Mileage Maker

But it is not as though the word of God has failed. For they are not all Israel who are descended from Israel; nor are they all children because they are Abraham’s descendants, but: “through Isaac your descendants shall be named.” Romans 9:6-7 NASB

Not all Israel – Daniel Boyarin’s study of the invention of heresy as a way to establish religious borders has some serious implications for our understanding of the ninth chapter of Romans.  Christians have taken Paul’s words to mean that Christianity is the “new Israel,” chosen by God to replace the physical descendants of Isaac.  They make this claim because they believe that generational Israel rejected Jesus as the Christ, and therefore is heretical, that is, holds false ideas about God.  They read Paul’s words, “not all Israel” is Israel as a declaration that theological doctrine is the true determinant of faith.  This, of course, is the point Justin made when he invented the idea of heresy.  But is it Paul’s point?

We recently finished a very long and detailed study of the book of Romans (CLICK HERE).  In that exhaustive study we demonstrated that Paul’s letter is thoroughly Jewish.  While he believes there are good grounds for accepting Yeshua as the Jewish Messiah, he certainly does not believe that the Christian doctrine of the Trinity is the absolute measure of faith.  His point in Romans chapter nine is not to exclude physical descendants of Abraham on the basis of a theological tenet but rather to make room for Gentiles who have accepted God’s calling in the Messiah.  But Christian theologians since Justin have used these words to establish a borderline between Jewish believers and Christians.  That was clearly not Paul’s intention.  He writes to Jewish assemblies because he is convinced that God has never and never will abandon Israel in any sense of the word.  What he argues is that Gentiles who follow the God of Israel should also be included in the fellowship of the Kingdom, as Gentiles, not as the “new Israel.”  The exegetical problem is not Paul’s choice of words but rather the paradigm used to interpret them.  Once Christianity identified itself as something other than Jewish, it conscripted Paul’s language to support its claims; claims which Paul would never have endorsed had he seen the outcome.  Paul did not want separation.  He wanted unification and inclusion.  But religions are just as much about who does not belong as they are about who does belong, and within a few decades after Paul’s letters, the authorities on both sides of the line fortified their fences to keep each other out.

Two thousand years later we feel the results.  Religiously, we don’t belong.  We are neither orthodox Jews nor orthodox Christians.  But orthodoxy is a religious concept.  In order to recapture the centrality of community that was of such importance to Paul, we have to remove ourselves from the religious debate.  We need to redefine “Israel” along the lines of Ira Stone’s comment about Luzzatto’s program.

“We can interpret the category of foolish gentile in a way that is not an ethnic but rather a moral category.  A gentile is one who does not recognize his or her place within the chain of human responsibility.  An Israelite is one who does.”[1]

“Not all Israel is Israel.”  That is to say, those who are Israel are the ones who recognize their moral accountability for each other extended to all humanity.  The specific ethnicity doesn’t matter.  This is Paul’s argument.  Gentile and Jew are not appropriate definitions of “Israel.” But neither is the binary “Christian” and “Jew.”  What matters, what really determines the nature of “Israel,” is not birth but commitment.  And, of course, if this is true then the distinction between Jew and Christian is entirely spurious, an invention used to propagate religion.  Something, I suggest, we can do without.

Topical Index: Jew, Gentile, Christian, Israel, Romans 9:6-7

[1] Ira F. Stone, in Moses Hayyim Luzzatto, Mesillat Yesharim: The Path of the Upright, p. 172.