All politics is theology, as Federalist CEO Sean Davis likes to say, and nowhere was that clearer than in a recent discussion between Tucker Carlson and Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, about the United States’ relationship to Israel’s recent offensive against Iran.
In the interview, which aired Wednesday, Cruz invoked the biblical statement that “those who bless Israel will be blessed, and those who curse Israel will be cursed.” The verse, which comes directly from Numbers 24:9, is a reference to God’s promise to Abraham in Genesis 12:3: “I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”
Cruz, who said he doesn’t want to put American boots on the ground in Iran but would support doing so “if the risk got severe enough,” concluded that the passage means “biblically we are commanded to support Israel.”
In fairness to Cruz, he told Carlson that such a position was a “personal motivation” of his and not one he would base policy on “as an elected official.” He noted other, geopolitical reasons to support Israel, like the fact that it’s “our strongest ally in the Middle East.”
But whether Cruz intended it or not — I doubt he did — the exchange became representative of a debate among evangelicals about what the Abrahamic covenant in Genesis actually means for American Christians and the modern political state of Israel.
“Is the nation God is referring to in Genesis, is that the same as the country run by Benjamin Netanyahu?” Carlson asked.
Cruz said yes. The senator later commented sarcastically on the exchange: “Tucker really argued that when the Bible says ‘Israel,’ it doesn’t mean … ‘Israel.’”
Well, how should Christians interpret “Israel” in this context?
Contrary to Cruz’s dismissal, it’s not at all ridiculous for sincere Christians to point out the obvious practical and spiritual differences between the Old Testament people of Israel, who were defined by both their ethnic identity and their status as God’s chosen people, and the modern nation-state of Israel, which includes ethnic Jews who maintain their Jewish faith but also includes Muslims, Christians, and atheists (as well as other ethnicities, such as Arabs, Russians, and Ukrainians).
The Abrahamic covenant Cruz references is an integral part of the biblical story of God’s redemption. The Old Testament prophets spoke clearly of the Messiah as the fulfillment of that covenant, and in Galatians, referring to the promise in Genesis, Paul says “it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham,” referring to Christians.
It would be wrong to discard the significance of the covenant in Genesis 12:3, but it’s equally wrong to ignore the ways Christ’s arrival in the New Testament interacts with and builds on it. God’s covenant with the Christian church doesn’t replace the Old Testament covenants, but is an extension of them. In the book of Romans, Paul uses the language of the Gentiles, or non-Jewish believers, being grafted onto an olive tree. It is only through the New Testament covenant that the covenants with Abraham, Moses, and other patriarchs in the Old Testament are fulfilled.
Paul makes it clear that God’s promised blessing to Abraham in Genesis foreshadowed the inclusion of the church. He writes in Galatians 3 that “the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, ‘In you shall all the nations be blessed.’ So then, those who are of faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith.”
A few verses later, he says, “the promises were made to Abraham and to his offspring. It does not say, ‘And to offsprings,’ referring to many, but referring to one, ‘And to your offspring,’ who is Christ.” Christ is ultimately the one, Paul says in verse 19, “to whom the promise had been made.”
It is just as important to understand the Abrahamic covenant in the context of the New Testament covenant between Christ and the church as it is to understand the new covenant in the context of the Old Testament. God’s promise to Abraham in Genesis should be viewed through the lens of the entire Gospel story. We shouldn’t treat the Abrahamic covenant lightly, but neither should we cherry-pick it to haphazardly apply to a modern geopolitical map — especially to justify acts of war.
In the Bible, many Jews made the mistake of looking for a political messiah when they should have been looking for a spiritual one. We shouldn’t fall into the same trap when it comes to equating the spiritual nation of Israel with its modern political nation-state.
As Christians, we naturally feel camaraderie with the people of Israel because of our shared biblical heritage. We certainly should not overlook the obvious love and tenderness that God has for the people of Israel throughout the Bible, and we should be quick to mimic that love, including by praying for the Jewish people to recognize Christ as the promised Messiah. We should also pray for their safety and protection in the face of Iran’s repeated vows to destroy them and their home. It’s not hard to discern who the relative “good guys” are in a war between Israel and Iran, and no one is seriously trying to say the two countries are moral equals.
Insofar as Cruz and others who cite the Abrahamic covenant in foreign policy discussions are advocating for general goodwill and moral support toward Israel and against homicidal Iranian clerics, that’s not controversial among Christians. Nor is the fact that America and Israel’s relationship as strong political allies commands a certain level of support from the sidelines.
But it is something else entirely to insist that God’s promise to Abraham in the Old Testament requires the United States government to base its political decisions on the objectives of the 21st-century Israeli nation-state. Taken to extremes, that would mean the United States has an obligation to make foreign policy decisions, no matter how much they may contradict the interests of the United States, based on whether those decisions benefit the nation-state of Israel.
I doubt Ted Cruz, who agreed with Tucker elsewhere in the conversation that the “single criterion for making decisions about America’s foreign policy is America’s national interest,” would go that far. But that’s the logical conclusion of such a simplistic interpretation of Genesis 12, and it reveals the danger of mixing theologically tenuous soundbites with foreign policy.
The covenant God made with Abraham, fulfilled through Christ, and extended via His covenant with the church is an essential part of the Gospel story that Christians should take time to study. It’s a beautiful illustration of the creativity and sovereignty of God and His plan for saving His children. But it’s a poor argument for getting the United States to go to war with Iran.