Contents
Introduction
It is well known that most Church Fathers were not particularly friendly toward Jews and Judaism. The early centuries of Christianity were not an age of ecumenism. Born as the messianic fulfillment of biblical Judaism, in its own self-understanding, Christianity quickly became an independent religion that had to establish its theological legitimacy in a world dominated by two great rivals: the ancient faith of Israel and the many religions of the Greco-Roman world. In this struggle, Judaism was naturally the more formidable theological adversary, for it shared the same Scriptures and the same God. The Church Fathers had to persuade all—Jews and Gentiles alike—not only that Jesus was the long-awaited Jewish Messiah, but that he came to fulfill the Jewish religion and—in their view—to bring it to its appointed end.
In the eyes of the Fathers, this was a zero-sum game: if Christianity was true, then post-Christic Judaism was not. If Christianity fulfilled Judaism, then Judaism was now obsolete, and the only legitimate path for Jews was to abandon Judaism and convert to Christianity. The rivalry between the two faiths, combined with the painful experience of Jewish opposition to the early Church, led to what later became known as supersessionism: the idea that the ecclesia had supplanted the synagoga as God's people. The Fathers saw the destruction of the Jerusalem temple and exile of the Jews from Judea as the "proof" that God abandoned them, and they expected this exile to be permanent. The prophecies of the land were now spiritualized as ecclesial or heavenly promises.
And yet even amidst the undeniable supersessionism of the Church Fathers, many of them anticipated the salvation of Israel in the future. Their reading of Scripture—especially St. Paul's Letter to the Romans, chapters 9–11—led them to believe that the Jewish people would turn to Christ near the end of human history. Some went further still, expecting that the Jews would also be restored to their ancestral land. It is this remarkable and often overlooked strand of patristic thought that the present article sets out to document.
The present article surveys the views of the Fathers and a few medieval Doctors on the future redemption of Israel. It proceeds chronologically, allowing readers to trace the development—and the remarkable consistency—of this hope across more than a millennium of Christian thought.
St. Justin Martyr (c. 90–165)
In his First Apology, Justin Martyr holds that the tribes of Israel will be gathered and restored at the time of the Second Coming, as predicted by the prophet Zechariah. He quotes Zechariah 12 at length, reading its vision of eschatological mourning over the one "whom they have pierced" as pointing to Israel's recognition of Christ at his return:
What the tribes of the Jews will say and do when they see Him coming in glory has been thus foretold by Zechariah the Prophet: "I will command the four winds to gather the scattered children; I will command the north wind to carry them, and the south wind not to strike against them. And then in Jerusalem there shall be great lamentation, not the lamentation of mouths or of lips, but the lamentation of the heart; and they shall rend not their garments, but their hearts. Tribe by tribe they shall mourn, and then they shall look on Him whom they have pierced; and they shall say: 'Why, O Lord, have You made us wander from Your way? The glory which our fathers blessed, has for us been turned into shame'" [Zech 2:6; 12:10-12; Joel 2:13; Isa 63:17]. (First Apology 52, ANF 1:180)
In the Dialogue with Trypho, Justin tells Trypho that he expects the earthly Jerusalem to be rebuilt in the future as foretold by the prophets. Remarkably, this hope is held not in spite of Christianity but as an integral part of it: Justin explicitly claims that many Christians share his millenarian expectation. The rebuilt Jerusalem will be inhabited by all believers in Christ, composed of both Jews and Gentiles.
[Trypho:] Do you really admit that this place, Jerusalem, shall be rebuilt; and do you expect your people to be gathered together, and made joyful with Christ and the patriarchs, and the prophets, both the men of our nation, and other proselytes who joined them before your Christ came? … Then I [Justin] answered… I and many others are of this opinion, and [believe] that such will take place… I and others… are assured that there will be a resurrection of the dead, and a thousand years in Jerusalem, which will then be built, adorned, and enlarged, [as] the prophets Ezekiel and Isaiah and others declare. (Dialogue with Trypho 80, ANF 1:239)
…John, one of the apostles of Christ, who prophesied, by a revelation that was made to him, that those who believed in our Christ would dwell a thousand years in Jerusalem. (Dialogue with Trypho 81, ANF 1:240).
