The Gospel and the Land of Promise

Christian Approaches to the Land of the Bible

Tim Bulkeley, Tim Meadowcroft, Peter Walker, Church, Bulkeley

• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9781498256742
• eBook ISBN: 9781630879778
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

Today the "land of promise" is a spark in the tinder dry atmosphere of Middle Eastern affairs. Events there continue to wield influence among peoples and in places well beyond the region itself. This raises for Christians the acute theological problem of how to relate to the "land of promise" today and in light of the land of the Bible. Our hope is that this volume of essays will contribute to a more informed and theologically coherent response to the "Land of Promise." It is offered here in the name of peace for all peoples in that place and among those who continue to look to her as a place of promise.

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Introduction

Peter Walker

The dispute still rages over the promised land: how today are biblically-rooted Christians to view this unique land—the focus of God’s promises in the Old Testament? What is its present significance and role within God’s purposes? Does it belong by “rights” to any particular people? And what are God’s expectations, indeed requirements, of those who live there?

These key questions, which percolate throughout this present volume and which were the basis for lively discussions in New Zealand when I visited to teach a course in biblical theology (focused on the issues of temple, city, land, and people), are naturally matters of even more vital concern for those Christian believers who actually live in the “land” themselves. Far from being abstract or merely “academic,” they are vitally urgent, coloring every aspect of life—religious, political, and practical.

This became abundantly clear for me, personally, when invited to participate in a series of four annual consultations that brought together Jewish and Palestinian Christians to discuss the “Theology of the Land.” In this chapter I highlight some of the major sticking points that we encountered in the midst of those lively debates. To keep this brief, the points of dispute will be listed under the original six headings.1

Inheritance

This key biblical word is sometimes used in the Old Testament of Israel (with the nation being seen as God’s inheritance) but is also used of the physical land that Israel inherited.2 Used in this way it reminded the Israelites that they were strictly “tenants” (with God himself as the prime owner of the land) but equally that they had received an undeserved gift of grace.3 But how does the New Testament use this word “inheritance” and who can claim to be its true inheritors?

The Palestinian viewpoint would note how the New Testament now applies this language of “inheritance” not to a land but to that which all believers graciously receive through Christ (1 Pet 1:3–4). They would also highlight Paul’s insistence that all believers, both Jew and Gentile, are now equally “heirs” of God’s promises in Christ (Rom 8:16–17). Paul is adamant on this point in Gal 3:26–29, where he builds his argument on the idea that Christ himself is ultimately the true “seed” (singular), the inheritor and guarantor of the divine promises.4 Thus, on this view, the notion of an “inherited land” has been transformed in the New Testament era. Moreover, if there were any continuing sense in which the “seed of Abraham” still inherited the physical land, then arguably the implication of Galatians is that the true inheritors of this land promise are not those physically descended from Abraham, but rather those who by faith have been incorporated into Israel’s Messiah.

A messianic viewpoint, however, would see the promise of this land inheritance in the Old Testament as not being overthrown by the New, but rather as continuing (in parallel to the “spiritual inheritance” now enjoyed by Gentile Christians): the promise still stands and those of Jewish descent are the rightful “heirs.” They would also highlight that, even within the Old Testament, there are several instances (principally during the exile) when the Israelites were not strictly in active “possession” of the land, but nevertheless were still (by divine promise) its rightful “owners.” This distinction between “possession” and underlying “ownership” then explains how the promise of their inheritance has not been broken through nearly two thousand years of not “possessing” the land of Israel. Jewish descendants of Abraham have always been its rightful owners, even though “dispossessed,” and this applies to the present day—even if some parts of the land are currently “occupied” or administered by others.

Covenants

The Bible is a book based on God’s covenant promises. There are several episodes in biblical history where God makes such covenant promises (e.g., Noah, Abraham, Moses, David), and the promises of a “new covenant” (Jer 31:31–34) give rise to the second half of the Bible being described in toto as the “New Testament” (or “New Covenant”). Yet this then gives rise to much dispute as to whether these apparently successive covenants are all aspects of but one overarching divine covenant-promise, or whether there are several covenants (which then relate to each other in various ways, perhaps by contrast or perhaps with a later covenant superseding an earlier covenant). In particular, were the important covenants (to Abraham and again to David) strictly unconditional or were they conditional in some way? Could the recipients of the promise eventually lose out on that which was promised? Indeed could the promise effectively be terminated (and thus totally removed from divine consideration) or is there something about them that is “eternal” and lasts “forever” (come what may)?

A messianic viewpoint would focus on the eternal and unconditional nature of these covenants. In particular, the divine promise of the land (an integral part of the covenant with Abraham) was explicitly stated to be “forever” (Gen 17:7–8). This cannot be revoked—neither by the passage of time, nor by the dawning of a “new covenant,” nor by the disobedience of the descendants of Abraham. The Israelites would eventually go into exile (the curse of the covenant for such disobedience), but they were “restored” to the land—precisely because the gift of the land was itself unconditional.

