Book Review Series: 'The God of Israel and Christian Theology' - Detailed Review: Chapter One
Introduction
"The God of Israel and Christian Theology" by R. Kendall Soulen is a significant work that addresses the relationship between Christianity and Judaism, specifically critiquing and offering alternatives to supersessionist theology. R. Kendall Soulen is a prominent theologian known for his work in the area of Christian-Jewish relations. He is an advocate for a theological approach that respects the ongoing covenantal relationship between God and the Jewish people.
Soulen critically examines the traditional Christian theology that views the Church as having replaced Israel in God's plan. He argues that this view is theologically flawed and has contributed to negative attitudes and actions towards Jewish people throughout history.
Soulen introduces the concept of the "canonical narrative," which frames the Bible's story in a way that includes both the Old and New Testaments without superseding the former with the latter. He emphasizes the continuity of God's covenantal relationship with Israel throughout the entire biblical narrative.
The book explores how a properly understood Trinitarian theology can support a non-supersessionist view. Soulen suggests that the God of Israel is the same God revealed in Jesus Christ and that this continuity is essential for a coherent Christian theology.
Soulen proposes reconfiguring key aspects of Christian doctrine to better reflect the ongoing significance of Israel. This includes rethinking doctrines such as election, covenant, and eschatology to incorporate a more inclusive understanding of God's relationship with both Jews and Christians.
The book also discusses the practical implications of this theological reconfiguration. Soulen emphasizes the importance of Christians recognizing and respecting the Jewish faith and its ongoing role in God's redemptive plan.
Preface
The God of Israel is the firm foundation and inescapable predicament of Christian theology. Without acknowledging the God of Israel, Christian theology seems empty and meaningless because the message about Jesus only makes sense if it’s based on a living God who can bring the dead to life and create things from nothing, as mentioned in Romans 4:17. However, if Christian theology does recognize the God of Israel, it faces many challenges and struggles it cannot easily solve. One major challenge is that Christian theology mainly serves a non-Jewish church while existing alongside the Jewish community, which also worships the God of Israel but does not accept the Christian message about Him.
Soulen talks about how Christian theology has sometimes struggled with its connection to Judaism. It uses the example of the church in Laodicea from the Bible, which was criticized for being "lukewarm"—neither fully committed to their faith nor completely rejecting it. This is compared to Christians who don’t want to leave the God of Israel but also don’t fully understand the complexities of their faith.
There have been two main times in history when Christian thinkers had to deal with this issue. The first time was when the early Christian church broke away from the Jewish community. This was a difficult period, and the Apostle Paul wrote about it, especially in Romans chapters 9 to 11. However, any hope of reconnecting with Jewish roots soon faded.
After this separation, the mostly non-Jewish church decided to think of itself as the "new spiritual Israel," meaning they believed they had taken over the Jewish people's place in God’s plan. This idea, called supersessionism, became very common and was rarely questioned for almost 2,000 years. During this long period, the church thought it was rich and needed nothing, but in reality, it was spiritually poor, as highlighted by a quote from Revelation 3:17:
For you say, I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing, not realizing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, ublind, and naked. (Revelation 3:17, ESV Bible)
The second era, which started in modern times and is still ongoing, was marked by events that challenged the comfortable beliefs of Christian theology. These events included the Holocaust, which forced Christians to confront their own faults, and the return of the Jewish people to the land promised by God to Abraham. Because of these events, Christians began to rethink their relationship with the God of Israel and the Jewish people, based on the Scriptures and the message of Jesus.
Many churches have now rejected the idea of supersessionism, the belief that the Christian church replaced Israel in God's plan. This rejection has brought about new and complex issues for Christian theology that are not yet fully understood. However, these challenges come with the possibility of growth and blessings, as they arise from engaging deeply with God.
The book discussed here tries to explore how the church’s new view of the God of Israel and the Jewish people affects Christian beliefs. It asks two main questions: How deeply is supersessionism woven into traditional Christian beliefs? And how can Christians read the Bible and hold their core beliefs without being against Jews?