St. Irenaeus (c. 125–202)
Like Justin, Irenaeus believed that a restored people of God from all the nations would be gathered into an earthly millennial kingdom in the land of Israel, according to the words of the prophets. For Irenaeus, this was not an optional or peripheral belief but an integral part of his anti-Gnostic theology: the goodness and permanence of the material world demands that God's promises to Israel be fulfilled on earth, not merely in some spiritual or heavenly realm. He marshals the prophets Ezekiel and Jeremiah as witnesses:
Ezekiel also says: "Behold, I will open your tombs, and will bring you forth out of your graves; when I will draw my people from the sepulchres, and I will put breath in you, and you shall live; and I will place you on your own land, and you shall know that I am the Lord" [Ezek 37:12]. And again the same speaks thus: "These things says the Lord, I will gather Israel from all nations where they have been driven, and I shall be sanctified in them in the sight of the sons of the nations: and they shall dwell in their own land, which I gave to my servant Jacob. And they shall dwell in it in peace [Ezek 28:25-26] … Now I have shown a short time ago that the church is the seed of Abraham … [and of] those that shall be saved from all the nations, Jeremiah says: "Behold, the days come, says the Lord, that they shall no more say, The Lord lives, who led the children of Israel from the north, and from every region where they had been driven; He will restore them to their own land which He gave to their fathers" [Jer 23:7-8]. (Against Heresies 5.34.1, ANF 1:563-64)
Irenaeus also believed that Jerusalem would be rebuilt according to the words of the prophets. In a striking convergence of earthly and heavenly realities, he insists that the earthly Jerusalem will be rebuilt "after the pattern of the Jerusalem above"—the prophetic promises are not dissolved by their heavenly archetype but rather fulfilled through it:
Then again, speaking of Jerusalem, and of Him reigning there, Isaiah declares, "Thus says the Lord, Happy is he who has seed in Zion, and servants in Jerusalem. Behold, a righteous king shall reign, and princes shall rule with judgment" [Isa 32:1]. And with regard to the foundation on which it shall be rebuilt, he says: "Behold, I will lay in order for thee a carbuncle stone, and sapphire for thy foundations … and all thy children shall be taught of God, and great shall be the peace of thy children; and in righteousness you shall be built up" [Isa 54:12-14]. And yet again does he say the same thing: "Behold, I make Jerusalem a rejoicing, and my people [a joy]; for the voice of weeping shall be no more heard in her, nor the voice of crying…. For as the days of the tree of life shall be the days of the people in thee; for the works of their hands shall endure" [Isa 65:18-22]. (Against Heresies 5.34.4, ANF 1:564-65)
Irenaeus is equally emphatic in his warning against allegorizing these prophecies into purely heavenly or spiritual blessings. He regards such allegorization as a failure of interpretive consistency and, implicitly, as a concession to Gnostic spiritualism. The prophecies, he insists, mean what they say—they speak of an earthly Jerusalem and a real, bodily kingdom:
If, however, any shall endeavour to allegorize [prophecies] of this kind, they shall not be found consistent with themselves in all points, and shall be confuted by the teaching of the very expressions [in question]… And Jeremiah the prophet has pointed out, that as many believers as God has prepared for this purpose, to multiply those left upon earth, should both be under the rule of the saints to minister to this Jerusalem, and that [His] kingdom shall be in it, saying, "Look around Jerusalem towards the east, and behold the joy which comes to thee from God Himself. Behold, your sons shall come whom you have sent forth: they shall come in a band from the east even unto the west, by the word of that Holy One, rejoicing in that splendour which is from thy God. O Jerusalem, put off thy robe of mourning and of affliction, and put on that beauty of eternal splendour from thy God…" [Bar 4:36-5:9]. (Against Heresies V.35.1, ANF 1:565-66)
Now all these things being such as they are, cannot be understood in reference to super-celestial matters; "for God," it is said, "will show to the whole earth that is under heaven thy glory." But in the times of the kingdom, the earth has been called again by Christ [to its pristine condition], and Jerusalem rebuilt after the pattern of the Jerusalem above, of which the prophet Isaiah says, "Behold, I have depicted thy walls upon my hands, and thou art always in my sight." (Against Heresies V.35.2, ANF 1:566)
Tertullian (c. 155–c. 220)
Tertullian expected that at his final coming Christ would turn in favor to the Jewish people. Writing in the context of a polemic against Marcion—who rejected the Old Testament entirely—Tertullian affirms the continuity of God's purposes for Israel, including the race of Abraham, who "by and by is to acknowledge him":
… for Christ is the proper and legitimate High Priest of God. He is the Pontiff of the priesthood of the uncircumcision, constituted such, even then, for the Gentiles, by whom He was to be more fully received, although at his last coming [Christ] will favour with His acceptance and blessing the circumcision also, even the race of Abraham, which by and by is to acknowledge Him. (Against Marcion 5.9, ANF 3:448)
In a commentary on the Parable of the Prodigal Son, Tertullian argues, contrary to the majority of the interpreters of his time, that the elder son represents the Christian and the younger prodigal son the Jew who has "squandered God's substance" and is "a beggar in alien territory." Tertullian holds that the Jews would be restored in the end and urges Christians to eagerly anticipate and rejoice over the coming restoration of Israel, which is intrinsically tied to Christian hope:
For it will be fitting for the Christian to rejoice, and not to grieve, at the restoration of Israel, if it be true, (as it is), that the whole of our hope is intimately united with the remaining expectation of Israel. (On Modesty 8, ANF 4:82)
Origen (c. 185–c. 253)
