One of the most widely-believed heresies of our time is that Christians must regard Jews as God’s eternally elected “chosen people.”   As will be shown, Holy Scripture rebuts this heresy. The Old Testament describes how Israel repeatedly disobeyed and defaulted upon its covenants with Him.  The Psalms and the Prophets foretold that Israel’s descendents would reject God’s Messiah, and that He would choose a new people.  And in the New Testament, Jesus Christ predicted that a new people would obey His new covenant.

The Roman Catholic Church teaches that these people are its Church. The Jews called these people “Gentiles,” from the Latin word for a different “race.”  Today, we call people of that race “Europeans.”

Why this heresy is important:

All heresy is a serious matter.  The heresy that Jews continue to be the “chosen people” and still possess their own covenant with God is gravely serious, for it strikes at the very heart of Christianity, - that no one may come to the Father except though Jesus Christ, that for all men, He is the Way, the Truth and the Light.

In addition to being gravely serious, this particular heresy is also acutely serious because of its dangerous political implications.

First, the heresy has rationalized a Christian America’s betrothal to militant Zionism.  If the Jewish people are always to be God’s chosen people, so it is reasoned, then Christians must always seek to uphold His continuing covenants with them.  Above all else, it is argued, this requires Christians to deliver to Jews their “promised land”, by force of arms, if necessary. Militant Zionism has in turn led to a resurgent, militant Islam and an incipient World War.

Second, the heresy has allowed the Europeans, including European-Americans, to regard the fate of their lands and peoples as a matter of religious indifference.  If Christians believe that only Jews are a chosen people, or entitled to a promised land, then the survival of the European peoples and their lands will appear to them theologically unimportant.

Third, the heresy has permitted slander against the European peoples to go unanswered, for example, that Christopher Columbus oppressed American Indians. The heresy precludes the best answer to these accusations, which is a religious justification - that God chose the Europeans to carry out the last command of the Risen Christ: “Go forth and make disciples of all nations.” Taking away their religious defense leaves Europeans open to the attack’s real purpose, which is shaming them into cultural and religious submission.

The global crises being generated by the heresy’s political implications should interest even those who do not profess the Christian faith.  Unless they favor continuing or expanding the Middle Eastern War, they too have a stake in rebutting this heresy.

And if those non-believers come to understand the true teaching of the Roman Catholic Church and Holy Scripture about the “chosen people”, then perhaps they would accept that teaching and convert.

For all these reasons, this heresy is a proper subject of theological debunking, no matter controversial or offensive some readers might find that process to be.

Other readers might disdain discussion of Christian doctrines or heresies as being irrelevant to the secular world.  But some ideas exert great force in this world, regardless of whether everyone subscribes to them.  History shows this to be especially true of religious ideas.

Why both Catholics and Protestants are to blame for the heresy:

Traditionally, the Roman Catholic Church has taught that the Church inherited all of God’s covenants with Israel. This doctrine is called supersessionism, or by its detractors, “replacement theology.”  The doctrine teaches that Jesus Christ established an exclusive, new and everlasting covenant with His Church, that superseded all previous covenants.  Traditionallly, the Church treated Jews like all other non-Christians - outside the salvation of the Church, unless they accept Jesus Christ.

But as part of the discredited Vatican II Council, some heretics within the Roman Catholic Church have sought to overturn the Church’s traditional teaching.  One of their vehicles is the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, which recently published “Refections on Covenant and Mission.”

This paper departs from nearly 2000 years of Church teaching and postulates that God’s covenant with Israel remains intact.  As result, it suggests that today’s Jews are not required to accept Jesus Christ in order to be saved:  “They already dwell in a saving covenant with God”  the document states.

Neoconservatives are delighted with this Vatican II teaching, as these same supposed covenants command that all of Palestine must be delivered into the hands of Zionists.

Most Protestant denominations retained the Catholic doctrine of supersessionism because it was an orthodoxy having a sound Scriptural basis.  For example, the redoubtable John Calvin wrote in his Chapter 11 of his Institutes of the Christian Religion:

“The calling of the Gentiles therefore is a notable mark of the excellence of the New testament over the Old.  Indeed this had been attested before my many very clear utterances of the prophets, but in such a way that its fulfillment was postponed until the Kingdom of the Messiah.  For it seemed completely unreasonable that the Lord, who for so many ages had singled out Israel from all other nations, should suddenly change his plan and abandon that choice.  Prophecies had indeed foretold this.  But men could not heed those prophecies without being startled by the newness of the thing that met their eyes.”

