The Church and Israel

At the heart of the Dialogue with Trypho is Justin’s claim that the Church gathered from the nations is now the true Israel — the heir of the promises, the people of the new and eternal covenant — and that the Mosaic Law was given for a season that has passed. This is one of the earliest and most influential statements of Christian supersessionism, and it must be read with care: its sources, its scriptural logic, its genuinely difficult passages, and the long shadow it cast. This file treats Justin’s theology of the Law and of Israel, set out fairly and weighed honestly.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Church Father)

A Topic, Not a Slogan

Few questions in the early Church are as easy to handle badly as the relation of the Church to Israel, and the Dialogue with Trypho sits near the source of the whole tradition. This collection treats Justin’s teaching here as a topic requiring care, not a slogan to be either cheered or condemned. That means setting out what Justin actually argues, in his own terms and with his own texts; distinguishing the theological substance (which the Church holds) from the polemical tone and the harsher particular claims (which the Church need not, and in their worst forms should not, endorse); and naming honestly the troubled history that the adversus Iudaeos literature, of which Justin is an early monument, helped to shape. The aim is neither to sanitize Justin by pretending his hard passages are not there, nor to reduce him to those passages and miss the serious theology and the genuine engagement with Jewish exegesis that fill the work. The reader is owed both the argument and the difficulty, held together.

“The True Israelitic Race”

Justin’s governing claim is stated without ambiguity. The Christians, he tells Trypho, “are the true Israelitic race, and the spiritual, and that of Judah, and of Jacob, and of Isaac, and of Abraham” — the seed promised to the patriarchs, now realized in those who believe in Christ from among all nations (Dialogue with Trypho 11, 135; ANF 1). The covenant given through Moses was, on Justin’s reading, never the final word: the prophets had already spoken of a “new covenant” (Jeremiah 31) which would supersede the old, and an eternal law and a new lawgiver were promised (Dialogue 11–12, 24; ANF 1). With Christ that new and eternal covenant has come, open now to all, and those who receive it — Jew and Gentile alike — are the people of God, while the badge of physical descent and the observance of the ceremonial Law no longer constitute membership in the Israel of promise. The Gentiles who believe have not displaced a continuing Israel so much as, in Justin’s argument, become the Israel that the believing remnant of the patriarchs and prophets always truly was.

The Purpose of the Law

The linchpin of the argument is Justin’s account of why the ceremonial Law was given. He distinguishes the eternal moral law — to love God and neighbor, binding on all people in all ages, and already kept by the righteous before Moses (Abraham, Melchizedek, and the rest, who were uncircumcised and did not keep the Sabbath) — from the particular ordinances of circumcision, Sabbath, sacrifice, and the food-laws, which were imposed on Israel for specific and limited reasons (Dialogue with Trypho 19–23, 43–47; ANF 1). These reasons, as Justin reads the prophets, were chiefly two: to set Israel apart and restrain its proneness to idolatry, and to foreshadow, as types, the realities to come in Christ — circumcision foreshadowing the circumcision of the heart, the Passover lamb foreshadowing the crucified Christ, the offering of fine flour foreshadowing the Eucharist (Dialogue 40–43; ANF 1; see Eucharistic Realism in Justin). Some observances Justin reads more sharply still, as given “on account of the hardness of your hearts” and the people’s sins (Dialogue 18–22; ANF 1). With the coming of the realities, the types have served their purpose; the Law’s ceremonial requirements are no longer binding, and Justin holds that a Jewish Christian may keep them out of habit if he wishes, provided he does not require Gentiles to do so or trust in them for salvation (Dialogue 47; ANF 1) — a notably moderate position on a question that divided the early Church.

Reading Justin’s Supersessionism with Care

Justin’s Dialogue is one of the foundational texts of the Christian claim to be the new Israel, and any honest account must hold several things together rather than choosing one and suppressing the rest.

First, the theological substance is integral to the New Testament itself: the claim that in Christ a new covenant is established and the Gentiles are grafted into the people of God runs through Paul (Romans 9–11; Galatians 3–4) and Hebrews, and Justin is developing, not inventing, it. To excise it would be to excise the apostolic faith.