More than anyone else, it is Origen and his thoroughgoing allegorical exegesis of Scripture who effectively laid to rest the early Christian hope of a restored earthly kingdom of God, including a rebuilt Jerusalem. By spiritualizing the land promises and the millennial prophecies, Origen set the dominant exegetical tone for the centuries that followed. Yet even Origen was not able to eliminate the hope for Israel's salvation, which is too plainly embedded in St. Paul (Rom 11) to be allegorized away. In two separate commentaries, he affirms that all Israel will one day be called again by God and saved:
For the Church was called between the two callings of Israel; that is to say, first Israel was called, and afterwards when Israel had stumbled and fallen, the Church of the Gentiles was called. 'But when the fullness of the Gentiles has come in, then will all Israel, having been called again, be saved' [Rom 11:25-26]. (Commentary on the Song of Songs, ACW 26:252)
Now indeed, until all the Gentiles come to salvation the riches of God are concentrated in the multitude of believers, but as long as Israel remains in its unbelief it will not be possible to say that the fullness of the Lord's portion has been attained. The people of Israel are still missing from the complete picture. But when the fullness of the Gentiles has come in and Israel comes to salvation at the end of time, then it will be the people which, although it existed long ago, will come at the last and complete the fullness of the Lord's portion and inheritance. (Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans on Rom 11:12, ACCS NT 6:291)
St. Cyril of Jerusalem (c. 315–386)
In his Catechetical Lectures, a foundational text of early Christian catechesis, Cyril of Jerusalem provides a detailed account of the events leading up to the Second Coming. Central to his eschatology is the coming of the Antichrist, who will first deceive the Jews by posing as their expected Messiah before his true character is revealed. Implicitly, Israel's eventual recognition of the true Christ is the dark mirror-image of this deception:
[The antichrist] shall seize for himself the power of the Roman Empire, and shall falsely style himself Christ. By this name Christ he shall deceive the Jews, who are expecting the Anointed; and he shall seduce the gentiles by his magical illusions. 12. This aforementioned Antichrist is to come when the times of the Roman Empire shall have been fulfilled and the end of the world is drawing near… and by the lying signs and wonders of his magical deceit having beguiled the Jews, as though he were the expected Christ, he shall afterwards be characterized by all kinds of crimes of inhumanity and lawlessness… (Catechetical Lectures 15:11-12, NPNF2 7:107-8)
In the same lecture series, Cyril describes what Israel's recognition of Christ will look like at the moment of his return:
But what is the sign of His coming … ? "And then will appear," He says, "the sign of the Son of Man in heaven" [Matt 24:30]. The true sign, Christ's own, is the Cross. A sign of a luminous cross precedes the King, showing Him who was formerly crucified; and so the Jews, who before had pierced Him and plotted against Him, on seeing it, will mourn tribe by tribe, saying: "This is He who was struck with blows, this is He whose face they spat upon, this is He whom they fastened with bonds; this is He whom of old they crucified and held in derision." (Catechetical Lectures 15:22, NPNF2 7:111)
St. John Chrysostom (c. 347–407)
A word of caution is warranted before citing Chrysostom. His eight homilies "Against the Judaizers" (Adversus Iudaeos) are among the most virulently anti-Jewish texts in all of patristic literature, filled with language that has rightly been condemned by the Church. They stand as a sobering reminder of how dramatically the Fathers' animus toward the Jews could diverge from the genuine theological hope they nonetheless retained for Israel. That Chrysostom, of all people, still affirmed Israel's eschatological salvation makes the patristic consensus documented in this article all the more remarkable. In his Homilies on Matthew, he anticipates that Elijah will appear as the forerunner of Christ's second coming specifically for the sake of the salvation of the Jews:
What is this reason [for the coming of Elijah]? That when He is come, He may persuade the Jews to believe in Christ, and that they may not all utterly perish at His coming. Wherefore He too, guiding them on to that remembrance, saith, "And he shall restore all things;" that is, shall correct the unbelief of the Jews that are then in being… Since when He says, "Elijah indeed comes, and will restore all things," He means Elijah himself, and the conversion of the Jews which is then to take place. (Homilies on the Gospel of Matthew 57, NPNF1 10:352)
In his Homilies on Romans, Chrysostom addresses Romans 11:26 directly and is unequivocal in his confidence that the Jews will attain salvation, grounding his assurance not in speculation but in the prophetic word of Isaiah, whose testimony he treats as decisive:
[Regarding the fact that the Jews] shall believe and be saved, [Paul] brings Isaiah to witness, who cries aloud and says, "There shall come out of Zion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob." [Isa 59:20; Rom 11:26] … "For this is my covenant with them, when I will take away their sins" [Romans 11:27] ... If then this has been promised, but has never yet happened in their case, nor have they ever enjoyed the remission of sins by baptism, certainly it will come to pass. (Homilies on the Epistle to the Romans 19, NPNF1 11:493)
St. Jerome (c. 345–420)
Jerome is one of the most prolific biblical commentators among the Fathers, and his prophetic commentaries contain several striking passages on the eschatological destiny of Israel. In his commentary on Joel, he engages with Joel 3:1-3, a passage in which God announces his restoration of Judah and Jerusalem as the prelude to a final judgment of the nations: "When I restore the fortunes of Judah and Jerusalem, I will gather all the nations and bring them down to the valley of Jehoshaphat, and I will enter into judgment with them there, on account of my people and my heritage Israel, because they have scattered them among the nations, and have divided up my land." Jerome reads this prophecy as pointing to the Day of Judgment, when a remnant of the Jewish people, together with Gentile believers, will have been gathered:
