genealogical principle—“to you and your offspring”—is constant throughout every
administration of the covenant of grace, but germane for the purposes of this study are the
clear implications that these theologically constructed covenants have in leading to a very
tight relationship between Israel and the church.
replaces OT Israel since Israel has forfeited its national identity by disobedience and faithlessness.
49Others refrain from the language of replacement and repudiate the accusation of supersessionism by delineating the continuity as one of fulfillment and redefinition.
50Regardless, as the embodiment and successor to Israel, the NT church is
Prophecy, ed. Carl Edwin Armerding and W. Ward Gasque (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1989), 207-20;
William Hendriksen, Israel in Prophecy (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1968), 53-57; Horton, The Christian Faith, 729-33; Horton, Introducing Covenant Theology, 129-35; Reymond, A New Systematic Theology, 512-35, 805, 837; Robert L. Reymond, “Israel and the Church in the Traditional Covenantal View,” in Perspectives on Israel and the Church: 4 Views, ed. Chad Brand (Nashville: B & H, 2015), 17-68; Herman Ridderbos, Paul: An Outline of His Theology, trans. John Richard De Witt (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1975), 333-41, 360-61; Beale, A New Testament Biblical Theology, 651-749; O. Palmer Robertson, The Israel of God:
Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow (Phillipsburg, NJ: P & R, 2000), 33-51; Morton H. Smith, “The Church and Covenant Theology,” JETS 21 (1978): 47-65; Marten H. Woudstra, “Israel and the Church: A Case for Continuity,” in Continuity and Discontinuity, 221-38; David E. Holwerda, Jesus and Israel: One Covenant or Two? (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), 27-58, 147-84; George W. Knight III, “The Significance of ‘Israel’
in the Usage of the New Testament,” in The Hope Fulfilled: Essays in Honor of O. Palmer Robertson, ed.
Robert L. Penny (Phillipsburg, NJ: P & R, 2008), 82-108; Anthony A. Hoekema, The Bible and the Future (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1979), 194-201, 215-16; Cornelius P. Venema, The Promise of the Future (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 2000), 261-77; Herman Hanko, We and Our Children: The Reformed Doctrine of Infant Baptism (Grand Rapids: Reformed Free, 1981), 26-35; Daniel R. Hyde, Jesus Loves the Little Children: Why We Baptize Children (Grandville, MI: Reformed Fellowship, 2006), 30-37; Booth, Children of Promise, 71-95.
49For example, Bruce K. Waltke, “Kingdom Promises as Spiritual,” in Continuity and Discontinuity, 274, writes, “National Israel and its law have been permanently replaced by the church and the New Covenant.” Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 4:667, states, “The community of believers has in all respects replaced carnal, national Israel. The Old Testament is fulfilled in the New” (cf. 296). Mark W.
Karlberg, “The Significance of Israel in Biblical Typology,” JETS 31 (1988): 263, 269, advances a similar line of thinking: “Israel as the old covenant people served a temporary purpose in God’s plan of salvation”
and “[n]ational Israel as such does not retain its covenant identity in the new, eschatological age of the Spirit.” Note also Raymond O. Zorn, Christ Triumphant: Biblical Perspectives on His Church and Kingdom, rev. ed. (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1997), 22-49, esp. 30. The Seventh-Day Adventist Hans K.
LaRondelle understands that Matt 21:43 “implies that Israel would no longer be the people of God and would be replaced by a people that would accept the Messiah and His message of the kingdom of God.”
Hans K. LaRondelle, The Israel of God in Prophecy: Principles of Prophetic Interpretation (Berrien Springs, MI: Andrews University, 1983), 101 emphasis original; cf. 130-31. Other scholars also use the language of replacement when discussing the Israel-church relationship. For example, R. T. France, Jesus and the Old Testament: His Application of Old Testament Passages to Himself and His Mission (Vancouver:
Regent College Publishing, 1998), 67, writes, “The implication is that the Jewish nation has no longer a place as the special people of God; that place has been taken by the Christian community, and in them God’s purposes for Israel are to be fulfilled.” Cf. John Bright, The Kingdom of God (Nashville: Abingdon, 1953), 228.
