"All Israel:" An Additional Witness

Re-reading through some sections from Continuity and Discontinuity (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 1988) earlier this evening, I came across the following quote from Marten H. Woudstra. Woudstra was closely associated with the production of the original New International Version of the Bible. For this reason, if you Google Woudstra’s name, you will find numerous attacks against him by KJV-only advocates, who charge him with theological liberalism [and worse], but–doing further research into his life (through on-line articles from the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society [Woudstra was a president of ETS]), I believe that there is no reason to give credence to these attacks. [Also: all of the contributors to Crossway’s Continuity and Discontinuity seem to have been theological conservatives.]

            At the time that he wrote “Israel and the Church: A Case for Continuity” for Continuity and Discontinuity, Woudstra taught at Calvin Theological Seminary. Woudstra interpreted “all Israel” Romans 11:26 in the same manner as the theologian for which his school was named. Woudstra wrote:

The quote from Isaiah 59 which follows in Rom 11:26 refers to a deliverer who shall come out of Zion. He it is who takes away Israel’s sin. This deliverer has already come when Paul writes these words. The taking away of sins has been accomplished by Christ, and this for both Gentiles and Jews. As the fullness of the Gentiles is brought in and “until” this time is finished, so, in this manner, “all Israel” will be saved. In this manner the twofold OT emphasis upon particularism and universalism will have merged. There will be one body of the redeemed, Christ’s flock, known to him by name and distinguished from those who are not his sheep. This body of Christ will exclude those who are not truly Christ’s own; yet it will also call all men to repentance. The saving of “all Israel” is still going on, for the fullness of the Gentiles is also still being brought in. But at all events some of the Jews who are now hardened in part will be grafted into the one olive tree. They will not form a separate program or a separate entity next to the church.