Then, in the twentieth century, John Darby’s theory of Dispensationalism began to make inroads into Protestant theology.  This was especially true in America, where Darby’s ideas became popularized by Cyrus Scofield’s retranslation of the King James Bible, complete with Darby-inspired footnotes.  Though most popular in America, the Scofield Bible was published in England, first in 1909 and then again in 1917, coinciding in time and place with the rise of British Zionism and its culmination in the 1917 Balfour Declaration.

One of Darby’s critics summarizes Dispensationalism’s overtly Zionist political implications:

“His novel dispensational speculations [...] led him to formulate two innovative doctrines concerning the church and Israel. Both marked a significant departure from Christian orthodoxy and evangelicalism in particular.

The first might be termed a 'replacement theology', although ironically, his was the opposite of that which is so criticised by Christian Zionists today. Darby taught that Israel would soon replace the church, rather than the church having replaced, superseded or indeed become, Israel. To accomplish this, Darby postulated his second distinctive doctrine involving two stages to the return of Christ instead of one, the first being to secretly gather the church to heaven in a 'rapture' leaving a revived and gathered nation of Israel to rule on earth for the millennium.”

Darby has reached what is hopefully a zenith of influence in the modern writings of Hal Lindsey and Tim LaHaye.  Lindsey repudiates 1900 years of Christian orthodoxy by insisting that both Israel and the Church have continuing, separate covenants with God.  LaHaye’s “Left Behind” fiction has sold more than forty million copies.

Supersessionism is the teaching of Holy Scripture:

The Holy Bible relates a history of God’s covenants with different persons, peoples and nations, and states plainly that God has chosen different peoples at different times to accomplish His purposes.

For example, the covenant with Noah (Genesis 9:8) predated the covenant with Abraham by many centuries and was deemed a universal covenant with Noah’s sons - the forbears of all mankind.  God’s covenant with the Abraham and the Hebrews is related in Genesis 17:9. God’s covenant with Moses and the Israelites is related in Exodus 19:6:

“Now, therefore, if you will obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my own possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine, and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. These are the words you shall speak to the children of Israel”

God’s covenant with Israel is specifically conditioned upon Israel’s obedience to God.  Christian covenant theology holds that all of God’s covenants required man’s obedience.  As examples, God’s covenant with Adam required one act of obedience. [Gen 2:17].  Noah “did all that God commanded Him.” [Gen 6:22 ]  Abraham was required to “keep” the covenant by practicing circumcision.  [Gen 17:10]

But throughout the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testament, Israel’s disobedience to God was first prophesied and then recorded. First was the Israelites’ idolatry of Aaron’s molten calf. [Exodus 32:1-5]   God renewed the covenant but warned Israel of the consequences of further disobedience:

“The Lord will bring your King whom you set over you to a nation that neither you nor your fathers have known; and there you shall serve other Gods, of wood and stone [...] All these curses shall come upon you [...] because you did not obey the voice of the Lord your God, to keep his commandments and his statutes which he commanded you.”

Exodus 28:36-45

Again, Israel disobeyed when King Jeroboam committed idolatry by fashioning two calves of gold. [1 Kings 12:28]  Then, in 721 B.C., the Assyrians  conquered and scattered the ten tribes of Israel’s Northern Kingdom.  In 597 B.C., the Babylonians conquered Judah’s Southern Kingdom and destroyed the Jerusalem Temple.

By practicing idolatry, the tribes of Israel disobeyed God, lost the land that God gave them to them and lost their standing as God’s chosen people.

Still, God did not abandon Israel.  He sent prophets to bring them back into His fold.  But Israel did not receive them.

