Inescapable Supersession?

Matthew Levering presents a typically careful, judicious summary of David Novak’s analysis of supersessionism in his Christian-Jewish Dialogue and the Life of Wisdom. Along the way he points out (following Novak) that even Christian rejection of “harsh supersessionism” (which claims that Jews have no continuing covenantal status) doesn’t overcome the head-on, mutually exclusive claims of the two faiths.

Levering observes (17) that each side claims “the continuation of biblical Israel.” For some Christians, “the claim to be the fullness of ‘Israel’ might seem less requisite for Christianity [than for Judaism], but in fact I think it is equally central. Christians understand themselves as ‘one body’ in the Messiah of Israel (Rom. 12.5; cf. 1 Cor. 12.13, Eph. 1.23, Col. 2.17), as “the body of Christ” (1 Cor. 12.27). The messianic Davidic King has accomplished the promised ‘new covenant’ (Heb. 8.10, quoting Jer. 31.31) and has united his kingdom to himself through his Spirit. This kingdom can be no other than “the Israel of God” (Gal. 6.16), which is in the Messiah’s dispensation a ‘new creation’ (Gal. 6.15). This kingdom includes both Jews and gentiles, both of whom now fulfill Torah in Christ.”

He discusses the relationship between Old and New Testaments, arguing that for Christians the New is not simply the result of the machine of the Old Testament, but the product of a new and free act of God, one that throws light back onto the past: “Viewed in light of Christ, biblical Israel—and Judaism—find teleological fulfillment in Christ, but not the kind of fulfillment that can be seen to emerge necessarily from the operation of the mechanism, nor the kind of teleology that brings about its own fulfillment from within its own resources and that has value only in its end or goal. God’s Word includes his good gifts to Israel. That these gifts are ordered to a further fulfi llment is indeed teleological, but the gifts cannot be reduced to an immanent and mechanical teleology” (21).

But then does this simply smuggle a kind of supersessionism “through the back door”? Doesn’t it mean that Christians and Jews both will say, each to the other, “Come home.” Levering answers Yes to that, but then adds, “neither Christians nor Jews can do so in a manner that denies or discards the realities that Christians and Jews affi rm together. Sinai is not merely a trigger for something else, but rather proclaims realities that Christians and Jews both recognize as true. Sinai therefore cannot be solely claimed by either community. It follows that Christians can ‘hope that everyone will accept Christ’ while engaging Jews as ‘elder brothers’ rather than as adversaries” (22).

A quotation from Novak, describing his relationship with Robert Jenson, is the best summary of the unavoidable impasse. Novak has writes, “The theological difference is that as a Christian and a Jew, Jens and I are existentially dedicated to faith assertions (i.e., willing to die for them if need be) about the truest relationship with God available in this world, which are undeniably not just distinctive but mutually exclusive head-on” (quoted, p. 22). 

Which Levering glosses with: “When viewed in their entirety, Judaism and Christianity are “mutually exclusive head-on,” even if commonalities should also be affirmed due to shared roots in biblical Israel. Teleologically one can only ask, ‘Which is the best way to and from the Lord God of Israel: the Torah or Christ?’ The answer cannot be both. Judaism does not accept Jesus of Nazareth to be the Messiah, and Christians, who do accept Jesus as Messiah, believe that he has reconstituted the Torah around himself” (22; emphasis added).