Christ is King
An unfortunate dispute has taken place at the Daily Wire regarding Israel and Palestine, which has resulted in nasty accusations, dubious theology, and the absurd claim that “Christ is King” is an ‘antisemitic’ proposition. The inner dispute between all parties involved is not my main interest here. Rather, I wish to expand on the meaning of Christ's Kingship and clarify what the teaching authority of Jesus Christ has both affirmed and condemned regarding the complex relationship between the Jewish people and the Church.
It is simply not the case that a proposition can be antisemitic. A proposition is a statement that has a truth value of either true xor not-true (i.e. false). The proposition “Christ is King” is a true proposition. Scripture reveals that Jesus Christ fulfills the Davidic kingdom:
He will be great and will be called Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give him the throne of David his father, and he will rule over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end1.
Furthermore, His Kingship is universal:
Then Jesus approached and said to them, “All power in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age.”2
In 1925, Pope Pius XI in his encyclical Quas Primas, instituted the Feast of Christ the King, which we celebrate on the last Sunday of each liturgical year. Quas Primas is as relevant today as it was in 1925. In his explanation for the encyclical, Pope Pius XI wrote that the “manifold evils in the world were due to the fact that the majority of men had thrust Jesus Christ and his holy law out of their lives; that these had no place either in private affairs or in politics” and “that as long as individuals and states refused to submit to the rule of our Savior, there would be no really hopeful prospect of a lasting peace among nations.”
Furthermore, Quas Primas explains the “nature and meaning of this lordship of Christ”. The “universal dominion of our Redeemer” consists of a “threefold power”, namely the authority and power of legislator, judicator, and executor. Within this authority and power is “the right of rewarding and punishing all men living, for this right is inseparable from that of judging. Executive power, too, belongs to Christ, for all must obey his commands; none may escape them, nor the sanctions he has imposed.”
That Christ has authority over every creature is universally held by all Christians. His jurisdiction is over every single human being. The accusation that “Christ is King” is ‘antisemitic’ comes from the Accuser himself. However, is there a more charitable reading of this seemingly absurd claim?
It was easily demonstrated that no proposition can be antisemitic and thus the proposition “Christ is King” cannot be antisemitic. Nevertheless, there are situations where a person can express a true proposition uncharitably and with evil intent. For example, harassing an obese individual about his weight for the purpose of belittling that person illustrates a serious character flaw in the person doing the belittling. It isn't that the proposition “he is obese” is false, but rather the intent of the person expressing it is evil. Clearly in this example the intent is not the good of the obese individual. Similarly, it is possible there exist some bad actor saying “Christ is King” without believing it simply to annoy, irritate, and anger a particular individual or group of individuals. In such an instance the person professing the proposition in vain will answer to God. In this hypothetical case the primary issue isn't antisemitism or bigotry, but blaspheming the Lord.
The issue of Jesus Christ's Kingship has also brought forth the discussion of the complex relationship between the Jewish people and the Church, particularly two prominent theological positions that are equally in error. The two theological errors are supersessionism (aka replacement theology) and dual-covenant theology.
The Pontifical Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews describes supersessionism as the theological opinion that “the promises and commitments of God would no longer apply to Israel because it had not recognised Jesus as the Messiah and the Son of God, but had been transferred to the Church of Jesus Christ which was now the true ‘new Israel’, the new chosen people of God.”3 In Nostra Aetate, the Magisterium reminds us,
…that the salvation of the Church is mysteriously foreshadowed by the chosen people's exodus from the land of bondage. The Church, therefore, cannot forget that she received the revelation of the Old Testament through the people with whom God in His inexpressible mercy concluded the Ancient Covenant. Nor can she forget that she draws sustenance from the root of that well-cultivated olive tree onto which have been grafted the wild shoots, the Gentiles. Indeed, the Church believes that by His cross Christ, Our Peace, reconciled Jews and Gentiles, making both one in Himself.