Then, it was prophesied that God would send a Messiah to deliver them from their bondage to the law and therefore to sin.  It was prophesied that the Messiah would become the cornerstone of mankind’s salvation, but that Israel would reject Him:

“The stone that the builders rejected has become the head of the corner”

Psalms 118

It was prophesied that by rejecting the Lord, the descendants of Israel would fall upon that stone and be broken:

“But the Lord of hosts, him you shall regard as Holy, let him be your fear and him be your dread. And he will become a sanctuary and a stone of offense, and a rock of stumbling to both houses of Israel, a trap and a snare to the inhabitants of Jerusalem.  And many shall stumble thereon; they shall fall and be broken; they shall be snared and taken.

 Isaiah 8:13-15

Later in the Old Testament, Hosea prophesied that Israel would lose its status as God’s chosen people, to be replaced with a different people:

“And I will say to them that were not my people , Thou art my people; and they shall say, Thou art my God.

Hosea 2:23

The Psalms foretold who those people were:

“Thou wilt deliver me from the contradictions of the people: thou wilt make me head of the Gentiles. A people, which I knew not, hath served me: at the hearing of the ear they have obeyed me.”

Psalms 17:44-45

The New Testament repeatedly refutes Israel’s claim to a continuing covenant with God.  The clearest example is contained our Lord Jesus Christ’s “Parable of the Vineyard,” part of His discourse to the Priests and Pharisees of the Jerusalem Temple [Matthew 21:33-43]:

“There was a householder who planted a vineyard and dug a wine press in it and built a tower, and let it out to tenants, to get his fruit. When the season of fruit drew near, he sent his servants to the tenants to get his fruit, and the tenants took his servants and beat one and killed another and stoned another.  Again, he send other servants more than the first, and they did the same to them.  Afterward, he sent his son to them, saying “They will respect my son”  But when the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, “This is the heir, come, let us kill him and have his inheritance”  And they took him and cast him out of the vineyard and killed him.

When therefore the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do with those tenants?  They said to him “He will put those wretches to a miserable death, and let out the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the fruits in their seasons.”

Jesus said to them: “Have you never read in the scriptures:

“The very stone which the builders rejected has become the head of the corner this was the Lord’s doing and it is marvelous in our eyes”

Therefore, I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a nation producing the fruits of it”

Now the meaning of this Scripture is clear.  But Hal Lindsey, Tim LaHaye and Vatican II all preach that instead of putting the tenants to a “miserable death,” the owner of the vineyard should deed them the property!

If the Gospel of Matthew’s teaching about the displacement of Israel is not clear, other Scriptures are available to clarify.  In Hebrews 8:13, God’s former covenants with Israel are deemed  “obsolete” and “ready to vanish away.”  In Acts 4:10-12, Peter states that even for the people of Israel there is “salvation in no one else” other than Jesus Christ.

The origins of the heresy:

How can Dispensationalists or Vatican II heretics ignore the plain meaning of these Scriptures?

Dispensationalists distort the plain meaning of the Scriptures.  This distortion is epitomized by their theology’s use of the term “dispensation” instead of what traditional Christianity calls a “covenant.”

The word “dispensation” means “a dealing out” or a “distribution.” (OED)  Unlike traditional covenant Christianity, which treats God’s covenants as a contract requiring human obedience, dispensationalism sees covenants as God’s “dealing out” of property.  According to Dispensationalists, once God distributes it, the property belongs to the human party, no matter how disobedient he may be.

Dispensationalists dispute that obedience is always a required term of God’s covenants with man.  Therefore, dispensationalists deny that disobedience is a breach of those covenants, as the Bible teaches was the case with both Adam and Israel. [Gen: 3:17-18; Hosea 6:7-10]

But the Gospel itself refutes the Dispensationalists’ interpretation. In the Parable of the Vineyard, our Lord Jesus Christ refers to the disobedient occupants of the vineyard as tenants, not property owners. The owner of the vineyard “let it out” to the tenants.  As tenants, they occupy the vineyard as long as they comply with the lease.  The vineyard has not been unconditionally “dispensed” to them for all eternity; they do not own it.  They are tenants, and their disobedience or breach of the lease is grounds for their eviction from the property.

Worst of all, by lapsing into error and heresy, Dispensationalists deny the singular significance of the Jesus Christ’s new covenant.  Jesus Christ established this unique and final covenant between man and God precisely because He assumed human form, and was perfectly obedient to God’s will.  For this reason His new covenant fulfills and supersedes all previous covenants between man and God.

