Journal: Tyndale Bulletin
Volume: TYNBUL 26:1 (NA 1975)
Article: Old Testament Prophecy And The Future Of Israel: A Study Of The Teaching Of Jesus
Author: R. T. France

TynBul 26:1 (1975) p. 53

Old Testament Prophecy And The Future Of Israel: A Study Of The Teaching Of Jesus1

R. T. France

A common use of the Old Testament by Christians, almost the only use made of it in some Christian circles, is to search its pages for predictions of events in twentieth-century politics, with a view to plotting their future course and, often, calculating the nearness of the final denouement. This Qumran- like use of Scripture has gained fresh momentum since the official establishment of the state of Israel in 1948. God is at last fulfilling his very longstanding promises of territorial restoration for his covenant people, and many Christians are firmly) convinced that this is the beginning of the end.

At the same time those compulsive spoil-sports, the theologians, and particularly the German ones, seem to be driving an ever thicker wedge between the Jewish people and the Christian church; they assert boldly that the former has no claim on the Old Testament promises, that it is in the Christian church, the true Israel, that those promises are already being fulfilled, that a political state of the people of God has been replaced in Christ by a spiritual kingdom drawn from all nations.

Inevitably the debate is highly charged, both politically and emotionally. Anyone who dares to question the relevance of Old Testament prophecy to the Jewish people of today and the political state of Israel is quickly, and often quite unfairly, charged with anti-Semitism (a strangely inappropriate word when applied to a political conflict in which both sides are overwhelmingly Semitic!). The long history of Christian in

TynBul 26:1 (1975) p. 54

justice to Jews seems to place the Christian already in the wrong, and it is not surprising that sensitive Christians are reluctant to appear hostile to Jewish ideals and aspirations. To talk of the Christian church as the true Israel is surely very literally to add insult to injury.

But presumably our theology should not be based on sentiment or on political expediency, but, as far as possible, on objective exegesis. The question we should ask of the view that the church is the true Israel, the inheritor of the Old Testament promises, is not how palatable it is to present-day attitudes, but whether it is a true expression of Christianity’s original rationale, as we find it in the thought of the New Testament.

Many have asked that question in recent years.2 Most of the discussion has centred on Paul, for the very good reason that he is the one New Testament writer who sets out explicitly to unravel the theological problem of the relation...