Preface
This blog post is a brief overview of the key points that I concluded after reading the book, The God of Israel and Christian Theology, by R. Kendall Soulen. Part one of the book deals with the critical issue of supersessionism as a problem for Western systematic theology.
Part two was a Biblical proposal of God’s blessing to the answer of sin upon His election of Israel and the “Other” namely, Gentiles. The following content is about God’s divine design in His blessing, creation, and covenant to those who One in Messiah, first the Jew and the Nations.
In the current ever-increasing cultural wars and identity crisis of many, the following selected writings within this blog post, I pray, will have an effective solution socially, inter-culturally, and spiritually. Soulen writes many themes within this book, but none are clearer and deserve our attention than this:
His [God’s] economy thrives at its best between those who are and who remain different. It is God’s will to consummate the human family by electing it to a historical yet open-ended economy of a diverse yet reciprocal dependence between Israel and the nations.
Who are the Gentiles in light of Israel being God’s Election?
To be a Gentile is to be a branch of Israel. Non-Jewish people in God’s original creation have always been an integral part of God’s single economy of governance and provisional care. For many, there is the notion that Israel alone will bless all nations and vis versa. The truth of the matter is a loving Creator of all creation, and living souls are and will always be the source of blessings of His creative order.
What is often overlooked in the proper reading and interpreting of the Scriptures is that God blesses both as the God of Israel, which presents His divine historical design of blessing the distinction of Israel and all the other non-Jewish nations on earth.
The God of Israel as the Creator and ruler of His creation has always been mindful of those who are outside of the Commonwealth of Israel long before her election. A proper reading of the Scriptures has never treated non-Jewish living souls as though they constituted an independent existence in space and time.
The Holy Scriptures are carefully written to portray everything which includes the inclusion of non-Israelites before and thereafter Abraham as God’s divine design of relating conventual with the people of Israel. Perhaps one of the very best Biblical stories that depict this interrelation of distinction, yet mutual blessings is Abraham’s circumcision of Ishmael. [Genesis 16, 17, 21]
- The aged Abraham and Sarah were childless with Eliezer of Damascus heir to the promise.
- Abraham slept with Hagar with her conceiving Ishmael.
- Sarah drove Hagar into the wilderness.
- God instructed her to return to the household of promise and to call the child Ishmael, “God has heard.”
Hagar’s and Ishmael’s continued presence in the household of promise, though temporary is highly significant. For it provides the divine basis for Ishmael to become included in the covenant of circumcision. This sacred rite seals God’s covenant with Abraham, Sarah, and their descendants. When Ishmael is a young man, God announces again the everlasting covenant that He establishes with Abraham and his children, and this time commands circumcision as the sign of the covenant. [Genesis 17:9-14]
- Over Abraham’s objection, God insists that His covenant will not be with Ishmael, but with Sarah’s son, [17:15-21].
- Ishmael is circumcised by Abraham sealing the covenant. [17:23].
- Though rejected, Ishmael is included in the covenant that God established with Abraham and Sarah through Isaac, the child of promise.
- After the birth of Isaac, Hagar, and Ishmael is forced to leave Abraham’s household permanently. [21:8-14].
The distinction between the chosen and the unchosen becomes public knowledge yet irrevocable. Ishmael’s rejection does not exclude the blessings of God’s covenant concern for living souls. By becoming touched by God’s covenant, he and all other unchosen will be the object of God’s providential care and protection.
This story of Ishmael’s circumcision sheds light on the fact that gentile identity not only is a product of the center of God’s covenant with creation. Gentile identity is a category of covenant history every bit as much as Jewish identity. Ishmael, like Isaac, is included in God’s covenant plan, even though distinctively. Even though not chosen to be the bearer of the covenant, Ishmael is one whose own story originates in the household of promise, and he bears the mark of that promise all his days.
Two Dimensions of Human Identity
The central theme of the Holy Scriptures communicates the God of Israel is working as Consummator and that this work divinely engages the human family through God’s provisions and protection within His economy of mutual blessing. His economy thrives at its best between those who are and who remain different. It is God’s will to consummate the human family by electing it to a historical yet open-ended economy of a diverse yet reciprocal dependence between Israel and the nations.