The book also aims to rethink Christian theology in the present era, which some call “after Christendom.” It argues that for Christian theology to be genuine today, it needs a new way of understanding its relationship with the God of Israel. This involves moving away from old, incomplete ways of thinking about God and the Jewish people, which often focused too much on separating from Jewish traditions. Instead, Christians should seek a more honest and respectful relationship with the Jewish people, recognizing their ongoing involvement in history.
The term "Christendom" refers to the church's theological and social stance, especially when it is dominant over Jews and disconnected from God's involvement in history. In contrast, the God of Israel is understood as being deeply involved with the Jewish people and human history. For Christian theology to be genuine after Christendom, it needs to align more closely with the God of Israel. This is the main goal of the book.
Some readers might judge the book based on whether it supports traditional Christian beliefs about the Trinity and Christology. However, the author does not address these topics in this book. Instead, the book focuses on the basic claim that the God of Israel has acted through Jesus for everyone. The author believes this approach can still fit within traditional Christian beliefs, but that is a topic for another discussion.
The God of Israel after Christendom
Ever since Christians first appeared on the scene, they have confessed that the God of the Hebrew Scriptures acted in Jesus of Nazareth for all the world. That is the center of Christian faith. All the rest turns on this.
Because of this belief, Christians naturally take a certain stance towards Jewish people, both in thought and action. This is because Christian faith involves the God of the Hebrew Scriptures, who identifies as the God of Abraham and the Jews. Since Jesus was Jewish, this also shapes Christian views.
The main question has never been whether Christians should interact with Jewish people, but how they should do so, and how their actions and words impact Jews. For most of the last 2,000 years, the church believed in supersessionism, the idea that Christians replaced Jews in God's plan. According to this belief, God chose Jews after Adam's fall to prepare for Jesus. After Jesus came, Jews were no longer special in God’s plan, and Christians became the "new Israel." The church, unlike the Jewish people, is a spiritual community in which the carnal distinction between Jew and Gentile is overcome. Accordingly, the church holds that the preservation of Jewish identity within the new Israel is a matter of theological indifference at best, and a mortal sin at worst. Additionally, it was believed that Jews failed to recognize Jesus as the promised Messiah and refused to join the new spiritual Israel. This belief, however, overlooks the fact that many Jews did follow Jesus after his death; in fact, all his original followers were Jewish. According to this idea, because the Jews rejected Jesus, God rejected them and scattered them across the earth, where they would be preserved until the end of time.
Finally, in the 1930s some German Christians began to expel Christians of Jewish descent from their pulpits and parishes. Soon afterward, other Germans, many of them baptized, began to take Jews from their homes and put them in concentration camps. Many Christians around the world were aware of this, but most did not regard it as a matter calling for a specifically theological or practical response. On the whole, they continued to speak and act toward the Jewish people as they had always done. When the camps were opened in 1945, it became clear that the Nazis had exterminated millions of Jews by gassing them and burning their bodies in ovens.
After World War II, the church began to reconsider its stance on Jews. Some churches realized that the idea of supersessionism was wrong and affirmed that God’s covenant with the Jews still stands. For example, the Presbyterian Church (USA) declared:
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 supersession-ism or replacement is harmful and in need of reconsideration as the church seeks to proclaim God's saving activity with humankind…God's covenants are not broken. "God has not rejected his people whom he foreknew" (Rom 11:2). The church has not "replaced" the Jewish people . . . . Hence, when speaking with Jews about matters of faith, we must always acknowledge that Jews are already in a covenantal relationship with God.
This declaration marks a significant change in Christian theology, indicating that the church is trying to build a new relationship with Jews. This book throws out the idea of supersessionism and examines how rejecting supersessionism affects Christian beliefs and suggests ways for Christians to maintain their faith while respecting the Jewish connection to God.
When considering supersessionism and Christian theology, Soulen's book is guided by four key convictions:
Supersessionism poses specific theological issues about the truth and coherence of Christian faith, requiring systematic theological reflection. In other words, supersessionism creates specific problems regarding whether Christian beliefs make sense.
Overcoming supersessionism demands a serious engagement with the theological claims of Jewish faith.
The systematic implications of supersessionism for Christian theology are best understood by focusing on how Christians interpret the narrative unity of the Christian Bible.