The Catholic Church affirms the persistent status of the Jews as the “chosen people” of God. The “well-cultivated olive tree” Saint Paul is speaking of is Israel and the “wild shoots” are the Gentiles. Saint Paul explains how the natural branches were broken off the tree of Israel because of their unbelief and the wild shoots were grafted in their place4. And yet Saint Paul also explains Israel can be grafted back on the tree:
And they also, if they do not remain in unbelief, will be grafted in, for God is able to graft them in again. For if you were cut from what is by nature a wild olive tree, and grafted, contrary to nature, into a cultivated one, how much more will they who belong to it by nature be grafted back into their own olive tree.5
Here Saint Paul is reminding the Gentiles of the origin of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Nostra Aetate explains that the Church,
keeps ever in mind the words of the Apostle about his kinsmen: "theirs is the sonship and the glory and the covenants and the law and the worship and the promises; theirs are the fathers and from them is the Christ according to the flesh" (Rom. 9:4-5), the Son of the Virgin Mary. She also recalls that the Apostles, the Church's main-stay and pillars, as well as most of the early disciples who proclaimed Christ's Gospel to the world, sprang from the Jewish people.
Returning to an earlier point about bad actors shouting “Christ is King” in vain, self-servingly or simply to boast, Saint Paul speaks directly to them:
Do not boast against the branches. But if you do boast, remember that you do not support the root, but the root supports you.6
As with any heresy, supersessionism contains some truth within it for there is a sense in which the New Covenant “supercedes” the Old Covenant and the Church is the “new Israel”. More precisely, the New Covenant fulfills the Old Covenant. In fact, Israel was chosen precisely to prepare for the coming of Jesus Christ.
Pope Benedict XVI explains that when the Torah is read together with the entire Old Testament canon it becomes clear that “Israel does not exist simply for itself, in order to live according to the ‘eternal’ dispositions of the Law—it exists to be a light to the nations.”7 Israel exists to prepare for the coming of the Messiah who will bring salvation to all the nations, breaking all boundaries so that “the God of Israel will be acknowledged and revered by all the nations as their God, as the one God.”8 It is in this sense Jesus is the new Jacob and the Patriarch of a universilized Israel (i.e. the Church or “new Israel”).
Now there is a sense in which the Law of Christ “supercedes” the Law of Moses. The numerous laws of the Torah were specifically given to Israel to keep the nation separate from all other pagan nations—the Sabbath, dietary laws and such were a political order given by God to the biological descendents of Jacob (i.e. Israel). This was the covenant God made with Israel so they could be a shining example to all nations of how to worship the One True God. In order to understand how the Law of Christ “fulfills” the Law of Moses, it is important to understand two types of law in the Hebrew law codes.
The two types of law are casuistic law and apodictic law. Casuistic law “stipulates legal arrangements for very specific juridical issues.”9 As Pope Benedict XVI explains “these juridical norms emerged from practice and they form a practically oriented legal corpus that serves to build up a realistic social order, corresponding to the concrete possibilities of a society in a particular historical and cultural situation.”10 The apodictic law “is pronounced in the name of God Himself”11 and consist of the universal divine law (e.g. the Ten Commandments). In other words, the casuistic law is the temporal application of the apodictic or divine law. The apodictic law is universal, but the casuistic law is up to the reasoned response of each nation to create its own judicial, social, and political order consistent with the apodictic law.
The 613 Commandments of the Torah is a particular kind of casuistic law and social order given specifically to Israel. By emphasizing and strengthening the apodictic law, Jesus has given all other nations the freedom to structure any kind of political order consistent with the apodictic law. Jesus has shown us the true essence of the Torah:
…“You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment. The second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.”12
Saint Paul sees the return to the Mosaic law as ignoring the essence of the Living Torah. The “Torah of the Messiah” fulfills the Torah of Moses by universalizing the People of God. As Pope Benedict XVI explains,
Israel can now embrace all the peoples of the world; the God of Israel has truly been brought to the nations, in accordance with the promises, and has now shown that he is the God of them all, the one God.
The flesh—physical descent from Abraham—is no longer what matters; rather, it is the spirit: belonging to the heritage of Israel's faith and life through communion with Jesus Christ, who “spiritualizes” the Law and in so doing makes it the path to life for all. In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus speaks to his people, to Israel, as to the first bearer of the promise. But in giving them the new Torah, he opens them up, in order to bring to birth a great new family of God drawn from Israel and the Gentiles.13
There is also one more important way the New Covenant fulfills rather than “supercedes” the Old Covenant. By offering Himself on the cross, His sacrifice completely fulfills the sacrificial system of the Mosaic law. Jesus Christ is the eternal sacrifice. In summary, Pope Benedict XVI explains that “there is really no ‘substitution’ but a journey that eventually becomes one reality. And yet this entails the necessary disappearance of animal sacrifices, in place of which (‘substitution’) the Eucharist occurs.”
