Aquinas on Israel and the Church: The Question of Supersessionism in the Theology of Thomas Aquinas

Theologians have long debated the significance of the Jewish religion for the Christian Church. Some scholars see Thomas Aquinas as the leading advocate of the belief that Israel has been superceded by the Church, while others hold that Aquinas avoids supersessionism altogether. The discussion has, however, not always analysed the terminology, nor has it taken into account some of Aquinas’s commentaries on Paul’s letters, his writings most relevant to the subject. Drawing upon the Pauline commentaries, Matthew Tapie shows that while Aquinas’s most commonly articulated view is that the passion of Christ made Jewish worship and the Mosaic law obsolete, Aquinas also advanced views that set this into question, in ways that support Christian teachings affirming the value of post-biblical Judaism. In doing so, he provides both a rich and timely reminder of the ambiguities in Aquinas’s thought and makes an important contribution to the literature of supersessionism.