Witness to Israel - the Centre for Israel Studies

The subject for this workshop is: witness to Israel. I want to tell you something about the Centre of Israel studies in the Netherlands, of which I am the director. Then I want to share with you some of our presuppositions that stand behind this witness. And thirdly I will give you a glance on the practice of our Centre.

Our centre is a collaboration between three organizations, i.e.

the Reformed Mission Association of the Protestant Church of the Netherlands (GZB)
the Christian Reformed Deputy Church and Israel of the Christian Reformed Churches in the Netherlands
the Institute of Church Building and Theology within the Ede Christian University.

The Centre for Israel studies was established five years ago. But as a matter of fact we stand in a tradition which is much longer. The Rev. Kees Jan Rodenburg, who was sent to Jerusalem as a theologian in the service of these three partners, stands in a tradition of ministry of many Dutch Reformed theologians who worked in Jerusalem for many years from the sixties onwards.

The aim of our centre is to improve contacts between the church and Israel. I.e to reflect on this relationship and to stimulate the meeting between Jews and Christians.

The witness to Israel is part of that aim. It is not the whole aim, and it is even not the first one. To characterize the meeting of the church with Israel we use three verbs: to listen, to serve and to witness.

Three verbs: to listen, to serve and to witness

Listening is very important, because we are convinced that our relation with Israel is a mutual one, and cannot be sufficiently characterised by a single way witness. Israel has received the words of the Lord, and lives with these words in a special way, from which we can learn a lot of things.

It is the task of the Rev. Kees Jan Rodenburg to be in close contact to those Jews who read the Bible. He tries to understand what it is to read the word of God with Jewish eyes. In some aspects we might say that Jews are standing closer to the texts than we do in our tradition. We are sometimes surprised when we get known to special rabbinic approaches to a text; but we have to admit, that Paul the apostle reads the Old Testament in much the same way. We might be surprised entering a synagogue about many things that are happening there. But we have to realize that Jews are praying to the Lord in exactly the same way in which David sang to God. Not only the Hebrew is the same. It is the way of praising, the way of knowing that you are in close community with all those on whose shoulders you are standing in praising the Lord. In praising, believing Jews attach many aspects of their every day life to the Lord, from which we can learn a lot. In remembering the deeds of the Lord in the festivals, there is a kind of reviving the history of salvation, from which we are more estranged. There is a deep sense of dependence on the Lord, there is the searching for what the Lord wants us to do, in listening to the Torah, which might be called a way of life, and there is a sense of the holiness of God; these are just some examples of what we can learn by listening to Israel.

The second task of the church, also in relation with Israel, is to serve. When we stress this, we have in mind the tragic history which devides the church from the Jewish people. We cannot speak with Jews without acknowledging this history. We have a debt to the Jewish people, of which we should be aware in thinking about our witness to Israel. Too often the name of Jesus Christ has afflicted terrible evils unto the Jews. We - as churches from the gentiles - did not manage to fulfil the task of which Paul is writing: to make Israel jealous. We did not provoke their jealousy, we provoked quite another kind of feelings, to which the name of our Saviour is tragically attached among the Jewish people. The cross of our Lord very often did not show them the love and grace of God, but was used as an instrument literally to crush their sculls.

Still we are convinced that we cannot listen to Israel and serve the Jewish people without mentioning the name of Jesus Christ, the unique name through which all people must be saved. In Jesus Christ God fulfilled his promises, which are still standing, first to the Jew and also to us, Gentiles, who may share in the hope of Israel, being engrafted in the root of Israel. How can we share this witness of the name of Jesus Christ in an honest way, in a modest way, and in a way that we can learn from this witness ourselves as well?

These questions are existential questions when your are in contact with Jewish people, who know the name of our Lord, which was revealed in the Old Testament, who live with that name, but still do not acknowledge Jesus as the Messiah. I cannot give all the answers to these questions, I just indicate that we are trying to find the best way of answering the call which comes to us, to make Israel jealous, even when we do not understand all the ways of the Lord. Paul himself wrestled with these questions without getting last answers. As a Jew he ended in praising the name of the Lord, even for those things he could not understand.

Different models for the relationship between the church and Israel

So last answers on these questions you should not expect. Still I want to indicate a little bit more about our theological position in our efforts to get in relation with Israel. We should be aware of the fact that as a church we have quite another relation with Israel than with all other peoples. I indicate some models that were used to characterize the relationship between Israel and the church.

First there is the model of substitution. In this model the church replaces Israel. There are clear grounds to do so. Many promises that were given to Israel are applied to the church in the New Testament. Paul says “If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise” (Gal. 3:29). That’s why the apostle can apply promises that were originally directed to Israel immediately to the church from Jews and Gentiles. E.g. in Romans 9:25. the text from Hosea (2:22) “I will call them ‘my people’ who are not my people and I will call her ‘my loved one’ who is not my loved one”, intended as a prophecy for Israel, is used by Paul as a prophecy for Jews and Gentiles alike. Many more texts can be adduced for this way of thinking.

