Journal: Journal of the Grace Evangelical Society
Volume: JOTGES 16:1 (Spring 2003)
Article: Periodical Reviews
Author: Anonymous

JOTGES 16:1 (Spring 03) p. 85

Periodical Reviews

“Romans 11 and the Future of Ethnic Israel,” Ben L. Merkle, Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 43:4 (December 2000): 709-721.

Voltaire, the French skeptic, whined that the world of his day “revolved around the insignificant pimple of Jewry.” Imagine how much louder he would complain two centuries later, when terrorism and Mideast battles make Israel the subject of morning headlines and evening talk shows. There is no more relevant theological question today than the question of whether the nation of Israel has a future in God’s plan.

The prevalent Christian answer to that question since A.D. 150 has been, no. Because Israel rejected His son, God has rejected and replaced her with a new Israel, the Church. This view, which goes by the name of supersessionism, found circumstantial support in the destructions of Jerusalem in A.D. 70 and 135, the subsequent scattering and disappearance of the Jews, Rome’s replacement of Jerusalem as the “holy city,” and the complete Gentilization of Christianity after Constantine.

But today this “replacement theology” is fading fast. Premillennialism has risen along with a literal interpretation of OT prophecy; the Jews have not only survived but returned to the land; and the Holocaust has made biblical scholars reassess the possibility that the Bible has been read through an anti-Jewish lens.

As a result, two years ago Craig Blaising could confidently tell an audience of 1,000 theologians—in his presidential address to the Evangelical Theological Society—that there is “a consensus regarding Paul’s teaching in Romans 9–11 that there is indeed a future in the plan of God for Israel—not a redefined Israel, but ethnic-national Israel.” Blaising could have named scholars as disparate as Barth, Cranfield, Stuhlmacher, Dunn, and Moo. Many covenant theologians have yielded as well, including perhaps the best Reformed exegete of the last century, John Murray.

For this reason, I imagine, the editor of JETS thought it would be interesting to include a riposte from one of the Reformed rear guard. Ben Merkle is a NT instructor at the Southern Baptist Seminary in Louisville,

JOTGES 16:1 (Spring 03) p. 86

and his argument against a future for ethnic Israel is clear, simple, and fair. But in the end, it is futile.

The crucial clause is found in Rom 11:26a, “and so all Israel will be saved.” “All Israel” includes every individual Jew, or possibly the general mass of Jews, living on the earth at the end of th...