We can see there is a sense the Church is the new and universal Israel and how the Mosaic law is fulfilled by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross. These truths are not the errors contained in supersessionism. The error is suggesting that the promises and commitments of God no longer apply to Israel, that the Old Covenant is null and void, and that the Jewish people have no special place in the Economy of Salvation. The Catechism of the Catholic Church affirms the continued validity of the Old Covenant:
The Old Testament is an indispensable part of Sacred Scripture. Its books are divinely inspired and retain a permanent value, for the Old Covenant has never been revoked.
We do not know the specific role the Jewish people will play in the Economy of Salvation, but the Magisterium hints that it will be the corporate conversion of the Jewish nation to Christ. The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches,
The glorious Messiah's coming is suspended at every moment of history until his recognition by "all Israel", for "a hardening has come upon part of Israel" in their "unbelief" toward Jesus. St. Peter says to the Jews of Jerusalem after Pentecost: "Repent therefore, and turn again, that your sins may be blotted out, that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that he may send the Christ appointed for you, Jesus, whom heaven must receive until the time for establishing all that God spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets from of old." St. Paul echoes him: "For if their rejection means the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance mean but life from the dead?" The "full inclusion" of the Jews in the Messiah's salvation, in the wake of "the full number of the Gentiles", will enable the People of God to achieve "the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ", in which "God may be all in all".
We wait “in company with the Prophets and the same Apostle, the Church awaits that day, known to God alone, on which all peoples will address the Lord in a single voice and serve him shoulder to shoulder".14
Now that supersessionism has been ruled out as a licit theological option, we must also avoid the error of dual-covenant theology. Dual-covenant theology is essentially the idea there are two parallel paths to salvation, namely a path through the Old Covenant and a path through the New Covenant. Sacred Scripture, Sacred Tradition, and the Magisterium is clear there is only one path to salvation—there is only one mediator between God and the human race15 and “there is no salvation through anyone else, nor is there any other name under heaven given to the human race by which we are to be saved”.16 Furthermore, Saint Paul is clear the Mosaic law is not salvivic:
We, who are Jews by nature and not sinners from among the Gentiles, [yet] who know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Christ Jesus that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law no one will be justified.17
Saint Paul is essentially saying that Israel is not saved or justified before God through the Mosaic covenant. He is not refering to all “works” of any kind since he also teaches to “…work out your salvation with fear and trembling”.18 More specifically, by “works of the law”, Saint Paul is referring to circumcision, which is the sign of the Old Covenant. Saint Paul's interlocutor in Galatia wanted to bring Gentile Christians back into the Mosaic law. When Saint Paul says “if you have yourselves circumcised, Christ will be of no benefit to you.”19, he is saying that Gentile Christians do not need to be circumcised in order to be saved. In fact, in the New Covenant baptism is “the circumcision of Christ”20. Baptism is the means through which we receive justification.
We should never compromise the Truth for anything, let alone out of fear of being called bad names. Nor should we conclude that any criticism of the secular state of Israel or Jewish people in general is necessarily malicious. And yet, we also do not want to let such criticism lead us into serious theological errors. We have a moral obligation to pronounce “Christ is King” to all of Israel and to every Gentile and we should always do so with charity and love.
Luke 1:32-33 NABRE
Matthew 28:18-20 NABRE
The Gifts and Calling of God Are Irrevocable, 17
Romans 11:17 NABRE
Romans 11:23-24 NABRE
Romans 11:18 NABRE
Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth (Doubleday, 2007), 116
Ibid
Ibid, 123
Ibid
Ibid
Matthew 22:37-40 NABRE
Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth (Doubleday, 2007), 101
Nostra Aetate, 4
1 Timothy 2:5 NABRE
Acts 4:12 NABRE
Galatians 2:15-16 NABRE
Philippians 2:12 NABRE
Galatians 5:2 NABRE
Colossians 2:11 NABRE