50For example, Horton, The Christian Faith, 730-31, writes, “The church does not replace Israel;
it fulfills the promise God made to Abraham that in him and his seed all the nations would be blessed. . . . Israel is not replaced by the church, but is the church in nuce, just as the church is the anticipation of the kingdom of God.” Likewise, Williams, Far as the Curse Is Found, 251-52, concludes, “The church does
the “true” or “new” Israel. Israel’s promises and status are transferred to the NT church.
51Even if Romans 11 teaches a mass conversion of Jews in the future, a national and political restoration of Israel is not in purview, for all the prerogatives, promises, and prophecies to OT Israel are translated to the church.
52forever transformed and redefined the people of God. That development is the incarnation and work of Christ the Messiah.” For Richard L. Pratt, Jr., “To the Jew First: A Reformed Perspective,” in To the Jew First: The Case for Jewish Evangelism in Scripture and History, ed. Darrell L. Bock and Mitch Glaser (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 2008), 174, the Reformed position is not replacement theology, but is a “unity theology” as the “promises to Israel are not abrogated, but extended and fulfilled through the salvation of both Jews and Gentiles in the New Testament community.” Pratt further establishes the unity of Israel and the church by appealing to Reformed understanding of the invisible and visible church. On this topic, see also Philip Church, “‘God Has by No Means Rejected His People’ (Rom 11:1): A Response to the Accusation of
‘Replacement Theology,’” in The Gospel and the Land of Promise: Christian Approaches to the Land of the Bible, ed. Philip Church et al. (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2011), 147-57; Colin Chapman, “God’s Covenant—
God’s Land?” in The God of Covenant: Biblical, Theological and Contemporary Perspectives, ed. Jamie A.
Grant and Alistair I. Wilson (Leicester, UK: Inter-Varsity, 2005), 221-56; Rob Dalrymple, These Brothers of Mine: A Biblical Theology of Land and Family and a Response to Christian Zionism (Eugene, OR: Wipf
& Stock, 2015), 98-103; and Sam Storms, Kingdom Come: The Amillennial Alternative (Fearn, Scotland:
Christian Focus, 2013), 177-227, esp. 195-96.
51Zorn, Christ Triumphant, 30-38.
52Patrick Fairbairn, The Interpretation of Prophecy, 2nd ed. (Suffolk, UK: St Edmundsbury, 1865;
repr., Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1993), 246, writes, “Unquestionably, there is no explicit announcement to [the re-establishment of the Jewish old economy] in the whole range of the historical and epistolary writings of the New Testament. The infliction of divine judgment upon the mass of the Jewish people, was very distinctly proclaimed by our Lord himself, with the destruction of their city and temple, and the scattering of the community at once from the kingdom of God, and from the land of their fathers. But in not so much as one passage does he unequivocally indicate for them a re-gathering to their paternal home, or a reinvestment with their former relative distinctions and privileges; far less is there any statement to imply, that the temple-worship should be again set up as the common religious centre and resort of Christendom.”
Later Fairbairn explains the significance of Jews coming to faith in Christ: “The only just expectation respecting the position of the Jewish people in their converted state—that alone which is warranted by the history of the past, or seems in accordance with the great principles of Christianity, is not that their singular and isolated place after they entered the church, but that their entrance itself there shall enliven and refresh her condition.” Ibid., 264. There is a minority voice within covenant theology for making a case for a
“remarkable ‘fluidity’” on the future and restoration of Israel, see Willem A. VanGemeren, “Israel as the Hermeneutical Crux in Interpretation and Prophecy,” WTJ 45 (1983): 132-44; and Willem A. VanGemeren,
“Israel as the Hermeneutical Crux in Interpretation and Prophecy (II),” WTJ 46 (1984): 254-97. While VanGemeren is open to Israel’s return to the land, some covenant theologians are more outspoken for not only a future conversion of Israel, but a full blown restoration. For example, Hendrikus Berkhof, Christ the Meaning of History, trans. Lambertus Buurman (London: SCM, 1966), 139-40, claims, “No matter how far Israel drifted from God’s calling, the faith of the prophets continues to live in the New Testament. This faith was that Israel’s unfaithfulness can never cancel God’s faithfulness, and that Israel will yet take a central place among the nations in the work of salvation.” Further, Berkhof, Christ the Meaning of History, 151, explains that the “last of the prophetic proclamations is the certainty that no matter how large the detours, land and people will be reunited and Israel will reach its destiny in Canaan.” There were also diverse views regarding unfulfilled prophecy and Israel’s restoration among the Puritans, see Iain H. Murray, The Puritan
The covenant of grace serves as the grounding for the continuity of the church throughout the OT and NT, but covenantalists also establish this position by a variety of biblical and theological arguments. The main points below are by no means exhaustive, but highlight some of the important reasons covenant theologians understand the church as a singular, unified body and covenant community throughout redemptive history.