We will attempt if possible to relate the same things to the Day of Judgment. When believers have been saved in Mount Zion and Jerusalem, and when the remnant of the Jewish people who have believed with the apostles and through the apostles have been called, at that time after the Lord restores the captivity of Judah and Jerusalem, who had come to preach sight to the blind and release to the captives, and he liberated those who confess the Lord and who dwell in the church, in which there is the vision of peace, he will gather together all nations that were unwilling to believe and he will bring them down into the valley of Josaphat. (Commentary on Joel 3:1-3, ACT Minor Prophets 2:292)
Commenting on a passage in the prophet Micah (2:11-13) that speaks of God gathering the remnant of Israel like sheep in a fold, Jerome interprets this as a prophecy of the eschatological ingathering of both Israel and the Gentiles into one united people under Christ:
At the consummation of the world, I shall come in my majesty with the angels and the other powers, and then I shall gather you all, O Jacob; then I shall assemble into one the remnants of Israel, and I shall unite my people equally with the people of the Gentiles into one sheepfold (Commentary on Micah 2:11-13, ACT Minor Prophets 1:60)
St. Ambrose of Milan (c. 339–397)
Commenting on the episode where Miriam became leprous after she complained about Moses' Ethiopian wife (Num 12:1-15), Ambrose interprets the scene allegorically: Miriam's complaint represents the Synagogue, and the Ethiopian wife represents the Church gathered from the Gentile nations. Crucially, just as Miriam was eventually healed from her leprosy, so the Synagogue will ultimately be delivered from its unbelief — a liberation brought about precisely through the faith of the Church. [1]
This murmuring refers to the type of the Synagogue, which is ignorant of the mystery of the mystery of that Ethiopian woman, that is the Church gathered out of the nations, and murmurs with daily reproaches, and envies that people through whose faith itself also shall be delivered from the leprosy of its unbelief, according to what we read that: "blindness in part has happened unto Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in, and so all Israel shall be saved" [Rom 11:25-26]. (Letters 63.57, NPNF2 10:464-65)
Ambrosiaster (c. 380)
The anonymous Latin commentator known as Ambrosiaster, whose commentary on the Pauline Epistles was enormously influential in the medieval West (often mistakenly attributed to Ambrose himself), offers a remarkably warm and hopeful reading of Romans 11:28. Despite the gravity of Israel's rejection of Christ, Ambrosiaster insists that God's love for Israel, rooted in the memory of the patriarchs, remains the guarantee of their ultimate restoration:
However seriously the Jews may have sinned by rejecting the gift of God… nevertheless, because they are the children of good people, whose privileges and many benefits from God they have received, they will be received with joy when they return to the faith, because God's love for them is stirred up by the memory of their ancestors. (Commentary on Paul's Epistles, ACCS NT 6:299)
St. Augustine (354–430)
Augustine receives more extended treatment here than any other figure in this survey, and rightly so: he is the most theologically influential writer in the Western tradition, and his positions on Israel shaped Catholic thought for over a millennium. His views are also among the most nuanced: while he is firmly supersessionist regarding the land—reading the promises to Canaan as now fulfilled in the Church—he is equally firm that God has not abandoned the Jewish people and that their salvation at the end of history is certain. The following passages, drawn from the City of God, the Psalms commentary, and a sermon, illustrate the range and depth of his thinking on this question.
In the City of God, St. Augustine comments on the Lord's promise to give the land of Canaan to Abram and to his descendants "forever" (Gen 13:14-17), acknowledging that Israelites still remain in the land in his own day, apparently confirming the reliability of God's promise:
Certainly no one questions that only that land is meant which is called Canaan. But that saying, "To you will I give it, and to your seed forever," may move some, if by "forever" they understand "to eternity." But if in this passage they take "forever" thus, as we firmly hold it means that the beginning of the world to come is to be ordered from the end of the present, there is still no difficulty, because, although the Israelites are expelled from Jerusalem, they still remain in other cities in the land of Canaan, and shall remain even to the end; and when that whole land is inhabited by Christians, they also are the very seed of Abraham. (City of God 16.21, NPNF1 2:323)
Augustine reads the prophet Hosea as anticipating Israel's return to God and Christ:
"'And afterward shall the children of Israel return, and seek the Lord their God, and David their king, and shall be amazed at the Lord and at His goodness in the latter days' [Hos 3:5]. Nothing is clearer than this prophecy, in which by David, as distinguished by the title of king, Christ is to be understood." (City of God 18.28, NPNF1 2:375–76)
Still in the City of God, Augustine discusses how in the last days Elijah will lead the Jews to faith:
… in the last days before the judgment the Jews shall believe in the true Christ, that is, our Christ, by means of this great and admirable prophet Elias who shall expound the law to them.... When, therefore, he is come, he shall give a spiritual explanation of the law which the Jews at present understand carnally, and shall thus "turn the heart of the father to the son," that is, the heart of the fathers to the children… (City of God 20.29, NPNF1 2:448)
Augustine adopted a literal approach to Zech 12:9-10, which anticipates that all nations will rise up against Jerusalem, only to be destroyed by the Lord—a final battle that will lead to the salvation of Israel "when they look on me whom they have pierced."
