What is 'Replacement Theology'?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replacement_theology

Supersessionism (also called Replacement theology by some, e.g. Messianic Jews, Nazarenes) is a belief that Christianity is the fulfillment of the Old Testament, and therefore that Jews who deny that Jesus is the Messiah fall short of their calling as God's chosen people.

Thus, according to supersessionism, the Jews are either no longer considered to be God's chosen people, or their proper calling is frustrated pending their acceptance of Jesus as the promised Messiah. The first view, a theory that the promises made to the Jews are invalid and that the Christian Church is chosen instead, was a theory promoted by Marcion of Sinope for example, who rejected the Hebrew Bible. Marcionism is not properly supersessionism, because it holds the old promises were never valid; yet, such a view, that the promises to the Jewish people have become invalid, is necessary for any theory that the Christian Church is chosen and that the Jews are not.

Critics of a complete replacement theory, just mentioned, might reason that the chosenness of the Christian believers is based on promises made to Israel concerning Christ. As the argument goes, Christians are 'in Christ' only as beneficiaries of the promises to Abraham, fulfilled in Jesus (grafted into remnant Israel, in the language of Romans 11:17). If the Jews as a whole could be rejected, then the Church would be rejected, since the promises upon which the Church stands were first given to the Jews, and have become theirs only through the Messiah promised to Israel. However, if as Christians believe, the election of the Christian Church is not reversible, then neither is the election of Israel, which is its basis. Note that election, or chosenness, in this sense is not equivalent to "saved"; rather, it means that the group in a corporate sense is looked upon by God as my people, and that the living God is to them our God, with attendant responsibilities. ^[1]

The traditional form of supersessionism does not on its own terms theorize a replacement; instead it argues that Israel has been superseded only in the sense that the Church has been entrusted with the fulfillment of the promises of which Jewish Israel is the trustee: Israel is forever the chosen trustee of the promises concerning the Messiah, and yet has presently rejected the Messiah; but the Church receives the promised Messiah, although it consists of Gentiles (who were not entrusted with the promises, nor bound by the obligations of Judaism), as well as Jews. On this account, supersessionists traditionally style the Christian Church as New Israel, and insist that Jesus is "the Way, the Truth, and the Life", superseding the ordinances of Judaism, which are regarded as merely types and shadows of Christ. On its own terms then, supersessionism is a fulfillment theology, as it were; but from the standpoint of adherents to Judaism, or proponents of the sufficiency of the ordinances of Judaism, it is reviled as Replacement Theology.

This mainstream belief has served as the explanation for why believers in Christ need not become Jews in order to keep God's covenant (pejoratively called Judaizing, the issue was addressed at the Council of Jerusalem), and is also the rationale for urging the conversion of Jews to Christianity. However, over the past several centuries a growing number of Christians began to reject the belief that salvation is possible only through professed faith in Jesus Christ, thus rejecting supersessionism. Supersessionism has also lost strength among twentieth century Protestant evangelicals, especially in the US, through the influence of Dispensationalism - which posits that the Jews will inherit the promises concerning the Messiah in a future restoration, and in the meantime are the subject of God's favor as a people under the same terms that applied to them prior to the coming of the Messiah.

Several liberal Protestant groups have formally renounced supersessionism, and affirm that Jews, and perhaps other non-Christians, have a valid way to find God within their own faith. Many fundamentalist Dispensational Christian groups, including conservative Evangelical Protestants renounce supersessionism; and yet also maintain that faith in Jesus Christ is the only way to God (citing usually John 14:6). Some few groups assert a theory that their group is the chosen people, rather than those who are called Jews - technically, these groups emphatically reject supersessionism, but they do so by adopting for themselves the identity of true Israel so that the Jewish people are in some cases regarded as false Israel (see for example, Anglo-Israelism, and Christian Identity).