Because Jesus Christ perfectly fulfilled man’s obligation to God under previous covenants, His new covenant is the final covenant.  No subsequent covenants or “dispensations” could be or have been established in the 2000 years since His death and resurrection.

While Dispensationalists distort Holy Scripture, Vatican II heretics are proposing to abolish it.

In his book Constantine’s Sword, James Carroll calls upon the Roman Catholic Church to revise the Holy Bible.  Carroll wants the Church to expunge those passages of Scripture that support supersessionism. Carroll, formerly a Catholic priest, writes for the Boston Globe, which is owned by the New York Times.

Carroll appears to claim that the New Testament itself is evil, and refers to:

“The fear, envy, insecurity, despair, grief and finally hatred that corrupted the authors of the New Testament.”

Carroll looks forward towards a “Vatican III” where the New Testament will be revised or even abolished:

“The act of reading such texts must now involve the act of arguing against them.  The inherent supersessionist terminology of of “Old” and “New” must be replaced.  Likewise “Law” and “Gospel.”  Instead of an inherently contemptuous tension between Jewish “prophecy” and Christian “fulfillment”, Vatican III must invite a new sensitivity...”

Carroll does not deny that Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy.  He admits it, and then calls for a restructuring or revision of “texts,”  i.e., Holy Scripture, in order to make them more palatable to Judaism.

Even by the standards of heresy, Carroll’s teachings are extreme, approaching outright blasphemy.  What motivates Carroll’s call for a “Vatican III”  and the desecration Holy Scripture?

Carroll states one purpose of Vatican III is to declare that:

“The Jews remain the chosen people of God.  The Jewish rejection of Jesus as the Son of God is an affirmation of faith that Christians must respect.  The task of Vatican III will be to reorder the Church’s relationship to the “troubling texts” that deny all of this.”

Carroll’s proposed Vatican III seems designed to subordinate Catholicism to Judaism, creating a new religion that might be called Judeo-Christianity.

Carroll’s call to revise the New Testament to make it more compatible with Judaism is reminiscent of the controversy surrounding the film “The Passion of the Christ.”  The Anti-Defamation League defamed the film as “anti-Semitic” precisely because the film was faithful to the Gospels of the New Testament.

The idea of revising the New Testament to please those it offends is also appealing to the homosexual lobby.  Together with the ADL, homosexuals agitate for “hate speech” legislation that one day may make it a crime to preach the Gospel.

Who are the “chosen people” if the Jews are not? :

Supersessionism, the traditional teaching of the Roman Catholic Church, holds that God’s covenants with Israel are transferred to the Church. The Church does not claim that God has chosen a new race of people.

However, Holy Scripture permits a different interpretation, in which God’s prior covenants with the people of Israel are now deemed to run in favor of a different race.

In Matthew 21:33-43, the Greek word used for “nation” is ‘ethna” which means an ethnicity.  The Greek word for a group of people who are ethnically unrelated is “laos.”  By using the word “ethna” instead of “laos,” the Gospel of Matthew is indicating that the people of Israel will be replaced not simply by a new Church, but by a different race.

Similarly, in 1 Peter 2:9-10, the Greek phrases “genos eklekton” and ‘ethnos hagion” are used.  The translation of these words are “chosen race” and “holy nation.” Again, this choice of worlds indicates that Israel is to be replaced with a different race.

Who are the new “chosen people?”  Their identity is supplied by 1 Peter 2:9-10.  Using the second person plural, Peter is comparing his audience with the ancient Israelites.  In fact, his language in verses 9 and 10 consciously parallels the language Exodus 19:6 applies to the Israelites, calling them “a holy nation” a “kingdom of priests.” Echoing Hosea, Peter says once they were “no people”, but now they are “God’s people.”

To whom is Peter referring?  In this epistle, Peter is addressing Gentile converts (1:14, 2:10, 4:3) in five provinces of the Roman Empire near the Aegean Sea- Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia.  The epistle’s excellent Greek implies that it’s audience was fluent in that language, which is the language of the New Testament. Historians identify the peoples of these provinces as being Greeks, Macedonians and Celts.

But whether one traces the early Christian Church through the provinces of Rome or Byzantium, in either Latin or Greek, its demographics and languages are European.

