The New Christian Zionism: Fresh Perspectives on Israel & the Land ed. by Gerald R. McDermott (review)

With the exception of Lutherans influenced by Johann August Bengel (1687–1752) or by North American premillennialist Lutherans, such as Joseph Augustus Seiss (1823–1904) or Conrad Emil Lindberg (1852–1930), the role of Israel, both people and land, in relation to God's overall economy of salvation, has not played a major role in Lutheran thinking. In contrast, traditional "Christian Zionism," enshrined in the Scofield Reference Bible, was advocated by many North American fundamentalists. In that view, although the return of Jews to their ancient homeland is a fulfillment of biblical prophecy, Israel and the church run on different tracks, with the church escaping God's wrath in the "Great Tribulation" but not Israel. Countering that view, traditional Lutheranism has tended to be "supercessionist," that is, that the church has supplanted Israel in God's economy of salvation.

This book, edited by an Evangelical Anglican who for decades taught at Roanoke College and is now at Beeson Divinity School, takes a different track. The essayists here eschew dispensationalist premillennialism with its project of charting the end times. However, unlike the supercessionist position, they see Israel as having a crucial place in God's plan of salvation for the world (12). For these thinkers, God's promises made to the Jews are "irrevocable" (Rom. 11:2). This does not mean that the nation of Israel cannot be criticized. Instead, it indicates that the destiny of the church is intertwined with that of Israel since Jesus did not come to destroy the law but to fulfill it. Thereby the covenant with Israel "abides" (27).

Agreeing with dispensationalists that the return of the Jews to Palestine is a fulfillment of prophecy, these writers see in the contemporary state of Israel a merely provisional and "proleptic" fulfillment of the promise of a whole new world (27). Decisive for these essayists is Romans 9–11, which they interpret Paul to say that the church has not supplanted the place of the Jewish people but that the Jews remain as God's "chosen people" (42). McDermott traces non-dispensationalist Zionism as a minority report in the ancient church but which came to fruition among Puritans, particularly Jonathan Edwards (64). Several scholars––Craig Blaising, Joel Willitts, Mark Kinzer, and David Rudolph––indicate that not all references to "the land" in the New Testament can be spiritualized, since they specify God's commitment to Israel's vocation which is rooted in the land promised to Abraham and his descendants. Mark Tooley narrates the history of attitudes about Israel among mainline Protestants, who early in the early twentieth century supported a nation state of Israel but more recently (since the 1970s) have critiqued Israel since Israel is no longer seen as an underdog and the Palestinians are perceived as oppressed (217).

Lutheran ethicist Robert Benne notes that Reinhold Niebuhr's support for a Jewish homeland was based not on biblical prophecy but instead on secular and liberal views. Benne himself goes further than Niebuhr and offers a theological justification for Christian support of Israel: God's covenant with Israel abides and that justifies Jews returning to "the land" (245). Robert Nicholson points out that in the 1967 war Israel pushed Jordan and Egypt "out of the original Mandate for Palestine, dislodging them from their own illegal occupation of Palestinian Arabs" (269). Shadi Khalloul, an Israeli Maronite Christian, highlights the benefits even for minorities of living in Israel. "When there are reports of Israeli killings of Palestinian civilians during war (which are rarely if ever intentional), thousands of Jewish people in Israel protest against the government. … but when a bus with Jews is blown up by Palestinian terrorists, Arabs often dance in the streets or name their children or parks after suicide bombers, and honor the murderers as martyrs" (295). Darrell Bock emphasizes that Gentile inclusion does not entail Jewish exclusion (311). Finally, Gerald McDermott notes that both Jews and Christians worship...