Is replacement theology anti-Semitic?

Abstract

In this article, the question is asked whether replacement theology is anti-Semitic – a critique that is often advanced in discourse on replacement theology. In answering this question, the definitions of antisemitism and replacement theology are revisited and the question whether replacement forms part of the hermeneutic of the New Testament writers is addressed. Subsequently, the core of what is actually replaced is determined, as well as the hermeneutic principles that distinguish replacement and anti-replacement approaches. It is found that the notion of replacement is inevitable, in the way in which writers of the New Testament convey concepts such as fulfilment, messianism, eschatology and newness. It is argued that at heart, the criteria of identity and covenant membership are replaced in the new eschatological epoch in Christ, which exclude race, biological descent or ethnicity and thus cannot be anti-Semitic.