A Palestinian response would highlight that there are other divine promises that, though explicitly stated as being “forever,” do not appear to have been fulfilled;5 so perhaps the Hebrew word forever (le’olam) does not mean literally “to the end of the eternity” but only “for a very long time.” Alternatively, if David was promised that there would always be a descendant on his throne (and that his dynasty would last “forever”: 2 Sam 7:13, 16), then there is a manifest problem in Old Testament history when the kings of Judah are taken into exile, never to return. This dashing of the divine promise evidently causes much heart searching for subsequent biblical writers (e.g., Pss 74 and 79). The solution to this dilemma, however, is given in the New Testament when the angel announces at Jesus’ birth that he “will sit on the throne of his father David and his kingdom will have no end” (Luke 1:32–33); this then is underscored when the apostles proclaim Jesus as Israel’s Messiah, the true Davidic King (Acts 2–3 etc.). So here is an instance of an “eternal” promise continuing over into the New Testament era (and indeed into eternity)—but, crucially, in a form or mode that is not literal or “political” in the same way as the original promise sounded.

This then suggests, by parallel reasoning, that the divine promise of the land also might continue into the present but in a different mode. Hence there are New Testament references to the “ends of the earth” now coming within God’s kingdom rule under Christ (Acts 1:8) and to Abraham’s “inheriting the world” (Rom 4:13)—indications that the apostles saw the land promise as now fulfilled in a maximalist and global fashion; hence too the references in Hebrews to the enduring “Sabbath rest” for God’s people as the ultimate fulfillment of the promised land as established under Joshua (Heb 3–4). Thus, Hebrews’ portrait of the temple, Jerusalem, and the land as all being viewed differently in the light of the coming of Jesus needs to be heeded today—not least by messianic believers (the contemporary equivalent of the first-century “Hebrew” believers). In the days of the “new covenant” (Heb 8:7–13), believers are to focus elsewhere, not on the original physical form of the promise, but on what the promise eternally signified; and they must not be tempted back into merely Jewish ways of seeing matters, ignoring the divinely intended fulfillment of those realities as now revealed in Jesus.

The role of Jesus in Fulfilling the Covenant

Within this framework of covenant fulfillment, there is then much dispute concerning the role of Jesus himself. As Israel’s Messiah he presumably came to fulfill the Abrahamic and Davidic covenants in some way, but how did he do so? So the questions we have just raised can also be phrased like this: Does the fulfillment that he accomplished cause the covenants to continue after him in much the same way as before, only deeper (as might be argued from a messianic position)? Or instead does his fulfilling them somehow bring their original shape to an end, with them now being supplanted by something slightly different, which yet reflects God’s original and eternal intention (as might be argued from a Palestinian position)? Thus a messianic believer might argue that, even if Jesus is the true Davidic king in a non-political sense, the original promise suggests that we might still expect a king over Israel in a more obviously literal sense. Or again, Jesus may have come as a fulfillment of God’s promise to Abraham, thus bringing God’s blessing to “all nations,” but surely that does not annul the promise within that Abrahamic covenant concerning his descendants’ ownership of the land?

This same point might be construed diagrammatically as follows. For the messianic position, the covenant promises in the Old Testament are like a straight line, which then is supplemented by extra aspects of fulfillment brought about by the coming of Jesus. For the Palestinian position, however, those covenant promises are funneled down onto Jesus and then re-emerge in the New Testament in a “new” form. In the former scheme there is an emphasis on continuity, but with additions; in the latter, there is a greater note of discontinuity, pointing instead to what might be termed “intentional transformation.” The latter scheme seems to work well for a biblical theme like the temple: for the New Testament clearly teaches that we no longer need a physical temple, because Jesus himself is the true temple and because he has offered the ultimate sacrifice for sin.6 However, the former scheme seems to work better for a biblical theme like the land: for at first sight there does not seem to be any substantial New Testament teaching that overturns the Old Testament’s perspective on this key topic. The Palestinian position (indebted to Hebrews) might therefore more frequently talk in terms of typology—where the reality revealed in the New Testament is God’s intended pattern or “type,” which has been preceded or foreshadowed by an Old Testament “anti-type” that might (outwardly) appear quite different. The messianic position would use this category more sparingly, fearing that such typological fulfillment might effectively undermine the Old Testament promises or seemingly render them null and void.

These d...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Contributors
• Acknowledgments
• Preface
• Abbreviations
• Chapter 1: Introduction
• Chapter 2: From Promised Land to Reconciled Cosmos
• Chapter 3: Paul’s Answer to the Threats of Jerusalem and Rome (Phil 3)
• Chapter 4: “Here We Have No Lasting City” (Heb 13:14)
• Chapter 5: The Kingdom of God and the Land
• Chapter 6: “Exile away from His Land”
• Chapter 7: A “Fifth Gospel” Less Torn and More Legible?
• Chapter 8: The Old Testament: Friend or Foe of Palestinian Christians?
• Chapter 9: Evangelical Social Conscience and the Challenge of Christian Zionism
• Chapter 10: When Land Is Layered
• Chapter 11: “God Has by No Means Rejected His People” (Rom 11:1)
• Chapter 12: The Gospel and the Land of Promise
• Bibliography