Messianic Salvation: National or Christological?

I suppose that many people know that Christians read as sacred Scripture both the Old Testament (i.e. the Hebrew Scriptures) and the New Testament and that they further imagine that Christians interpret the Hebrew Scriptures in the same way as do the Jews with the sole difference that Christians believe that the Messiah has already come whereas the Jews are still waiting for Him to arrive.  But, in fact, this is not so.

       The Christians interpret the Hebrews Scriptures very differently than do their Jewish neighbours.

       Firstly, Christians believe that the Hebrew Scriptures were not God’s final word to His covenant people, but were a παιδαγωγός/ paidagogos, a custodian, a guide, a tutor to lead them to Christ (Galatians 3:24).  God’s final revelation therefore was not a covenant witnessed to in Scripture but a divine Person, the Messiah.  In Judaism the Messiah is subordinated to the covenant and to the Torah, whereas the Church regards the Mosaic covenant as now obsolete and the Messiah’s new covenant as eternal.

       Perhaps equally significant is the fact that Christians regard the promised Messianic salvation different than do the Jews.

       Jews regard the promised salvation as national.  They anticipate a time when a man, the Messiah, will liberate the nation of Israel and exalt Israel to a place of political supremacy in the world so that all the nations will be subject to it.  (Orthodox Jews—or at least some of them—sharply differentiate Israel as God’s covenant people and the modern State of Israel which was established by Gentile powers in 1948.  In fact, some Orthodox Jews deny the spiritual legitimacy of the modern State of Israel.) In this view, Messianic salvation comes to all Jews by virtue of being Jews and part of the Jewish nation.  They will benefit from their nation’s supremacy in the world and from the worldly prosperity which this supremacy provides.

       Further, this traditional view of Messianic salvation expects that God in heaven will maintain Israel’s international supremacy with supernatural power, judging the destroying any nation that dares to rebel against this supremacy.

       Admittedly, a literal reading of the Hebrews Scriptures supports such a belief.  For example, a literal reading of Psalm 2 portrays the nations in an uproar and the peoples as devising a vain thing—namely tearing apart the fetters which subject them to the nation of Israel and its Messianic King.  The nations band together to cast away their cords of their subjection, but God in heaven will not permit such a rebellion—in fact He laughs at such a futile idea and scoffs at the would-be rebels and then He terrifies them in His fury.  It concludes by saying that it is better the nations should take warning and do homage, for God’s wrath is quickly kindled.

       Or consider the prophecies of Ezekiel 38-39.  This long section foresees a large coalition of rebels coming out of the remote parts of the north to invade the land of Israel and overthrow their power.  Such an invasion will provoke God’s fury and an earthquake of blazing divine anger (Ezekiel 38:18-19).  God will judge the invaders with pestilence and bloodshed, with torrential rain, hailstones, fire and brimstone (v. 27). 

       The same kind of invasion of Gentile armies and the same divine defence of Israel are portrayed in the prophecies of Zechariah.  In that day, Zechariah declares, God will strike with bewilderment and madness the horse and rider of the invading army.  (Note in passing the presupposition that the invaders use cavalry, not tanks or planes to invade.) All the invading nations of the earth will be met with plague; their flesh will rot while they stand on their feet, both their eyes in their sockets and the tongues in their mouth (Zechariah 12:4, 14:12).

       All of the nations that survive this attempted invasion will be forced to come up in pilgrimage every year to Jerusalem to celebrate with the Jews the Feast of Booths—i.e. the feast celebrating God’s gift of the land to Israel.  Any nation that refuses to make this annual pilgrimage will be punished with drought (Zechariah 14:16-17).

       All this is part of a vision of salvation as national—and in fact, as geographic, since all Israel has returned to the land of Canaan after the Babylonian exile.

       Needless to say, the Christian interpretation is very different.

