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Does Matthew 21:43 Support Replacement Theology?
By Michael J. Vlach, Ph.D.
One text often used by supersessionists to support the idea of the permanent rejection of national Israel is Matt 21:43.[1] In this verse, which Frederick Dale Bruner calls “one of the most important verses in Matthew,”[2] Jesus addressed the unbelief of the leaders of the nation Israel and announced his rejection of them because of their stubborn unbelief: “Therefore I say to you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a nation producing the fruit of it.”
What is the significance of Jesus’ words in Matt 21:43? Supersessionists often assert that Jesus was making two major points. The first was that the nation Israel had been permanently rejected as the people of God. The second is that the “nation” to whom the kingdom would be given is the church.
This view that Matt 21:43 teaches the replacement of Israel with the church was held in the Patristic Era. As Origen declared, “Our Lord, seeing the conduct of the Jews not to be at all in keeping with the teaching of the prophets, inculcated by a parable that the kingdom of God would be taken from them, and given to the converts from heathenism.”[3] Irenaeus and Chrysostom, too, believed this text taught the permanent rejection of the Jews.[4] This understanding of Matt 21:43, though, goes beyond just the Patristic Era. According to W. D. Davies and Dale Allison, this view that Matt 21:43 teaches the replacement of national Israel with the church is “the dominant interpretation in Christian history.”[5]
This view of Matt 21:43, however, is improbable for several reasons. The first problem concerns the identity of the “you” from whom the kingdom would be taken. Several interpreters have pointed out that the “you” probably refers to the current leaders of Israel and not the nation as a whole as supersessionists have claimed. M. Eugene Boring, for instance, states: “Who is represented by the ‘you’ from whom the kingdom is taken? Who is the ‘nation’ to whom it is given? In the context, the addressees are clearly the chief priests and Pharisees . . . i.e., the Jewish leadership, not the people as a whole.”[6] Making a similar point, David D. Kupp writes, “Jesus’ growing antipathy to the Jewish leaders has never spelled outright rejection of the Jewish crowds, the people of Israel. Even in 21.43 the target audience is explicitly the leaders, not the people.”[7]
Boring and Kupp appear correct in their observations. Matt 21:45 states that the religious leaders “understood that He [Jesus] was speaking about them.” Anthony J. Saldarini argues that the supersessionist view is more in line with supersessionist presuppositions than with the actual meaning of Matthew 21:43: “This reading, which fits later Christian supercessionist interpretations of Jewish-Christian relations, is beset by several problems, the most obvious of which is that Matthew makes the chief priests and Pharisees apply the parable to themselves (21:45), not to Israel as a whole.”[8] Since the context indicates that Jesus was speaking specifically to the religious leaders of his day, the supersessionist assertion that Jesus was announcing the permanent rejection of the nation Israel appears unlikely.
Another problem with the view that Jesus is declaring the permanent rejection of Israel is that other sections of Matthew’s gospel appear to reaffirm or hint at a future for Israel. As Sanders has pointed out, Matt 19:28 “confirms the view that Jesus looked for the restoration of Israel.”[9] M. A. Elliott asserts that in Matthew’s gospel “nothing explicit is found regarding the rejection of Israel.”[10]
A second problem concerns the supersessionist view that the nation to whom the kingdom would be given is the Christian church.[11] The context of Matthew 21 makes it unlikely that the “nation” of whom Jesus is referring is the church. As Turner writes, “In verse 46 it is clear that the religious leaders believed Jesus was talking about them, not Israel as a whole. Thus it is reading too much into this verse to view it as indicating the replacement of Israel by the Gentile church.”[12] Saldarini points out that theologians who interpret “nation” as the church “are reading in second-century Christian theology” into Matt 21:43.[13]
Thus, Matthew 21:43 is not a supporting text for replacement theology.
