Thomas Fretwell. Why Israel? Ezra Foundation, 2021.
———. Why the Jewish People? Ezra Foundation, 2021.
These two short companion books deal with some thorny questions of Bible interpretation and history.
Why Israel? is subtitled Understanding God’s Plan for Israel and the Nations. Basically, the author says that God is not done with the Jewish people in history and the existence of the modern state of Israel demonstrates this. The book is five chapters, each chapter based on a verse or part of a verse from Romans 11:25-29.
These verses summarize the apostolic view of the Jewish nation after their rejection of Jesus, though written before the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple in A.D. 70. Romans 11:25 warns his Gentile readers in Rome not to misunderstand God’s purposes. That is the theme of the books’ first chapter.
The second chapter reminds us that God’s purpose will be fulfilled through the Jews, that their rejection of Jesus is only temporary “until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in” (also Romans 11:25).
The third chapter reminds us that in the next two verses of Romans we are told that God will rescue Zion. He has a plan that Israel will experience a national regeneration. As with the other chapters, Fretwell uses many Bible prophecies to support these statements in Romans. We note, for example, that most of Zechariah 12, 13, and 14 prophesy such a regeneration.
Chapter four says that “unbelieving Israel is still beloved for the sake of the fathers” (68). There are few places in the Old Testament where the Lord specifically said that He has helped Israel or Judah, not because of their own righteousness but because He remembers his promise to Abraham and other ancient patriarchs. Four is the shortest chapter with the fewest quotations from the Bible, but this reviewer was reminded of Ezekiel 36:22-24, among other Scriptures:
Therefore say to the house of Israel, Thus says the Lord God: It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for the sake of my holy name, which you have profaned among the nations to which you came. And I will vindicate the holiness of my great name, which has been profaned among the nations, and which you have profaned among them. And the nations will know that I am the Lord, declares the Lord God, when through you I vindicate my holiness before their eyes. I will take you from the nations and gather you from all the countries and bring you into your own land.
Referring to Romans 11:11, Fretwell says the purpose of letting the Gentiles know about the God of the Bible and His Messiah is to “provoke the Jews to jealousy.” No, Gentiles are not Jews, but many have learned about the God of the Jews and worship Him, though perhaps in a different manner.
Finally, the last chapter notes that “the promises of God are irrevocable” as Romans 11:29 says. Therefore, when God said as He did in Ezekiel 36 as quoted above as well as many other places, that God will have the Jews, who were scattered all over the world, return to their Judean homeland, He meant it. He did not change His mind.
This then leads into the theme of the second book in the series, Why the Jewish People? The subtitle reads Understanding Replacement Theology and Antisemitism. Technically, the subtitle should specify Western Antisemitism since there is nothing about Islam or the Far East or Africa. Still, it makes a case that so-called Replacement Theology or Supersessionism has its roots in Antisemitism.
Replacement Theology promotes the idea that since the Apostolic Age God is finished with the Jewish people in terms of prophetic significance or promises. Any such promises made to the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob now apply to Christians or the church and no longer apply to the Jews. In other words, the church has replaced Israel in God’s economy or the church has superseded the Jews in God’s plan for the ages.
While the book does deal with the idea that the Jewish people are still part of God’s plan, it attempts to show that, at least among Christians, Replacement Theology has its roots in Antisemitism. It notes that the big break between Christians and Jews took place in A.D. 135 during the Bar Kochba revolt against Rome. Jewish leaders were saying that Bar Kochba was the Messiah. Christians, many of whom were Jewish, denied this since they already had a Messiah. Along with their warning about Jesus’ prophecies concerning Jerusalem that were fulfilled in A.D. 70 with the fall of Jerusalem to the Romans, their denial of Bar Kochba made the Jews consider Christians traitors and not true believers.
By the year 300 or so, a number of Christian writers and preachers were denouncing Jewish teachings and characterizing Jews in very strong language. I had noted elsewhere that by the fourth century the church was celebrating Easter according to the Roman solar calendar rather than the Jewish lunar calendar. Even today that is why some years Easter corresponds to Passover but in other years they vary. That is simple and logical understanding. Why not use the calendar that most of the world is using? In America we celebrate George Washington’s birthday on February 22, although he was born on February 11, 1731, because in those days England and its colonies were still using the Julian Calendar. But that becomes February 22, 1732, in the Gregorian Calendar we use today.1
However, Why the Jewish People? also quotes church leaders from the time period to show that it was more than just a choice of calendars. There were some claiming that they could never imitate the Jews for a variety of reasons, most of them derogatory. So most of the book goes through Western history quoting Luther and Calvin among others to show their anti-Jewish bias. It includes well poisoning, blood libel, and other slanders.
It does note that beginning in the 1600s some Christian leaders started to change. Cromwell, for example, welcomed Jews to England as Washington did to America. Jonathan Edwards and other theologians began to speak of the necessity of Jews returning to the Holy Land and re-establishing their own nation-state. By then, though, the enlightenment picked up where the church left off. Darwinism, for example. spoke of favored and inferior races. The Jews in such an arrangement were always among the inferiors.
I do have one minor quibble. The author claims Augustine was Antisemitic. Perhaps he was, but the quotations from Augustine that the author uses simply remind us that the Jewish Diaspora was a result of their falling away from God as prophesied in many places in the Old Testament, e.g. Deuteronomy 28:64. Indeed, that passage from Ezekiel quoted earlier warns of a time when the Jews will be spread over the whole world among the Gentiles and outside their own country. Regardless of how we interpret Augustine, Fretwell does make a case that Antisemitism has had a shameful history among many Christians.
The question then becomes this: While Replacement Theology may be rooted somewhat in Antisemitism, there are verses in the Bible which suggest it may be true. What about Supersessionists who are not Antisemitic? The last chapter deals with some of the verses that may be talking about it and tries to show that such verses are taken out of context or mean something else.
I personally only know a few Supersessionists, and some of them are motivated by concern for Palestinians. However, the one section of the New Testament that I have seen used to support it is Acts 28:23-29 where Paul quotes from Isaiah 6:9-10. That is not included in this book. I would have been interested in how they handle that one. Perhaps they would simply go back to Romans 11:25-29 which Paul also wrote and forms the basis of Why Israel?
One of the most moving examples of someone who did not believe in Replacement Theology was Hudson Taylor, the famous missionary to China. Every year he gave some of the money his ministry received to a mission agency that specialized in witnessing to the Jews. With this donation, he would include the note “To the Jew first” (see Romans 1:16). That ministry would turn around and send a donation to Taylor’s work with the note “and also to the Gentile” (Why Israel? 73).
Perhaps we should all meditate more on Galatians 3:28-29:
There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise.
God did create nations, but there is only one race (Acts 17:26). And God’s ultimate plan is described in Revelation 7:9-10:
After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!”
Amen.
1 For more on this see https://englishplus.com/grammar/00000141.htm.