Why I am No Longer a Dispensationalist

I have one problem with most of the theological frameworks that have become labels bound up with people’s identity: they have a tendency to become more important than Scripture, at least in practice. When someone proposes a contradictory view, and argues it from Scripture, too many times he’s dismissed or even condemned for contradicting the framework without ever bothering to engage his Scriptural arguments – they are simply assumed to be bogus because they disagree with the normative framework.

And I have seen this knee-jerk reaction from representatives of various interpretive frameworks — it is by no means a dispensational monopoly.

I’m an Orthodox Preterist.

Michael, I was a bit upset when I saw the title of this blog, but having read it, I think you were talking pretty much tongue-in-cheek. “But for those of you who know what I am talking about,
I am still a Dispensationalist.” I am not sure I do know what you are talking about, (probably my problem, not yours) but evidently you are indeed, still a Dispensationalist.

I don’t say a lot about my Dispensationalism either, and for the same reasons you mention. But i do think it cannot be dismissed or even well denied. Probably theological error stems more from moderating Dispensationalism, than from allowing it to mature and even expand. Incidentally, I don’t recall ever hearing of a “modernistic” Dispensationalist. (That line sounds familiar, have I borrowed it from someone?)

My knowledge of Progressive Dispensationalism is limited. If there are points of the Classical Disp. position that need to yield toward Covenantal Theology, I am willing to do that, but on the other hand, if Dispensationalism ought to be expanded in some areas, we are diminished in blessing if we ignore these, as also we will be, should we yield any real Disp. truth to the Covenant position. There has been a rush within the past several decades to either tone down Dispensationalism, or to abandon it all together. This, in my opinion, has been to the great detriment of Evangelicalism.

I am not sure I have dispensationalism figured out either.
But then, I am not even sure I have the Trinity figured out yet.
(I keep arguing with Charismatic types, how can you “get” the Holy Spirit separately from accepting Christ? If you have one of the Trinity, you have all, all the time. Period. Yes, I know there is the “infilling” temporarily, but that is more power in my opinion, not the entire entity of the H.S. )
I definitely do not have Charismania figured out. I need more charts….

Aw Michael, I thought you completely jumped off that boat and swam ashore to the solid ground of CT like I did 🙂 Good wrestling here, especially related to the evolution of both systems. I may not be a dispensationalist anymore, but it drives me crazy when people treat it as a monolith according to older articulations.

Pre-Christ saints saved by works? Paul looked back to Abraham as a man whose faith was accounted to him for righteousness. From Abraham to Jesus it wasn’t works that saved anyone, but their faith (trust/loyalty) towards God that was evidenced by their obedience to God’s commands (although Moses defying God in order to prevent him destroying Israel suggests that the loyalty was regarded as more important that mere obedience).

Nobody could claim to keep the Mosaic law better than the Pharisees, but Jesus condemned them as white-washed tombs because they engaged in mere observance of the law rather than the heart-loyalty that God demands. Not all obviously, some came to Jesus before the crucifixion, and many afterwards.

So, do you still believe in the Rapture, Millennium sacrificial system? You never really stated clearly about that.

What ever happened to the basics like:
1. Separation of Israel & Church
2. Literal interpretation
3. Progressive revelation

Most important factors might be “does it conform to the Bible” that is “does God treat mankind differently in different era’s”? Call it what you want but, there are still dispensations. Non-Biblical covenants surely can’t be the ticket for a correct interpretive system. These things matter!

Like Michael, I grew up in a church culture where Dispensationalism (and a pre-tribulational rapture) was assumed. Reading “Countdown to Armageddon”, edited by Charles Ryrie, written to defend the pre-trib view, convinced me that the case for it was pretty weak. Subsequently, reading Robert Saucy’s “The Case for Progressive Dispensationalism” convinced me that I was not a dispensationalist of any stripe.

Interesting article Michael. Certainly these days we can’t assume that people are using the same terms to mean the same thing. Therefore we need take the time and expend the effort required to clearly explain the basic concepts embedded in the descriptive categories we’re employing. As I see it the bottom line is this: Despite current “progressive” expressions of Covenantalism, Dispensationalism is still the only theological system which assigns to the Jewish people and the Land of Israel its proper biblical covenantal prominence and significance. And for me, that is more than enough reason to continue to identify as a dispensationalist.

