Whose Promised Land?
In 1948, the modern state of Israel was established, and in 1967 Jerusalem came under Israeli control after the Six Day War. Since 1948, there has been almost perpetual conflict between Israelis and Palestinians over the rightful ownership of the land. In recent years this conflict has grown ever more bloody, as one peace initiative after another has fallen apart. So whose land is it? What does Scripture say about the land, and how are Christians to think about this issue? Philip Johnston and Peter Walker have assembled a group of biblical scholars and theologians to address these and related questions in a helpful work entitled The Land of Promise.
In the first chapter of Part 1, Paul R. Williamson examines the nature of the land promise as well as the nature of its fulfillment in Genesis-Kings. He argues that although the land promise was provisionally fulfilled, it was never fully realized. The Old Testament continued to look forward to the full realization of the promise at some point in the future. In the second chapter of Part 1, T. D. Alexander explores a number of themes that are related to the promised land. He looks at the land as a place of rest, as sacred space, as that which gives identity to the people of God, as the arena where faith and obedience are tested, and as a source of divine blessing or cursing. He rightly concludes that our considerations of the land should not be reduced merely to the issue of ownership.
In Part 2, Deryck Sheriffs examines the way the land is viewed in the prophetic books. His first chapter provides a series of "snapshots" looking at the issue during different points in the history of Israel and Judah. He notes that the prophets continually connect the blessing of land with covenant faithfulness. In other words, he observes that possession of the land required covenant obedience. When Israel forsook the terms of the covenant, they could only expect the curses of the covenant, including exile from the land. In his second chapter, Sheriffs focuses in particular on Isaiah 40-55, and shows what a Christian reading of those prophetic chapters entails.
Peter Walker, author of Jesus and the Holy City: New Testament Perspectives on Jerusalem, examines the land in the New Testament. In the first chapter of part 3, Walker studies the way the land is portrayed in the writings of the Apostles. In his second chapter, he focuses specifically on what Jesus has to say about the land in the Gospels. He observes that all of these New Testament books present a new approach to the issue of the land that is more universal in scope.
Part 4 includes three chapters on the issue of the land in Christian theology. In the first chapter of Part 4, O. Palmer Robertson offers a Reformed, new-covenant understanding of the land. In the second chapter, Stephen Sizer explains the dispensationalist understanding of the land promises. He also includes a helpful survey of the relationship between dispensationalism and Christian Zionism, an issue that is discussed at much greater length in Timothy Weber's recent book, On the Road to Armageddon. In the third chapter of Part 4, Colin Chapman, the author of Whose Promised Land?, asks ten important questions in order to help Christians sort through the various issues surrounding the question of the land.
Part 5 is entitled "Views from the land today." In the first chapter of Part 5, Baruch Maoz offers the perspective of a Jewish Christian on the land. In the second chapter of Part 5, Naim Ateek offers a Palestinian Christian perspective. These two chapters forcefully reveal the deep underlying hermeneutical differences surrounding this topic. In Part 6, Carl Armerding presents a Christian mandate for stewardship of the land and Gordon Thomas offers a personal response to the chapters in the book.
As with any multi-authored collection, some of the chapters in The Land of Promise are better than others, but all of the chapters are worth reading and studying. Peter Walker's chapters, in particular, are quite illuminating. Along with works such as David Holwerda's Jesus and Israel and Colin Chapman's Whose Promised Land?, this book will help Christians come to a better understanding of an important issue. |
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