Within the context of the church's traditional understanding of the canon's narrative unity, supersessionism is seen to distort not only the church's stance toward the people of Israel but also other aspects of the church's faith and life.
Supersessionism as a Problem for Systematic Theology
The first of Soulen’s key convictions is how supersessionism poses a problem for systematic theology. Supersessionism, the idea that Christianity replaces Judaism, brings up important theological issues that need to be addressed thoughtfully. It creates a problem because it suggests that the existence of Jewish people doesn’t matter to God. This is a big issue because supersessionism makes Christian beliefs seem inconsistent. You can imagine a god who doesn’t care about Jews, but it’s impossible to imagine the God of the Hebrew Scriptures feeling that way. If Christians say they worship the God of Israel but also believe God is indifferent to Jews, they are contradicting themselves. This inconsistency casts doubt on the truth of Christian beliefs. If God doesn’t care about Jews, how seriously can we take God’s involvement with the rest of creation? If God breaks His own covenants with the Jews, how is he to treat the “Christians?” If God’s plan ignores Jews, how can this salvation truly heal the world?
Christians rethinking their views on Jews should do so because it brings them closer to the truth about God, not just to avoid offending anyone. Changing beliefs just to avoid controversy doesn’t lead to real improvement in Christian life and could lead to more cynicism. True hope for renewal in Christian theology and living comes only when the church recognizes the theological problems with supersessionism and sincerely changes its stance towards the Jewish people.
Supersessionism and Dialogue
The second of Soulen’s key convictions is regarding how the only way to overcome supersessionism is to increases dialogue. The church's belief that Christianity replaced Judaism developed when there was little contact between Christians and Jews. This essay argues that moving past this belief requires engaging with the theological claims of Jewish existence. Michael Wyschogrod has been significant in promoting dialogue between Christians and Jews. He offers a perspective that is rooted in Jewish tradition but also relevant to Christian theology, helping Christians rethink their views on supersessionism.
Wyschogrod's key idea is that God chose Israel freely and permanently as His people. This choice is about a real human family, not based on spiritual or moral superiority. God chose the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who are neither better nor worse than others. This physical connection and identity to Abraham’s family is the foundation of Judaism.
In addition to family identity, Judaism also includes many obligations, traditions, and beliefs, but the most important is obeying God's commandments in the Torah. An Orthodox Jew, Wyschogrod holds that the Torah constitutes God's special claim upon the obedience of the Jewish people in general and upon each Jew in particular. Jewish neglect of the Torah constitutes serious disobedience against God. Considering how crucial the Torah is to Jewish life, even it is a superstructure rather than foundation:
“The foundation of Judaism is the family identity of the Jewish people as the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Whatever else is added to this must be seen as growing out of and related to the basic identity of the Jewish people as the seed of Abraham elected by God through descent from Abraham. This is the crux of the mystery of Israel's election."
The fundamental reality of Judaism is the corporeal election of Abraham's children. Everything else, even the Torah, rests upon this.
As Judaism itself teaches, God's nature is spiritual. Therefore it would seem only natural for God's election to be based on religious sensibility or moral accomplishment rather than carnal descent. The elect would then consist of all those who are spiritually and morally akin to God, from whatever people or nation they descend.
Wyschogrod admits that God could have chosen to engage the world in this way. Yet had God done so, Wyschogrod argues, the cost would have been great. The human creature is not only spiritual but material. If God had chosen to engage the human creature only in the spiritual aspect of its being, then the greater portion of what constitutes humanity would have been left out of the relation with God. By electing Israel, God chose to embrace a people in the fullness of its humanity. In this way, God confirms the human creature as it was created to live in the material cosmos."
Wyschogrod points out another consequence of God's election of a human family rather than a spiritual or ethical elite. By making election a matter of descent, God has made it very difficult for members of the elect community to escape their identity as God's chosen. In contrast, an election based on faith or ethics would be terminated by a change in belief or conduct. A Jew, however, cannot resign his or her election. By electing to be the God of Israel, God has bound God's name to the world in a way that cannot easily be dissolved. In Wyschogrod's memorable phrase, Israel "is the carnal anchor that God has sunk into the soil of creation "
Wyschogrod also addresses why God would choose one people over others. He believes this choice allows God to show His love and faithfulness, giving humans a reason to be grateful. He explains that love can be understood in two ways: agape (selfless love) and eros (desire). Agape is charity in the purest sense while eros is sensual love. Agape is without superiority or condescension, while eros is vulnerable to passion, desire, and jealousy. Agape is disinterested and impartial, while eros is concerned with this person rather than that one.
