Supersessionism

Supersessionism is the view, associated with covenant theology, that the church is not a second people running alongside ethnic Israel but Israel’s own promised remnant brought to fulfillment, so that the New Testament’s blessing on “the Israel of God” (Gal. 6:16) belongs to Jewish and Gentile believers united in Christ rather than to a future, ethnically restored nation.¹ The word itself is a modern label, and a contested one even among those who hold the underlying doctrine.² Dispensationalism rejects the position, holding that Israel and the church remain two distinct peoples with two separate purposes.

Confessional Witness

The 1689 Second London Baptist Confession never uses the word “supersessionism,” a term later theology coined; it states its own position in the vocabulary of covenant theology instead. Its covenant chapter says that after Adam’s fall “the Lord was pleased to make” with fallen humanity “a second [covenant], commonly called the covenant of grace; wherein he freely offereth unto sinners life and salvation by Jesus Christ.”³ Unlike the Westminster Confession’s parallel chapter, the 1689 does not describe this covenant of grace as “differently administered” under Moses and under Christ, a difference of wording that 1689 Federalism reads as placing the Mosaic covenant outside the covenant of grace altogether, so that the New Covenant church, not historic Israel under Moses, is that one covenant of grace in its proper and final form. On either reading, the confession’s covenant theology holds that Old and New Testament believers belong to a single covenant people rather than two.

Biblical Basis

Paul closes his letter to the Galatians by pronouncing peace “upon the Israel of God” (Gal. 6:16), a phrase Reformed exegesis reads as naming the church itself: “‘Israel’ is of course not only that carnal Israel which Moses led out of Egypt into the wilderness and Joshua led into the land of Canaan… but also that spiritual Israel about which Romans 2:21, 29, and Galatians 6:16 speak. It signifies the church of both testaments.”¹

The same reading extends to Paul’s declaration a chapter earlier that “there is neither Jew nor Greek… for ye are all one in Christ Jesus. And if ye be Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise” (Gal. 3:28-29), and to Ephesians’ picture of Jewish and Gentile believers as no longer divided by “the middle wall of partition” but “fellow-citizens with the saints, and of the household of God” (Eph. 2:14, 19). Reformed exegetes read these texts as excluding a future restoration of ethnic Israel “to their own land” as “a distinct nation in the Christian Church,” on the ground that Scripture “over and over again” describes Jew and Gentile as already “built up together… into one temple” rather than as two peoples awaiting separate futures.⁴

Historical Development

Patristic self-identification

Christian writers applied Israel’s own titles to the church within a century of the apostles. Bavinck traces the description of believers as “the true Israel, the blessed people of God” to this postapostolic period, citing Justin Martyr’s mid-second-century Dialogue with Trypho as an instance of the usage.⁵

Nineteenth-century dispensationalism

A rival framework arose much later. Berkhof describes how “in the second quarter of the nineteenth century a new form of Premillennialism was introduced under the influence of Darby, Kelly, Trotter, and their followers in England and America, a Premillennialism wedded to Dispensationalism,” later “popularized… especially through the Scofield Bible.”⁶ Where covenant theology reads the church as Israel’s own fulfillment, this newer system “present[s] a new philosophy of the history of redemption” in which “Israel plays a leading role and the Church is but an interlude,” positing “two peoples of God… Israel dwelling on earth, and the Church in heaven.”⁶

Opposing Views

Dispensationalism holds that “the church is a distinct body in this age, separate from Israel,” so that God is working out “two purposes… related but not synonymous… in the world today,” one for Israel as an earthly people and a separate one for the church as a heavenly people.⁷ Progressive dispensationalism narrows this distinction somewhat while still maintaining a future, national role for Israel that classic covenant theology denies.

Objections and Responses

Doesn’t calling the church “the Israel of God” mean the Jewish people themselves have been cast off? Paul raises this objection within Romans itself: “I say then, Hath God cast away his people? God forbid… God hath not cast away his people which he foreknew” (Rom. 11:1-2). Bavinck reads Paul’s later statement that “all Israel” will be saved (Rom. 11:26) along the same lines: the hardening that has fallen on part of Israel is partial, not total, and “the stem of the tame olive tree has been preserved” even where branches have been broken off and wild branches grafted in.⁸

Is “supersessionism” even a fair name for this position, or a loaded label critics use? The term is modern, and even a Reformed theologian who accepts a version of it concedes that “supersessionist language is usually controversial when it is deployed,” carrying overtones many who hold the underlying doctrine would not intend.² The confessions themselves avoid the word, stating the position instead as the covenant of grace’s unity across both testaments rather than as a claim that ethnic Israel has been discarded.

Related Doctrines

References

Petrus van Mastricht, Theoretical-Practical Theology, vol. 2, Faith in the Triune God, ed. Joel R. Beeke, trans. Todd M. Rester (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2019), chap. 8, “The Unity of God,” 206. ↩ ↩²
David Gibson, “Sacramental Supersessionism Revisited: A Response to Martin Salter on the Relationship between Circumcision and Baptism,” Themelios 37, no. 2 (2012): 191. ↩ ↩²
The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1689), chap. 7, “Of God’s Covenant,” text as reproduced by The 1689 Confession. ↩
Charles Hodge, “Second Advent,” in Systematic Theology, vol. 3 (New York: Charles Scribner and Company, 1873), 807. ↩
Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Abridged in One Volume, ed. John Bolt (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), chap. 21, “The Church as a Spiritual Reality.” ↩
Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology (London: Banner of Truth Trust, 1969), 696. ↩ ↩²
Charles C. Ryrie, Dispensationalism (Chicago: Moody Press, rev. ed. 1995), 39-40. ↩
Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Abridged in One Volume, ed. John Bolt (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), chap. 24, “The Return of Christ.” ↩