Buried in a long, angry Jerusalem Post column about a proposed Church of Scotland policy statement on Israel and Palestine is this fascinating argument from the document in question:
“Promises about the land of Israel were never intended to be taken literally… [God’s] promise to Abraham about land is fulfilled through the impact of Jesus, not by restoration of land to the Jewish people.”
Huh. I can’t recall hearing a supercessionist argument (i.e., one based on the claim that New Covenant of Jesus voided and replaced the Old Covenant between God and the Jewish people) argument against Zionism. But then the Kirk (the Church of Scotland) has often been associated with odd mixtures of old and new, back to the days when it represented the most “modern” version of the Reformation, even as it carried out some of Europe’s most savage witch-hunts.
UPDATE: Just this afternoon, the Church of Scotland agreed to revise the draft policy statement to take out the arguments about Abraham. Good idea.
