The Land of Promise: Biblical, Theological and Contemporary Perspectives
Philip Johnston & Peter Walker (eds)
IVP, 2001, 240 pp.
The Israeli/Palestinian conflict is constantly in our headlines. To whom should the land belong? What does the Bible say? The promised land is a difficult issue. There is much said about it in the Old Testament, but very little in the New Testament. Why is that?
This book comes out of a conference of evangelical Christians, and seeks to address these issues. The Tyndale Fellowship Biblical Theology Study Group has put together a book of papers presented to their conference in 1999. In the end it involves questions of how to interpret the Old Testament in the light of its fulfilment in Jesus. We want to have a sound biblical theology which does not jump straight from the Old Testament to us today, bypassing Jesus. The question really is this: How does the coming of Jesus fulfil the promises of God about the land? How should we read the Old Testament promises in the light of Jesus and the new covenant?
This book answers the issues from the Bible. The first three chapters of six (each with two papers) look at the Old Testament promises to Abraham, the partial fulfilment of the promises in Israel’s history, the prophecies about Israel’s restoration after the exile, and then the fulfilment in the New Testament.
Part four examines Christian theological answers to the big questions raised today about the promised land. It includes the best part of the book—a clear biblical theology of the land—and answers well the kinds of questions I raised at the beginning of this review. There is also a brilliant exposition and shocking exposé of a popular view in (especially) American Christian circles, which believes that the land belongs to Israel alone today. The final chapters did not add a lot and tended to go over old ground. They included interesting angles from an Israeli Jewish-Christian pastor and a Palestinian Christian pastor.
I found about half these chapters very helpful. They gave a good explanation of what all the Scriptures say on the promised land, and how it is fulfilled in Jesus and the new covenant. There were new things that I learned, and that would surely be the case for most readers. Some chapters were more readable than others; some more biblical, some more pertinent in answering the contemporary issues. Having ten different authors necessarily meant differences in standard and opinion. The notes on contributors are a great help in discerning where they were coming from. The nature of the book is fairly scholarly, and not always an easy read. And there was some repetition of themes. The different authors makes at times for a jarring effect—they come from different angles and stances, particularly later in the book.
My own question goes like this. Romans 11 insists on there still being a special place for the Jews as God’s ancient chosen people (see my article ‘Making Jews Jealous’, in Briefing #282, p. 31). Thus, Jesus fulfils the promises about God’s people in the Old Testament, broadening them to all the nations, and yet the gospel is still first for the Jew. If that is the case for the people, what then of the land? It is clearly broadened in the New Testament to all the world. But is there still within that fulfilment a special place too for the land? I found that only two papers addressed this issue. Both were in the affirmative, and I disagreed with the reasoning in both. The other papers rightly saw the fulfilment of the promises in Jesus, but did not go on to discuss how they develop from there. It seems to me that the New Testament sees the fulfilment in Jesus of the Temple theme for instance as continuing in the church—the new Temple of God (Eph 2:19-22). The new place of God is “in Christ”. We come in to that place by hearing and believing the gospel. The consequence of the place of the land in the Bible is surely evangelism. How do people now enter the new heavens and earth? By hearing the gospel and putting their trust in Jesus. How do we build the new Temple? By sharing the gospel. I was disappointed not to see this in the book. It seemed to me that its biblical theology could have been done even better with this consideration.
However, anyone interested in the issue of the promised land would do well to read this book. I have not read many books on the topic, but as yet could not recommend a better book than this.
