West Port Experiment

Many of us these days are noticing a lot of “noticing.” That is, more and more people—especially young men—are increasingly aware of the Jewish other. Podcast personalities and influencers have noticed the Jews and subjected them and the state of Israel to exponentially more criticism in the last few years than I’ve witnessed my whole life. And grand conspiracy theories about them, once the domain of fringe thinkers, seem to be going mainstream. Stock Jewish tropes are traded around and Jew banter abounds. It’s definitely in vogue, and a sign that you’re in the know and not a Boomer. And all this has found a place in Reformed circles.

Just how much the Jew-jokes and memes are serious can be hard to tell. We might write it off as boys being boys, blowing off steam, mimicking and one-upping their peers. I’m inclined to think at least some of it is benign; though I’ve seen a good amount of nasty stuff. And how much of the political commentary is more performative bluster or even profitable clickbait is also not obvious to me. There has always been demand for the provocative, and this kosher slab of red meat seems to be in high demand these days.

And yet, whether or not this is more of a fad, still I am rather concerned. I am noticing some things about this “noticing,” if you will, this new far-right attitude to the Jews that is unhealthy and far from God-honoring, though finding traction in our circles. Permit me to offer some perspective on this new trend, from a confessionally Presbyterian point of view.

Some clarifications

First, let’s clear the air about a few things. Much of evangelicalism has been negatively influenced by dispensationalism, and in particular, its approach to the Jews. Contrary to that fundamentalist ideology, the Reformed faith asserts that Israel is the Old Testament Church, the true people of God, saved by grace alone through faith alone, by Christ alone who was then yet to come, just as much as New Testament believers now. The “Church” is not essentially distinct, then, from ancient Israel. And the “catholic” or universal Church under the Gospel is composed of all those who are spiritually the children of Abraham by faith. This so-called “Church” age is hardly a parenthesis for second-tier Gentile believers, until the eventual, full political restoration of the Jew is realized in the holy land, with the Messiah literally reigning in Jerusalem, and—what is most egregious of all—the restoration of the typical, ceremonial, sacrificial system. Especially since the creation of the nation-state of Israel in 1949, dispensational evangelicalism has nearly fawned over all things Jewish on this deeply flawed reading of Holy Scripture.

And make no mistake: political Zionism and the modern nation-state of Israel have been secular and godless from the start. And for that matter, many devout Jews reject Zionism. Neither individual Christians nor Christian nations bear any clear, unique, and necessary obligation on theological grounds to support the nation-state of Israel, at least beyond the duties we owe to all men made in the image of God.

In terms of Jewish ‘character,’ we must also sadly concede that a good number of them have been notoriously wicked, some arguably having an outsized negative influence on Western society. Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, the majority of the founders of Bolshevism. And who of us can help but ‘notice’ how many Jews are neck-deep in the sleaze of showbusiness, how many endow far-left politics, and how many are deeply implicated in the social menace of pornography? Some of the “noticing” here is understandable. While some speculatively connect too many dots, there are clearly some connections.

Last, by way of disclaimers, let us be emphatic that the governments of sovereign nations have a primary duty under God for the safety and welfare of their own citizens. The post-war ascendance of globalism, multiculturalism, and liberalism has come crashing down, much of it very deservedly so. The late madness of wokery was this philosophy gone to seed, and now we are witnessing a significant cultural correction. There is definitely cause for thanksgiving in these things.

And yet in this present mood, there is great need for biblical clarity. Let us “abhor that which is evil, and cleave to that which is good.”

Some controlling principles

1. Jews past, present and future. For starters, I’m seeing a lot of contemporary “Reformed” takes on the Jews in redemptive history and in eschatology that are facile and overreaching. It seems that many believe that the Reformed faith espouses some kind of simplistic “replacement theology.” That is, the Gentile Church has replaced the Jewish Church: full stop, no qualification. The breaking down on the middle wall of partition and the admission of the Gentiles means for many that being a Jew, a physical descendant of Abraham, means nothing anymore. Verses such as Romans 2:28-29 are used in a one-sided way: “For he is not a Jew, which is one outwardly; neither is that circumcision, which is outward in the flesh: but he is a Jew, which is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter; whose praise is not of men, but of God” (cf. 9:8; Gal. 3:7). Now, Paul wouldn’t have said it unless it was absolutely true and needing saying. God is able from the very “stones to raise up children to Abraham,” when the ethnic sons no longer bear any spiritual resemblance to the father of the faith. Blood is most certainly not thicker than water in God’s estimation, and the casting off of the Jews is testament that “God is no respecter of persons.”

