Is Christian Zionism a heresy?

[Michie]

By now it is old news that Tucker Carlson is splitting the MAGA world by interviewing a racist podcaster who praises Hitler and Stalin. But few if any have challenged Carlson’s claim in that softball interview that Christian Zionism is “Christian heresy.”

Christian Zionists say that Jews have a right to a homeland, and that this right is supported by the Bible. They say this support is not only in the Hebrew Bible (which Christians call the Old Testament) but also in the New Testament.

The apostle Paul, for example, wrote that “the gifts and calling of God are without repentance” (Romans 11:29). Paul was writing about Jews who had not accepted Jesus as messiah. He wrote that “as touching the election, they are beloved for the fathers’ sake” (Romans 11:28). In other words, they were still the Chosen People because of the promises He made to the patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac and Jacob). And the “gifts” he gave to them were irrevocable.

What did Paul mean by “the gifts”? In the first century Jewish thinkers such as Philo the philosopher and Josephus the historian wrote of God’s gifts to the Jewish people, and the land as one of the greatest of those gifts.

Continued below.

Is Christian Zionism a heresy?

Christian Zionists say that Jews have a right to a homeland, and that this right is supported by the Bible

www.christianpost.com

 

[BobRyan]

I don't think one needs to be a dispensationalist or zionist to affirm the right of Israel to exist as a nation. All nations have a right to exist. And America has the right to form alliances with cooperating nations such as Israel.

That is true even from the POV of one like me who is not a dispensationalist. It is just basic Christianity to form friendships, alliances and agreements and then stick to them.

 

[jas3]

Yes, it is.

The apostle Paul, for example, wrote that “the gifts and calling of God are without repentance” (Romans 11:29). Paul was writing about Jews who had not accepted Jesus as messiah. He wrote that “as touching the election, they are beloved for the fathers’ sake” (Romans 11:28). In other words, they were still the Chosen People because of the promises He made to the patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac and Jacob).

That conclusion is fine, with the qualification that the "chosen people" who continue in their rejection of the Messiah have been cut off (Rom. 11:20). They are only grafted back in if they abandon their unbelief (Rom. 11:23). Verse 29 doesn't mean they still have a "land promise," it means that God is merciful in continuing to give unbelieving Jews the chance to repent and be grafted back in by following the example of the Gentiles (vv. 30-32).

What did Paul mean by “the gifts”?

Huh, if only there were another few verses after that one where he elaborated on what he meant.

As for the relationship between dispensationalism and Zionism, whether or not you can point to a couple of writers in the prior two centuries (still very late in Christian history), it's undeniable that the idea that God has simultaneous contradictory covenants (dispensationalism) and the idea that God's promise of land under the Old Covenant continues today (Zionism) go hand in hand, and they both really entered mainstream evangelical thought at the same time and through the same influences.