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Last night, I decided to do a google for baptist forums to see what's out there, what they discuss, etc. I came across a KJV-only independent fundamental baptist forum, and decided to poke around a little. I was curious, so I searched for "Covenant Theology" to see what their thoughts were.
I found a thread or two that basically said that covenant theology was another name for replacement theology. The church is now the recipient of God's promises, and national Israel is not. That was pretty much the extent of their discussions about covenant theology. Pretty deep stuff!
I'm a little curious, but not much, about what has been written under the heading of replacement theology. Truthfully, I'm not too inclined to read much about it, but I was wondering if any of you have read any books about replacement theology, particularly books written by its proponents. How close (or how much out in left field) do these books come to explaining what covenant theology is?
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IMHO, a good rule of thumb is that whenever someone uses the words "Replacement Theology," you can immediately write off the credibility of anything they have written on theology at all.
It is a poor and misleading term that, when used by someone, betrays their complete lack of meaningful study, or their lack of ability to summarize someone anywhere close to fairly.
You probably won't find any self-identifying proponents of Replacement Theology, as the term only exists within the dispensational world to describe the totality of their one-sentence worth of knowledge about Covenant Theology. And that one sentence isn't even entirely correct.
The one sentence you will hear repeated over and over: "Replacement Theologians believe the church has replaced Israel."
In their world, it is almost an ad-hominem attack - they intentionally name something in a simplistic, apparently false-on-the-surface way so they can avoid substantive interaction on actual issues.
I would be highly interested to see if there actually exists somewhere a person who will say, "I hold to Replacement Theology." Anyone who knows the issue well enough to claim Covenant Theology is well aware of the fact that the single sentence definition offered is overly-simplistic, and in some ways just plain false.