• Covenant, Land, and City
  Finding God's Will in Palestine
  Paul Nadim Tarazi, "Covenant, land and city: finding God's will in Palestine,"
  The Reformed Journal 29 (1979) 10-16
  with commentary by the editor of The Reformed Journal
  
  http://www.svots.edu/Faculty/Paul-Nadim-Tarazi/Articles/Covenant-Land-and-City.html

Darn it, atx. I completely respect what you are saying, and in spirit I was trying to do it. I have no complaints with your removing the separate paragraphs that I placed here.

BUT... This is the first time I'm returning to them, so that I CAN summarize and comment -- just as you say (irony!). And, unfortunately you beat me to it.

I loose. (Can't blame you!)

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The LaGrange Declaration
May 1979

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As believers committed to Christ and his kingdom, we challenge the popular assumptions about biblical interpretation and the presuppositions of political loyalty held so widely by fellow Christians in their attitudes toward the conflict in the Middle East.

We address this urgent call to the church of Jesus Christ to hear and heed those voices crying out as bruised reeds for justice in the land where our Lord walked, taught, was crucified, and rose from the dead. We have closed our hearts to these voices, and isolated ourselves even from the pleading of fellow Christians who continue to live in that land.

We are anguished by the fact that countless Christians believe that the Bible gives to the modern State of Israel a divine right to lands inhabited by Palestinian people, and divine sanction to the State of Israel's policy of territorial acquisition. We believe such an understanding must be judged in the light of the whole of biblical revelation affirming that in the revelation of Jesus Christ, God's covenants find their completion. Therefore, we plead for all Christians to construct a vision of peace in the holy land which rests on the biblical injunctions to correct oppression and seek justice for all peoples.

Forthrightly, we declare our conviction that in the process of establishing the State of Israel, a deep injustice was done to the Palestinian people, confiscating their land and driving many into exile and even death. We are further grieved by the ongoing deprivation of basic civil rights to those Arabs who live today in the State of Israel.

Moreover, for thirteen years, large portions of the holy land and its people, including the West Bank of the Jordan River, Gaza, and East Jerusalem, have suffered under foreign military occupation, even as in our Lord's time. Land is seized from its inhabitants. Water for farming is rationed and restricted. Schools and universities are closed by the Israeli military authorities. And 100,000 people have been arrested in large part for speaking their convictions. Of these, some have been subjected to brutal torture, described by the US Consulate in Jerusalem as "systematic" and documented beyond any question.

We confess our silence, our indifference, our hardheartedness, and our cowardice, all too often, in the face of these dehumanizing realities.

Earnestly, we pray for a new anointing of the Spirit in our hearts, creating us into a more faithful people used to break every yoke of oppression and let the broken victims go free.

We extend our hearts to our Jewish brothers and sisters, common sons and daughters of Abraham. Like us in the United States, their corporate national spirit is being corroded by the weight of the government of the State of Israel's reliance on rampant militaristic policies and actions. We would pray for them, and with them, for a vision of security rooted in expanding channels of trust rather than escalating arsenals of armed might.

Historically and today, the State of Israel's territorial ambitions have been justified as security needs. Through the decades, this has instigated a cycle of violence and counterviolence that still continues, engulfing all sides, and leaving none unblemished from the spilling of innocent blood. We pray with the Psalmist for every bow to be broken and every spear to be snapped.

Too many of us have been lulled into the shallow hope that peace can be built in the Middle East through the US supply of more weapons, with the continued military occupation of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, and while basic human and political rights of the Palestinian people are denied. We call on Christ's followers to repent from their complicity -- through either their indifference or their uncritical embrace of US policies -- in the continuing cycle of Middle Eastern violence, accelerated by our tax dollars and our government's political decisions.

The Arab people and their land have been plundered for centuries by Western Christendom. We acknowledge and confess a continuing legacy of prejudice, evidenced today, toward Arab people, both Christian and Moslem.

We repudiate with equal and uncompromising fervor the enduring prejudice toward the Jewish people still present this day in our society and in our churches (those churches include, ironically, many of those churches with staunchly pro-Israeli biases, drawn from their versions of biblical interpretation).

Overcoming these divisions and hatreds, we affirm, as God's revelation declares, our common humanity with all.

