Catholicism and Israel: Perspective and insight from a Dominican theologian

The last two years have provoked a significant amount of debate in Catholic circles as to how the Church should understand and relate to the modern state of Israel.

Prominent Catholics such as Secretary of State Marco Rubio profess “unwavering support” for Israel, while ecumenical (but mostly Catholic) First Things publishes content largely defending Israel. Alternatively, at Crisis Magazine, we read titles such as “America First Does Not Mean Unlimited Support for Israel,” and “Against Catholic Zionism.” In turn, Joe Heschmeyer at Catholic Answers asks: “Is Genesis 12 really saying that we’re to ‘the modern nation of Israel with military aid in its wars?” His answer: “Not according to St. Paul.”

Although this much-discussed topic is not central to Principles of Catholic Theology: Book 4, On the Church, Mary, Nature and Grace, a new collection of essays by prominent theologian Fr. Thomas Joseph White, OP, the book offers two extended reflections on Israel that provide deeply needed clarity on Catholic conceptions of Israel. The first essay, “On Good Supersessionism: Jews, Christians, and the Covenant That Binds and Divides Us,” presents refreshing guidance on this much debated theological topic, while the second essay, “The State of Israel and the Holy See: A Theological and Ethical Perspective,” helps Catholics navigate what Catholic teaching says (and doesn’t say) about Israel.

True and false supercessionism

Fr. White begins the first essay by observing that in contemporary Catholic theology, there are five prominent expressions of the notion of a Christian supersession of the people of Israel.

The first, called covenantal displacement, posits that the people of Israel and their descendants, though once in a covenant with God of supernatural origin, no longer enjoy an elective status, which has been transferred to the Church.

The second, divine reprobation, is the idea that the Jewish people were or are collectively responsible for the death of Christ and, accordingly, by divine decree, are historically and perpetually collectively alienated from God.

Another supersessionist thesis is the unique mediation of Christ, which posits that because the revelation of God given in Christ has an absolute and universal character, it supersedes all previous revelation given to Israel or subsequent claims to religious truth.

The fourth, Christological mediation theory as Judaic displacement, holds that if one affirms Christ is the unique, universal saving mediator, then this entails both covenantal replacement and reprobation, and thus Christological universalism is anti-Judaic

Finally, sacramental fulfillment and sublimation is the affirmation that the ceremonial precepts of the Old Law have been abrogated by the sacraments of the New Law.

With this important context in place, White offers a surprising preface to this debate: biblical supercessionism is originally a creation of the ancient Hebraic prophets, relying on the Torah itself. This is because God’s covenant with Israel supersedes the covenants God made with Adam (and thus the human race) and later Noah (Gen. 3:14-19; 9:1-17). Moreover, the covenant with Abraham and Moses occurs within a broader context in that the grace given to Israel is intended to eventually extend to the entire human race, something the Old Testaments prophets constantly reminded the people of Israel. Thus, both Jews and Christians are supersessionist, and both are so in relation to all preceding human religious traditions and practices.

Of course, the Christian perspective offers an additional sense of supersessionism, based on the fact that the revelation given to the ancient Jewish people is open to fulfillment, and that the New Testament claims to fulfill the Old. In light of the death and Resurrection of Christ, the covenant restricted to the practice of the Mosaic law realizes a genuine universality, since Christ’s atonement fulfills the law and opens up God’s covenant to the nations, as baptism fulfills and universalizes circumcision, continuing the dynamic of the Old Testament in a more perfect way, providing a medium by which the gentile nations may enter the covenant.

But while the New Testament replaces the ceremonial law of the Old Testament, it does not, strictly speaking, replace ancient biblical Judaism. As Jesus says: “Salvation is from the Jews” (John 4:22)

Yet, White explains, the Church “superseding” current practitioners of post-Biblical Judaism is theologically unintelligible. For starters, Orthodox Judaism as it exists for the past two millennia is in many respects a post-Christian development, one that came into being in the wake of the destruction of the Temple and Israel as an ancient nation state. Because of this, it cannot really be “superseded” in any unambiguous sense of the term, since it developed alongside the Church. Though the New Testament provides a qualified supersessionism regarding the revelation and mediation of Christ and his new sacramental economy, these claims cannot refer in a straightforward way to the Jewish people who came after Christ.

Moreover, St. Paul teaches in the Epistle to the Romans, in chapters 9 through 11, that after the coming of Christ, God remains faithful to his covenant with the Jewish people, including those who do not believe in Jesus as the Messiah and Lord. God does not abandon them, and their continued existence retains religious significance, since the Jews’ eventual reconciliation with the Church has eschatological meaning. Aquinas, among other Catholic thinkers, says that the continued existence of the Jewish people serves as a perpetual sign of the reality of the ancient covenant. And the Second Vatican Council’s Nostra Aetate explicitly rejects the idea that the Jewish people are collectively reprobate, and condemns any teaching that holds the Jews in contempt, instead favoring prerogatives of charity and human justice.

