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Christian Zionism II: Is It Bad Theology?

November 17, 2013 by Gerald R. McDermott

Continued from Page 3

But King Ahab stole land and murdered its owner, Naboth. God then arranged for both Ahab and his wife Jezebel to be "executed," thus suggesting that God intervenes to avenge the defenseless (1 Kgs. 21).

Burge points out that the prophets continued this refrain. Amos prophesied exile because Israelites were oppressing the poor (Amos 7:17), Jeremiah criticized the abuse of aliens (7:5-7), and Ezekiel declared that when the Jews returned from exile, they were to make provision for aliens: "They shall be allotted an inheritance among the tribes of Israel" (Ezek. 47:22-23).

The upshot of all this is that keeping the terms of the covenant includes treating aliens with justice, indeed love. Covenant keeping is not only a matter of avoiding idolatry and treating fellow Jews with justice, but extending that justice to non-Israelites living in Israel. If Israel was disciplined for violating the covenant, some of those violations were against aliens living in the land.

Both Martens and McComiskey note the prophets' interpretation that the Israelites lost the land and were sent into exile because of disobedience to these terms of the covenant. Yet both evangelical scholars find the prophets and other biblical authors holding to the promise of land for Israel even after Israel by disobedience has forfeited the land. Martens writes,

Israel might and in fact did lose the land, because of failure on their part to live in the land in loyalty to Yahweh. Yet the land was inalienable in the sense that it could not be forcibly taken from Israel. Israel, however, through disobedience, forfeited the land. Prophets in the exile fell back on the inalienable right of Israel to the land, and announced a return from exile to the land, for, they said, it was rightfully theirs still (Jer. 12:14-16; 16:14-15; see also Ezek. 36:8-15).

McComiskey observes that while the prophets expanded the promised inheritance of God's people beyond the definable boundaries of Canaan to include the world, they nevertheless retained their expectation that Israel would return to the land of Palestine: "We cannot conclude that the prophets considered that promise to have been abrogated." In other words, with the prophets we find new promises made for the messiah and his worldwide reign, but these new promises do not overrule the earlier promises of a particular land for a particular people. "Expansion [of the promise] is not synonymous with abrogation." Just as Abraham was to be the father of Israel and many nations, so too Israel would return to her own land and the rest of God's people would live in a whole world.

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I would add that the prophets recognized a distinction that we seldom recognize—that while the covenant God made with Abraham was full of "I will" promises and its principal gift was a land (Gen. 12–17), the covenant with Moses was full of "you must" requirements respecting the possession of that land. The Abrahamic covenant was unconditional, while the Mosaic covenant was conditional. God's gift of a land to Abraham's progeny was forever, even if their enjoyment of the gift was restricted to certain periods of history.

The relative silence about land in the New Testament does not mean that the New Testament authors believed that the Abrahamic promises concerning land had been abrogated. McComiskey observes that Josephus was also silent about land. But Josephus deleted the theology of covenanted land because of its revolutionary implications for the messianism of the Zealots, whom he feared and despised. Political circumstances and Josephus's purposes thus determined his presentation about the promise of the land; any claim that he did not share the Jewish view concerning the land as promised or covenanted land because of his omissions would certainly be precarious. The same is true of any argument from silence concerning the New Testament authors.

McComiskey argues further that while Jesus does not speak directly in the gospels about God's promise of land to Israel, neither did the Mishnaic Tractate, "The Sayings of the Fathers." Yet the rest of the Mishna was well-known for its belief in the promise. Similarly, the Mosaic law never included the earlier promise of Gentile inclusion, yet the earlier promise was never abrogated. McComiskey links the two promises, both referring to land, typologically: they are two aspects of the promise of land in the prophets—restoration to the land of Palestine, and the rule of the world by the Messiah. The first is the earnest of the second.

Besides, it is curious that when his disciples asked him just before his ascension, "Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?" (Acts 1.6), Jesus did not challenge their assumption that one day the kingdom would be restored to physical Israel. He simply said the Father had set the date, and they did not need to know it yet. My point is not that the present state of Israel is anything close to the eschatological Kingdom, but that Jesus did at that point refer to something in the future for physical Israel. And, if the historic church is correct to teach that the book of Revelation is also a prophecy of Jesus Christ, then this Christ also refers to a Kingdom that has Jewish earmarks pertaining to physical Israel. Christ in glory "holds the key of David (3:7); he is "the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David" (6:5); all twelve tribes of the nation of Israel are mentioned in 7:1-8; the two witnesses will be killed in Jerusalem (11:8); and the battle of Armageddon will be in a valley in northern Israel (16:16).

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12/2/2022 9:05:59 PM

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