In this respect it resembles the distinction between body and soul. Body and soul are aspects of the one being that God created in God's image. To regard a person primarily as soul rather than as a concrete unity is to risk missing the human being who is really there. Similarly, true love is impossible without an element of eros that orients agape on the reality of the particular one who is loved. This introduces an element of exclusivity into true love. Without this directedness and exclusivity, agape becomes fictitious:
Undifferentiated love, love that is dispensed equally to all must be love that does not meet the individual in his individuality but sees him as a member of a species, whether that species be the working class, the poor, those created in the image of God, or what not. ... In the names of these abstractions men have committed the most heinous crime against real, concrete, existing human beings.
Real encounter is possible only when humans are regarded as more than instances of a class. Genuine human love is directed to the concrete individuality of the other; therefore, genuine human love requires exclusivity. Wyschogrod observes that God's love is usually said to resemble agape rather than eros. As agape, God's love cannot exclude.
According to Wyschogrod, however, it belongs to the glory of the biblical God that God chose to love humanity in a human way. Precisely because God is deeply concerned with human creation, God loves it with a differentiated love. By electing Abraham and his seed, God has chosen in favor of genuine encounter with the human creature in his or her concreteness. The unsubstitutability of God's love for Israel is the guarantee of God's love toward all persons, elect and non-elect. The distinction between Jew and Gentile-far from indicating a limit or imperfection of God's love-testifies to God's willingness to engage all creation on the basis of divine passion.
The universal significance of God's love for Israel is revealed in God's promise to Abraham that all the world should be blessed in him:
Because He said: "I will bless those who bless you, and curse him that curses you; in you shall all the families of the earth be blessed" (Gen 12:3), He has tied His saving and redemptive concern for the welfare of all men to His love for the people of Israel.
God's promise to Abraham links God's blessing not to some generic feature of human identity that all people share but to encounter between those who are and who remain genuinely different. As a result, there are no "general" or "universal" paths that lead to the God of Israel. Apart from a relationship to the people Israel, no relationship to the God of Israel is possible. God is the Creator and Ruler of the universe, but God does not draw near as the conclusion of cosmological or ontological proofs for the existence of God. God draws near as the God of Abraham who took the people Israel out of the land of Egypt and who remains this nation's God to the end of time.
Having viewed at least some basic features of Wyschogrod's theology, we can turn our attention to his understanding of Christianity. From Wyschogrod's perspective, what is Judaism to make of Christian faith? Wyschogrod discusses Christianity with special reference to christology and ecclesiology, so we will consider these two areas separately.
Christians claim that Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah of Israel and the Son of God. For Jews, the claim that Jesus is the Messiah is difficult because he did not fulfill the messianic role as they understand it, ushering in the Messianic Kingdom. problematic. In itself, the claim that any given person was or was not the Messiah is not a matter of ultimate importance for Jews; that is, it is a point on which Jews can be mistaken while remaining good Jews. However, Wyschogrod suggests that Jews should not outright reject Christian claims about Jesus as Messiah, as God’s promises to Israel are still secure. More difficult is the incarnation of God within Jesus.
Are Jews therefore free to reject out of hand the church's claims about God's incarnation in Jesus? Wyschogrod does not think so, for that would be to impose external constraints on God's freedom, something hardly compatible with authentic Jewish thought. Israel would be entitled to reject the church's claims about Jesus out of hand only if these claims implied that God had repudiated God's promises to Israel. That is something that Israel can be sure that God will never do, not because God is unable but simply because God honors God's promises. The question, then, is does christology involve the abrogation of God's promises to Israel?