Much attention is made to how the NT authors apply the Greek word for church (ἐκκλησία), sometimes translated “congregation” or “assembly,” to the new covenant people of God when the exact same word is used in the Septuagint (LXX) to translate the Hebrew term for assembly (ל ָה ָק). The term “church” is an OT word as it is used for the assembly of the old covenant people of God (Deut 4:10; 9:10; 10:4). The NT church looks back to the “church in the wilderness” (Acts 7:38; 1 Cor 10:1-11; Heb 12:18-28).
53The OT church or assembly was a prototype of the NT church and yet the terminology of ἐκκλησία designates the essence of the church throughout both the OT and NT.
Second, the OT titles and designations for Israel are applied in the NT to the church, and as such, contend covenantalists, provide rationale for a significant degree of continuity between Israel and the church. Williams succinctly describes a variety of images of Israel applied to the church:
The image of Jesus as the bridegroom (Mark 2:18-20) and the church as the bride of Christ (2 Cor. 11:2) develop the Old Testament image of Israel as the wife of God (Isa. 54:5-8; 62:5; Jer. 2:2). Other Old Testament imagery for the people of God that is carried over into the New and applied to the church includes the church as the branches of a vine (John 15), a flock led by a shepherd (Luke 12:32; John 10:1-8), the elect (Rom. 11:28; Eph. 1:4), a priesthood (1 Peter 2:9; Rev. 1:6), the remnant
Hope: A Study in Revival and the Interpretation of Prophecy (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1971), 37- 83, esp. 52-53.
53McKay, The Bond of Love, 198; Berkhof, Systematic Theology, 571-72; Clowney, “The New Israel,” 209-11; Clowney, The Church, 30-32; Smith, “The Church and Covenant Theology,” 49, 59-61;
Williams, Far as the Curse Is Found, 247-48; Woudstra, “Israel and the Church,” 222; Willem VanGemeren, The Progress of Redemption: The Story of Salvation from Creation to New Jerusalem (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1988), 398; Zorn, Christ Triumphant, 11-12. Horton, The Christian Faith, 719-20, notes the progress of the assembly as “a progression from ‘people of God’ (as promise) to ekklēsia (fulfillment).” See also Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 4:277-79; 296-97; and Reymond, A New Systematic Theology, 805-10.
(Rom. 9:27; 11:5-7), the true circumcision (Rom. 2:28-29; Phil. 3:3; Col. 2:11), and Abraham’s seed (Rom. 4:16; Gal. 3:29).
54Descriptions of the church as the “saints,” the “beloved,” and the “called” could also be added as these too find their origin as references to Israel.
55In addition, a majority of covenant theologians understand that the church is called the “Israel of God” by Paul in Galatians 6:16.
56Taken together, these OT titles and descriptors of Israel that are reapplied to the NT church demonstrate that the church constitutes the true Israel.
Another key factor for understanding the continuity of the people of God is how the NT portrays the blessings, privileges, and promises to Israel as now being inherited by the church.
57The promises of the Abrahamic covenant come to fruition through Christ with the church as the heir of the Abrahamic blessings.