       The Church has always regarded Messianic salvation as centering upon and consisting of not a glorified nation, but a glorified Messiah.  The people of Israel were to be glorified not by being part of a privileged and exalted nation, but through union with the Messiah.  That is, God glorified His Messiah, giving Him victory on the cross over sin, death, Satan and hell and by raising Him from the dead and exalting Him to heaven.  God’s people are glorified by being sacramentally united to the Messiah as part of His Body (i.e. the Church).  What is required is not belonging to the Jewish nation (i.e. “works of the Law” such as circumcision and Sabbath-keeping), but repentance and becoming Messiah’s disciple through baptism (i.e. membership in His Body).  Apostles like Paul even scandalously wrote that such membership in Messiah’s Body was open to everyone—to Gentiles as well as Jews.

       This meant that the Church regarded national identity (i.e. Jewishness) as completely irrelevant to Messianic salvation and that many Jews, by insisting that Messianic salvation was national, completely misunderstood their prophetic Scriptures and also failed to attain to this promised Messianic salvation.

       We can see at once how this means that the Christian interpretation of the Hebrew Scriptures must be completely different than the Jewish interpretation.  The Jews interpreted the prophecies literally; the Christians interpreted them spiritually.

       An example of this Christians interpretation can be found in Acts 4.  We have seen that a literal interpretation read this psalm as portraying the Gentiles nations uniting in a rebellious international coalition against Israel.  But how did the apostles interpret this?—as being about the person of Jesus.

       The apostles noted that recently “in this city [i.e. in Jerusalem] there were gathered together against Your holy Servant Jesus whom You anointed [i.e. against Jesus as the promised Messiah] both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel to do whatever Your hand and Your purpose predestined to occur” (Acts 4:27).

       Note:  Psalm 2 spoke of a coalition of “the nations/ Gentiles and the peoples” united in their rebellion against the nation of Israel (Psalm 2:1, Acts 4:25).  The apostles regarded this prophecy as being fulfilled in the coalition of Pontius Pilate and the Romans along with Herod and the peoples of Israel in their united opposition to Jesus at the end of His life.

       This was not a literal interpretation of Psalm 2, but it was the authoritative and paradigmatic interpretation of the apostles—and of the church after them.  In this interpretation we see the prophesied rebellion against the people of God was fulfilled in the historical rebellion against the Messiah of God.  The attack on Israel and God’s vindication of Israel was regarded by the apostles as fulfilled in the attack on Jesus and God’s vindication of Him through His Resurrection and Ascension.  Messianic salvation was not national, but Christological.

       This necessitated a radical Christian re-reading of the Hebrew Scriptures, as literal fulfillment was replaced by spiritual fulfillment.

       It might be objected by some that such a spiritual reading overthrows the meaning of the text and is thus illegitimate.  But it must be noted that a literal reading is now impossible.  Remember: the promised Messianic salvation was promised to occur after the return from the Babylonian exile.  The prophets were clear that after the return from exile Israel would never again be subject to exile or defeat, but that God would supernaturally defend them from such catastrophe.  That was the point of such prophecies as Ezekiel 38-39 and Zechariah 12 and 14.  But the catastrophe of 70 A.D. when Jerusalem was again defeated and the people scattered made such a literal fulfillment impossible.  Since God did not in fact defend them from catastrophe in 70 A.D. this meant that if the prophecies were true, they must have a spiritual fulfillment, not a literal one.

       Thus the choice is no longer between a literal fulfillment of the prophecies and a spiritual one, but between a spiritual one and no fulfillment at all.  When the Romans overthrew Jerusalem in 70 A.D., burned the Temple to the ground and scattered Israel to the four winds, they also (unwittingly) made a spiritual fulfillment of the prophetic promises the only one left on the exegetical market.

       The Church therefore was not perverse in reading the Hebrew Scriptures as being fulfilled spiritually in Christ and in the sacramental and eschatological salvation Christ brings.  It was God’s intent all along to clothe His promised salvation in the garments of symbol and in the ambiguity which all symbol brings with it.  For that ambiguity left room for human choices:  those in the first century could choose to serve Jesus or could choose not serve Him, the prophecies leaving room for their freedom of choice.

       It is as St. Paul said about Jesus in Acts 13:27—“those living in Jerusalem and their rulers not having understood the voices of the prophets fulfilled them by condemning Him”.

       We see therefore that as Christians we read the Hebrew Scriptures very differently from our Jewish neighbours.  For them, it is ultimately all about the glory of Israel.  For us, it is all about the glory of Jesus.