Saddened that you can’t take being made fun of. Saddened that you haven’t actually researched out dispensationalism. Just a little research reveals that dispensational thought goes all the way back to the church fathers, just like CT does. So what if someone doesn’t formalize it until the 19th century, no one formalized CT until the 16th century. You speak of dispensationalism “maturing” as if CT has not. You haven’t read much of CT’s history either then.
The “maturing” of dispensationalism by Blaising and Bock was really more of an effort to marry CT with Dispensationalism, than a “maturing,” and sorry it doesn’t work. The hermeneutics of both (CT and dispensationalism) are not compatible with each other.
Stop focusing on what men think and start focusing on reading the Word of God for yourself without the tainted glasses of anyone’s theological bent. I’m a dispensationalist not because that was what I was taught, for I’ve never had any teaching on the subject. Much like being a Baptist, I am one because that is what I find in my personal study of the Word of God. Set aside the books for a while and open the Book of books.

Michael, I am just curious. A point Gentry and Wellum made repeated in Kingdom through Covenant was that the real sina que non of dispensationalism was distinction of the church and Israel. I’m wondering if based on that premise and the fact that you still hold to a pre-trib pre-mill position, if you really still are a dispensationalist but just in need of a better descriptor than progressive.

Also, for the comments that reference that PD is an attempt to marry CT with dispensationalism. I don’t think that’s quite right. If I understand positions put forth by Blaising, Block, Burns, etc the attempt is to reconcile a Christo-centric reading of Scripture with the outworking of redemptive history such that the change brought on by the first Advent doesn’t disrupt the foreshadowing and fulfillment of the OT. That’s different than saying how can we blend the two positions.

This is an honest and fun article. Jesus will work it all out as we wait and see and ‘occupy the time’ by living with the Fruit of Spirit and acting upon His direction . That people used to die over these words is another interesting time for discussion when denominationalism began. Just ask Menno Simmons. As a retired pastor and History Prof, Mike, I enjoy your truthfulness and investigations.

Ain’t nobody going to Heaven bragging that “I was right and you were wrong.” Except me. And my position is that when all is revealed, we’ll know that we all saw only in part. And then we’ll gather around the throne and sing “Glory to the Lamb that was slain!” So, lighten up, guys, and enjoy your discussions.

Sounds like I was raised in a similar church environment. When I went to college and seminary, there didn’t seem to be the same intellectual rigor among the dispensationalists as there was among reformed and covenant theologians. The dispensationalists seemed to be twisting Scripture to fit dispensationalism, whereas the others were explaining Scripture.

Michael,

Thanks for being open and honest about your struggles with the dispensational point of view. I was also raised and educated in dispensational theology. However, one point I did get from my professor was that both covenant theology and dispensational theology are a means to understanding the whole of Scripture. That has allowed me freedom to explore the weaknesses and strengths of both. I’m not sure what to call myself, but I am somewhere in between. Sounds like you might be in a similar situation. We are always learning.

I was raised in a diverse background. I was baptized in a Church of the Brethren that didn’t practice a particular hermeneutic. Their only real convictions as a denomination are the Trinity, believer’s baptism, and pacifism. After my mom succumbed to cancer, my dad remarried a Lutheran and we all became Lutherans. Lutheran catechism doesn’t teach a particular hermeneutic, only what Luther taught about the sacraments, the Lord’s prayer, the Ten Commandments, and the Apostle’s Creed. Later on, I was taken in by a wild family of Independent Fundamentalist Baptists who gave me a book on Dispensational Hermeneutics, a KJV Scofield Bible, and a series of lessons on why the King James is the only true English Bible, Reformed theology is wrong, and Dispensationalism is right. I didn’t exactly agree with them, but I was hooked on hermeneutics after that. I soon thereafter enrolled at Columbia Bible College where I was taught a far better hermeneutic using Roberson McQuilkin’s Understanding and Applying the Bible.

There are sensibilities in Dispensationalism that are good to take into consideration, but they aren’t any different than simply looking at the context of the period of history that a text of Scripture was written in. If anything, letters like Romans and Hebrews point out that there is no fundamental difference between the “dispensations” of law and grace. There are functional differences resulting from either looking forward to the coming Messiah or living in light of the work he accomplished during his first coming. Otherwise, it’s all the same.

