pointed out that Replacement theology is not self-contradictory for a Christian; it is, in fact, the only plain reading of the Gospels.

From: John McDade SJ

Schismatic Bishops, Holocaust Denial and Christian-Jewish Relations

Pope Benedict has gone out of his way to condemn denial of the Holocaust, calling such revisionism “intolerable”. He is following the lead given by Pope John Paul II who was responsible for an astonishing transformation in the Church’s theological understanding of the Jewish people and their significance in the present age. The change inaugurated at Vatican II can be simply described: it was the removal of what is called the ‘theology of supersessionism’ by which Judaism is understood to have been replaced by Christianity. Supersessionism has been the default position in Christian thought, and it is given clear expression in the American Baltimore Catechism used widely before the Council:

Why did the Jewish religion, which up to the death of Christ, had been the true religion, cease at that time to be the true religion?
Answer: the Jewish religion was only a promise of the redemption and figure of the Christian religion, and when the redemption was accomplished and the Christian religion was established by the death of Christ, the promise and the figure were no longer necessary. (391)

Nostra Aetate subtly counters this replacement theology by affirming that God’s covenant with the Jewish people was not revoked because ‘God does not take back the gifts he bestowed or the choice he made’. St Paul had written about those Jews who did not accept Jesus as Messiah and Lord: ‘as regards election, they are beloved for the sake of their forefathers. For the gift and the calling of God are irrevocable’ (Rom 11.28-9). In other words, God does not alter the choice he has made to bestow his love on Israel; God is faithful to his promises.

Without reflecting on it, often Christians have treated Judaism as part of the prehistory of Christianity: it is what prepares the way for Jesus Christ, but has no significance in the present age. Jews are simply early, troublesome actors in the overarching Christian story. Christians who suggest that God has ‘rejected’ or replaced the Jewish people should consider that if God can withdraw his love from Israel, he can also withdraw it from the Church: so on what basis could we Christians possibly trust a God who shows himself to be so inconsistent? A replacement theology has profound consequences for your doctrine of God and your doctrine of the Church, so think again, my supersessionist friend, before, through your theories of Israel being removed from divine favour, you undermine the solidity of the very Christian faith you claim to uphold.

In a thoroughly Pauline spirit, during his visit to the Mainz synagogue in 1980 Pope John Paul II spoke of ‘the people of God of the Old Covenant that has never been revoked by God’. Now, if the covenant has never been revoked, then it is still in place, and we have to acknowledge that what God inaugurated at Sinai is still a feature of God’s relation to the Jewish people, awaiting fulfilment as God brings them to the fullness of redemption. Later the Pope spoke of Christianity and Judaism as traditions ‘linked together at the very level of their identity’ and ‘founded on the design of the Lord of the covenant’. Now this cannot be a sequential relationship, in which one follows the other and supersedes it: it must refer to a bond at one and same time.