REPLACEMENT THEOLOGY
14 MAY 2025
Based on a lecture presented at Malchut 2019, the FFOZ Friends and Torah Club Leaders’ Conference in Atlanta, Georgia. www.ffoz.org
Broadly speaking, replacement theology is the idea that Christians have replaced Jews as God’s people. As a close corollary, replacement theology holds that God has replaced the old religion of the Jews (Judaism) with the new religion of the Christians (Christianity). It’s a core assumption of the whole church. Denying that to be the case does not make it less true.
Simple Substitutions
The assumptions of replacement theology are woven into the warp and woof of Christian doctrine. The most obvious tenets of replacement theology are axiomatic:
The New Testament replaces the Old Testament.
The church replaces Israel.
Christians replace Jews.
The Lord’s Day (Sunday) replaces the Sabbath.
The Lord’s Supper (Eucharist) replaces Passover.
Those are some of the obvious, surface-level substitutions propagated by replacement theology, but that’s just the beginning. Replacement theology completely subverts the worship God ordained and entrusted to Israel in the Bible: the Temple, priesthood, and Levitical system.
The death of Jesus replaces the sacrifices.
The body of Christ replaces the Temple.
The priesthood of Jesus replaces the Levitical priesthood.
The Christian clerical class replaces the Levitical priests.
Replacement theology also disregards the idea of a literal fulfillment of the prophecies about the restoration of the Jewish people in the land of Israel. In other words, there is no coming Messianic Era; the church is the Messianic Era. There is no future physical restoration of Israel because the church has replaced Israel, and, therefore, the prophecies about the coming kingdom are fulfilled in the church and, ultimately, in going to heaven:
The promise of heaven replaces the promised land.
Going to heaven replaces the kingdom of heaven (the Messianic Era).
The church replaces the kingdom of heaven.
Ironically, such replacements are routinely made by self-proclaimed Bible literalists who pride themselves on a Sola Scriptura interpretation of the text. “We take the Bible literally!” they say while replacing the actual things that the Bible says with things that the Bible does not say. That’s because replacement theology is all about “out with the old and in with the new.” It posits that all these old things were replaced when Jesus came and died and rose from the dead. The good news, the “gospel message,” according to replacement theology, is that God has replaced all the old systems with the new system.
When stated as succinctly as that, it’s easy to sympathize with Jewish people who reject the gospel. Jews must surely think it puzzling that we would present the New Testament, which ostensibly replaces Judaism and all Jewish religious institutions and functions, as good news for Israel. Where’s the good news in the replacement-theology version of the good news? Israel has been replaced, the Torah has been canceled, and God’s covenant with the Jewish people is over. Adding insult to the injury, replacement theology posits that Jewish people’s relationship with God has been replaced by a new order and mechanism for salvation, thereby damning Jews (who do not become Christians) to eternity in hell. Is it really a mystery why most Jewish people are none too excited about this so-called good news?