For in that day the Jews—those of them, at least, who shall receive the spirit of grace and mercy—when they see Him coming in His majesty, and recognize that it is He whom they, in the person of their parents, insulted when He came before in His humiliation, shall repent of insulting Him in His passion. (City of God 20.30.3, NPNF1 2:450)
Augustine continues by speculating on the order in which the events of the final judgment:
"And at or in connection with that judgment the following events shall come to pass, as we have learned: Elias the Tishbite shall come; the Jews shall believe; Antichrist shall persecute; Christ shall judge; the dead shall rise; the good and the wicked shall be separated; the world shall be burned and renewed." (City of God 20.30.5, NPNF1 2:451).
In his Expositions on the Psalms, Augustine associates the last verse of Psalm 14 with Paul's hope that "all Israel will be saved":
"Who will give salvation to Israel out of Sion?" [Ps 14:7]. Who but He whose humiliation ye have despised? is understood. For He will come in glory to the judgment of the quick and the dead, and the kingdom of the just: that, for as much as in that humble coming "blindness has happened in part unto Israel, that the fulness of the Gentiles might enter in," in that other should happen what follows, "and so all Israel should be saved" [Rom 11:25-26]. For the Apostle too takes that testimony of Isaiah, where it is said, "There shall come out of Sion He who shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob" [Isa 59:20]: for the Jews, as it is here, "Who shall give salvation to Israel out of Sion?" "When the Lord shall turn away the captivity of His people, Jacob shall rejoice, and Israel shall be glad" [Ps 14:7]. (On the Psalms, NPNF1 8:47)
Augustine also reflects directly on the relationship between the Church and the Jewish people, explicitly rejecting the idea that the Church has permanently supplanted Israel. Their temporary setting-aside serves a providential purpose—it has brought blessings to the Gentile Church—but it is not the final word. In a sermon that anticipates the modern Catholic rejection of hard supersessionism, Augustine affirms that their time of exile will come to an end:
What! have we supplanted the Jews? No, but we are said to be their supplanters, for that for our sakes they were supplanted. If they had not been blinded, Christ would not have been crucified; His precious Blood would not be shed; if that Blood had not been shed, the world would not have been redeemed. Because then their blindness hath profited us, therefore hath the elder brother been supplanted by the younger, and the younger is called the Supplanter. But how long shall this be? The time will come, the end of the world will come, and all Israel shall believe; not they who now are, but their children who shall then be." (Sermons on New Testament Lessons 72.4-5, NPNF1 6:472).
St. Cyril of Alexandria (378–444)
The great Alexandrian patriarch and defender of the title "Theotokos" at the Council of Ephesus (431) also expected the future salvation of Israel. Though Cyril is primarily remembered as a dogmatic theologian, his biblical commentaries reveal a consistent and carefully reasoned eschatological hope for Israel. Commenting on Romans 11:26, he draws on Isaiah to confirm Paul's promise:
Although it was rejected, Israel will also be saved eventually, a hope which Paul confirms by quoting this text of Scripture [Isa 59:20-21]. For indeed, Israel will be saved in its own time and will be called at the end, after the calling of the Gentiles. (Explanation of the Letter to the Romans, ACCS NT 6:298–99)
In his allegorical commentary on Genesis, Cyril finds a richly suggestive type of Israel's eschatological reconciliation with Christ in the reunion of Jacob and Esau (Gen 33:4). Just as Esau, who had every reason to be hostile after being cheated of his birthright, embraced his brother upon his return from Haran, so Israel—estranged for a season while the nations are called—will at last be reconciled with Christ at the end of time. Cyril also cites Hosea 3:4-5, a classic proof-text for Israel's future turning to God:
At the end of time our Lord Jesus Christ will be reconciled with Israel, his ancient persecutor, just as Jacob kissed Esau after his return from Haran. No one who listens to the words of holy Scripture can actually doubt that with the passing of time Israel also will have to be received again into the love of Christ through faith… [Cyril quotes Hos 3:4-5] … While Christ, the Savior of us all, gathers believers from the nations, Israel is deserted, since it has no law to elect its leaders, and it cannot offer to the divine altar the sacrifices prescribed by the laws. It therefore awaits Christ's return from his action of converting the nations, so that he may receive it as well and unite it with the law of his love to the others. See how Jacob, who rejoiced in the generation of his children and in his numerous herds of sheep, came back from Haran and received again Esau into his friendship. In time Israel itself will be converted after the calling of the nations and will admire these riches in Christ. (Glaphyra on Genesis 5.3, ACCS OT 2:225)
Cyril also read Jesus's words in Matt 23:38–39—"you will not see me again, until you say, 'Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord'"—as anticipating the coming salvation of Israel:
"For when 'the fullness of the nations comes in' and they believe in Christ, then the Jews who believe after these things see the beauty of the divine nature of Christ." (Fragment 264, ACCS NT 1b:185)
St. Prosper of Aquitaine (c. 390–c. 455)
A close associate of Augustine and a fierce defender of his theology of grace, Prosper of Aquitaine addresses the mystery of Israel's temporary rejection in the context of a broader theological reflection on why God grants saving grace to some and withholds it from others. In his treatise The Call of All Nations on the problem of the salvation of infidels, St. Prosper of Aquitaine reflects on the election, temporary unbelief, and future outpouring of grace upon Israel:
