An interesting opinion piece in Haaretz this week titled
Lucky the Jews Didn’t Understand What Mike Pence Was Really Saying [access requires subscription or sign-up] suggests that a close analysis of the theological underpinnings of U.S. Vice President Mike Pence's speech to the Knesset on Monday (see
prior posting) shows that it was based on Christian supercessionist beliefs. Here are a few edited excerpts that give a flavor of the analysis:
Pence explained that, "It was here, in Jerusalem, on Mount Moriah, that Abraham offered up his son, Isaac, and was credited with righteousness for his faith in God."...
In Genesis 15 ... God takes [Abraham] outside and says that he will have as many descendants as the stars.... Abraham then "had faith in the Lord, and the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness."
[According to doctoral student Joshua Blachorsky] ... this verse was central to the thought and work of the apostle Paul, who in his letter to the Romans ... uses this verse to explain that Abraham was considered "righteous," worthy of salvation, not because of his observance of the commandments ("works") or his circumcision, the act by which he entered into a divine covenant, but because of his faith.
In Christian readings of Paul, the Jewish Torah and its commandments ... cannot bring about the promises of inheritance to Abraham. Rather, only faith can bring about salvation....
In this reading, Abraham is the father of the faithful, not the father of the circumcised....
The U.S. Vice President stood before the assembled delegates of the Jewish state ... and told them, right after talking about the Holocaust, that Abraham was not their father but that Abraham was his father.
