Ted Cruz and the Meaning of Israel (3)
I really want to understand Ted Cruz’s argument when he said, during his interview with Tucker Carlson, that the Bible requires Christians to support the modern state of Israel. To be sure, I am not convinced that Cruz is using good logic, which means that I am already biased against his claim. At the same time, I do want to take the argument seriously, for the following reason: If I don’t take it seriously then I won’t be able to understand it—and I have no right to criticize an argument that I haven’t fully grasped.
So let’s revisit what Cruz said:
. . . as a Christian growing up in Sunday school, I was taught, from the Bible, those who bless Israel will be blessed, and those who curse Israel will be cursed. And from my perspective, I want to be on the blessing side of things.
Below is the English translation of the first three verses of the twelfth chapter of the first book in the Old Testament, the Book 0f Genesis, taken from the New Revised Standard Version. The text to which the Senator is referring is the first half of the third verse (Genesis 12:3a).
In verses 2 and 3, God is making a promise to Abram (later: Abraham). The first point to note is that while God’s promise includes Abraham having lots of descendants (“I will make of you a great nation”), the only person being blessed is Abraham himself, and not his descendants. Second, the key term “Israel” is conspicuous by its absence. Third, there is no indication that the first part of verse 3 (“I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse”) is supposed to apply to some or all of Abraham’s biological descendants, unconditionally and in perpetuity, let alone to 21st century Jewish people.
While these points do not invalidate the overall argument, they do demonstrate that the desired or intended conclusion cannot be derived from this passage; instead, one would have to introduce additional passages from elsewhere in the Bible as well as the assumption of univocality (i.e., that the Bible represents a single perspective). In other words, several interpretive steps would have be taken before one could reach the relevant conclusion. It seems to me that Ted Cruz and his Christian Zionist supporters are not used to arguing their case, like a lawyer must do in front of a jury, but are in the habit of presenting their preferred conclusion (“Christians must support the state of Israel”) as if it were simply the literal and the most obvious meaning of Genesis 12:3a—which is clearly not the case.
Let me make the same point in a different way. A typical argument is supposed to have at least three components: the Ground (the relevant data or evidence), the Claim or conclusion, and the Warrant (the logical link between the ground and the claim).
Ted Cruz’s Christian Zionist argument looks like this:
As soon as Cruz made this argument, Tucker Carlson saw that there was no easy or direct way to link the ground with the claim. In most cases, the warrant doesn’t have to be explicitly stated, as the audience is usually able to supply the missing warrant. But the Senator had made an unusual argument, and Tucker was absolutely justified in demanding to see the connection. Yet, even after repeated questioning, Tucker was unable to get his guest to articulate the warrant in a satisfactory manner. Instead, Cruz kept repeating the claim, making no effort to demonstrate how his claim was related to, or could be derived from, the ground in question (Genesis 12:3a).
The absence of warrant in Ted Cruz’ Christian Zionist argument leaves a large gap between the ground and the claim. The gap can only be bridged with the help of several interpretive steps, as already mentioned, but those steps are rarely, if ever, spelled out in detail by the advocates of the argument. The reason why Senator Cruz could not give a convincing explanation in response to Tucker’s objection is that the interpretive steps that would constitute the missing warrant were never explained to him. Being unable to justify his position, all he could do was to repeat the same talking point over and over again.
The gap between the ground and the claim contains at least six unacknowledged assumptions. The absence of the warrant indicates that these propositions have been tacitly accepted as true, even though each of them needs to be supported by evidence. The assumptions can be stated as follows:
- The second person pronoun “you” in Genesis 12:3a refers not only to Abraham but also to all of his biological descendants.
- The descendants implied in the verse refer to the lineage of Abraham through his son Isaac and grandson Jacob (whose title was “Israel”) but not through his elder son Ishmael.
- The divine promise of Genesis 12:3a is valid without conditions and in perpetuity, i.e., it will remain in effect forever, even if the descendants of Jacob stop obeying the commandments and no longer believe in God.
- Being the biological descendants of Jacob, the contemporary Jewish people constitute a single ethnic group as well as a “nation” in the modern, political sense of the word.
- For all political and theological purposes, the contemporary Jewish people are the same as the “people of Israel” mentioned in the Bible.
- Since 1948, the sole representative of the modern Jewish “nation” is the Middle Eastern state known as “Israel.”
The assumptions listed above are at the core of the entire argument. Without making these assumptions, we cannot go from the ground (Genesis 12:3a) to the claim (“Christians must support the state of Israel”). However, it would be an understatement to say that proving these assumptions would be an uphill task, for each of them is susceptible to strong objections and counter-evidence.
The weakness of Ted Cruz’s Christian Zionist argument should be apparent to anyone who gives it a tiny bit of critical attention, as was demonstrated by Tucker Carlson. Yet, there are millions of people in the United States—as well as in other countries where the American Gospel has been influential— who cannot find anything wrong with this argument. For Christian Zionists—such as Pastor John Hagee and the members of his organization, “Christians United for Israel”—this is a perfectly rational and unproblematic understanding of the word of God. In fact, so many Americans hold this belief that a sitting U.S. Senator is willing to claim it as his own conviction, one that motivates him to prioritize the interests of a foreign country over his own constituents, without fearing any political backlash.
Why do so many Christians accept this argument, despite its obvious flaws? It has nothing to do with being uneducated or unintelligent. To explain this widespread phenomenon, we have to zoom out and ask the larger question about where Christian Zionists are coming from, i.e., what is the theoretical framework or ideology that is shaping their perspective? For it is not the Bible that determines their politics; rather, it is a particular way of interpreting the Bible—a paradigm, in other words—that is shaping their approach to the world, including their approach to the Bible itself.
Most Christian Zionists see the world and everything in it, including both national and international affairs, through a unique interpretive lens, called premillennial dispensationalism. You could be the smartest person in the whole world, but if you were to adopt this particular approach as your dominant paradigm then you too would see the world just the way Christian Zionists see it.