58All the benefits of the new covenant, including the eschatological outpouring of the Holy Spirit, pass over to the church. According to Ridderbos, because of Christ’s work of fulfillment,
54Williams, Far as the Curse Is Found, 249. See also Ridderbos, Paul, 330-35; Reymond, A New Systematic Theology, 526-27; McKay, The Bond of Love, 325; Woudstra, “Israel and the Church,”
233-35. For a fuller treatment, note Beale, A New Testament Biblical Theology, 669-79. For the analogies of family, bride, and city, see Horton, The Christian Faith, 724-29.
55Ridderbos, Paul, 332-33. For a more complete analysis of OT descriptions of Israel applied to the church, see Paul S. Minear, Images of the Church in the New Testament (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960; repr., Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2004), 66-104.
56Robertson, The Israel of God, 38-46; Jeffrey A. D. Weima, “Gal. 6:11-18: A Hermeneutical Key to the Galatian Letter,” CTJ 28 (1993): 90-107; G. K. Beale, “The Peace and Mercy Upon the Israel of God: Old Testament Background of Galatians 6,16b,” Biblica 80 (1999): 204-23; Beale, A New Testament Biblical Theology, 722-24; Woudstra, “Israel and the Church,” 234-35; Knight, “The Significance of
‘Israel,’” 106-8; Hoekema, The Bible and the Future, 197; Venema, The Promise of the Future, 274-77.
57For discussion of these areas, confer Horton, The Christian Faith, 717-23, 729-33; Williams, Far as the Curse Is Found, 252-54; Clowney, “The New Israel,” 211-16, 219-20; Ridderbos, Paul, 336-41.
Many other themes could be discussed as well including election, the church as God’s dwelling (i.e., temple), the vital union in Jesus as covenant head, and the theme of worship in the assembly of God’s people. These, and more, are discussed in Edmund P. Clowney, “The Biblical Theology of the Church,” in The Church in the Bible and the World: An International Study, ed. D. A. Carson (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1987; repr., Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2002), 13-87.
58Hodge, Systematic Theology, 3:549-51; John P. Davis, “Who Are the Heirs of the Abrahamic Covenant?” ERT 29 (2005): 149-63; cf.McComiskey, The Covenants of Promise, 17-21.
all the privileges Israel as God’s people was permitted to possess recurs with renewed force and significance in the definition of the essence of the Christian church: being sons of God (Rom. 8:14ff.; Eph. 1:5); being heirs according to promise (Gal. 3:29; 4:7); sharing in the inheritance promised to Abraham (Rom.
8:17; cf. 4:13; Col. 1:2); being heirs of the kingdom of God (1 Cor. 6:9, 10; 15:50;
Gal. 5:21). For this reason the church may rejoice in the hope of the glory of God (Rom. 5:2; 8:21; 2 Cor. 3:7ff., 18; Phil. 3:19), the splendor of the presence of God among his people, once the privilege of Israel (Rom. 9:4).
59Fourth and lastly, the restoration and renewal prophecies of a nationalistic Israel regathered to the Promised Land are generally understood to have been provisional, or literally fulfilled in Israel’s history, or were spiritually and symbolically or typologically fulfilled in the church through Christ’s redemptive work. Other restoration prophecies are interpreted by covenantalists to come to complete fruition with the cosmic renewal of the new heavens and earth.
60The restoration prophecies are not to be taken in a literalistic fashion, for the prophets project the future in the historical structures and imagery to which they were accustomed. Fairbairn highlights this principle: “Situated as the prophets generally were, it was quite natural, and, in a sense, necessary, that they should speak of the better things to come in language and imagery derived from such as were known and familiar to their minds.”
61One example often presented by covenant theologians is the
59Ridderbos, Paul, 336-37.