It is the firm basis for a Reformed theology, to know that God’s covenant in Old and New Testament is basically one covenant, because it reveals the words of the one and only God, which attest one and the same faithfulness of the Lord, and one and the same grace by which man can live; Abraham, as well as David, as well as all those who are the seed of Abraham by believing in Jesus Christ.

Yet there is a big question about this position. Does this mean that the church is the successor of Israel in the sense that it replaces the old people of God’s covenant in the plan of God? That is not the case in the NT. Jesus specially prays for those that had been crying: “his blood may come upon us.” “Father forgive them”, the Lord prays on the cross, they do not know what they were saying. When Peter stands up on the first day of Pentecost, he tells to all those men of Israel standing before him, Jews and proselytes: the promise is still yours and for your children and for all those people whom the Lord our God will call (Acts 2:39, in allusion to Joel 3:5). Without uncertainty the apostle Paul asks in Romans 9-11: did God reject his people? By no means, he answers. And in the way he explains this answer he shows that the people of Israel not only have a special place in God’s history of salvation, but that the words of the Lord for his people are still standing: “it cannot be that God’s word has failed” (Rom. 9:6). How could we underline God’s faithfulness to his word, if at the same time this word would not apply any more to those who were the first receptors of this word? God’s promises from the Old and from the New Testament still stand for Israel in the first place. The theory of substitution does not reckon with God’s faithfulness towards the people with which He made his covenant.

Secondly as a Reformed centre for Israel studies we not only reject the theory of substitution and replacement, we also reject the dispensational model, in which Israel has quite a different place in the plan of God than the church.

Dispensational theories did exist from old times in the church. The church expelled the heresy of Marcion, who taught that the God of the Old Testament was another God than the God of the New Testament. Yet during the whole of church history this way of thinking of came to the surface in different clothing now and then. It implies that you think that Israel has another level in the plan of salvation. The church does not need the Old testament to live with, the OT is for Israel. So on the one hand, for us the OT belongs to the past and at the same time special promises for Israel from the OT are still to be fulfilled, mostly in a literal way. These expectations sometimes are connected with the expectation of a thousand year reign of Christ on earth. At any rate these expectations are connected to Romans 11:25,26a: “I do not want you to be ignorant of this mystery, brothers, so that you may not be conceited: Israel has experienced a hardening in part until the full number of the Gentiles has come in. And so all Israel will be saved.”

In the dispensational model there will be a special time, when this promise will be fulfilled. This period often is connected with several promises from the prophets about the return of Israel to the holy land, sometimes even with the expectation of a rebuilding of the temple, anyhow a restoring of Zion.

The problem I have with this vision is the interpretation of these promises. They are no promises any more, that ask to be accepted and replied by faith and obedience, but they have become predictions. In fact in this model all promises are unconditional and can be read as a map of the future, in which Israel has a specific place.

This implies that Israel will at last have another relationship with Christ than the church. For the church Christ is the Saviour and Mediator to whom you may come in faith, for Israel Christ is the Head and King, who once will gather his people, whether they wanted to be gathered or not. God has a double way of salvation: one for Israel and one for the church.

I don’t agree with the way many OT prophecies are read in this way of thinking. It is far to simple to think that those prophecies that were not yet fulfilled in a literal way will be fulfilled in a special period that can be awaited for Israel. Moreover I have the biggest problem with the way God’s covenant is broken into a double way of salvation. I believe that God’s promises are meant to be answered by faith and ask for a reaction to everybody at any time; in that respect there is neither Jew nor Greek, Paul affirms several times (e.g. Gal. 3:28). There is only one coming of Christ to be expected, one moment when even all those who are in their graves will hear the voice of the Son of Man (John 5:28). There is no separate coming of the Lord for Israel, there will be one moment when all will be judged, the quick and the dead.

There is a third model we reject in our thinking about the relationship between Israel and the church. That is a model that is presupposed in many modern publications, the model of two ways. Israel has the Torah to come to the Lord, as we have Christ as our way to come to God.

This way of approaching Israel is mainly influenced by the tragic consequences of the holocaust. How could a church, that has done and tolerated such evils towards the Jewish people, dare to tell Jews what to believe? The church should be silent, when it really faces its own history of witness to the Jewish people. We’d better respect their way of living with the Lord, as they respect our way of doing so.