But there’s actually more that needs saying. On the other side of such ethnicity-relativizing statements, there is Romans 9 to 11. Here, it becomes abundantly clear that believing Jews like the Apostle Paul were and are a distinct fulfillment of God’s enduring purpose to the ethnic seed of Abraham in particular and genetically. Consider how Paul pulled himself back from utter despair over the widespread Jewish rejection of the Messiah:

I say then, Hath God cast away his people? God forbid. For I also am an Israelite, of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin.  God hath not cast away his people which he foreknew. [Know] ye not what the scripture saith of [Elijah]? how he maketh intercession to God against Israel, saying, Lord, they have killed thy prophets, and digged down thine altars; and I am left alone, and they seek my life. But what saith the answer of God unto him? I have reserved to myself seven thousand men, who have not bowed the knee to the image of Baal. Even so then at this present time also there is a remnant according to the election of grace (Rom. 11:1-5).

The “remnant” here is not to be confused with the “remnant” of all elect believers in the world, generally speaking. Rather, the elect “remnant” in this particular passage is the elect Jewish remnant, who were given the sovereign, regenerative grace of God to call out upon the name of Jesus Christ. In the early days of Christianity, God determined not to allow all Jews, all ethnic descendants of Abraham, to fall away. God’s purpose to Abraham would stand. And case in point: Saul of Tarsus!

But there’s another key issue that seems to be lost. Perhaps in the present fervor to eschew dispensationalist Jewish fantasies, many have run to the other extreme, that ethnic Jews somehow have no eschatological future whatsoever. God rejected them, cast them out of the Kingdom and gave their place to the Gentiles (Luke 13:28-29). Over and out; one and done. To be sure, by and large they were the people of God and now are not. Yet, while they now are not the people of God, yet one day they will be once again:

“For I would not, brethren, that ye should be ignorant of this mystery, lest ye should be wise in your own conceits; that blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in.  And so all Israel shall be saved: as it is written, There shall come out of Sion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob: for this is my covenant unto them, when I shall take away their sins. As concerning the gospel, they are enemies for your sakes: but as touching the election, they are beloved for the fathers’ sakes” (Romans 11:25-28).

The “natural branches” had been broken off, and the Gentiles as “wild branches” were grafted “contrary to nature into the good olive tree,” partaking “with them,” that is, actual Jewish Christians like Paul, “of the root and fatness of the good olive tree” (Romans 11:17). But against the grim fact of their apostasy, Paul encourages himself that God is “able” to graft them in, and clearly in verses 25-28 above, this is the great “surprise!” Once the Gentile harvest comes in, there will be a great spiritual visitation upon the Jewish people. While for now they are largely “enemies for your sakes,” yet “they are beloved for the fathers’ sakes.” They were beloved? No! They are beloved.

This interpretation is hardly novel, and it predates the rise of dispensationalism by two centuries. Many Reformed and Presbyterian theologians explicitly posited at the end of time a general spiritual restoration of Jews to the faith of the Messiah they rejected and entertained not just a solid hope, but cherished evangelical warmth and compassion for these prodigals. The Westminster divines urge us when praying “thy kingdom come,” that we ought to pray that “the gospel [be] propagated throughout the world, the Jews called, the fulness of the Gentiles brought in” (L. Cat. 191). They directed ministers regularly to pray in public worship “for the propagation of the gospel and kingdom of Christ to all nations; for the conversion of the Jews, the fulness of the Gentiles, the fall of Antichrist, and the hastening of the second coming of our Lord” (Directory for the Public Worship of God). The outcomes of these petitions were no more in doubt than the coming Kingdom itself. Whatever their differing opinions on lesser eschatological questions, these divines were clearly of one mind here.

2. Jewish identity & uniqueness. Next, let us reckon with the question of Jewish identity. Old, hackneyed conspiracies have regained traction, telling us that we’ve lost track of the Jewish ball in the shell game of history. The real Jews are not the ones who say they are, but have cropped up in some wholly novel place. Now, there is no denying that Ashkenazi Jews have a lot of European blood by intermarriage, as the Sephardic Jews in their post-Iberian diaspora throughout Latin America. I will not get into the weeds here, especially since I am no expert in this area. But as one who considers himself a decently competent theologian, there is more than enough biblical evidence to tell us that the Jewish people, notwithstanding the obvious reality of intermarriage and secularization, continue as a distinct, genetic people group to this day, and that they are generally self-identified as such. (And incidentally, why on earth someone would ever wish to pretend that he was a Jew when he is not is quite beyond me. I am lost to the attraction of being an everlasting pariah.)