Second, Justin’s tone and some particular arguments are hard, and the Dialogue contains passages — above all his reading of the recent Jewish defeat and exclusion from Jerusalem as divine punishment for the rejection of Christ (Dialogue with Trypho 16; ANF 1) — that contributed to a long and bitter tradition of Christian anti-Judaism. Per the repository’s methodology, such claims are reported, attributed to their source, and not endorsed as the Church’s reading of the historical sufferings of the Jewish people; the adversus Iudaeos tradition that Justin helped found has been a cause of real harm, and modern Orthodox reflection on Judaism does not rest on his polemical historiography.

Third, the Dialogue is not only polemic. Justin grants that the believing patriarchs and prophets were saved, prays earnestly for Trypho and his companions, treats his interlocutor as a serious and learned man, and parts from him in friendship and mutual goodwill (Dialogue 142; ANF 1). Romans 11 — that God has not cast off his people, and that the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable — sets a limit within the New Testament itself on how any supersessionism may be read, and a responsible reception of Justin reads him within that limit rather than past it.

[Disputed: the assessment of Justin’s Dialogue in the history of Jewish–Christian relations. Some scholars read it as relatively restrained for its genre and era and as evidence of genuine engagement with Jewish exegesis (Skarsaune, The Proof from Prophecy); others situate it within the harmful adversus Iudaeos tradition and stress the damage of its supersessionist framing. Both the theological argument and its troubled reception are reported here; neither is collapsed into the other.]

Circumcision of the Heart and the Older Righteous

A revealing strand of Justin’s argument is his appeal to the righteous who lived before Moses and pleased God without the ceremonial Law. Abraham was justified and called the friend of God before he was circumcised; Melchizedek, the priest who blessed Abraham, was uncircumcised; Adam, Abel, Enoch, Lot, Noah — all were righteous without circumcision, the Sabbath, or the sacrifices (Dialogue with Trypho 19, 23, 27, 43; ANF 1). From this Justin draws the conclusion that the ceremonial Law cannot be necessary for righteousness in itself, since the holiest of the patriarchs were righteous without it; it was given later, to a particular people, for particular reasons of discipline and foreshadowing. The “circumcision” that always mattered, and matters now, is the circumcision of the heart of which the prophets spoke — the inward turning to God that Abraham had and that the gospel now opens to all nations (Dialogue 12, 15–16, 43; ANF 1). This appeal to the pre-Mosaic righteous is theologically important: it lets Justin argue not that God changed his mind or abolished a good thing, but that the eternal way of righteousness — faith and the love of God — was always the same, and that the ceremonial Law was a temporary provision within that larger and unchanging economy. It is also, notably, an argument from the Jewish Scriptures themselves, conducted on the common ground Justin shares with Trypho, rather than an appeal to Christian authority over against the Law.

The Pure Sacrifice and the New People

The positive core of Justin’s theology of Israel is the conviction that the promises have not failed but have been fulfilled and opened to all. The pure sacrifice foretold by Malachi to be offered “in every place” among the nations (Malachi 1:11) is, for Justin, the Eucharist now offered by the Church everywhere — the sign that the worship of the true God has gone out from one people to all peoples (Dialogue with Trypho 41, 117; ANF 1). The new lawgiver promised by the prophets is Christ; the new and eternal covenant is his; the circumcision that now matters is of the heart; and the people of God is now a people gathered “from every race of men” (Dialogue 11, 117; ANF 1). This is the second-century Church’s account of its own identity in relation to the Scriptures and the people of Israel — an account the Orthodox Church receives in its theological substance (the Church as the new covenant people, the Old Testament fulfilled in Christ) while reading its harder polemical edges in the chastened light of the whole New Testament witness and of the long history that followed.

References

Justin, Dialogue with Trypho 11–24, 40–47, 117, 135, 142. In Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 1; and trans. Falls, rev. Halton, ed. Slusser.
Barnard, L. W. Justin Martyr: His Life and Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967.
Skarsaune, Oskar. The Proof from Prophecy. Leiden: Brill, 1987.