After decades of successful rapprochement, a conference last week shows that a long-discredited theological aberration is threatening to open a new rupture between Christians and Jews - in the service of Islam. Replacement theology is, in brief, the idea that Christians are the true inheritors of God's Old Testament promises to Israel. It discards St. Paul's New Testament assurance that God has not rejected His people (Romans 11:2) and, in its extreme form, repudiates the Old Testament after the fashion of the Marcionite sect, which the Church declared heretical in the second century C.E. Marcion articulated his anti-Jewish doctrine in this way around the year 144 C.E.:

"We Christians worship an entirely different God from that of the Jews. We have absolutely nothing in common with them. Their scriptures bear witness to a completely different divinity. Indeed, our Christian religion was founded with the purpose of putting the Jewish heritage to rest once and for all."

Why is the exhumation of musty theological controversies worthy of note? Because these neo-Marcionite replacement theology advocates are mounting in the U.S. and Europe a concerted and thoroughgoing attempt to end support for Israel among Christians, which has been widely noted particularly among Evangelicals for many years. This, of course, plays right into the hands of radical Muslims, who have used Islam's even more virulent form of replacement theology against Jews and Christians alike for centuries in order to justify killing, enslaving, and displacing them.

The conference, a U.K. Evangelical Alliance “Consultation” on the Holy Land held on June 26, 2003 in London, was addressed by our friend and mentor Bat Ye'or, the renowned historian of Islam's institutionalized injustices toward religious minorities, which have come to be known as dhimmitude. Another speaker was the Anglican Rev. Stephen Sizer. At his website Sizer openly and unapologetically exhorts Christians to accept replacement theology and, on its basis, to repudiate Israel. He advocates:

1) a Marcionite separation of the Gospel from the Old Testament;

2) a reading of the Old Testament from a perspective that denies that modern Jews have any legitimate Jewish identity or continuing standing as the People of God (in opposition to Romans 11:1 and 29);

3) an affirmation that the present state of Israel and its citizens are not heirs to the Biblical Israel, and that because of the sins of the Jews, Israel has lost its covenant with God. That covenant has been transferred to the Palestinians, innocent victims of a demonized Israel;

4) a demonization of the state of Israel to prove the cancellation of the covenant;

5) an aiming of this campaign at Evangelical Americans in order to suppress their support for Israel.

Sizer's inflammatory writings meld warped, ahistorical sociopolitical "narrative" to heretical theology and blatant hatred of Jews - Judenhass. For example, he states that “a return to Jewish nationalism…would seem incompatible with this New Testament perspective of the international community of Jesus."

Fiendishly dealing in half-truths and distortions, he claims: "The covenant between Jews and God was conditional on their respect for human rights. The reason they were expelled from the land was that they were more interested in money and power and treated the poor and aliens with contempt…In the United States, politicians dare not criticize Israel because half the funding for both the Democrats and the Republicans comes from Jewish sources."

Not surprisingly, Sizer complements these hateful attitudes with the tired canard about Israel (the Middle East's sole, vibrant, multi-religious and multi-ethnic democracy!) being an apartheid state that he terms “even worse than South Africa.” He admits to wishing for Israel’s liquidation.

Sizer is not alone. In February, 2002, British journalist Melanie Phillips published a brave, chilling article (http://pws.prserv.net/mpjr/mp/sp160202.htm ) chronicling the resurgence of replacement theology, catalyzed by Palestinian Christian revisionists. Two Neo-Marcionist Palestinian clerics, the brazen Anglican Bishop of Jerusalem, Riah Abu El-Assal, and the more "discreet" Father Naim Ateek, are at the vanguard of the new replacement theology movement. As noted by Ms. Phillips, Bishop El-Assal stated regarding Palestinian Christians,

"We are the true Israel… no-one can deny me the right to inherit the promises, and after all the promises were first given to Abraham and Abraham is never spoken of in the Bible as a Jew…He is the father of the faithful."

In the U.K., these Palestinian clerics have won the admiration of John Gladwin, the Bishop of Guildford, who promotes their ideology. Sizer is a priest in this bishop’s diocese.

Despite the exposure by Ms. Phillips, and condemnation by some of the Christian religious hierarchy in the United Kingdom, the ugly replacement theology phenomenon seems to be intensifying. Christian groups worldwide of all sects seem unsure how to react to this new, virulent strain of Judenhass replacement theology.