If Paul when writing Romans 9 to 11 positively identified Jewish people after two major captivities, the loss of the ten tribes, and the Babylonian captivity, and indicated that God preserved an elect remnant of believing Jews “to this day;” and if Paul reassured himself that the “blindness in part is happened unto Israel until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in” (Rom. 11:25), consoling himself that the remnant would spiritually blossom as the rose at the end of time, then God has made an irrevocable guarantee. “The gifts and calling of God are without repentance [revocation].” The openly and avowedly Messiah-rejecting line through the ages will give up their dogged unbelief and come home to Father. The promised seed must remain essentially intact.

Let us not forget the original Abrahamic promise. The Lord swore that in him “all the families of the earth would be blessed.” Observe, that’s not just the Gentiles. That’s all families, including that family “of whom, as concerning the flesh, Christ came,” and that very family that rejected him. That family too must be blessed in a meaningful way at last. And that means that they must be preserved. But more, the preservation of the Jewish people must be historically observable. Those who identifiably rejected Him and stubbornly persisted in that rebellion will identifiably be grafted back into their “own olive tree” (Rom. 11:24). The blessed irony of Israel’s eventual repentance as they “weep over him whom they pierced” will not be lost to them or the nations. Lose the nation in the stream of history and lose the blessed irony and the power of that mystery that made Paul erupt in amazed admiration (Rom. 11:33-36). God’s veto on Israel at 70 A.D. must come full circle, at least in spiritual terms through Jewish repentance and faith in their own Messiah. The Greater than Joseph will be glorified when his traitorous brothers come bowing down to him. “And all flesh shall see the salvation of our God.”

Next, we affirm their observable identity as well as their continuing uniqueness. Now again, Christian converts from among the Jews have no special, preferred standing in the catholic Church of God. “Circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision is nothing, but the keeping of the commandments of God” (1 Cor. 7:19). “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal. 3:28). They may not boast over those who “have received the Holy Ghost” even as they had. And yet their Jewishness—and the specialness of being a Jewish Christian—is not thereby obliterated.

Paul didn’t abolish the Jew-Gentile distinction absolutely any more than he did the male-female one. Yes, the middle wall is gone, once for all. “It is finished!” And that veil will never be repaired. Christ fulfilled all the typical ceremonies: circumcision, the seventh-day Sabbath, the priesthood, the sacrifices. The shadows are gone, and the Church is one without division. “There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism.” And no so-called ‘secret rapture’ can or will ever reverse this great redemptive reality. But the basic ethnic distinction, the nationality, remains. Jesus was a Jew, of the seed of David “according to the flesh” (Rom. 1:3, 9:3, 5, 8; 1 Cor. 10:18). That’s at the very least as special as being Irish is for Irishmen or being English is for Englishmen.

But is there nothing more special than that in being Jewish? Like, at all? “What advantage then hath the Jew? or what profit is there of circumcision?  Much every way: chiefly, because that unto them were committed the oracles of God” (Rom. 3:1-2). Or, consider the lofty, spiritual pedigree Paul assigns to his kin, however apostate: “Who are Israelites; to whom pertaineth the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promises; whose are the fathers, and of whom as concerning the flesh Christ came, who is over all, God blessed for ever. Amen” (Rom. 9:4-5). But perhaps it will be said, that was then, but this is now. To which I say, of whom does Paul write these things? Jews that had rejected the Messiah. The passage of time changes nothing, really. Prodigals may run far from home and even stay there a long time. They may become wholly unworthy of ever being received again. But however broke, caked with filth, and pining after pig food, they are still sons of the Father. At least, “after the flesh,” as those “beloved for the fathers’ sakes.”

No, there is still something very special about being a Jew. Is it enough to spare him damnation if he persists in unbelief? No. Does it entitle him or his people to a blind, uncritical regard from Gentile Christians? No. Does he get a special seat in the catholic Church, apart from the uncircumcised dogs? By no means! Paul definitely had something to say to Peter about that. But it hardly means that we should fail to “notice” them in these charitable, biblical terms, and not after the reactionary impulses of a jaded generation.