We believe that any biblical hope for peace and security for all peoples in the Middle East must encompass some form of restitution for past wrongs. Life, peoplehood, and land are all God's gifts. These gifts enjoyed by the Jewish people in the Holy Land have been denied to the Palestinian people. Therefore, we yearn and we call for the building of a peace that includes the clear expression of political self-determination and justice for the Palestinian people. This includes leadership of their own choosing, and a sovereign state. Our firm conviction is that through asserting these rights, the way can be opened for Jews in Israel and Palestinian people to find peace and true security in that land.

We pledge ourselves, and we invite others, to an urgent devotion to see God's purpose of peace, justice, and reconciliation realized in this land. In that spirit, we call upon all Christians to join with us in reexamining assumptions regarding biblical revelation and views of the conflict in the Middle East; we commit ourselves and our resources to active and ongoing dialogue with other Christians on these questions; and, we pray that the Body of Christ will extend its life as a humble, sacrificial and unswerving servant of peace/salaam/shalom in the land where God sent his Son to live among us.
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Tom: Having lived on the West Bank among Palestinians for ten years (before and after the Uprising) and seen first hand what they have to live with and how they are treated, I have to confess that I have a very difficult time seeing the present State of Israel as the fulfillment of anything biblical.

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Originally posted by PotOnWheel

"Christian Zionism" is Unbiblical

http://kdcr.dordt.edu/cgi-bin/plumblines/get_individual_plumbline.pl?id=5704

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Tom: I'm suggesting that perhaps some have misunderstood the gift ...

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Barry: Is Israel of this day the one talked of in Old Testament?

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Is it more crucial for the U.S. how we treat this Israel than other nations?

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Could it be that the church of our Savior, Jesus Christ, is now "Israel" in some sense?

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Do you see Daniels prophesies playing out today in the news from the Middle East?

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(Bib info is great. You're free to summarize Tarazi's arguments in your words if you like POW.)

atx

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History after Jesus Christ

If Yahweh is the Lord of history, then there is a movement in the Bible: the last line is not at the same level as the first one. It is simple heresy to reverse the movement of God's work by reminding him that if he still wants us to recognize him as our God then he ought to do exactly the same things he did in the past. Yahweh is the God of history, and we are no longer living in Abraham's time, or Moses' time, or Joshua's time. We are living in the time of the lordship of Jesus Christ. This biblical premise must never be overshadowed.

In Jesus of Nazareth we find this kind of criticism of the Jews of the first century. He reminded them that we cannot lock God even in his past experiences, that he is always ahead in realizing what he means to realize. And Christians believe that the end-realization happened in Jesus Christ. Thus, what is taking place after Christ is not a history like that of the biblical revelation which culminated in Jesus. And the basis for this is the Christian belief that not only the Lord Jesus coming in glory, but also Jesus of Nazareth, son of Mary, is the eschatological being.

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34 "Salt is good, but if it loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? 35 It is fit neither for the soil nor for the manure pile; it is thrown out.
"He who has ears to hear, let him hear."

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Since Yahweh is the ultimate reality and the basic subject of theology, and since he is a moving and dynamic reality, we must be careful if we speak of the "theology of the land." For theology of the land or theology of the covenant or theology of the church are all merely different aspects of the one theology whose topic is Yahweh.

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(Jere 7:1 NIV)
This is the word that came to Jeremiah from the LORD: 2 "Stand at the gate of the LORD's house and there proclaim this message: "`Hear the word of the LORD, all you people of Judah who come through these gates to worship the LORD. 3 This is what the LORD Almighty, the God of Israel, says: Reform your ways and your actions, and I will let you live in this place. 4 Do not trust in deceptive words and say, "This is the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD!" 5 If you really change your ways and your actions and deal with each other justly, 6 if you do not oppress the alien, the fatherless or the widow and do not shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not follow other gods to your own harm, 7 then I will let you live in this place, in the land I gave your forefathers for ever and ever. 8 But look, you are trusting in deceptive words that are worthless. 9 "`Will you steal and murder, commit adultery and perjury, burn incense to Baal and follow other gods you have not known, 10 and then come and stand before me in this house, which bears my Name, and say, "We are safe"--safe to do all these detestable things? 11 Has this house, which bears my Name, become a den of robbers to you? But I have been watching! declares the LORD.

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In order to understand the place of land in the Bible we have to view it against the background of the two thousand years before Christ. In the Eastern Mediterranean area there were a number of groups of people moving around, looking for a settlement. Ancient Israel was no exception. This is clear from the fact that the issue of the promised land is dealt with specifically and intensively in the first seven books of the Old Testament, which cover the period of the settlement in Canaan, but in the following books there is either nothing about the land or only a discussion of how the people ought to behave in it.

