For Brakel the coming of the Gentiles brings forth no second tree.

He speaks of the expansion of the same goods of grace to the nations and of Jews and Gentiles who together make up one church.

No opposition of church against church

In his discussion of Galatians 4 Brakel makes an important distinction. When Gentiles now receive the adoption as children, he does not necessarily see there an opposition between an old Jewish church without sonship and a new church with sonship. He calls it a transition in which now the Gentiles also receive the goods of the covenant of grace.

That fits with Ephesians 2: people who were strangers to the covenants of the promise are brought near and built together. Paul's image is not that Israel is completely broken off and replaced by an entirely new story, but that enmity is removed and access to God is opened.

Unity is not the same as erasure

Here the tension of our series grows sharper. Brakel is strong on the unity of the church. He uses no scheme of two permanently separated communities of salvation. Believing Jews and believing Gentiles belong to Christ and together form one church.

But from that ecclesial unity Brakel does not later conclude that the term "Israel" in Romans 11 can only still mean "church." When Paul asks whether God has cast away His people, Brakel lets the Jewish nation come emphatically into view again.

The olive tree is already waiting

Romans 11 helps to hold these two lines together. There is one olive tree. Wild branches are grafted in. Natural branches are broken off because of unbelief and can be grafted in again. Unity of the tree therefore does not mean identity of history.

That is why "one church" is for Brakel not the same as a simple formula of replacement. At the same time he is also no modern dispensationalist. His model asks a harder question: how can one community of salvation offer room for an abiding historical significance of Israel?

That becomes the central tension of the following articles: one church out of Jews and Gentiles — and yet a future conversion of the Jewish nation.

The question Brakel himself asks

Now we have arrived at chapter 6, section 11. There Brakel formulates the question without detours: will the Jewish nation remain cast away forever, or will it still come to conversion?