… It is not given to any human study or genius to explore the decree and design according to which God . . . has consigned all in unbelief, that He may have mercy on all [Rom 11:32] . . . . He delayed for centuries, while He was educating Israel, to enlighten the countless peoples of infidels; and now He allows that same Israel to go blind till the universality of the Gentiles enter the fold. He allows so many thousands of this people to be born and die to be lost, when only those whom the end of the world will find alive will attain salvation. (The Call of All Nations 1.21, ACW 14:69)
But He has shown His mercy for all men in a far more extraordinary manner when the Son of God became the Son of man… Since then the glory of the race of Israel shines not in one people only… The promised heritage falls no longer to the sons of the flesh, but to the sons of the promise. The great parsimony in bestowing grace which in the past ages befell all other nations, is now the lot of the Jewish people. Yet, when the fulness of the Gentiles will have come in, then a flood of the same waters of grace is promised for their dry hearts… (The Call of All Nations 2.9, ACW 14:103)
Theodoret of Cyrus (c. 393–c. 458)
Theodoret of Cyrus, the prolific exegete and defender of Chalcedonian Christology, comments on Romans 11:25 in his characteristic careful and literal manner. Like Augustine, he reads the coming of Elijah as the proximate cause of Israel's final conversion, citing Jesus's own words in the gospels as confirmation:
And he [Paul] urges them not to despair of the salvation of the other Jews; for when the Gentiles have received the message, even they, the Jews, will believe, when the excellent Elijah comes, bringing to them the doctrine of faith. For even the Lord said this in the sacred gospels: 'Elijah is coming, and he will restore all things' [Matt 17:11]. (Commentaries on the Epistles of Saint Paul, in Joel A. Weaver, Theodoret of Cyrus on Romans 11:26, 88-89)
Cassiodorus (c. 485–c. 585)
Commenting on Psalm 103, Cassiodorus connects v. 9 ("He will not always be angry, nor will he be wroth for ever") with Romans 11:25-26. The Senator-turned-monk whose monastic foundations helped transmit classical and Christian learning through the Dark Ages, Cassiodorus finds an eschatological reference to Israel's conversion even in the Psalter. The promise that God will "not always be angry" leads him directly to Paul's assurance of Israel's final salvation:
This verse can be applied also to the Jewish people, who we know are to be converted at the world's end. On this Paul says: 'Blindness in part has happened in Israel, that the fullness of the Gentiles should come in, and so all Israel should be saved' [Rom 11:25-26]. (Explanation of the Psalms, ACW 53:22-23)
St. Gregory the Great (540–604)
In his Moralia on Job, the vast moral commentary composed in Constantinople that shaped medieval spirituality for centuries, Gregory reads Job's joyful banquet with his brothers and sisters after the conclusion of his ordeals (Job 42:11) as a prefiguration of the reconciliation of Israel and the Church:
In the end of this world [the Church] receives those things that are her own, twofold, when, having received the Gentiles in full number, all Judæa also which shall then be found, agrees to run to her faith. For hence it is written, Until the fulness of the Gentiles should come in, and so all Israel should be saved [Rom 11:25-26]. Hence the Truth also says in the Gospel, Elias shall come, and he shall restore all things [Matt 17:11]. For now the Church has lost the Israelites, which she was unable to convert by preaching, but when, at that time, on the preaching of Elias, she gathers together as many as she shall have found, she receives as it were in fuller measure that which she has lost. (Moralia on Job, Part VI, 35.14.24, in Parker/Rivington, Vol. 3, 677-78)
But these words which are subjoined attest that they rather announce the conversion of the Jewish people at the end of this world. For it is added; There came to him all his brethren, and all his sisters, and all that knew him before, and did eat bread with him in his house [Job 42:11]. For then do His brethren and sisters come to Christ, when as many as shall have been found of the Jewish people are converted. For from that people He took the substance of His flesh. His brethren and sisters therefore then come to Him, when from that people which is united to Him by kindred… flock to Him with devout congratulation through the knowledge of the Faith. They then set forth in His house a banquet of most crowded festivity, when they no longer despise Him as a mere man, and, mindful of their relationship, rejoice together in cleaving to His Godhead. (Moralia on Job, Part VI, 35.14.26, in Parker/Rivington, Vol. 3, 678-79)
Venerable Bede (672–735)
The Venerable Bede stands out as one of the rare voices in the Western tradition who reads Luke 21:24—Jesus's announcement that Jerusalem would be "trampled by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled"—in a manner that includes a hope for Israel's physical return to the land. With characteristic scholarly caution (he qualifies the hope as "perhaps not rashly" entertained), he links the "times of the nations" to Romans 11:25-26 and draws a territorial as well as spiritual conclusion:
And they will fall by the edge of the sword and be led away as captives among all nations, and Jerusalem will be trampled on by the Gentiles [Luke 21:24] … In accordance with the prophetic text that proclaims: In your anger, you will remember mercy [Hab 3:2], he immediately went on to say: Until the times of the nations are fulfilled [Luke 21:24b]. The times of the nations are certainly those which the Apostle recalls when he says: That blindness in part has happened in Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles comes in, and so all Israel will be saved [Rom 11:25-26]. When Israel obtains its promised salvation, it is hoped, perhaps not rashly, that it will also return to its native soil and rejoice in the possession and habitation of its former chief city, because it is said that it was not going to be distressed in this way forever, but until the times of the nations are fulfilled. What follows, after the times of the nations have been fulfilled and Israel has thus been saved, the Lord reveals in sequence. (Commentary on the Gospel of Luke VI.86.256, in Calvin B. Kendall & Faith Wallis, Bede: Commentary on the Gospel of Luke, 576)
St. Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153)
Perhaps the most eloquent medieval voice on this theme, Bernard meditates on the verse "I held Him and will not let Him go till I bring Him into my mother's house" (Song 3:4) as an expression of the Church's longing to share the salvation of Christ even with the Synagogue, her estranged elder sister. Far from writing off Israel, Bernard sees the Church's hope as inseparable from Israel's ultimate return. In a passage of remarkable beauty and charity, he urges the Church not to hold salvation selfishly but to keep it "until the fulness of the gentiles shall come in, and so all Israel shall be saved":
"I held Him and will not let Him go till I bring Him into my mother's house and into the chamber of her that bore me" [Song 3:4]. Boundless, my brethren, is the charity of the Church which begrudges not a participation in her delights even to her jealous rival, the Synagogue. Can anything be kinder than the readiness which she here manifests to communicate Him Whom her soul loveth even to her enemy? However, it should not surprise us, since "salvation is of the Jews" [John 4:22]. Thither whence He came let the Saviour return in order that a "remnant" of Israel may be saved: Let not the branches be ungrateful to the root, nor the children to their mother. The branches ought not to begrudge the root a share of the sap they have derived from it; nor should the children envy their mother a participation in the milk they have drawn from her breasts. Let the Church, therefore, keep a firm hold of the salvation which the Synagogue has lost; let her hold fast to it "until the fulness of the gentiles shall come in, and so all Israel shall be saved" [Rom 11:25-26]. (Sermon on the Song of Songs 79)
St. Bonaventure (1221–1274)
The Franciscan Doctor, writing in his speculative lectures on the six days of creation, affirms with characteristic directness that the conversion of the Jews is not a matter of speculation but of certainty, grounded in the testimony of both Isaiah and the Apostle Paul. In his view, this future salvation is scripturally guaranteed:
The fact that the Jews will be converted is certain because of Isaiah and the Apostle who teaches authoritatively: Though the number of the children of Israel are as the sands of the sea, the remnant shall be saved [Isa 10:22; Rom 9:27], and again: A partial blindness only has befallen Israel, until the full number of the Gentiles should enter [Rom 11:25-26]. (Collationes in Hexaemeron 15.25)
St. Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274)
The Angelic Doctor stands as one of the most significant voices surveyed here, both for the breadth of his theological authority and for what he explicitly affirms. In his commentary on Jeremiah, Aquinas is one of the few Fathers or Doctors who explicitly entertains the hope that Israel will return not only to faith but also to its ancestral land—a hope he cautiously but clearly states as the telos of the prophecy. He reads Jeremiah 31:15-17 as promising liberation to Israel at two levels, first by achieving freedom from their enemies, and second:
with regard to the end to which the liberation is directed: and there is hope for your future [Jer 31:17], to signify that in the last times [the Jewish people] shall be turned to the true faith and perhaps even to their own land, at the death of the antichrist. (Commentary on Jeremiah 31:17; c.31 l.4)
In his commentary on Romans 11:24, employing the Pauline metaphor of branches grafted into an olive tree, Aquinas reads the re-grafting of the natural branches as pointing to the restoration of Israel to "the greatness of their nation"—a phrase that carries both spiritual and, arguably, national-historical connotations:
911. If, I say, this was contrary to nature, how much more shall they that are the natural branches, i.e., which by natural origin pertain to the Jewish nation, be grafted into their own olive tree [Rom 11:24], i.e., be brought back to the greatness of their nation: he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children, and the hearts of children to their fathers [Mal 4:6]. (Commentary on Romans 11:24; c. 11 l.3)
Aquinas also comments on the crucial word "until" in Romans 11:25—"a hardening has come upon part of Israel, until the full number of the Gentiles come in, and so all Israel will be saved"—and treats it as designating a genuine termination of Israel's blindness, after which a universal salvation of Israel will follow:
It can also designate the termination, i.e., that the blindness of the Jews will last up to the time when the full number of the gentiles will come to the faith [Rom 11:25-26]. With this agrees his next statement, namely, and then, i.e., when the full number of the gentiles has come in, all Israel should be saved, not some, as now, but universally all: I will save them by the Lord their God [Hos 1:7]; he will again have compassion upon us [Mic 7:19]. (Commentary on Romans 11:25-26; c. 11 l.4)
Conclusion
The foregoing survey reveals a striking degree of unanimity. Across more than a millennium of theological reflection, from Justin Martyr in the second century to Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth, the Fathers and medieval Doctors consistently affirmed that the Jewish people would one day turn to Christ and attain salvation near the end of human history. Many of them linked this conversion to the coming of Elijah as forerunner, as foretold in Malachi and confirmed by Jesus himself. Several expected that this turning would be preceded by the deceptions of the Antichrist, through which the Jews would first be led astray before recognizing their true Messiah. On the question of Israel's spiritual redemption, the tradition speaks with a remarkably unified voice—and that voice became authoritative Catholic doctrine (CCC 674).
