Who are Abraham's heirs?

As usual, Halden of inhabitatio dei tackles this question with eloquence and insight. As he states in the comments, his position is essentially a "Johannine" one. In conclusion he writes:

Thus, from the perspective of inter-religious dialogue, one key element that distinguishes Christianity from the other two Abrahamic faiths is Christianity’s explicit denial of what the other two vehemently claim, namely that “legitimate” descent from Abraham substantiates the claims of their faith. Christians make no claim to be legitimate children of Abraham, rather they claim that their status as God’s people is derived from nothing inherent within themselves either ethnically or politically. We are the people of God solely and only because of the radical miracle brought about in Jesus Christ which shatters and scandalizes any “natural” claim to be God’s people through historical natural succession.

In the recent words of Brian Welch: "It's all spiritual now" (OK, Halden's more nuanced than that).

Read the whole thing, including various insightful comments. Here's my response:

I'm uncomfortable with this. Though my knowledge of the New Testament is woefully inadequate to give a proper response, I'll do what I can because the issue is important to me. Some thoughts:

You say: Christians make no claim to be legitimate children of Abraham . Doesn't Paul speak of adoption? It's one thing to talk about the new spiritual nature of the community (agreed), it's another to talk about the nature of the transition from “flesh” to “spirit” and what that means for the flesh itself. I think this is a key issue. There's an eschatological dimension to this which is just awkward and can't be easily resolved with reference to the “spirit.” Biblical theology seems to be constantly caught up in a dialectic between different poles which can't be resolved with this fallen world. Thus, we have dichotomies between letter and spirit, flesh and spirit, heaven and earth, this world and the next, divine and human, normal time and eschatological intervention, the Old and the New etc. I don't think it's doing enough justice to the Bible's understanding of salvation history to evaporate the earthly in favour of the spiritual, as if biological descent can simply be rejected now that something “spiritual” has happened. There is genuine newness in the New, but it's always testified to in terms of the Old, which isn't simply discarded now that the New has arrived. It is transformed, perhaps, but the crux is the relation between Old and New and not just whatever the New has brought. Again, what is the nature of the transition and is there not some form of tension that needs to be maintained?

This is undergirded by what I take to be an important hermeneutical principle: the Old testament is as much a witness to the Truth as the New. It is not the case the the New has figured everything out, nor that the New is the fullfillment of the Old. Rather, both point to one reality and their relation to each other is dialectical. As a result, it is not enough to quote New Testament verses as a foundation for our understanding of the people of God. It needs to be balanced out with the Old Testament, and perhaps even be “corrected” by the OT, in light of the one subject matter. Thus, according to some OT theologians, the heart of the Old Testament consists in a concrete relationship between Jhwh and his elected nation Israel. Psalm 147:20 states: “He has not dealt thus with any other nation; they do not know his ordinances. Praise Jhwh!” In a real sense, a non-Jew reading the OT is reading “someone else's mail.” The question is, what constitutes our right to be considered the addressees of these texts? Language of “ingrafting” and “adoption” in Christ seems to be the rule. The fact that the Jews haven't believed seems to be an anomaly for Paul which he can't understand, rather than an irrelevancy due to the insignificance of biology.

Again, isn't quoting New Testament verses in order to reject the election according to the flesh like reading John instead of the Synoptics, or Chronicles instead of Kings? There are different genres of witness which need to balanced with each other (as you know, of course).

In sum, I don't know enough of the details, but I think the tension between fleshly and spiritual election needs to be maintained. As a result, according to at least one construal, Christianity and Judaism belong on one side of the divide as the true heirs of Abraham—though in different, paradoxical senses—and Islam on the other, as a forgery. The divide you offer above is not wrong per se. It just needs to be maintained as part of a larger, eschatologically awkward whole.

P.S. I belatedly note Halden's latest post in the thread: Church and Israel - Christianity and Judaism. I am in full agreement.

The Judge of church and synagogue

It's often assumed that theological exegesis is fideistic and inherently inclined to read its own assumptions into the Bible. This danger clearly exists, but part of the solution turns on the nature of the theological assumptions in operation. Christianity seems to have consciously situated itself in the "gap" between dialectical poles: between heaven and earth, the Old and the New, letter and spirit. It's called to negotiate both, and this should serve to keep its triumphant proclamation chastened by the need to "discern the mystery" (A. Louth) in a veiled text. In this challenge, the Jewish people serve as a constant challenge to Christian proclamation. It is what Childs calls the function of "the mystery of Israel" (thanks to D. Driver's dissertation for this insight). Here is a profound Childs quote on the issue:

A major point to emphasize is that Christianity can make no proper theological claim to be superior to Judaism, nor that the New Testament is of a higher moral quality than the Old Testament. Human blindness envelops the one as much as the other. Rather, the claim being made is that the divine reality made know in Jesus Christ stands as judge of both religions. This assertion means that Judaism through God’s hesed has indeed grasped divine truth from the Torah, even when failing to recognize therein the manifestation of God in Jesus Christ. Conversely, Christianity, which seeks to lay claim on divine truth in the name of Christ, repeatedly fails to grasp the very reality which it confesses to name. In a word, two millennia of history have demonstrated that Jews have often been seized by the divine reality testified to by their Scriptures, but without recognizing its true name, while Christians have evoked the name, but failed to understand the reality itself. [*]

P.S. The image above is a typical motif on cathedrals in Europe of triumphant "church" over defeated "Synagogue." The tragedy is particular evident when you walk from the Jewish cemetery in Worms, Germany, to the cathedral, where the statues still stand. Should they be taken down? Or are they affirming a difficult truth which, when out of control, leads to bloodshed? I think Childs' thoughts provide a way forward.

[Hat Tip for the image from this interesting website]

[*] Childs, Witness to Christ?, 63–64.

Christian Zionism: Some Positive Developments

John Hobbins, via Hirhurim, links to an excellent article on the theological relation between the Church and the modern State of Israel. Interestingly, it's written from a Catholic perspective and is packed with insight. I'm in total agreement with John when he says

I am not a particularly optimistic person, but after reading the article and the post, hope caught hold of me as it hasn’t for some time. In my neck of the woods, it has been hard to claim the name of evangelical Zionist because of the many crackpots out there who self-identify as such. Now, the rules are changing.

This is an issue that won't go away and needs to be addressed. Here are three quotes that stood out for me:

Ultimately, Jews and Christians must remain a mystery to each other. Christians cannot help but ­recognize that Providence has sustained the Jews through their long exile, yet they cannot explain why Jews do not recognize Jesus Christ as the fulfillment of their prophecy. Jews cannot help but recognize that Christians are inspired by the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, yet they cannot explain Christian belief in the divinity of Jesus, except to dismiss it as a “world-historical fiction” (in Franz Rosenzweig’s words).

For Christians, the Jewish nation stands as a living reproach to Gentile nations: They reject Christian universality by desiring election in their own flesh. For the Jews, Christianity signifies that only as individuals can Gentiles enter the people of God, and that no other ethnicity may covet their election in the flesh. Jews ­cannot affirm salvation through Christ, and Christians cannot affirm salvation without Christ.

Jews have little to fear from Christian universality; the mortal danger to their existence stems rather from the jealousy of Gentile nations who covet election.

This last quote is particularly interesting, as the principle of the particularity of Jewish election has become a cornerstone in Christopher Seitz's take on the canonical approach. See his article "'And without God in the World': A Hermeneutic of Estrangement Overcome," in Word Without End (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 41-50. For Childs, too, the "mystery of Israel" is a foundational concept.