The initial human expression of God’s image within His divine design is expressed on the earth as the human family, male and female, of parents and children, of one generation and the next. These differences provide the basic form for our lives as those who within God’s divine design in the present and the end, maybe a blessing to one another.
A second dimension of human identity is manifested through God’s vocation of the human family into covenant history. Since God promises to bless Abraham and “in him” all the families of the earth, the human family participates in covenant history in this divine creative order, mainly as Israel and the nations, as Jews and as Gentiles.
God’s election of Israel, and therefore Jewish and Gentile identity, is God’s new creation which is now superior to creaturehood in the image of God. Israel’s unique place in God’s restorative plan means that it not only receives the gifts of creaturehood and childhood but also learns directly from God that this is His will.
This is the privilege that comes with Israel’s identity as God’s special beloved child. In contrast, Gentiles receive the same benefits but come to know about them through contact with the Jewish people. Creaturehood is the “external basis” of covenant identity in the difference between Jew and Gentile. Covenant identity as Jew or as Gentile is the inner basis of human creaturehood.
The Apostolic Witness
The Gospel is the story of the God of Israel’s victory due to Jesus overpowering all that destroys or threatens God’s creation and humanity. God’s victory in the finished work of Jesus is without question the center but not the totality of the Christian faith. God from the onset of His creative order ensured as Consummator that not even The Fall could deny His creation promises of life and the fullness of life to the creation and the human family.
The Gospel is the good news about the God of Israel’s coming Earthly reign, [Eden restored] which proclaims in Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection the victorious guarantee of God’s fidelity to the work of consummation, that is, to the fullness of mutual blessing as the outcome of His economy with Israel, the nations, and all creation.
Jesus implemented God’s divine plan in the New Covenant to bless Israel and God thus blessing all other nations as well. In the multiple roles and titles that the Messiah possesses, none was as important as His willful obedience to be used by God to reclaim, redeem, and restore those who had lost their original divine identity and purpose.
The two disciples of the Messiah, Matthew, and Luke list how God’s finished restorative work on the earth would be guaranteed. The genealogy of each author binds Jesus to humanity by the sequence of generations from the patriarchs and matriarchs, into the election of Israel, and before Israel, with Adam and Eve in the Garden. [Matthew 1:2-16; Luke 3:23-38]
The apostle Paul affirms God’s election of Israel and the proclamation of the Gospel in the New Covenant in this manner, “to the Jew first and also to the Greek” [Rom 1:16; see 2:9, 10]. In this context, Paul acknowledges that Israel’s rejection of the Gospel is itself an internal and divinely willed part of the way the Gospel fits into the world of Israel and the nations being a new creation of God’s expression on the earth.
God’s temporary hardening of Israel is not the same thing as rejection and has nothing to do with moral judgment. God has hardened the heart of Israel so that the gospel which they reject, will become spread throughout the world reaching all nations.
Gentiles are spiritually grafted into the commonwealth of Israel by faithfully receiving and responding to the Gospel message. But if some of the branches were broken off, and you, although a wild olive shoot, were grafted in among the others and now share in the nourishing root of the olive tree, do not be arrogant toward the branches. Romans 11:11-24 [the highlighted portion of the text, is disclosed in the part one of Soulen’s book, concerning supersessionism as a problem for Western systematic theology].
Paul’s theme throughout Romans communicates God’s fidelity and His end times’ supernatural intervention on the nation of Israel. The mystery that Paul announces is how God will intervene on behalf of Israel. Paul affirms, after “the full number of the Gentiles has come in.” that is when all of Israel will be saved.“
And so all Israel will be saved; as it is written,
“Out of Zion will come the Deliverer;
He will banish ungodliness from Jacob.”
“And this is my covenant with them
when I take away their sins.” Romans 11:25-27
The holistic impact of the proclamation of the Gospel is the very means of the power of God for salvation to both Jewish and non-Jewish believers of the faith. This supernatural instrument summons everyone not to cease being Jews or Gentiles but to glorify and live out loud in God’s earth, the present and future victory of the God of Israel. This is evident by all who are in Messiah, to conform to the Messiah’s solidarity with the other, even to the point of participation in Jesus’ sufferings.
Isaiah 42:1
“Behold, My Servant, whom I uphold;
My chosen one in whom My soul delights.
I have put My Spirit upon Him;
He will bring forth justice to the nations.
Grace and Peace
Brother Alonzo