[1] The following authors have expressed the idea that Matt 21:43 teaches the rejection of the nation Israel and/or Israel’s replacement by the church: Jack Dean Kingsbury, Matthew: Structure, Christology, Kingdom (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1975), 157; R. T. France, The Gospel According to Matthew, TNTC, vol. 1 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1985; reprint, 1987), 310; John Gerstner, Wrongly Dividing the Word of Truth: A Critique of Dispensationalism (Brentwood, TN: Wolgemuth & Hyatt, 1991), 190–91; Archibald Thomas Robertson, Word Pictures in the New Testament, vol. 1 (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1930), 172; Zorn, Christ Triumphant, 30; George Eldon Ladd, The Gospel of the Kingdom (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1959), 114; Karl Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith: An Introduction to the Idea of Christianity, trans. William V. Dych (New York: Seabury, 1978), 337; Herman Ridderbos, The Coming of the Kingdom, trans. H. de Jongste (Philadelphia: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1962), 352–53; Francis Wright Beare, The Gospel According to Matthew: A Commentary (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1981), 431; LaRondelle, The Israel of God in Prophecy, 101; John Bright, The Kingdom of God (Nashville: Abingdon, 1953), 226. Other texts have been used to support this idea of the permanent rejection of Israel. Diprose mentions John 8:30–59 as a possible supporting text for replacement theology. In this text Jesus stresses that the Jewish leaders were not children of Abraham but children of the devil (see 8:44). Ronald E. Diprose, Israel in the Development of Christian Thought (Rome: Istituto Biblico Evangelico Italiano, 2000), 36–38. Diprose also mentions 1 Thess 2:15–16. The latter part of verse 16 states concerning the Jews, “But wrath has come upon them to the utmost.” (55). Bright mentions Matt 8:11 as being parallel to Matthew 21:43. Bright, The Kingdom of God, 226.
[2] Frederick Dale Bruner, Matthew: A Commentary, vol. 2 (Dallas: Word, 1990), 770.
[3] Origen, Against Celsus 2.5, ANF 4:431.
[4] See Irenaeus, Against Heresies 4.36, ANF 1:514; Chrysostom, Homilies on the Gospel of Matthew, 68, PG, 58:631–34; See also Apostolic Constitutions 5.16, ANF 7:446.
[5] W. D. Davies and Dale Allison, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel According to Saint Matthew 19–28, ICC, vol. 3 (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1997), 189.
[6] M. Eugene Boring, “The Gospel of Matthew: Introduction, Commentary, and Reflections,” NIB, vol. 8 (Nashville: Abingdon, 1995), 415.
[7] David D, Kupp, Matthew’s Emmanuel: Divine Presence and God’s People in the First Gospel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 95. According to D. A. Carson, “Strictly speaking, then, v. 43 does not speak of transferring the locus of the people of God from Jews to Gentiles, though it may hint at this insofar as that locus now extends far beyond the authority of the Jewish rulers . . . instead, it speaks of the ending of the role the Jewish religious leaders played in mediating God’s authority.” D. A. Carson, “Matthew,” EBC, vol. 8 (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1981), 454. Luz writes, “Is Jesus announcing the supersession of Israel by the Gentile Church in the history of mankind’s salvation? . . . No, because in this context he is quite clearly speaking to Israel’s leaders and to no one else. No, because ethnos—that same Greek word for ‘people’ that means, in the plural, ‘nations’ or ‘Gentiles’—cannot simply be equated with ‘church.’” Ulrich Luz, The Theology of the Gospel of Matthew, trans. J. Bradford Robinson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 119. See also David L. Turner, “Matthew 21:43 and the Future of Israel,” Bibliotheca Sacra 159:633 (2002): 56.
[8] Anthony J. Saldarini, Matthew’s Christian-Jewish Community (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 59.
[9] E. P. Sanders, Jesus and Judaism (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985), 103. By Israel’s restoration, Sanders means “Jewish restoration” (116).
[10] M. A. Elliott, “Israel,” in Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels, eds. Joel B. Green, Scot McKnight, and I. Howard Marshall (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1992), 359. Elliott also writes: “Some adherents of this new school of Jesus research hold that the major presupposition for Jesus’ ministry was the widespread eschatological doctrine of the restoration of Israel, and that Jesus both addressed this concern and understood his ministry in the light of the expectation” (360).
[11] According to Frederick Dale Bruner, “A strong exegetical tradition says that the church is not the ‘nation’ to whom Matthew’s Jesus promises that the kingdom ‘will be given.’” Frederick Dale Bruner, Matthew: A Commentary, vol. 2 (Dallas: Word, 1990), 771. Emphasis in original.
[12] Turner, “Matthew 21:43 and the Future of Israel,” 57. If the “nation” in Matt 21:43 is not the church, who is it? Two alternative explanations have been offered. First, Turner argues that the “nation” is “the Matthean community as an eschatological messianic remnant whose leaders will replace the current Jerusalem establishment and lead Israel in bearing the fruit of righteousness to God” (59). This “Matthean Christian Jewish community” is allegedly “led by Jesus’ apostles” (61). See also Saldarini, Matthew’s Christian-Jewish Community, 63. Others have understood the “nation” of Matthew 21:43 as referring to a future believing generation of Israel. See Arnold G. Fruchtenbaum, Israelology: The Missing Link in Systematic Theology (Tustin, CA: Ariel, 1994), 60.
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