Covenant Theology

On Monday night, I had the opportunity to go to a lecture by Colin Chapman, author of Whose Promised Land?: The Continuing Crisis over Israel and Palestine. After having been told by Gary Burge (another Middle East scholar) that objectivity with regard to the Middle East is impossible, I was pleasantly surprised at how unbiased Chapman's assessment of the situation was.

He started by reviewing a brief history of the region over the last 2000 years, during which he critiqued both sides for their actions at different points, and commended both sides for their actions at different points. He proceeded to suggest what he sees as possible routes which either side can take in the future. The last part of his lecture---which, for me, was by far the most exciting and hopeful aspect---was a proposal of a new theological lens through which to view the conflict, and the Middle East in general.

He critiqued both dispensational theology (a lens that has been used by many conservative Evangelicals, by which the U.S.'s prosperity is tied to the prosperity of Israel, and the establishment of the state of Israel has great theological and eschatological significance) and replacement theology (a lens which says that God's covenant with Israel was somehow nullified by the coming of Christ, such that the people of Israel hold relatively little continued significance in terms of the progressive course of salvation history).

What he offered instead is what he termed "covenant theology." As he described this fresh and very promising theological lens, much of what he said sounded like a verbatim application of the theology of NT Wright to the political arena. Covenant theology understands God's promises and prophecies of the Old Testament to be fulfilled in the person of Jesus Christ. (Along these lines, Wright talks about Christ having fulfilled and embodied the five great Old Testament portraits of God--Wisdom, Word, Spirit, Temple, Torah--thereby demonstrating the vivid lines of continuity between the God of the Old Testament and the divine Messiah. According to Wright, Christ's claiming to be one with Yahweh is the "blasphemy" which led to His crucixion. See Jesus and the Victory of God, or for a more accessible version, see chapter 5 in The Challenge of Jesus or http://www.ntwrightpage.com/Wright_JIG.htm).

Messianic Jews believe that Jesus was the embodiment of the long-awaited Messiah, and covenant theology seems consistent by saying that just as the peace and justice and redemption that Christ brought was not brought via military or political victory, Christians today should not expect that the redemption of Israel is going to come through geographical or political advances. This lens frees us from assigning huge significance to the existence of the state of Israel and calls us to focus instead on bringing about the Kingdom of God in the way that Christ incarnated that very Kingdom.

For me, this is still a pretty significant mental shift. Until recently, I had always uncritically assumed that to be a Christian meant to support Israel, and to not support Israel was anti-Semitic. But given the fact that much of Israel is a secular reality, it seems that Israeli nationalism can trump faith in the same way that American (or any other) nationalism often supercedes or interferes with or unduly colors faith. Colin Chapman noted that, in his opinion, the root of the conflict in the Middle East is clashing nationalisms. Much of Christ's whole message is that we are not fighting against flesh and blood, but rather against spiritual realities and principalities.

Anti-Semitism throughout the centuries has been an enormous tragedy with horrific consequences, and we must be concerned with the continued safety and flourishing of the Jewish people. For me, this stance stems primarily from the notion that we are created as God's image-bearers and called to bring about God's reign on earth. God is a God of life, peace, and justice, and these are virtues that are scarcely seen in the midst of the continued atrocities in the Middle East. Our activity of promoting life, peace, and justice is a universal call, a call to stand up against death, unrest and injustice wherever it exists on earth, whether that be in Gaza or North Korea or Darfur or Los Angeles.

We need to be advocating for peace in the Middle East. We need to be seeking justice and promoting life. And we need to do these things in the footsteps of Christ our Messiah, and according to the teachings that He gave us. We need to prayerfully and diligently live out the Kingdom of God, to be ambassadors of a world order that points to the rule of God and not the domination of men. Through the power and guidance of the Spirit, the Church is called to be the light of the world in the same way that Christ was (see John 8:12 and Matthew 5:14). In the words of NT Wright, "The Spirit is given so that we will be for the world what Jesus was for Israel. Our task is not to repeat what Jesus did, but to implement his achievement. That is at the heart of Christian mission" (http://www.fulcrum-anglican.org.uk/events/2005/inthechurch.cfm). We need to keep in mind the spiritual realm, the realm in which Jesus acheived His victory over darkness and death. As Christians, to uncritically support Israel in its ongoing fight for land seems to return to an overly literalistic interpretation of Old Testament prophecy, the same type of reading which has led and continues to lead many Jews to the conclusion that Jesus Christ could not possibly have been the Messiah.