Enjoyed the article. There is a lot of moving around on eschatology, and indeed, it appears to be undergoing a radical re-examination. With a measure of teeth-gnashing in studying eschatology for several years, I moved into the preterist camp. I have an article “A Critical Examination of Dispensationalism” here (scroll down): http://prophecyquestions.com/2014/02/01/articles-by-charles-meek/

I was a Dispensationalist. My first papa key at 16 was 50% spent on a Scofield bible. I used to teach it and in my late teens and twenties was known in my area as the prophecy guy. I am not all worked through on the details now, then I knew every detail of revelation ,every bowl and trumpet. now I’m a big picture guy. What tipped it for me? Israel, just ISRAEL. The key verses of neither circumcision or circumcision count for anything only a new creation, The Kingdom is taken from you and given to a nation that will bear it’s fruit, and he is not a JEW who is one outwardly, all did it for me. The temple and sacrificial system also finished me off, if the OT can be modified because Christ has come. Then so can our understanding of temple, land, people and nation. I could not stomach a literal fulfillment of Ezekiel’s temple with sacrifice of sins , blood dripping everywhere and garment end priests. It’s no longer the land….it’s the WORLD that Abraham b came heir of, I await the Aaliyah …..the return from the four corners of the earth to …….feast with Abraham in the kingdom of God. I’m happier, bigger vision, happy to leave the details

@Ron Q: The Separation of Israel & Church, and perhaps even Progressive Revelation, are both implications, not fundamentals. They’re implications of, for the lack of a better term, the “Dispensational hermeneutic”, one that takes the literal, plain, (perhaps even local-context?) meaning of Bible verses quite seriously.

It seems to me that hermeneutics usefully defines the system, be it New Covenant Theology, Covenant Theology, and Dispensational Theology. And therefore hermeneutics explains the differences between the three.

I am a dispensationalist and not ashamed to be called one. What bothers me the most are CTs who act as if you must be stupid and uneducated to hold to dispensationalism. I hold this view because it flows from a consistent literal hermeneutic. It also provides the best way to deal with the differences between Israel and the Church. Too many times “straw man” arguments are used to attack dispensationalism. When Matt says “The dispensationalists seemed to be twisting Scripture to fit dispensationalism, whereas the others were explaining Scripture.” I find the opposite to be true, a literal approach to prophetic passages is automatically rejected often with no other explanation other than we just know the literal approach cannot be true.

There were many views about how Christ would come the first time, all of which were wrong. It is good to keep that in mind. The world conditions in the last days, described in scripture, seem closer than before, but it is in those days that the understanding of the scripture is greatest.
I recall a friend who was sent to assist an elderly pastor as part of his pastoral training. The old man had an eschatological chart that went around one of the Sunday school walls. At the place where the word antichrist was printed there were a number of names. I don’t remember them exactly, but it was something like this: Kaiser Wilhelm II (crossed out), Mussolini(crossed out), Hitler(crossed out), Stalin(crossed out), Khrushchev.
When my friend came in one Sunday, he found the old man taking the chart down in disgust. “Every time I get good candidate for the Antichrist, someone takes him down(Khrushchev was deposed several days before),” the point being that each of his selections represents a sea change in its moment, a time when the common opinion in the church was that things couldn’t get much worse before the rapture.
I have no particular preference for or against the rapture of the church, but if tribulation works patience, patience experience, experience hope because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts, as Paul tells us, does it matter whether we do or don’t go through the great tribulation? I need to be attentive to the scripture, the signs of the times, the care of His beloved, His heart for the world, but do I have to have a stand on issues that I lack the information to decide.
We all make decisions based on our understanding and our understanding is based on the milieu we have lived in. That is why the Holy Spirit was given to lead and guide us into all truth. He, de riguer, lives and has always lived in the mileu of the Trinity. When there are widespread disagreements in the church one of two hypotheses occur: that one group is right in line with the Holy Spirit or that none are. It seems to me, “in honor preferring one another,” we almost always opt to be right, without reservation. When we say, ” let God be true and every man a liar,” we manage to exclude ourselves from “every man,” to our detriment and the church’s.
In any case, is there something I have missed in the scripture? Are we going to get eschatology grades in heaven? A pluses for those who got it right and D minuses for those who didn’t? Will those with the As be able to lord it over those with the Ds? Carnality in heaven. Now that’s a concept.
Let us love one another, for love is of God.

By grace I find myself in a covential commitment to dispensationalism, so that through faith I have redemption do greater works as God reveals them to me! 🙂

Which is fitting because I want to be a Calvanist, but am compelled to be Arminian.

How can one read Matthew 24 and Jesus says “This generation shall not pass until all these things are fulfilled.” Yet as a dispensationalist would say this is future but chapter 23 of Matthew were it says This generation shall not pass was 2000 years ago. How can one make sense of the theology??? I am at a loss. I am growing away from Dispensationalism.

