ABSTRACT
The rise of "national supersessionism" can be clearly traced through the writings of Thomas Hobbes and Baruch Spinoza—a Christian and a Jew, respectively, who turned the covenant into a general grounding for modern politics. If "supersessionism" names the conviction that Christians have replaced Israel as God's elect and thus may claim as their own all the blessings of that election, then "Christendom" names the politics made possible by such a theology. In the first response, the Christian chiliasts of the first and second centuries held on to the visible and material character of Israel's redemptive hopes, but they diminished its presence. That is, they made the tangible sociopolitical aspects of redemption part of the church's future eschatological hope. The end of the middle ages saw the birth of modern political liberalism that was bolstered by a new shift in theological and political claims about election, covenant, and redemption.