The subsequent history of the Europeans did fulfill New Testament prophecy.  The Europeans have tendered the fruits of the vineyard to its owner.  The Europeans, the new “chosen people,” did implement the new covenant by their obedience to the risen Christ’s last command “Go forth, and make disciples of all nations.”  Matthew 28:19.

For the purposes of an essay, a full recounting of world history in this regard is impossible and hopefully unnecessary.  Suffice it to say that since the time of Christ, the Europeans christianized first the Roman Empire, then the Holy Roman Empire, and then the New World.  Even after the Age of Exploration ended, it was Europe and then America that sent missionaries to christianize the rest of the world.

The idea that the Europeans are God’s chosen people is no more “racist” than the widely accepted idea that Israelites were His chosen people. The idea is not ‘racist” at all, in a materialist sense.  God does not choose men, people or nations because of their genetics or DNA.  Holy Scripture teaches that He chooses them to give them an opportunity for obedience, to do His will.

The difference between a racial theory of supersessionism and the traditional Catholic teaching of supersessionism is not significant, especially compared to the heresy that all of God’s covenants with Israel continue to benefit today's Jews.  While the European people and the Christian Church are conceptually distinct, they are historically intertwined.  Hillaire Belloc went so far as to predicate an chiastic identity between Europe and the Faith:

“The Faith is Europe
and Europe is the Faith”

Are the Europeans the eternally elected chosen people of God, regardless of their obedience to His Word?  No more than the Israelites were.  By their disobedience and unfaithfulness, they may lose their status as the chosen people of Christianity.  Pope Benedict XVI recently recognized that Europe and America are standing at this precipice:

“The Lord, in the Old and New Testament alike, pronounces judgement upon the unfaithful vineyard. [...] But the threat of judgement regards us too, the Church in Europe, Europe and the West in general. With this Gospel, the Lord is shouting into our ears the same words he told the Church of Ephesus in the Apocalypse: “Unless you repent, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place.” (2,5). The light may be taken away from us too, and we would do well to allow this warning in all its gravity to resound in our soul, at the same time crying to the Lord: “Help us to convert! Give us all the grace of a true renewal! Do not allow your light among us to be extinguished! Reinforce our faith, our hope and our love, so we may bear good fruit!”

Conclusion:

Quite recently, the Christian doctrine of supersessionism has become controversial.  Such was not the case for the first 1900 years of Christian history.  The doctrine was unquestioned by the traditional Roman Catholic Church.  As a consequence of its sound Scriptural basis, supersessionism was well-established in orthodox Protestantism.

Not until the rise of Dispensationalism in the first decade of the twentieth century, and the advent of the Second Vatican Council in its fifth decade, did Christians begin to question supersessionism.  In the form of the retranslated Scofield Bible,  the heresy of Dispensationalism coincides in time and place with the advent of British Zionism.  In the Roman Catholic Church, attacks upon supersessionism coincide with Vatican II’s repudiation of the Church’s traditional liturgy and teachings.  In either case, the dissenters from supersessionism wear the badge of 20th Century heretics.

The motivations behind the heresy become clear once one admits its implications.

The heresy strikes at the very heart of the Christian faith.  The survival and continued existence of covenants or dispensations outside of Jesus Christ undermine the Church’s claim to catholicity or universality.

By excepting one or more nations from the need to find salvation in Christ, the heresy undercuts the Great Commission of His Church, to go forth and make disciples of all nations.  Matthew 28:19  The Church’s proselytizing mission is compromised.

Politically, the heresy elevates Zionism to the level of Christian doctrine.  Among Dispensationalists, it is an article of faith to support unconditionally the UN-created State of Israel, both financially and militarily.

The heresy exalts modern day Jews as God’s “chosen people.”  At the same time, it debases the theological and worldly importance of the Christian Church and the European people.  The heresy is gaining strength at a time when the Christian religion is under a barrage of enemy fire, and the European people are undergoing a demographic implosion.

Whether they are Catholic or Protestant, Christians must repudiate this heresy in all its hydra-headed forms, and reclaim the traditional teachings of their Churches.  They must do this for the sake of Jesus Christ and the new and eternal covenant He established.

And they should do it for the sake of Europe, its people and its civilization. For as Belloc said:

“Europe will return to the Faith, or she will perish. The Faith is Europe.  And Europe is the Faith.”