Must We Bless the Modern State of Israel?
And if you be Christ's, then are you the seed of Abraham, heirs according to the promise. - Galatians 3:29
Above: The Prophets Hosea and Jonah by Raphael (1510)
In a recent viral interview, Ted Cruz, a U.S. Senator from Texas, sat down with Tucker Carlson to discuss the ongoing conflict between Israel and Iran. The exchange quickly grew tense, with Cruz visibly frustrated by Carlson’s probing—particularly when it came to questioning whether Christians should support the modern state of Israel.
Cruz reaffirmed a position he’s held since entering the Senate: “When I came into the Senate, I resolved that I was going to be the leading defender of Israel.” It is troubling that an American Senator openly commits the exercise of his office to the interests of a foreign nation—but let that pass. He offered two reasons for this commitment. The first, and our focus here, was explicitly theological:
[A]s 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.
This prompted Carlson to ask what seemed like a straightforward question: “Is the nation God refers to in Genesis the same as the one currently governed by Benjamin Netanyahu?”
Cruz answered affirmatively—brushing the question aside as if it were self-evident. But for Christians, especially Catholics, these are not trivial questions. We must seriously consider: Is the Israel of today the same “Israel” invoked in the Book of Genesis?
The passage at the heart of the exchange is Genesis 12:2–3, where God speaks to Abraham:
And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and magnify thy name, and thou shalt be blessed. I will bless them that bless thee, and curse them that curse thee, and in thee shall all the kindred of the earth be blessed.
For Christians today, especially in light of Cruz’s interpretation, a crucial question arises from this passage: What is the “nation” we are called to bless? Is it the modern state of Israel? Or is the promise rooted in something deeper—something fulfilled not in a political entity, but in Christ and His Church?
It may seem simple to identify Abraham’s biological descendants listed in Scripture as the “great nation” of Genesis 12. But the narrative quickly becomes complex, the nation becomes harder to identify. What begins as a covenantal identity rooted in faith and obedience to God becomes fractured by internal division, civil war, shifting borders, and rival claims to leadership. By the time Rehoboam—the grandson of King David—took the throne, the united kingdom had fractured. Ten tribes formed the northern kingdom of Israel, while Judah and Benjamin remained in the south. So which of these splintered kingdoms represents the nation we are commanded to bless? Are we talking about a bloodline, a tribe, a piece of land?
Carlson’s question brings this issue out of the Old Testament and into the present: Is the modern state of Israel, established in 1948, the same nation God referred to in Genesis? The simple and historically honest answer is: No.
Christ came not to abolish the old covenant, but to fulfill it—transforming its promises and extending them beyond the boundaries of ethnicity, land, or lineage. Through baptism, He offers divine sonship to all who believe, uniting Jew and Gentile alike into one body. The blessing once promised to Abraham’s biological descendants is now fulfilled and universalized in Christ.
In this light, the Church is rightly understood as the New Israel—the continuation and fulfillment of God’s covenantal promise. To overlook this is to remain anchored in the shadows of the Old Testament, missing the full revelation of Christ’s mission. He did not come merely to restore a political or ethnic kingdom, but to inaugurate a spiritual one that transcends bloodlines and borders.
The Second Vatican Council affirmed this in Chapter II, paragraph 9 of Lumen Gentium:
Christ instituted this new covenant, the new testament, that is to say, in His Blood, calling together a people made up of Jew and gentile, making them one, not according to the flesh but in the Spirit. This was to be the new People of God. For those who believe in Christ, who are reborn not from a perishable but from an imperishable seed through the word of the living God, not from the flesh but from water and the Holy Spirit, are finally established as "a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a purchased people . . . who in times past were not a people, but are now the people of God."
The new covenant, sealed by Christ’s blood, establishes a “new People of God” in the spirit. This new People of God is the group to whom we owe blessings if we are to take Genesis 12 seriously, not the modern state of Israel.
Similarly, Pope Pius XII tells us with precision that it is indeed the boundary-less Catholic Church that receives the “Paraclete’s gifts”:
For then, as Augustine notes, with the rending of the veil of the temple it happened that the dew of the Paraclete's gifts, which heretofore had descended only on the fleece, that is on the people of Israel, fell copiously and abundantly (while the fleece remained dry and deserted) on the whole earth, that is on the Catholic Church, which is confined by no boundaries of race or territory.1
As a Protestant, however, Senator Cruz would not be swayed by a Church council or by Pope Pius. But Scripture is clear on this teaching as well: the Church is the New Israel. This is made explicit by Romans 8:14, Galatians 3, Matthew 21:43, and John 1:12 among other passages.
Cruz is at best using a misguided understanding of Genesis 12 to promote war with a foreign power on behalf of Israel, and at worst he is intentionally deceiving the American people into thinking that bombing Iran on Israel’s behalf is somehow the only reasonable Christian position, the only way to receive the blessing promised in Genesis.
But the Catholic Church—not the modern state of Israel—is the fulfillment of the nation God promised to Abraham. She is the new People of God, the true seed of promise, in whom the universal blessing of Genesis 12 is realized. Far from discarding what came before her, the Church gathers up and fulfills every true and good aspect of the Law and the Prophets. Nothing essential is set aside or forgotten, but is completed and transfigured in Christ and His Body. To confuse this fulfillment with political allegiance to a modern nation-state is not fidelity to Scripture but a distortion of it.
Mystici Corporis Christi (1943), paragraph 31.