Starting at the end of the 16th century, however, some of Calvin’s theological descendants, mostly Puritans, took a different approach. They took seriously the Reformation’s emphasis on the plain sense of the Bible and therefore distinguished between promises made to Jewish Israel and those made to the new Gentile Israel. 

Is the Reformed tradition historically supersessionist? That is, have theologians following the Calvinist trajectory always taught that the church supersedes Israel without remainder, such that the non-Jesus-accepting people of Israel and that little territory on the Mediterranean are no longer theologically significant?

One might think so. After all, John Calvin wrote that because the Jews did not “reciprocate” as willing partners in God’s covenant, “they deserve to be repudiated” (Institutes 4.2.3). There is only one covenant for Calvin, so the new covenant did not replace the old; yet the church is the new recipient of the Old Testament promises made to Jewish Israel. There is no continuing corporate election of Israel, only election of individual Israelites who accept Christ (Institutes 3.21.6). After Jesus’s resurrection, then, there is no future for the people or land of Israel that makes any theological difference.

Puritan Interpretations

Starting at the end of the 16th century, however, some of Calvin’s theological descendants, mostly Puritans, took a different approach. They took seriously the Reformation’s emphasis on the plain sense of the Bible and therefore distinguished between promises made to Jewish Israel and those made to the new Gentile Israel. Thomas Draxe (d. 1618) was a disciple of the Puritan theologian William Perkins. He used Romans 11 and biblical prophecies to argue that Jesus would not come again until “the dispersed Jews generally converted to Christianity,” but that in the meantime they “would be temporally restored into their own country, [would] rebuild Jerusalem, and have a most reformed, and flourishing, church and commonwealth.”

In his commentary on the book of Revelation, published posthumously in 1611, Thomas Brightman (1562–1607) wrote that Jews were the “kings of the east” in Revelation 16:12 who would destroy Islam. He was certain they would be restored to the land of Zion: “Shall they return again to Jerusalem? There is nothing more sure: the Prophets plainly confirm it, and beat often upon it.”

Henry Finch (c. 1558–1625), a member of Parliament and strong advocate of Puritan causes, rejected the ascription of all Old Testament promises to the Gentile church:

Where Israel, Judah, Zion, Jerusalem, etc. are named in this argument, the Holy Ghost meaneth not the spiritual Israel, or church of God collected of the Gentiles, no nor of the Jews and Gentiles both (for each of these have their promises severally and apart), but Israel properly descended out of Jacob’s loins.

Joseph Mede (1586–1638) was another Puritan sympathizer who advanced an oft-repeated Puritan conviction that the Jews would be restored to the land of Israel after the destruction of the Turkish empire. One of Mede’s students was John Milton, who in Paradise Regained (1670) wrote of the people of Israel’s return to their ancient land:

Yet He at length, time to himself best known,
Remembering Abraham, by some wondrous call
May bring them back, repentant and sincere,
And at their passing cleave the Assyrian flood,
While to their native land with joy they haste,
As the Red Sea and Jordan once he cleft,
When to the Promised Land their fathers passed.
To his due time and providence I leave them.

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