Future Israel: Why Christian Anti-Judaism Must Be Challenged

This is a great book, somewhat long but my main issue isit is not just the future of Israel that gives reason for 'Christian' Anti-Judaism to end. Nevertheless it is an important work and should be read by everyone.

This is a unique and useful book for several reasons. Barry Horner is no Christian dispensationalist. One might expect him to share the supersessionist views of many Reformed writers. He does not. His theology is brilliantly Christian and yet is able to integrate the canonical role of Israel. By canonical I mean the over-arching story of the whole Bible. The way some Christians explain God's plan virtually ignorning Israel's past, present, and future role, is disturbing. People who read the Bible without doctrinal presuppositions that Israel is obsolete and replaced by the church always conclude from the Old and New Testament that Israel has a continuing role. A word to Steven Pospisil whose review on here really is ludicrous: Your comment is so one-sided it is hilarious. A non-reader of the Bible would assume you are presenting all the information. You are not. You say, "nowhere in scripture does it speak of two plans for the Jews and the Gentiles." Have you read Acts? There is a mission to the Jews (Peter, James) and to the Gentiles (Paul). You may assume the distinction died after the book of Acts but that would be an assumption. Further, Romans 11:2, 25-29, suggests that Israel remains the elect people of God. This in no way conflicts with the Bible's insistence that Jesus is Messiah and faith in him is needed for redemption. Good theologies can integrate complex issues and don't need to ignore polarities. Derek Leman derek4messiah.wordpress.com

This extraordinary work superbly exposes Christian Antisemitism (although the author politely employs the term "Anti-Judaism"), relating the history of gentile usurpation of the heritage of the Jewish people, how this mindset became popular with Augustine's amillennialism and how reformers like Luther and Calvin accepted the doctrine of supercessionism or replacement theology and how it has persisted in Reformed theology up to the present day. Jewish Christians are given a voice and the author holds the attitude of the Apostle Paul up as an example, in particular his love for Israel as expressed in the letter to the Romans chapters 9 to 11. In essence, the book seeks answers from scripture on whether Israel as a distinct nation in its own land has a future according to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Those who learn from history already know the answer, based on the country's miraculous rebirth in 1948 and its survival against overwhelming odds in a neighborhood of unspeakable evil. The aforementioned question is not a mere academic issue. There are those who still hold to the doctrine of supercessionism/replacement theology, often in a veiled form. They are contributing to the spread of the new Antisemitism as recorded by Phyllis Chesler and by Bernard Harrison in his book The Resurgence of Anti-Semitism. Horner's scholarly investigation is excruciatingly detailed and steeped in the terminology of Reformed theology so that the lay reader may find it hard going in certain parts, but overall it is accessible to the persistent. He writes in a spirit of humility and seems to bend backwards to accept the bona fides of contemporary Christian Antisemites when pointing out their errors. Often I find his style too polite, even when he demonstrates the indifference, antagonism and spiteful attitude of the aforementioned to the State of Israel and the Jewish people. Only once, he exclaims with exasperation: "Are we talking of the same God here?" Chapter One contrasts the attitudes of Augustine and Calvin with those of the Philosemitic Horatius Bonar and Charles Spurgeon, Chapter Two dissects the centuries of Christian Anti-Judaism from the early period through the reformation to the 21st century, and the next looks at Christian Anti-Judaism in the USA with reference to people like Gary Burge, O Palmer Robertson and provides a reply to the arrogant Open Letter To Evangelicals issued by Knox Theological Seminary in Fort Lauderdale. Anti-Judaism in the UK is discussed in Chapter Four, with particular reference to the dhimmi writers Colin Chapman and Stephen Sizer, whilst the next one provides an overview of the history of Zionism - including the Christian variety - and the rebirth of the state of Israel. More information on the history of Christian Zionism is available in the books Standing With Israel by David Brog and The Politics of Christian Zionism 1891-1948 by Paul Charles Merkley. Chapters Seven and Eight look at the hermeneutics of Christian

This work is scholarly and practical. It is a thorough critique on a subject that is of supreme importance. Excellent research material regardless of one's eschatological convictions!

The State of Israel has a political problem: many people want to destroy it and are teaching their children that it would be a good idea to destroy it. And some of this antipathy to Israel is religious in nature, as Barry Horner shows in this fine book. There is a review of some of the foundations of Christian anti-Zionism, including the works of Tertullian, Saint Augustine and Saint John Chrysostom. In more recent times, we see that John Calvin was no friend of the Jews, although Martin Luther was surely far worse. As a matter of fact, one of the few Saints who showed no special animus towards the Jews was Anselm. We read about some of the expulsions of Jews in Europe. England expelled its Jews in 1290 and Jews were not permitted to return until the time of Oliver Cromwell, in the seventeenth century. Jews were expelled from France in 1306 and 1394, and from Spain in 1492. Some of these Jews fled to Portugal, only to be expelled from there. And, of course, there was anti-Semitism in Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries. There still is. Next, we see some examples of contemporary anti-Judaism in the United States: Albertus Pieters, Loraine Boettner, Gary Burge, Donald Wagner and O. Palmer Robertson. And there are some corresponding examples of anti-Judaism in the United Kingdom: Colin Chapman, N. T. Wright, Stephen Sizer, Steve Motyer, Peter Walker, and Kenneth Cragg. Horner also refers to James Parkes, who quite properly explained that the Balfour Declaration did not give Levantine land to the Jews: it simply recognized a historic right of Jews to be in that land (and rejected any claim by Arabs to have a sole right to live there). There is some interesting material about Theodore Herzl, including an account of his meeting with the Pope (the Pope said the Church would assist neither religious nor secular Jews in returning to the land of Israel). And there's some interesting history of the early portion of the British Mandate: "by 1930, 57% of Jewish land holdings had been either swamp land or never before been cultivated." And we also see Britain's shameful behavior in 1935 to 1948, in the final years of the Mandate. Horner very helpfully tells us about the excellent work of Bat Ye'or, which may give some perspective to what Chapman, Sizer, and others have to say. Much of this book dealt with detailed theological topics that I, as a Pagan, found uninteresting. But I was intrigued by the extent to which many opponents of Israel used Biblical sources as an obvious excuse to attack Israel, often in a particularly hypocritical manner. And, of course, a major question for me has not been what excuses people have used to oppose human rights for Jews, but the extent to which they have done so. Some visitors to the Levant in 1839, Bonar and M'Cheyne, are quoted as saying that "the professing Christians here - Greeks, Armenians, and Roman Catholics - are even more bitter enemies to Jews than Mahometans; so that in time of danger,