Wyschogrod does not believe that this is necessarily the case. He suggests that the doctrine of God's incarnation in Jesus could be understood as a kind of intensification of God's covenant with Israel. Although the incarnation is not foreseen in the Hebrew Bible, once the fact of the incarnation is assumed (as it is by Christians), it can be regarded as an extension of the Bible's basic thrust:
[The covenant between God and Israel] depicts a drawing together of God and Israel. In some sense... it can also be said to involve a certain indwelling of God in the people of Israel whose status as a holy people may be said to derive from this indwelling; Understood in this sense, the divinity of Jesus is not radically different-though perhaps more concentrated--than the holiness of the Jewish people.
If Judaism does not accept Christianity's faith in Jesus of Nazareth, it is not because this faith as such runs counter to the basis of Jewish existence but because "Judaism does not hear this story, because the Word of God as it hears it does not tell it and because Jewish faith does not testify to it."
The church is a community assembled from all the nations who are united not by common descent or language but by a common desire to worship the God of Israel. What should a Jew make of this astonishing phenomenon?
In Wyschogrod's judgment, Jews should approach the phenomenon of the church with hopeful respect. Wyschogrod holds that Israel's own trust in God leads it to expect a day when the nations will join Israel in the praise of God's name. To this extent, at least, the church appears congruent with Israel's own pattern of expecta-tions, since the church has helped to spread the knowledge of God to the ends of the earth.
Wyschogrod believes that the relationship between Judaism and Christianity should be understood as two paths within God’s plan, with the church respecting Israel’s unique role. This requires the church to recognize and honor the Jewish connection to God.
Ultimately, however, the question of whether Israel can see in the church a sign that is congruent with Jewish faith depends upon the church's attitude toward the Jewish people. Are the nations prepared to receive God's blessing in the context of God's covenant with Israel? Or do they seek to do away with God's beloved child in order to usurp its place in God's affection? Unfortunately, the phenomenon of the church is deeply ambiguous on this point. Traditionally, the church has failed to understand itself in light of God's fidelity to the people Israel. Instead it has proclaimed itself to be the true spiritual Israel, comprising the faithful of all nations, in relation to which the old carnal Israel existed merely as a temporary foreshadowing.
For Wyschogrod, the true test of the church's theological posture toward Israel's election is the church's conduct toward Jews in its own midst, that is, toward Jews who have been baptized. For it is here that the church demonstrates in an ultimate way whether it understands itself in light of God's eternal covenant with the seed of Abraham. If the church acknowledges the abiding reality of Israel's corporeal election, it will naturally expect baptized Jews to maintain faithfully their Jewish identity. But if the church truly believes that it has superseded God's covenant with Israel, it will prohibit or discourage Jews from preserving their identity as Jews and members of the Jewish people. In short, the problem of supersessionism turns on the church's capacity to acknowledge the abiding religious significance of Israel's corporeal election and hence the abiding religious significance of the distinction between Gentile and Jew.
Wyschogrod argues that the church's early position on this crucial issue differs from what later became its standard view. At an early date, followers of Jesus envisioned the church as a single fellowship with two branches, the Jewish and the Gentile. Jewish and Gentile Christians shared a common faith in Jesus, but they differed in that Jews remained obedient to the Torah while Gentiles were bound only by the Noachide laws and the laws within the Torah for a “stranger within our midst” (see Acts 15). To this belief it added the conviction that Gentiles can be followers of Jesus as Gentiles, that is, apart from circumcision and observance of the Torah.
Gradually, however, this view of the church was replaced by a different one according to which Christ's coming meant the complete erasure of the distinction between Jew and Gentile.
Clearly, the second view represents the church's classical understanding of itself. The basis of this self-understanding is the spiritualization of God's covenant with Israel. The church declares that the only thing that matters before God is one's inward spiritual identity as one who believes, not one's corporeal identity as either Jew or Gentile. In this way, the church frees membership in the covenant from all consideration of membership in a natural human family.
But it does so at the cost of casting off the carnal anchor that joins the God of Israel to creation in the people Israel. By claiming to be God's new people, the church directly assaults the trustworthiness of God's promise to Israel. Israel can regard this only as another example of the nations' protest against the election of the stock of Abraham, a protest that Israel must repudiate as a rebellion against God's word.
