Let Israel’s Pride Fill the Cosmos: A Reformation Correction of Christian Suspicion of Jewish Particularity

Abstract

Summary This essay is an attempt to exorcise Christian supersessionism. It argues that finding a positive Christian assessment of Jews has been so difficult that the difficulty indicates a basic flaw in the presuppositions behind recent scholarship. Supersessionism has crept into Pauline scholarship, which claims to have overcome old systematic theological concepts, rather blatantly in the New Perspective on Paul and mildly in even the otherwise excellent work of John Barclay. Recent systematic attempts to evaluate Jewishness positively, while technically not supersessionist, overcome Christian supersessionism at the expense of telling Jews how to be Jews. Furthermore, post-supersessionary systematic theology shares many of supersessionism’s presuppositions, including its suspicion of particularity and ethnicity in favor of universalizing concepts. This essay argues that a return to the much-maligned law-gospel distinction of the Reformation offers a path to celebrating Israel’s ethnicity, particularity, and exclusive election by God. Pauline scholarship and post-supersessionary systematic theology both assume that the Torah alone is exclusively for Jews, while the good news of Jesus is inclusive and universal. In contrast this essay argues that the gospel also belongs particularly to the Jews. Though it also blesses particular gentiles, they will remain eternally blessed foreigners.