One of the criticisms that Dispensationalists have with Reformed Theology is we advocate replacement theology. Of course it would leave some of us still new to reformed theology wondering what exactly was replacement theology. Douglas Van Dorn addresses replacement theology in his book, Covenant Theology: A Reformed Baptist Primer:
The claim is made that we are teaching that the church replaces Israel in God's plan of redemption. In its most extreme forms, this charge associates covenant theology with anti-Semitism. This is a harmful caricature.
There is nothing here that can even be implied that covenant theology hates Jews. Instead, we have argued that God loves all people, and that he saves whomever he wants. This salvation began with Jewish people, as Jesus and all of the Apostles were...Jews. The problem is that those who make such a claim have failed to understand what national Israel was in the first place. As Paul says, it was the vehicle through which the promises of God to the world would come (Rom. 9:1-5). It was a type. It was real and physical, but it pointed beyond itself.
Curiously, the idea of Israel has never been completely bound to racial lines. This was typified early on in the Exodus when a mighty hose-a mixed multitude (Ex. 12:38)-left Egypt. From almost the beginning, there was no such thing as a pure Jew, as there was mixing and merging with the nations around them even as early as Joseph's sons Ephraim and Manasseh, both of an Egyptian mother. Moses' children were half Midianite. Then we have Gentiles like Rahab and Ruth who not only become Israelites (even though they are not Jewish), but even end up in the linage of Jesus.
The most important thing of all in regard is Jesus himself. Jesus becomes True Israel in his obedience. This can be seen in the way Matthew describes the life of Jesus as being born under the threat of death by a mad king bent on killing all the newborn babies two years and younger, going down to Egypt, coming out through baptism, going into the wilderness to be tempted for a period of "forty" and finally ascending to a mountain to give the law. Jesus is also a Vine, (John 15:1ff), an image which Isaiah used to describe Israel (Isa. 5:1-7). We could list other OT links between Jesus and Israel as well. It seems to me it is failure of epic propositions to miss this, thereby causing us to remain in types an shadows when the light is right before our eyes.
What about the nation of Israel today? Covenant theology continues to recognize that there is such a thing as ethnic Israel, just as it recognizes that Kenyans, Swedes, and Koreans are their own national groups...What covenant theology refuses to do is go back to types and shadows, thereby replacing Christ who is The Temple and True Israel and True Sacrifice, with a national entity that will re-establish a sacrificial system in a man-made temple. Animals, physical temples, and nations have fulfilled their purposes in the plan of redemption, for they all find their end focus in Jesus who brings a new heavenly kingdom along with his spiritual temple and spiritual sacrifices that we offer to Christ.
No, this isn't replacement, but fulfillment. Thus, someone has written, "It is therefore, not the case of one people replacing another people, but the case of one covenant replacing another covenant when the promise reveals by the Covenant of Grace from Genesis 3:15 on were accomplished, when the Old Covenant ended and a large group made of Jews and non-Jews entered into the New Covenant. One must refuse the opposition between Israel and the Church and rather emphasize the scope of the Covenant of Grace in the Old Testament (Israel) and the scope of the Covenant of Grace in the New Testament (every nation). The Gentiles do not replace Israel, but were added as inheritors of the blessings of Israel. The opposition that is found in the New Testament is between the Old and New Covenants and not between Israel and the Church, which is rather an artificial opposition coming from Dispensationalism."
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