Supersessionism is a term, if you have come across it, probably means you have seen either a Jewish or Christian academic denounce it as an antisemitic idea. Many Jewish and more recently Christian scholars, academics etc., have argued that Supersessionism, which is the view that the New Testament supersedes or replaces the Old Testament i.e. the Mosaic covenant and therefore and Christians replace Jews as people, is an anti-Jewish or antisemitic belief as seen in the images below. However, we find that throughout the history of the Church, many Christians, starting from Apostle Paul himself, have the view that is either implicitly or explicitly in favour of this view.
Many traditional churches held and continue to hold views that can be described as “supersessionist”. I therefore argue, that attempts to label this view as antisemitic are ultimately part of an anti-Christian movement within academia and elsewhere to demonise Christianity as an evil and hateful religion.
What even is antisemitism?
First, we must define what even is antisemitism, in order to see whether this view can be seen as antisemitic. ‘Antisemitism’ is usually understood as prejudice or animosity against Jews as a race or ethnic group. Often in conversations around antisemitism, the Holocaust is mentioned due to it being the most egregious and obvious example of antisemitism.
Supersessionism
As explained before supersessionism is the view that the New Testament supersedes or replaces the Old Testament and therefore and Christians replace Jews as people. It is sometimes referred to as replacement theology. Scholars identify supersessionism as falling into 3 general categories, ‘Hard’, ‘sweeping’, and ‘Jewish’ supersessionism’.
Hard supersessionism is the view that is commonly understood to represent supersessionism, which is the complete replace of Jews with Gentiles as the people of God and views Christianity as having no Jewish character. Some argue that this is what was taught by the early Christian writers such as St Justin Martyr, however, this view is more hypothetical as many of these same writers will argue that Christianity has continuity with the Old Testament while still holding to a replacement type view.
‘Sweeping’ supersessionism is the view that rather than having any continuity with the covenantal religions of the past, it replaces and ‘sweeps aside’ anything resembling religion with a new thing, a completely new and fresh revelation. ‘Jewish’ supersessionism is the view that a new people are called, who have continuity with the Old Testament, but practice the Torah in a ‘new way’ thus becoming the new Israel.
I would argue that a mixture between this view and the ‘hard’ view is the view of the Church and is common to Catholics, Orthodox and Protestant traditions, with the ‘sweeping’ view being a post-Liberal or post-Barthian Christians, generally nondenominational groups.
Is it antisemitic?
Now we arrive at the crux of this essay. Seeing that we have defined antisemitism as prejudice or hatred based on race or ethnic identity as a Jew, the case that supersessionism is an antisemitic view is completely false and stupid, since it is a religious view and not a racial one. One might argue, as many have, that supersessionism has been used to persecute Jews in the past, which is only a hypothesis with no real proof that it is the case, with many using the Inquisition and other events in the High Middle Ages in Europe as evidence, however, most of this is tentative since for the vast majority of those cases were never aimed at Jews in particular or at all, such as the Crusades. Even in cases where there was genuine religious animosity against Jews, such as the Inquisitions, one can hardly say that you can go from ‘hard’ supersessionism to thinking that persecuting Jews is okay, given that St Augustine, a widely cited proponent of supersessionism, directly forbade attacking Jews and said they should be left alone.
This brings up the point that just because one thing is used to justify another thing, does not mean that what was used as justification is necessarily able to justify something else. For example, if one would use mental illness to justify criminality, that does not mean that therefore mental illness is inherently criminal. Similarly, just because supersessionism was in a specific time in the 11th and 13th centuries used to justify antisemitic violence, does not therefore mean that supersessionism is therefore antisemitic, because that would presuppose that if supersessionism were true, antisemitic violence against Jews would be justified, which does not follow.
This is anti-Christian.
My final case is that calling supersessionism as antisemitic is meant to denigrate Christianity as a religion and by extension paint Christians as hateful or bigoted people, and knowing that in this age, being called hateful or bigoted l is tantamount to being called a heretic during the Inquisition, as many have lost jobs, businesses, and financial stability over things like this.
We have explored supersessionism and from a hermeneutics standpoint, it is easy to justify supersessionism using Scripture. Christ himself, throughout the Gospel, argues that He has come to fulfil the scriptures and the prophecies contained therein (Mt 1:22; 2:15, 17, 23; 4:14; 8:17; 12:17; 13:35; 21:4; 26:54, 56; 27:9; Mk 14:49; Lk 4:21; 24:44; Jn 12:38; 13:18; 15:25; 17:12; 18:9; 19:24; 19:36 Ac 1:16; 3:18; 13:27) and St Paul as well, argues in many of his letters how Christ has brought a new eschatological fulfilment of the Law, which suggests that this fulfilment has brought about a New Covenant as he argues in Hebrews 8:6.
Many early Christian writers such as Tertullian, St Justin Martyr, St John Chrysostom, St Jerome etc., held a mixed view of both ‘hard’ supersessionism and ‘Jewish’ supersessionism as argued in this essay. It is the view of all traditional Christian Churches such as the Roman Catholic Church, even post-Vatican 2 where they changed to what is described as a more ‘soft’ view, the Orthodox Church and many Reformed churches Therefore, this is the heritage of all Christians, and to paint it as antisemitic opens up the avenue to call Christians who try to honestly practice their faith hateful or bigoted.
For example, imagine the idea that supersessionism is antisemitic becomes common, which means that anytime a Christian uses the Scripture as a grounding principle in anything, they can be called hateful because they are holding onto something that is deemed antisemitic. Alongside other issues involving other Scriptural ideas which are being condemned elsewhere, such as on homosexuality or pagan religions, what is being created is a pretext to use this era’s bigotry Inquisition as a means of suppressing Christianity. In conclusion, supersessionism is not antisemitic and believing that is feeding into anti-Christian narratives.
