Fulfillment or Replacement Theology
Is Fulfillment Theology the Same as Replacement Theology?
Fulfillment Theology is a new form of Replacement Theology that in effect replaces the Jewish people in God’s plan, not with the Christian church but with Jesus. This theology gives literal, ethnic Israel some recognition for God choosing them for His redemptive purposes but sees that calling as already “fulfilled” in Jesus’ first coming and the church’s birth (Acts 2). However, in his article “Israel and Fulfillment Theology,” ICEJ’s David Parsons writes that adherents to Fulfillment Theology “are generally uncomfortable with being identified with classical Replacement Theology, due to its malevolent fruit—namely the pogroms, inquisitions, expulsions, and the Holocaust.”[24]
So to scripturally back their “theology,” Parsons says they emphasize the “ever-expanding ‘inclusiveness’ of God’s salvation plan as it culminated in the gospel being preached to all nations.”[25] However, Fulfillment Theology ends up at the same place as Replacement Theology, concluding that “God is finished with Israel, albeit with less inherent hostility toward the Jews.”[26]
No God-Given National Destiny
Hedding writes that like Replacement Theology, Fulfillment Theology ends up contending that since the time of Jesus, “the Jews no longer enjoy a God-given national destiny” in the land God promised them in Genesis 12:
This time around, it is not the church that replaces Israel and takes over all her promises in Scripture but, in fact, Jesus. He fulfills in His life and redemptive work all the promises that God ever made to the Jews—even the promise that Canaan would be the everlasting possession of the Jewish people. Jesus is the promised land. This allows the proponents of this theory to distance themselves from the awful evil (as in the apartheid state) and antisemitic consequences (as in the Christian pogroms of history) of Replacement Theology. However, they end up believing the same thing.[27]
Fulfillment Theology proponents argue, among other things, that when Jesus claimed to have fulfilled (correctly interpreted, not nullified) the Law and the Prophets in Matthew 5:17, He was referring to all of the law and the promises to natural Israel. In truth, Matthew 5–7 is a discussion about the Mosaic covenant. Hedding writes Jesus was “expounding the inward nature of the law and our failure to keep it. … When Jesus said that He came to fulfill the Law, He meant just that! That is, He would perfectly fulfill in His life the moral demands of the Law on behalf of a fallen world. He would thus prove to be a perfect man and would give His life on the cross so as to remove the curse of the Law from our lives” (Galatians 3:13).[28]
Learn more about Fulfillment Theology:
Paul and Replacement Theology
Did Paul contradict the idea of Replacement Theology?
The short answer is yes. Before arriving at Romans 11, Paul reviewed Israel’s sin and disbelief in the revelation of Jesus as Messiah. Then, in Romans 11, Paul responds to God’s stance with Israel considering this disbelief, stating in Romans 11:28–29 that God’s gifts and calling upon national Israel are “irrevocable”: they cannot be altered. The context of the surrounding Scripture affirms Paul is talking about corporate Israel: there remains a special, unique, and irreversible calling upon Israel as a nation. Adherents to Replacement Theology argue the opposite—that God has revoked that calling on Israel and transferred it to the church.
God Has Not Cast Away His People
However, consider more of Paul’s argument in Romans 11:
Has God cast away His people? Certainly not! For I also am an Israelite, of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin. God has not cast away His people whom He foreknew. (vv. 1–2)
I say then, have they [Israel] stumbled that they should fall? Certainly not! But through their fall, to provoke them to jealousy, salvation has come to the Gentiles. Now if their fall is riches for the world, and their failure riches for the Gentiles, how much more their fullness! (vv. 11–12).
For if their being cast away is the reconciling of the world, what will their acceptance be but life from the dead? (v. 15).
According to Paul—a Jewish man himself—God has not cast away Israel, and he was proof of it. Daniel Juster writes in his work on Replacement Theology:
Like all biological members of the nation, [Paul], too, was an Israelite—a biological descendent of Abraham and a biological member of one of Israel’s tribes. The fact that God accepted Paul into right relationship with Him through faith in the Messiah was evidence that God had not rejected Israel as a nation. Apparently, Paul’s point was as follows: If God had rejected Israel as a nation, then He would not have accepted me.[29]
Gentiles Brought Near
In fact, gentiles—whom Paul said in Ephesians 2:12 were “without God and without hope”—have been brought near to God because of Israel’s stumbling. But it doesn’t end there: if there was no future for Israel in God’s plan of redemption (as Replacement Theology adherents claim), what does Israel’s future “fullness” mean at the end of verse 12? And what did Paul mean by saying they would be resurrected and accepted by God?
Paul was referring to a future resurrection of literal, ethnic Israel, what the prophet Ezekiel envisioned in 37:1–4 when he described the “dry bones” of the whole house of Israel that will one day live. Zechariah alluded to this spiritual restoration, too, in 12:10: “And I will pour on the house of David and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem the Spirit of grace and supplication; then they will look on Me whom they pierced. Yes, they will mourn for Him as one mourns for his only son, and grieve for Him as one grieves for a firstborn.”
And of the nation of Israel, Isaiah says: “It is too small a thing for you [Israel] to be my servant to restore the tribes of Jacob and bring back those of Israel I have kept. I will also make you a light for the Gentiles, that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth” (49:3).
Isaiah says about this coming time that it will be the nation of Israel “in whom I will be glorified” (49:3). Even Jesus says Israel will one day be restored (“you will not see me again”)—but not until His people repent (Matthew 23:39).
Restoration is coming for the children of Israel. On that day, they will pick up the mantle given to them in Genesis 12:3 to be God’s servant nation to bless all the families of the earth. They will fulfill their calling to be “a light to the gentiles” (Isaiah 42:6; 49:6) so that they might “be My salvation to the ends of the earth” (Isaiah 49:6).
