From "Supersessionism/Replacement Theology" by Richard C. Lux, 2020
Supersessionism, sometimes called āreplacement theology,ā is the doctrine that claims that Christianity and/or the Catholic Church has superseded or replaced the Jewish people as God's covenant people. It asserts that the āoldā covenant that God had with Israel has been replaced by the ānewā covenant in Jesus, and that Jews are no longer God's chosen people and are rejected by God. Only conversion to Christianity via Baptism can fully restore them to God's love and acceptance.Ā
The French Jewish historian and Holocaust survivor Jules Isaac sketched out this Christian theological anti-Judaism that had been an integral part of Christian teaching since it began in the second century, reached its full maturation in the early Middle Ages, and continued until its complete rejection by the Second Vatican Council in its document Nostra Aetate (āIn Our Age,ā 1965). In Isaac's book, The Teaching of Contempt (1962), he details this teaching of contempt in ten main themes, explaining how it:Ā
āPromulgates an erroneous, univocal, and stereotypical view of the religious and ethical world of the Hebrew Scriptures (the Old Testament).Ā
Denies the indebtedness of Christianity to the religious genius of Judaism.Ā
Denigrates first-century Palestinian Judaism.Ā
Teaches that the dispersion of the Jews from the land of Israel was a divine punishment for their rejection of Jesus.Ā
āFails to educate Christian people about the polemical (and intra-Jewish) character of certain texts of the Christian Scriptures (the New Testament), including the pejorative invoking of āthe Jewsā and caricatures of the Pharisees.Ā
Characterizes Jesus in ways that reject his Jewishness and his fidelity to his Jewish tradition.Ā
āConveys the erroneous impression of universal antipathy toward Jesus by Jews of his time, when in actuality only a small number of Jewsāmainly the Temple priesthoodāopposed Jesus.Ā
Employs a singular, messianic interpretation of the religious motives of the Jews of Jesus's time (that is, that only a messianic expectation was prominent in the religious imaginations of the people and that only one particular understanding of messianism prevailed in Jewish belief).Ā
Stereotypes Jewish leadership, and exonerates the Roman officials in the death of Jesus.Ā
Charges the Jews with deicide, a charge āmurderousā¦,ā as Isaac wrote, āin its generation of hatred and crime but alsoā¦radically false.ā
History of the Development of SupersessionismĀ
All the controversial passages in the Christian Scriptures regarding Jews, which were an in-house family argument within the Jewish community, were misunderstood in Christian understanding by the early second century, when the majority of Jesus's followers were then converted Gentiles with little or no knowledge of Jewish religion, culture, and history.Ā ...
In this context, Marcion, a non-Jew, born in Pontus on the Black Sea, who came from a high social class and was well-educated, arrived in Rome about the year 140 CE. He was accepted into the Christian community there and began teaching. His dominant theme was that of the discontinuity between the Law, that is, the Torah, and the Gospel story concerning Jesus.
He taught that the Old Testament was not fulfilled by, but abolished by, Jesus. The God of the Jews, according to Marcion, was a god without mercy who was vengeful, who severely punished, and who was in no way related to the God of Jesus, whose father was a God of love, forgiveness, and salvation.Ā
Even though Marcion was excommunicated and banished from the Christian community at Rome, he established his own church with bishops, priests, and deacons. His teaching and community spread throughout the Mediterranean, and its theology continues in some forms up to the present day. For even today in the church we sometimes hear preachers speak erroneously of the God of vengeance and punishment in the Old Testament, while Jesus's God in the New Testament is one of love and forgiveness.Ā