For Wyschogrod, Christian supersessionism reflects a basic rebellion against the categories of Jewish and Gentile identity and the mysterious difference that they entail. According to Wyschogrod, the church cannot "go behind" God's election of Israel to a more general, spiritual plane of God's relationship to humanity without paying a heavy price.
Supersessionism and the Church’s Standard Canonical Narrative
The third of Soulen’s key convictions is focusing on how the church views the narrative. A key claim of this volume is that in order to understand and ultimately to overcome the legacy of supersessionism in Christian theology, we must focus attention on how Christians have understood the theological and narrative unity of the Christian Bible as a whole. This task is facilitated by the concept of a canonical narrative. A canonical narrative is an interpretive instrument that provides a framework for reading the Christian Bible as a theological and narrative unity. As used in this essay, a canonical narrative is to be clearly distinguished from the biblical canon itself. The biblical canon is the collection of texts that constitute the sacred writings of the church.
In contrast, a canonical narrative is a framework for interpreting the biblical canon. Arising from the biblical canon, but not simply identical with it, a canonical narrative reflects a fundamental decision about how the Bible "hangs together" as a whole. The need for a canonical narrative arises because the Bible is an extraordinarily complex text whose unity and coherence are subject to question and debate. This is especially true in light of the Christian Bible's peculiar double structure, consisting in the Hebrew Scriptures and the Apostolic Witness (commonly known as the Old and New Testaments).
The interpretive framework that Christians commonly use to read the Bible has the basic character of a story. In effect, a canonical narrative is a story that permits Christians to read the multiplicity of biblical stories (and legal codes, genealogies, letters, etc.) in reasonably coherent and consistent terms.
Christianity's traditional canonical narrative was forged in the latter half of the second century, at about the same time that the Christian Bible took its characteristic and lasting shape as a single canon consisting of two parts, the Scriptures and the Apostolic Witness. From the beginning, the traditional canonical narrative has provided an interpretive framework that shows how the church's canon forms a single coherent witness to the God of Israel's action in Jesus Christ. The framework organizes the entire biblical text in light of two chief ways in which God, the Creator of the world, engages human creation: as Consummator and as Redeemer. The story coordinates God's work as the Consummator of creation with Adam and Eve, and tells how God having created the first parents initially proposed to consummate or perfect and fulfill them by bringing them to eternal life.
The story then relates how God's consummating work suffered a calamitous setback in the event known as the fall, whereby the first parents through their disobedience unleashed the destructive powers of sin, death, and evil upon themselves and the good creation. God then graciously resolved to engage humankind specifically as Redeemer in Christ, in order to rescue humankind from the consequences of the fall and in order to vindicate God's original intention to consummate human creation. Fitting the work of redemption to the times, God ordered the economy of salvation in Christ in a twofold form: prophetic and definitive. The prophetic form, commonly called the Old Covenant or Old Testament, coincides chiefly with God's history with Israel from Abraham to the incarnation. The definitive form, commonly called the New Covenant or the New Testament, coincides with God's history with Jesus Christ and the church from the incarnation to the day of judgment.
This account of the Bible's narrative unity has exercised unparalleled influence on the church's theological imagination from the second century to the present day. In particular, it has shaped the way Christians have conceived two relations that are fundamental to the whole fabric of Christian theology: the relation of God's work as Consummator and God's work as Redeemer, and the relation of the Scriptures and the Apostolic Witness. The standard canonical narrative (or standard model) defines the first relationship by means of the story of creation-for-consummation, fall, redemption in Christ, and final consummation, and it defines the second relationship by means of the conception of the unity-in-difference of the Old and New Covenants or Testaments. While mainstream Christian traditions have been replete with contentious and ongoing debates about virtually every aspect of Christian theology, these debates have taken place largely within the hermeneutical parameters established by the standard model.
Charles Wood observes that any canonical construal can be expected to give rise to its own set of questions and problems, some fairly obvious, others latent, and that it may be only after some considerable time that one is in a position to assess the limitations of a construal and to suggest revisions or alternatives. Part One of this work argues that supersessionism is one such latent problem connected with the church's standard canonical narrative. Soulen explores the connection between the standard canonical narrative and the theology of displacement by looking at three pairs of pivotal Christian thinkers: Justin Martyr and Irenaeus of Lyon, Immanuel Kant and Friedrich Schleiermacher, and Karl Barth and Karl Rahner. As our study of these figures unfolds, it will become clear that the theology of displacement is not a superficial feature of the standard model. On the contrary, supersessionism is directly implicated in the model's "deep grammar," including how it constructs the relationship of God's works as Consummator and as Redeemer, and the relationship of the Scriptures and the Apostolic Witness.
