The Old Covenant: Revoked or Not Revoked?

More and more Catholics, Protestants and Jews are seeking to overturn 2000 years of Christian teaching concerning the Old Covenant. Although the Church has always taught that the Old Covenant is revoked, what we are now being told by theologians, clerics and lay persons in high places is that it has not been revoked. These critics, who refer disparagingly to the traditional doctrine by such names as “supersessionism,” “replacement theology,” “revocation theology,” etc., are all seeking for one thing – to establish the position that: a) the Jews retain legal possession of the Old Covenant; b) that this covenant is independent of, but runs concurrently with, the New Covenant; and c) most hold that the Old Covenant is the means by which God provides salvation to the Jews. We are hearing this new teaching from almost every quarter of the religious world and it is one of the fastest growing problems in the Church today. At its root, it emasculates the saving Gospel of Jesus Christ, and does so for the people who need it the most – the Jews.

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Benedict XVI on Jesus, the Church, and the Jews

Benedict XVI on Jesus, the Church, and the Jews

The election of Joseph Ratzinger as Pope Benedict XVI in 2005 gave the world a Bishop of Rome coherent with, but significantly different from, his predecessor. Pope John Paul II and Cardinal Ratzinger were close colleagues in the Vatican for many years. As head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Ratzinger was point man on several important doctrinal disputes that historians will consider crucial to John Paul’s papacy—liberation theology, faith and reason, and reproductive morality in particular. Ratzinger was primarily responsible for the Catholic Catechism. The two functioned almost as one mind.

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