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Moreover, the stress on the importance of the land as it emerges in the Bible was developed in the eighth, seventh, and sixth centuries before Christ when the people thought that God would never forsake the land. The land, they said, was Yahweh's gift to Abraham and his posterity, and he will stick to his promises and gifts. That line of reasoning was, of course, an effort to bind God to a human way of thinking, which is often the expression of human wishes. Then came Deuteronomy to remind the people that the possession of the land was conditional: the land had been given, not taken. It is always a gift of God, which means that it is God who is important in the whole issue. The land was only meant to be a threshold to what was more important: Jerusalem and the Temple where the glory of Yahweh abides.

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Thus the land and its importance was a specific stage at a particular time in God's plan. The movement of that plan went on. This explains why, in spite of all the parallelism drawn in the Bible itself between the Exodus and the return from Babylon, the latter was different from the former. One way in which it differed is that the realization of the ultimate goal of this second exodus did not begin with the land, then center on Jerusalem, and finally culminate in the Temple. Rather, as we can see in Ezra-Nehemiah, Haggai, and Zechariah, it began with the Temple, then extended to Jerusalem, then expanded to the rest of the "land-earth." Because of this centrifugal movement the land is no more delineated. The new horizon is the whole earth.

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The second experience (return from the exile) was not parallel to the first (exodus). Those who force such a parallelism show their willingness to impose their views and their own experience with God on his subsequent dealings with us. Luke grasped the intention of the movement here in his two-volume book in a marvelous way: everything was centered in Jerusalem, and Jesus Christ performed his exodus in Jerusalem -- not out of Jerusalem (Lk 9:31). When Jesus/Yahweh had done his last specific deed, the movement went from Jerusalem to Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth (Acts 1:8).

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Moreover, the stress on the importance of the land as it emerges in the Bible was developed in the eighth, seventh, and sixth centuries before Christ when the people thought that God would never forsake the land. The land, they said, was Yahweh's gift to Abraham and his posterity, and he will stick to his promises and gifts. That line of reasoning was, of course, an effort to bind God to a human way of thinking, which is often the expression of human wishes.

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Perhaps, Lee, God's promise to Abraham regarding the land is fulfilled in something more grand than the specific state of Israel or within its boundaries. Paul interprets the land promise in Rom. 4 as God's having promised that Abraham will inherit the "cosmos." Why would Paul say that? Didn't he understand the promise was specific and had identifiable boundaries? I think the land promise is fulfilled ultimately in something greater. This is not to break his promise, it's to fulfill it, but in a way the historical land of Palestine cannot possible comprehend.

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Originally posted by Lee Merrill

This was a covenant, though, with Abraham! Saying this won't happen is saying God breaks his word. And calling God's covenants human ways of thinking undoes the new covenant, too.

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...Then came Deuteronomy to remind the people that the possession of the land was conditional: the land had been given, not taken. It is always a gift of God, which means that it is God who is important in the whole issue.

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Originally posted by TGB

Perhaps, Lee, God's promise to Abraham regarding the land is fulfilled in something more grand than the specific state of Israel or within its boundaries. Paul interprets the land promise in Rom. 4 as God's having promised that Abraham will inherit the "cosmos." Why would Paul say that? Didn't he understand the promise was specific and had identifiable boundaries? I think the land promise is fulfilled ultimately in something greater. This is not to break his promise, it's to fulfill it, but in a way the historical land of Palestine cannot possible comprehend.

Tom

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Hebrews 11:38-40 "...the world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, and in caves and holes in the ground. These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised. God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect."

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Tom: … it remains to be argued that the small slice of real estate known as Palestine qualifies as "THE" cosmos even after the universal effects of Abraham's blessing are taken into account. These blessing are the gospel and are mediated through faith in Christ. They require nobody's statehood, or any other political entity.

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Jee: Matthew 21:43 Therefore say I unto you, The kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof.

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The following passage leads me to believe that the New Covenant with Israel did not include possession of any real estate, but rather with the nature of the law becoming internalized in the heart:

Hebrews 8:9 … they continued not in my covenant, and I regarded them not, saith the Lord. 10 For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord; I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts…

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In any case, it does not seem clear to me how we can say that Israel of today is necessarily the same thing as Abraham's seed to whom the promises were made, for we read in Galatians that believing Gentiles have now received the promises of Abraham, and no mention is made of physical land:

Gal. 3:14 That the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ; that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.

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Gal. 3:16 Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made. He saith not, And to seeds, as of many; but as of one, And to thy seed, which is Christ.

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