The strength of this model, I would say, is that it shows us the weakness and failure of the substitution-model. However, I don’t agree with those who tell me that the Word of God for Gentiles can be found in Jesus Christ, whereas the Word of God for Jews can be found in the Torah. Jesus cannot be mistaken, when He says that He is the way, the truth and life himself. There is given no other name by which man can be saved. It is for good reason that Paul consequently went to the synagogue when he came in a new city to bring the good news of Jesus Christ. It is not for nothing that he had such a great sorrow and anguish in his heart, when he thought about his kinsmen, the brothers of his own race. He even wished to be cut off from Christ for the sake of his brothers (Rom. 9:1). He thought it to be his duty to make them jealous by his ministry to the gentiles trying to arouse his own people and save some of them (Rom. 11:14). It is still the task of the church not only to listen to Israel but also to give witness to the gospel, as the power of God for salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew then for the Gentile (Rom. 1:16).

We believe it to be of great importance to get on in our thinking about the relationship of Israel with the church, by reflecting on the character of God’s promises. These promises still stand for Israel, even when Israel does not believe in Jesus Christ at this moment. It is our opinion that a promise of the Lord is not a prediction, but a serious word of God that should be answered by faith and obedience. But our disobedience does not annul the strength of God’s promises. Even when God stretched out his hands to a disobedient people, he keeps on stretching out these hands. And there still are great promises for Israel. We don’t expect the promise of Romans 11:26 about “all Israel that will be saved” to be fulfilled in an unconditional way in a certain period of time. But still the apostle kindles our hope that there are great things to be expected.

There won’t be another way of salvation for Israel, apart from God’s grace in Jesus Christ. And I think the apostle does not even direct our attention to a special time. I think that the apostle means to reveal what is happening at this very moment already. Gentiles are coming in, because Israel rejected the gospel. And when Israel sees how Gentiles are entering, Paul hopes that they will be jealous and also confine themselves to Jesus as their Messiah. But anyhow, he says, it is in this way, that also Israel will be saved: during the period in which the fullness of the Gentiles will enter, also Israel will be saved. We only see a little bit of it, but God oversees the whole, and his promise will be fulfilled in his way. He did not abandon his covenant, and just as I am an Israelite myself, Paul says, and just as we can see that at this moment there still are 7.000 left, we can be sure, that God will bring in the whole of Israel. This is happening in the time that the full number of the Gentiles are entering.

The word of the apostle is not a prediction, but a firm affirmation of the promise for Israel, that God did not abandon his people. And there can be greater things to be expected, that even go above our imagination. There is a broadening in Romans 11 from the rest of Israel to the fullness, from their rejection as the reconciliation of the world to their acceptance that will be as life from the dead.

So I read Romans 11 as a stimulus to the witness of the church to Israel, while at the same time we keep on listening and serving, because we are not the root, but branches from a wild olive tree, that came in to share the life with the cultivated olive tree. This cultivated olive tree in my opinion is God’s covenant with Israel, from which we as Gentiles can derive our hope, sharing the hope of Israel as Paul says.

Practice of the Centre for Israel Studies

Given these presuppositions, what can we do as a centre in Holland, with one man in Jerusalem? We can build up good relations with the Jewish community, first of all in Israel. Kees Jan Rodenburg e.g. was admitted as a Christian to an institute for the education of Rabbis. When they acknowledged that we as Christians really want to listen to them, because they have something to tell us, then our experience is, that they sometimes pose questions to us. In answering these questions we can witness of the way we experience the grace of our Lord. We also find it important that we as Reformed theologians participate in interfaith dialogue, because we have our own contribution to it, having some historical experience in thinking about God’s covenant and the character of his promises.

We try to demonstrate the relevance of listening to Israel, by publishing the results of our meeting with Israel, by teaching in several institutes, giving courses about Judaism and about the relationship of the church with Israel, and also by the visiting tours of the Rev. Kees Jan Rodenburg to many churches every year. As we are not just an ecclesial organisation, we have also the opportunity to share what we receive and hear in Israel with the students in Holland. The lessons about the special relationship of the church with Israel are part of the degree programme Religion and Theology at the Ede University. Apart from this students may do a practical placement in Israel. So the cooperation between school and churches may be called fruitful.

We organize study seminars with Christian and Jewish speakers, and we invite Christians for study seminars in Israel, just to undergo the real meeting with the Jewish people and the way they live with their Lord and with the scriptures. Furthermore some churches have shown interest to be involved in a special relationship with a Jewish Messianic community in Israel. We also have contacts with Messianic Jews, because they very often feel themselves neglected by both Christians and Jews. By Christians, who do not acknowledge their roots in Israel and by Jews who suspect their Messianic brothers of betraying their Jewish tradition.

Apart from this we also are trying to find ways to be present in Israel in a relief project, because we don’t want to express our relationship only on a theological level. As you see, our aim to reach Israel with our witness has many aspects. We thank the Lord of Israel that He gives us these opportunities and we ask Him to bless our efforts, in order that his Name shall be glorified in the Netherlands as well as in Israel. That of course is the highest aim of everything we want to do.