At the deepest level, the problem with the standard canonical narrative is that it makes God's identity as the God of Israel largely indecisive for shaping theological conclusions about God's enduring purposes for creation. The model renders the center of the Hebrew Scriptures- the eternal covenant between the God of Israel and the Israel of God--ultimately indecisive for understanding how God's works as Consummator and as Redeemer engage creation in lasting and universal ways. In a real sense, the standard model embodies a kind of toned down Christian gnosticism. As conceived by the standard model, God's action in Jesus Christ entails deliver-ance--not indeed from the work and realm of creation-but nevertheless from a history in which God's relationship with the Jewish people plays a central and enduring role. This is a gnosticism not of being but of history, a point that brings us to a fourth and final major conviction informing this volume.
Supersessionism and Christian Thought
The fourth of Soulen’s key convictions is a systematic connection between the doctrine of supersessionism and the weaknesses identified in traditional patterns of Christian thought.
One cost of the church's standard canonical narrative is that it fosters and supports a triumphalist posture toward the Jewish people. However, the standard canonical narrative has exacted other costs as well. For the same reason that the standard model is supersessionist, it has also tended to contribute to a double impoverishment of the Christian theological imagination. On the one hand, the standard model has led to a loss of biblical orientation for Christian theology, especially with regard to the Scriptures of Israel. On the other, it has led to a loss of creative theological engagement with the hard edges of human history. As a result, the standard model has fostered and supported a damaging dislocation of the gospel about Jesus Christ. Estranged from its proper context in the Scriptures of Israel and in public history, the gospel has been resettled in very different contexts. Separated from the Hebrew Scriptures, the gospel has been understood through perspectives on human religion that are quite different from the Bible’s language. Without considering the broader scope of public history, the gospel has been viewed mainly in terms of personal and private experiences.
One of the first modern theologians to recognize and challenge the separation of the gospel from its roots was Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who wrote while imprisoned in Nazi Germany. He called for a "religionless Christianity," urging Christian theology to free itself from interpretations that were overly philosophical and focused on individualism, which he saw as unbiblical. He questioned what it means to interpret religiously, suggesting that neither a purely metaphysical nor an individualistic approach is relevant to the Bible or contemporary people.
Bonhoeffer's words are remembered today as a critique against viewing the gospel in overly personal terms. He encouraged Christians to find the meaning of their faith within the broader context of public history. Bonhoeffer is honored for highlighting this issue, which has become a significant theme in theological writing. Additionally, Bonhoeffer's own journey to understand a more worldly Christianity was closely linked with his rediscovery of the Hebrew Scriptures as essential for understanding the gospel:
The transcendence of epistemological theory has nothing to do with the transcendence of God. God is beyond in the midst of our life. The church stands, not at the boundaries where human powers give out, but in the middle of the village. That is how it is in the Old Testament, and in this sense we still read the New Testament far too little in the light of the Old. How this religionless Christianity looks, what form it takes, is something that I'm thinking about a great deal, and I shall be writing to you again about it soon.
Bonhoeffer's concern was not to "modernize" Christian faith after the liberal fashion of the day but rather to make it more faithful by situating the gospel in the context of public history and the Scriptures of the Jewish people.
Soulen argues that there is a systematic connection between the doctrine of supersessionism and the weaknesses that Bonhoeffer identified in traditional patterns of Christian thought and that have since claimed the attention of many others. Just as a flaw in the heart of a crystal distorts all of the light that passes through it, the logic of supersessionism has tended to distort the doctrinal patterns of Christian thought in ways that have hindered areas of Christian discipleship far beyond the church's posture toward Israel. If this is the case, then the task of overcoming supersessionism is vital not only for the renewal of the church's relation to the Jewish people but for the renewal of its relation to the Bible and to the world.