What makes this tradition all the more remarkable is that a handful of the Fathers and Doctors — Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, the Venerable Bede, and above all Thomas Aquinas — anticipated not only Israel's spiritual restoration but its national and territorial one as well. Writing centuries before the possibility seemed remotely plausible, they read the prophets with a literalness that the dominant allegorical tradition could not sustain. That they did so purely on the basis of the biblical witness, without any historical evidence to support them, makes their witness all the more remarkable.
Nevertheless, most of the Fathers had a striking "blind spot" regarding Israel as a nation. Most of them expected Israel to remain in exile indefinitely. Their supersessionist presuppositions led them to treat the Old Testament's hundreds of prophecies about Israel's return to the land as either already fulfilled in the return from Babylon, spiritually fulfilled in the Church, or pointing to a heavenly Jerusalem rather than an earthly one. The allegorical method of exegesis, so powerful in unlocking the Christological dimensions of Scripture, was here turned against the plain sense of the prophets. The result was a tradition that acknowledged Israel's spiritual future but denied its national one.
In this light, the minority report of Justin, Irenaeus, Bede, and Aquinas, long marginal within the tradition, now appears less like an eccentric deviation than a prophetic anticipation. The Church has since moved beyond both elements of the patristic legacy in different ways. The hope for Israel's salvation has been definitively confirmed as Catholic doctrine. The supersessionism, by contrast, has been firmly rejected, along with the "teaching of contempt" that flourished in its shadow. The catastrophe of the Holocaust gave this rejection its most urgent modern impetus: centuries of anti-Jewish polemic, to which patristic supersessionism had contributed, bore a measure of moral responsibility for creating the climate in which the extermination of six million Jews became possible.
Beginning with Nostra Aetate (1965) and continuing through a series of magisterial documents, culminating in the Pontifical Commission's The Gifts and the Calling of God Are Irrevocable (2015), the Church has increasingly recognized that God's covenant with Israel remains in force and that the Jewish people retain their unique election. These developments, together with the biblical data—the Old Testament land prophecies never revoked by the New Testament (cf. Matt 5:17; Luke 21:24; Acts 1:6–7)—open the possibility of overcoming the patristic "blind spot."
Given all this—the biblical data, the witness of a minority within the patristic tradition itself, the magisterial development, and the historical events of the last century—Catholics can well attribute theological significance to the return of the Jewish people to their land in a moderate Catholic Zionism, understood not as a political program but as a development of doctrine: a truth present in Scripture and faintly perceived in some of the Fathers, but not fully recognized until historical events shed new light on what the prophets had always proclaimed.
What would this doctrinal development look like in concrete terms? The prophets—above all Ezekiel (chapters 36–37)—foretell Israel's restoration as a divine act unfolding in two stages: first a physical ingathering of the people to their land (even while they remain, for a time, in a state of spiritual unreadiness), and then a sovereign outpouring of God's Spirit effecting their inner renewal. This two-stage pattern maps strikingly onto the history of modern Zionism, which began as a largely secular nationalist movement and yet resulted in a return to the land on a scale whose contours the ancient prophets had described in remarkable detail.
The New Testament does not revoke these prophecies; Jesus himself, in Luke 21:24, speaks of Jerusalem being "trampled" by the Gentiles only "until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled," implying a restoration of Jewish sovereignty over the holy city. The patristic and medieval tradition acknowledged Israel's spiritual future with impressive consistency, but could not yet see its national dimension, in part because the historical evidence had not yet appeared. Now that it has, the Church may be in a position to read the full prophetic witness with fresh eyes—receiving the Fathers' insight on Israel's salvation, gently correcting their blind spot regarding the land, and affirming that the gifts and calling of God toward Israel are irrevocable in every sense: spiritual and territorial alike. Such a Catholic Zionism would not be a departure from tradition but its deepest possible continuation. On this, the minority report of the Fathers turns out to have been right.
Abbreviations and Sources
ACCS: Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture
ACT: Ancient Christian Texts
ACW: Ancient Christian Writers
ANF: Ante-Nicene Fathers
NPNF: Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers
Fahey, Denis. The Kingship of Christ and the Conversion of the Jewish Nation. Regina Publications, 1953.
McDermott, Gerald R., ed. The New Christian Zionism: Fresh Perspectives on Israel and the Land. IVP Academic, 2016.
Vlach, Michael J. "Rejection Then Hope: The Church's Doctrine of Israel in the Patristic Era." TMSJ 19, no. 1 (2008): 51–70.
Vlach, Michael. Has the Church Replaced Israel? B&H Publishing Group, 2010.
Notes
- Also Origen, Homily on Numbers 6.4.2. ↩
