The ancient Orthodox answer to the Replacement Theology debate
Scroll through social media for even a few minutes, and you are bound to stumble into a fierce theological debate. One of the most heated and frequently misunderstood arguments in American Evangelicalism today concerns the relationship between Israel and the Christian Church. The core question is blunt.Did the Church replace Israel in God's plan? To make sense of this, we need to look at the dominant view popular in the West today, and contrast it with the ancient, radically different approach of the Eastern Orthodox Church. The view most widely circulated in American Protestant circles is rooted in a system called Dispensationalism. This theology argues that God has two completely separate plans for two distinct groups: the physical nation of Israel and the Christian Church. According to this theory Old Testament covenants (like those given to Abraham or Jeremiah) apply strictly to the physical nation of Israel and are entirely literal (e.g., guaranteeing specific geographical bor...