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Israel, God's servant

God's key to the redemption of the world

Darby rides again

ISRAEL, GOD’S SERVANT
God’s key to the redemption of the world
By David W. Torrance & George Taylor
Paternoster. 224 pages. £9.99
ISBN 978-1-84227-554-2

‘Israel’ is the present-day state of that name plus the rest of unconverted Jewry; ‘The Church’ is the worldwide company of converted Jews and Gentiles, and ‘Israel continues to be God’s servant and, together with the Church, is God’s instrument, God’s key, for the redemption of the world’ (p.2). There you have the topic of this book in one sentence.

Let us suppose that, like me, you can’t swallow such a view; nevertheless, you will benefit from reading this book (not least its seven rewarding appendices) for its research into the politics, past and present, of the Middle East — pretty scrupulously balanced and giving (me, at any rate) lots of information I had not previously known.

But, on the other hand, regarding the main purpose of the book, do I find myself persuaded? Well, no. I still cannot find any ‘Jews’ in the Old Testament, and, while I agree with Torrance (retired Church of Scotland pastor) and Taylor (a pseudonym) in tracing ‘the Church’ back to Abraham, I cannot see it, as they do, as some sort of stream of divine redemptive action in parallel to what began to develop, in inter-testamental times, into what we know as Judaism and ‘the Jewish nation’. Pretty well the main plank in the Torrance-Taylor case is that while Old Testament institutions like the sacrifices reached their intended full and final expression in the Cross, ‘the land’ remains and always will be ‘the land’. This is constantly asserted, but not argued.

Likewise, John 4.22 (‘salvation is of the Jews’) is quoted time and again as if it, axiomatically, supported the contention that ‘unbelieving Israel remains God’s covenant people’ with a ‘mission to the world’ as ‘represented in the Servant Songs’. There is no discussion whether this is a legitimate interpretation or even the most appropriate contextuality. The great and unique J.N. Darby rides again — though his dispensational baggage has been lost in transit.

Alec Motyer