Theology Has Real Life Consequences

(The following is my foreword to The Power of Myth by David Crump. The photo is mine—taken in Gaza City.)

Theology is not an arcane activity reserved for a cadre of specialists—theology is simply how we think and what we say about God. To form an idea about the divine and to express that idea is to engage in theology. But Christian theology is not a domain where egalitarianism is privileged—not all ideas about the God revealed in Christ are equally valid. For example, seventeen centuries ago at the Council of Nicaea the Christian bishops settled a Christological debate, confessing that Jesus is “true God from true God” and not a lesser being as Arius had taught. All of this matters because theology has real life consequences. And this is never more evident than when we bring our theology to the current Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Christian Zionism is a prime and tragic example of how much harm can be done in the name of bad theology. I say this as one who in my youth inherited Christian Zionism as the default position within American evangelicalism. Some of this bad theology was received in good faith as an attempt to atone for the long, sad history of antisemitism in the church. But well-intended as it may be, Christian Zionism has a fatal flaw: It is not true to the New Testament.

Central to New Testament thought is the revelation that the covenant promises of God made to Abraham and David are fulfilled in Jesus Christ. We are alerted to this in the very first verse of the New Testament: “The genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham.” (Matt 1:1) Jesus is the true seed of Abraham who blesses all the families of the earth and the true son of David who reigns forever. On the Emmaus Road the crucified and risen Christ showed his two traveling companions how the things written in Moses and the prophets were fulfilled by himself, and thus “he opened their minds to understand the scriptures.” (Lk 24:45) In speaking of Christ, Paul says “in him every one of God’s promises is a ‘Yes’” (2 Cor 1:20). It is no exaggeration to state that the first Jewish Christians saw the Old Testament as all about Jesus. But Christian Zionism seeks to subvert the high Christology of the New Testament by making the modern nation-state of Israel a kind of strange co-redemptrix with Christ—that somehow the promises of God are fulfilled by Jesus and by the modern nation-state of Israel. This leads to the theological error of giving to a political state the kind of unquestioned allegiance that belongs solely to Jesus Christ as Lord. Christian Zionism creates divided loyalties with catastrophic consequences.

Upon further scrutiny and as it plays out in real life, Christian Zionism is little more than substituting scapegoats—instead of Jews as their scapegoats, Christians will now scapegoat Palestinians. But scapegoating (achieving unity by projecting blame upon a vilified other) is not the way of the Christ; it is literally the way of the satan—the accuser. To advocate for the violent subjugation and forced removal of a people from their historic homeland though an aberrant reading of select Old Testament texts is utterly contrary to the way of love and mercy taught by Jesus. David Crump puts it bluntly when he writes, “Christ never approves of mass slaughter, oppression, discrimination, or stripping people of their dignity.” That such a self-evident sentence should need to be written shows how dangerous Christian Zionism has become.

One of its most intractable problems is that Christian Zionism refuses to read the New Testament in a theologically serious manner. This is especially true in regard to the Pauline epistles. Paul’s grand theological project was to offer a solution to the first big controversy the church faced: How do you justify Gentiles as Gentiles being full members of the Jewish body of Messiah? Through a creative and inspired re-reading of the Old Testament, Paul reveals that in Messiah’s death the dividing wall between Jews and Gentiles has been broken down, “that he might create in himself one new humanity.” (Eph 2:15) Participation in the covenant of God is no longer defined by ethnicity, circumcision, and Torah observance, but by faith, baptism, and obedience to Jesus. In the historic person of a particular Galilean Jew, the salvation of God is made universally accessible. In Christ the chosen people are now the human race, and the holy land is now the whole earth. This may seem to be a radical reinterpretation of the Old Testament (though it was really there all along), but it is clearly the inspired apostolic interpretation of the New Testament.

Christian Zionism, on the other hand, is an assault upon the high Christology of the New Testament and Paul’s theology of justification. Thus, while it may be Zionism, it is hardly Christian—at least not in any credibly theological way. A faithful reading of the New Testament must not be jettisoned in favor of political agendas and pop eschatology. The apostle Paul is not subject to the partisan politics of John Hagee or the macabre fiction of Tim LaHaye.

My utter rejection of Christian Zionism as incompatible with sound Christian theology does not mean that I don’t love Israel and the Jewish people. I do. But I also love Palestine and the Palestinian people—especially my Palestinian brothers and sisters in Christ. None of this is abstract to me. I’ve been to Israel and Palestine dozens of times. I suppose I’ve lived a year of my life in that land. I’ve been in the West Bank. I’ve been in Gaza—which is something very few Israelis have done . . . unless they were toting a gun. When you stop thinking of people in abstraction and meet them face to face, or better yet, over a shared meal, a lot can change. I know it has changed me, and I’ve seen this kind of human interaction change others as well.

Ultimately Christian Zionism comes to an end when we learn to the read the Bible in the light of Christ—the way the first Christians read the Bible. It’s not Joshua and his wars of conquest that inform Christian theology, but Jesus Christ and him crucified. It’s not Saul’s genocidal slaughter of Amalekite men, women, children, and babies that informs Christian ethics, but the Sermon on the Mount. It’s not David’s wars with the Philistines that informs Christian eschatology, but the Lamb’s self-sacrificial conquest of the principalities and powers. The purposes of God are entirely fulfilled in the crucified and risen Christ. That simple but incontrovertible statement alone renders Christian Zionism theologically incoherent.

And now a book awaits you. A book that is powerful and provocative, but a book that is also theologically robust and deeply Christian. It’s not reckless but well-researched. This book is not hypothetical or serene; it is timely and urgent. It is a book that proceeds from real passion and a profound desire to follow Jesus. Near the very end of this significant work, David Crump writes, “My goal is not to change pro-Israel people into pro-Palestinian people. My objective, rather, is to help us all become pro-humanity people.” And in light of the apostle Paul telling us that the accomplishment of Christ upon the cross was to form one new humanity in himself, to become a person who is pro-humanity really is the apex of Christian discipleship.