60For discussion of the OT prophecies and promises regarding Israel’s restoration, see Beale, A New Testament Biblical Theology, 680-749; Waltke, “Kingdom Promises,” in Continuity and Discontinuity, 280-86; Hoekema, The Bible and the Future, 206-12, esp. 209-11; Fairbairn, The Interpretation of Prophecy, 270-83; Robertson, Christ of the Prophets, 453-502, esp. 486-98; Venema, The Promise of the Future, 283- 86; Hendriksen, Israel in Prophecy, 16-31; Kim Riddlebarger, A Case for Amillennialism: Understanding the End Times (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2003), 68-80; Robert B. Strimple, “Amillennialism,” in Three Views of the Millennium and Beyond, ed. Darrell L. Bock (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1999), 84-100. Robert Vasholz, “The Character of Israel’s Future in Light of the Abrahamic and Mosaic Covenants,” TrinJ 25 (2004): 39-59, seeks to move away from the spiritual fulfillment interpretative approach and instead stresses how prophecies were provisional and conditional given that they were made under the auspices of the Mosaic covenant. With the abrogation of the Mosaic covenant with the new, the provisional prophecies are annulled. For how certain OT prophecies are applied to the church by NT authors, see Oswald T. Allis, Prophecy and the Church (Philadelphia: P & R, 1945), 134-66.
61Fairbairn, The Interpretation of Prophecy, 273; cf. 270-71. Likewise, Woudstra, “Israel and the Church,” 232; Dennis E. Johnson, Him We Proclaim: Preaching Christ from All the Scripture
(Phillipsburg, NJ: P & R, 2007), 223-26; L. Berkhof, Principles of Biblical Interpretation: Sacred Hermeneutics, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1952), 151-52.
citation of the prophetic words of Amos 9:11-12 in the Jerusalem council described in Acts 15. The appropriation of Amos’ prophecy in the present era with the inclusion of Gentiles serves as evidence that the “body of believers in Christ stand in unbroken continuity with the covenant community of the Old Testament.”
62The OT prophecies concerning Israel’s restoration, land, temple, and the city of Jerusalem with a Davidic king ruling over the nations are all fulfilled in Jesus Christ, the church, or await a final fulfillment with the rejuvenation of the world at the consummation.
63In sum, the establishment of the NT church, according to covenant theologians, is the fulfillment of the Abrahamic promises. The prophesied future kingdom of Israel is inaugurated through Christ. The ushering in of the kingdom by Jesus ends Israel’s exile, secures salvation, and brings about the inclusion of the Gentile nations. The joining together of Jew and Gentile in the church (Eph 2:11-22) means there will be no restoration of Israel as a nationalistic entity. Israel and the church are essentially one and differ only in terms of organized, visible representations. Closely connected to the theological arguments for the continuity of Israel and the church within the framework of the covenant of grace is how typology is understood. This final and crucial discussion of how typology is used in the ecclesiology of covenant theology will draw this hermeneutical overview to a close.
62McKay, The Bond of Love, 200; and see O. Palmer Robertson, “The Hermeneutics of Continuity,” in Continuity and Discontinuity, 89-108, as he devotes his whole chapter to unpacking Amos 9:11-12 in Acts 15:15-18.
63Berkhof, Systematic Theology, 713, finds, “The books of the prophets themselves already contain indications that point to a spiritual fulfillment, Isa. 54:13; 61:6; Jer. 3:16; 31:31-34; Hos. 14:2; Mic.
6:6-8. The contention that the names ‘Zion’ and ‘Jerusalem’ are never used by the prophets in any other than a literal sense, that the former always denotes a mountain, and the latter, a city, is clearly contrary to fact. There are passages in which both names are employed to designate Israel, the Old Testament Church of God, Isa. 49:14; 51:3; 52:1, 2. And this use of the terms passes right over into the New Testament, Gal.
4:26; Heb. 12:22; Rev. 3:12; 21:9. It is remarkable that the New Testament, which is the fulfilment of the Old, contains no indication whatsoever of the re-establishment of the Old Testament theocracy by Jesus, nor a single undisputed positive prediction of its restoration, while it does contain abundant indications of the spiritual fulfilment of the promises given to Israel, Matt. 21:43; Acts 2:29-36, 15:14-18; Rom. 9:25, 26;
Heb. 8:8-13; I Pet. 2:9; Rev. 1:6; 5:10.”