Types of Replacement Theology
Replacement Theology (Supersessionism) has several forms, according to Michael J. Vlach, PhD, assistant professor of Theology at The Master’s Seminary and R. Kendall Soulen in his work The God of Israel and Christian Theology.
Click the plus signs below to read about three:
Flaws in the Thesis behind Replacement Theology
In his work “An Assessment of ‘Replacement Theology,’” Dr. Walter Kaiser sees five “fatal flaws” in the Replacement Theology thesis:
Flawed Belief #1: God made the “new covenant” with the church.
God’s word indicates God made the “new covenant” with the house of Israel and Judah, not the church, as seen clearly in Jeremiah 31:31:
Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah.
Flawed Belief #2: Israel rejected Jesus as Savior, so God devised a new plan.
The Jewish people’s failure was always part of God’s calculated plan. As Hendrikus Berkof says, Israel was, is, and will be “the link between the Messiah and the nations,” even in her disobedience. Israel’s rejection of salvation actually had positive results:
For if their rejection brought reconciliation to the world, what will their acceptance be but life from the dead? (Romans 11:15 NIV)
Flawed Belief #3: God “cast off” disobedient Israel.
Scripture is clear that God has not cast Israel off—as Paul states clearly:
The gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable. (Romans 11:29)
I say then, has God cast away His people? Certainly not! For I also am an Israelite, of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin. … For I do not desire, brethren, that you should be ignorant of this mystery, lest you should be wise in your own opinion, that blindness in part has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. And so all Israel will be saved, as it is written: “The Deliverer will come out of Zion, and He will turn away ungodliness from Jacob.” (Romans 11:1, 25–26)
Paul used himself as an example: if he—a descendent of Abraham of the tribe of Benjamin, an Israelite once disobedient and in a state of unbelief—could be brought into God’s fold by faith, so could other Israelites.
Flawed Belief #4: God’s promise to Israel that the land was theirs as an “everlasting” possession was not speaking about linear time but rather “to the end of the age.”
This flaw misinterprets the term “everlasting” (or in some translations, “forever”) regarding the land promise in verses like Genesis 17:7–8:
I will establish my covenant as an everlasting covenant between me and you and your descendants after you for the generations to come, to be your God and the God of your descendants after you. The whole land of Canaan, where you now reside as a foreigner, I will give as an everlasting possession to you and your descendants after you; and I will be their God. (Genesis 17:8)
The eternal aspect of the land promise in 17:7–8 (as well as Genesis 12, et al) is not just an expression meaning “the end of the age.” Daniel Gruber writes:
The claim that the Hebrew word for “forever” or “everlasting” really means “to the end of the age” is only partially true. In some cases it does mean that, but that is not all it means. The English word “always” provides a helpful parallel. It means “every time,” but it also means “as long as” and “forever.”
Kaiser agrees:
The word “forever” is not limited in every instance of its usage, for there are numerous examples of its meaning that transcend such boundaries. When the additional phrases that are used in numerous contexts about the land being given in perpetuity to Israel and of the enduring nature of God’s promises to Israel as a nation are all added up, the impression of all the contexts is overwhelmingly in favor of an oath delivered by God that is as enduring as the shining of the sun and moon (see Jeremiah 33:17–22).
Flawed Belief #5: Paul’s allegory in Galatians 4:21–32 teaches that the church replaced national Israel in God’s plan.
Using this passage as evidence that God replaced Israel with the church misunderstands what Paul intended in Galatians 4 and the audience to whom he made these remarks, writes Gruber.[33] In its proper context, Paul was expositing the difference between justification by works versus justification by faith and grace.
Consider verses 21–23 and 30 and Paul’s example of Hagar (the slave woman) and Sarah (the free woman):
Tell me, you who want to be under the law, are you not aware of what the law says? For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by the slave woman [Hagar] and the other by the free woman [Sarah]. His son by the slave woman was born according to the flesh, but his son by the free woman was born as the result of a divine promise. … Get rid of the slave woman and her son, for the slave woman’s son will never share in the inheritance with the free woman’s son. (21–23, 30)
Paul’s audience was primarily non-Jewish, and he wrote his letter to them to “explain the relation of the law to gentiles—which for Paul, is no relation at all.”[34] He was addressing whether gentiles should be circumcised to be righteous before God using the example of the two sons—not declaring that the Jews were cast out:
To say this would be to confuse the opposites that Paul is using: the opposite of the Jew is not the church, but the gentile. If one wants to learn what Paul’s opposite for the church is, it must be the “unbeliever,” not the Jew. For even Paul himself was once a persecutor of those who believed in the Messiah. In that action, he was much like Ishmael [son of the slave woman] born of the flesh and destined to be cast out.
But when he believed, he became like Isaac [son of the free woman] destined to be an heir and part of the persecuted seed of promise. … the same could be said for a gentile like Sosthenes, the leader of the synagogue, who at first persecuted Paul in Corinth (Acts 18:17). … when he, too, became a believer, he moved from one side of this allegory to the other side (1 Corinthians 1:1).[35]
Paul’s remarks were directed to legalistic gentiles who were making the wrong choice—to be circumcised in order to be justified by the law—which Paul declared would only take them “back into bondage and a disinherited state.”[36] The law couldn’t save them. Galatians 4:21–31teaches that “the quest for justification by works leads to bondage whereas justification by faith and grace leads to freedom and salvation.”[37]
If we miss this key point, writes Kaiser, “the meaning of Paul’s allegory will be lost, and wrong meanings will be found where they do not exist.”
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