When the Apostle Paul wrote to the Romans that Gentile believers were “grafted in” to the olive tree of Israel (Romans 11), he was not announcing the birth of a new religion but the restoration of God’s ancient purpose. The covenant was not discarded but fulfilled; the tree was not uprooted but renewed. In Christ, the promises to Abraham reach their intended harvest: the nations brought in, Israel restored, creation reconciled. The covenant is not a coalition of moral traditions; it is the resurrection of a people in the Messiah.
The fiction of the “Judeo-Christian” West
The modern phrase Judeo-Christian civilization emerged not from the prophets or apostles but from mid-twentieth-century political discourse, particularly during World War II and the early Cold War, when writers such as Will Herberg employed it to describe a shared religious identity standing against both fascist and secular totalitarianism. In that context it functioned as a rhetorical alliance, a way for Jews and Christians to affirm common moral concerns in the face of ideological threats. As a cultural project it had a certain usefulness; as a theological category, however, it remains inadequate. God’s covenant cannot be reduced to a shared moral consensus.
By joining “Judeo” to “Christian,” the hyphen performs sleight-of-hand by turning redemptive history into sociology. It imagines the West as a child of a moral consensus rather than of the Cross. Yet the moral architecture of the West—its concern for conscience, justice, and human dignity—arose not from a broad Abrahamic compact but from the Incarnation itself. The light that illumined the Gentiles did not come from shared law but from shared life in the risen Lord.
From continuity to fulfillment
Paul’s olive-tree imagery corrects both triumphalism and nostalgia. The Gentiles who are grafted in do not form a second people beside Israel, nor do they replace her. They become part of the same covenantal organism now sustained by the life of the Messiah. As Jason Staples argues in Paul and the Resurrection of Israel, Paul’s gospel announces Israel’s restoration through the death and resurrection of Christ, bringing to completion the story begun with Abraham.
The covenant’s boundaries expand, but its root remains holy. Israel’s vocation to bear God’s name among the nations is not cancelled but completed as Gentiles enter through faith. The Church, therefore, is not “post-Israel” but Israel renewed: the people of God now defined not by genealogy alone but by participation in the Spirit.
The Cross, then, does not divide history into competing religions. It unveils what the Law and the Prophets had long foretold. As Augustine said, “In the Old Testament the New is concealed; in the New the Old is revealed.” The hyphen between “Judeo” and “Christian” conceals this revelation, suggesting continuity without fulfillment and unity without conversion. By framing Christianity as merely the moral heir of Judaism rather than the fulfillment of Israel’s covenant in Christ, the hyphen shifts attention from redemption to heritage and from conversion to cultural continuity.
Our covenant with God is not a coalition with him or with the Jews. The confusion arises when covenantal grace is mistaken for cultural partnership. The Kingdom of God is not an alliance of the pious; it is a new creation. A covenant binds by divine promise, while a coalition binds by mutual interest. Shared virtues, public prayers, and moral declarations may indeed grow from covenant life, but they are its fruit, not its foundation; in a coalition they become the basis of unity precisely because they demand no common root. But the gospel’s claim is far more radical: through the crucified and risen Christ, God has made one new humanity, not by negotiation but by regeneration.
To call the West “Judeo-Christian” is to soften revelation into cultural respectability, recasting the scandal of Christ’s particular claims as a broadly shared religious heritage. It replaces Pentecost with parliament, baptismal incorporation into Christ with the looser language of cultural belonging. The Church does not exist to preserve civilization’s moral order; she exists to embody a redeemed one. The olive tree flourishes only where the sap of the Spirit flows. Without that life, even the most venerable branches become dry wood fit for the fire.
The Law fulfilled in the Spirit
The Law given at Sinai is not abolished but fulfilled in those who walk by the Spirit (Rom 8:3–4). What was once written on tablets of stone is now written on human hearts. The covenant’s continuity is not institutional but incarnational. The same God who called Abraham now calls the nations; the same righteousness once revealed in the Law is now revealed in Christ.
Here is the true unity of the Testaments: promise kept, not partnership maintained. The God of Israel has not changed his mind, but he has kept his word in ways that only grace could imagine. Every moral vision worthy of the name “Christian” must arise from this miracle of fulfillment, not from nostalgia for a cultural synthesis that never existed.
The Church is the fulfilled people of God. When the Church forgets her identity as grafted Israel—incorporated into the covenant promises first given to Abraham—she begins to speak the language of coalition rather than covenant. The olive tree into which Gentiles are grafted is not a new organism but the living root of Israel’s calling, now sustained by the Messiah. The distinction between natural and grafted branches remains historically real, yet both draw life from the same root and share the same covenantal hope. Paul’s gospel leaves no room for confusion: “You were once far off, but now you have been brought near by the blood of Christ” (Eph 2:13). The nearness of the Gentiles does not dilute Israel’s election; it manifests its purpose: that through Abraham’s seed all nations should be blessed.
This is why the Church cannot adopt the idiom of “Judeo-Christian civilization” without losing her own tongue. The phrase points not to covenant fulfillment but to an imagined moral consensus drawn from a shared religious past, while the gospel points forward to new creation. Civil religion seeks agreement; covenant faith seeks transformation. The one preserves, and the other resurrects.
The cross fulfills the Old Testament promises. Between synagogue and Church stands not a wall of enmity but the open tomb. The difference is real and decisive, yet it is the difference between promise and fulfillment, not between error and replacement. The Cross unites by fulfilling; it reconciles by judging; it brings peace by passing through death.
Therefore the Church does not boast against the branches but remembers her dependence on the root. She confesses that her very existence is the fruit of Israel’s faithfulness and God’s mercy. The covenant has no hyphen because it has a heart of flesh, animated by the Spirit poured out on all who believe.
The covenant has a Savior
The moral order of the West, such as it remains, is a fragile afterglow of the light of Christ’s revelation. To rebuild on any foundation other than Christ is to return to Babel with better manners. The Church’s calling is not to preserve a mythic “Judeo-Christian” civilization but to proclaim the crucified and risen Lord through whom Israel’s promises live.
The covenant fulfilled in Christ is not a hyphenated civilizational project but the living promise of God made flesh. Its center is not a shared ethic but a Savior—Jesus Christ himself. And in him the nations find not merely a moral code to admire but a life into which they are grafted, a single tree whose root is holy and whose branches reach to the ends of the earth.