My initials are JT and I find myself in agreement with JT above.. My history is broadly similar too. I read early Brethren writers like Darby and Kelly. These were very able men. Considerably more able than many later dispensationalists. People like Chafer in their writings did dispensationalism no favours. I read ‘Things To Come’ keen to grasp the system in a systematised way.

In my early 20’s I began to meet Christians who were not dispensationalists and I was shocked. Until then I thought dispensationalism was the only game in town. I began to read the Bible with more alert eyes. At the same timeI was reading quality commentaries that I soon saw were not dispensational. Doubts were beginning to surface.

The first real hole in the dyke for me was the pretrib rapture. I eventually conceded I could not see the pretrib rapture. I needed to go to commentaries to be told what was the rapture and what was the revelation and they often differed. I think 2 Thess 1 convinced me that the coming of Christ to judge the world and the coming for his church was the same event. It lost became clear that 1 Thess 4,5 and 2 Thess 2 had the Coming for the church and the day of the Lord in close proximity because they were the same event. In Matt 24, is it likely that Jesus would describe the frightening events leading up to the coming of the Son of Man and not tell his disciples they need not fear for they will be raptured before these things.

It is just possible that dispensationalism could survive without a pretrib rapture but if the absolute distinction between Israel and the church is abandoned it is left with no real distinctives. Everyone agrees that dispensations of some sort exist. The real heart of dispensationalism is its two separate programmes for two separate peoples. To my mind this too is badly flawed. A key text to weigh is in Matt 21. John Thomson has already alluded to it… the kingdom shall be taken from you and given to a nation that will produce its fruits. This is a reference to his disciples and those that follow them. It is all who believe the gospel of the kingdom who are sons of the kingdom (Matt 13). Or, as in the parable that immediately follows ‘the kingdom shall be taken from you’ (Matt 24:43) if Israel of C1 refuses the invitation to the wedding banquet then these invited guests would be destroyed and the servants would go out to the roads and others would come in. The others are the church.

The church has a Jewish base. It’s foundations are Jewish apostles. Pentecost gave the new covenant eschatological gift of the Spirit to Jewish believers and converts and later the same gift was given to the gentiles. Both having the Spirit revealed the parity that existed. Gentiles had been brought into the covenants of promise and commonwealth of Israel on equal standing with their Jewish believers. (Eph 2). In faith union with Messiah both Jew and gentile are Abraham’s seed and heirs according to promise (Gals 3:29). ‘In Christ’ is not a unique position that takes the church outside of the stream of OT promise rather it is the sphere where all OT promise is realised. All the promises of God are yes and amen in Christ.

There are not two divine programmes one for earthly Israel and one for the heavenly church rather the relationship between the OT and the NT is one of promise and fulfilment. OT types (the land, people, city, temple, sacrifices etc) are on a trajectory to fulfilment in the NT. Very frequently that trajectory is from the earthly to the heavenly. Adam, of the earth, is a type of Christ who is from heaven (1 Cor 15). The earthly temple was a copy of and pointed to the heavenly temple. Aaron the earthly High Priest pointed to Christ the heavenly high Priest. Abraham was promised land but did not see Canaan as the fulfilment of that promise but looked for a heavenly country. Likewise he did not look for an earthly city, and earthly Jerusalem, but for a city whose builder and maker was God; he looked for a heavenly Jerusalem (Hebs 11, 12:22). We need only read the prophetic descriptions of the future kingdom to realise what they describe can only exist in another world. Isa 54 is a good example. It is a description of the eschatological Jerusalem that is born from the work of the servant in Isa 53. The city once desolate is overflowing with life. The walls need to be expanded to contain them. Where has all the life come from. The NT tells us. It has come through the gospel. The gospel has brought Jews and gentiles into Isaiah’s eschatological city and so its teeming with life. Paul specifically cites Isa 54 and its influx of citizens. Moreover, he calls Isaiah’s earthly eschatological city ‘the Jerusalem above” (Gals 4:26-28).

Of course ‘heavenly’ does not mean located in heaven. The New Jerusalem is heavenly but it is located on a renewed. Earth. New creation consists of a new heavens and new earth but in a profound sense it is all heavenly for God is residing there among his people.

I feel dispensationalism is challenged by these observations. While there are discontinuities between the OT and the NT there is profound continuity expressed in the trajectory of promise to fulfilment and of the earthly to the heavenly. It struggles to cope with Christ’s formation of his own eschatological messianic community that he calls the church or better, the assembly, echoing OT language for Israel; the evident continuities with OT types, promises and prophecies challenge its absolutising of any ‘mystery’ elements.

Anyway, I hope these reflections invite thought and even comeback.