Bat Ye’or’s analysis of replacement theology is based in large part on her unique studies of what she has described as the “civilization of dhimmitude”: the Muslim Shari’a (Holy Law) regulations that classified as despised second-class citizens the indigenous, pre-Islamic dhimmi peoples of the Middle East and elsewhere whose lands were conquered and Islamized by jihad wars - particularly Christians and Jews. Bat Ye’or discussed the subservient attitudes engendered in Christians and Jews by the culture of dhimmitude:

“ Dhimmitude derives from the surrender of the Christian clergy and political leaders to the Muslim jihad armies, and their submission to Islamic domination of both their lands and peoples. In exchange, they received a pledge of protection ('dhimma') from the Muslim sovereign - and the cessation of the jihad war. This "protection" was conditioned on a ransom payment (jizya) that was extorted from the vanquished Christian and Jewish populations (dhimmis). Sometimes, Christian submission to Islam was rooted in personal ambition. Dhimmitude often induced self-hatred, and hatred against Jews and Christians who resisted the jihad and Muslim domination. Christian dhimmitude has been a world force for Islamization throughout history.”

She noted that these attitudes linger on in the current revival of replacement theology, which redounds to the great advantage of Muslim radicals who want to see Israel destroyed. Sizer and other Christian replacement theology advocates are working, knowingly or not, hand-in-glove with groups like Hamas, which advocates an Islamic replacement theology that considers both Judaism and Christianity to be erroneous deviations from a common Islamic origin of the three monotheistic religions. For committed Muslims, Islam is the primordial religion preached by Abraham, Moses, the Hebrew kings and prophets, and by the Muslim Jesus (Isa), another prophet of Islam, whose second coming will bring the end of Christianity. Thus Islam is the only legitimate religion of mankind, and those who cling to older, superseded covenants (i.e., Jews and Christians) must be converted, killed, or subjugated (cf. Sura 9:29 of the Qur’an).

In calling for the rejection of modern Israel on the grounds of replacement theology, Sizer and the others have joined the Islamic jihad war against Israel. Delegitimizing Judaism by preaching replacement theology also promotes bloody outbursts against Jews. At times, it has even sustained annihilationist campaigns - an undeniable historical legacy of both Christian and Islamic replacement theologies, antedating the creation of Israel by more than a millennium. In stark contrast, the remarkable post-Shoah Vatican II / Nostre Aetate reforms, which facilitated genuine Catholic-Jewish dialogue and rapprochement, denounced such supersessionist replacement theology explicitly and recognized the grave existential dangers it posed to Jews.

What’s more, the new Marcionites’ course of action has two principal consequences for the rapidly dwindling number of Christians in the Middle East:

1. Insofar as it justifies Christian support for the Islamic jihad against Israel, it weakens Christianity, which is included by Muslims - with Jews and Israel - in the framework of jihad and dhimmitude;

2. Its Marcionist element separates Christianity from its Old Testament roots, fostering the Islamization (and consequent disappearance or subjugation) of Palestinian Christian Arabs.

Ironically, the wanton Jew hatred fueling the Palestinian dhimmi clerics’ replacement theology is self-destructive - blinding them (and their fellow travelers in Europe and beyond) to the agenda of their ostensible Islamist "allies" who seek to supersede and replace not only Judaism, but Christianity as well. And this ultimate desire of the Islamists extends far beyond the Holy Land, having in fact no geographical constraints.

Bat Ye’or conveyed to us this trenchant observation:

"This Christian vision is totally unaware of the Islamic policy toward the People of the Book ('Book' = Bible; 'People' = Jews and Christians). It is a dualistic vision and not a triangular perspective that integrates the jihad theological ideology. It pretends that Israel is the enemy and assumes a priori, an Islamo-Christian fraternization which is historically, theologically and politically an illusion, and an aberration. As Islam is the third element in the Holy Land, and the principal one in the disputed territories, any political evaluation of the situation there with reference only to Israel without referring to Islam, is extremely dangerous for Christianity's survival in the Holy Land."

For the sake of those Christians and their Jewish brethren, Christian leaders of all sects must decisively reject this new Marcionism - before it’s too late.

Back to OrthoVox

http://www.orthovox.org/orthovox/03-08bostom.htm

Andrew G. Bostom, “Replacement Theology Redux: A Self-destructive Amalgam of Jew-Hatred and Christian Dhimmitude,” Ortho Vox: An Online Journal of Ecumenical Christianity, August 2003 at http://www.orthovox.org/orthovox/03-08bostom.htm