In short, Christ without biblical Judaism is unintelligible, and without Christ the Gentile world could not receive the many truths revealed to the people of Israel (not to mention Mary, who in her long-suffering virtue embodies expectant, righteous Israel). When Christians in any way deny the covenantal dignity of the Jewish people, they not only supersede the Torah but also the Cross, which in turn undermines the core of the Christian Faith.

So, while the Church teaches that Christ is the culmination of the Abrahamic and Mosaic covenant, the Jewish people are related to God by their original covenant through Christ.

The Catholic Church and modern Israel

Given the above, how should Catholic theology understand the state of Israel? Certainly, the Old Testament provides evidence of a divine promise to the land of Israel, originally pledged to Abraham, reinstantiated in the Torah, and reiterated in the prophetic literature and history of the ancient people of Israel. Because of this, it is tempting to make certain conclusions about the land of Israel today in light of its reestablishment in the mid-twentieth century, and especially as a response to the inhumanity of the Shoah.

Nevertheless, White believes this to be an error for four reasons.

First, there is little basis for such a claim in classical Catholic theological tradition, as the New Testament makes little or no pronouncement on the matter of Israel’s right to the land or any ongoing Christological and eschatological significance of the Jews living on the land after the coming of Christ.

Second, if Catholic theologians demonstrate respect for the political sovereignty of the state of Israel based on an insufficiently biblical and Catholic theology, their arguments will appear arbitrary. For Christians unsympathetic to the nation of Israel, such a position could provoke some to assess that recognition of the state of Israel is correlated to unwarranted theological innovation, and thus, by consequence, repudiating diplomatic recognition of Israel is actually to return to traditional theological sources and orthodoxy.

Third, the territorial boundaries of Israel as they relate to ancient promises are historically obscure. How is the ancient notion of a promised land intended to translate into a concept of state sovereignty and diplomatic respect of territorial identity in the context of modern nation-states and in light of Israeli wars of territorial expansion? “Catholics should be careful about imposing anachronistically their historical reconstructions of Israel upon a modern historical and political situation that is in many respects novel and alien to the biblical text,” writes White.

Fourth, there are new complicating theological conflicts and competitions. Many Jews living in Israel or elsewhere who support the political sovereignty of the state of Israel are secular and do not appeal to a divine right to the land, while many religiously observant Jews do not affirm the divine right to the land in its current context. How is a Catholic theology of Israel to make sense of such persons? Binding Catholic theological conceptions of the Jewish people too tightly to the modern state of Israel would seem to define Judaism and Jews on relative adherence to the land promise.

There is a sounder basis for Catholic recognition of the modern state of Israel. Natural Law and the rights of states, for example, apply to any people sharing a common culture, history, legal tradition, and internal government system, as well as a territorial unity or continuous location in place and time. Natural law also acknowledges the place of nation-states within a larger international order bound by common justice and called to a collaboration of universal brotherhood or fraternity. And natural law acknowledges distinct nations and their roles in the divine economy and the larger universal order of all nations. Moreover, natural law demands a certain respect and tolerance for the religious freedom of others.

Of course, these principles would apply not only to Israel but also to the Palestinian people in the Palestinian territories and the Gaza Strip. And that would include the historic Christian population of this region, which was the majority in the fifth century and remained about ten percent of the population of Palestine into the middle of the 20th century.

Jews and Christians, White observes, share a common spiritual patrimony and potentially convergent mission. They share a common source of revelation. Nevertheless, the ongoing covenant of the people with God does not depend upon the modern state of Israel, even if the modern state may in some qualified ways embody or express the ongoing commitment to the pursuit of the covenant with God on the part of the Jewish people, and reflect a certain theological fittingness of the enactment of the covenant on the land of Israel.

In sum, Catholics should maintain reservations regarding a distinctly theological notion of the land-right, because such a perspective risks undermining any commitment to the recognition of the state of Israel by basing this recognition on a theological grounding that is “novel, untested, and not widely accepted.” Moreover, reserve is warranted because the people in the nations surrounding Israel—some of which include significant historic Christian populations—have just as legitimate a claim to natural law and internal law as does the state of Israel.

White’s cogently argued position on modern Israel is thus ultimately grounded in Church teaching and tradition, holding in careful tension the validity of supersessionism, natural law, and the significance of the perduring covenant of God with the Jewish people. As with the rest of this excellent collection, we have come to expect nothing less from one of America’s best theologians.