24. Despite the dispensationalists’ partial defense of their so-called literalism in pointing out that “the prevailing method of interpretation among the Jews at the time of Christ was certainly this same method” (J. D. Pentecost), they overlook the problem that this led those Jews to misunderstand Christ and to reject him as their Messiah because he did not come as the king which their method of interpretation predicted. Response: It is not advisable to refer to Dispensational interpretation as “literalism” …
Category: Hermeneutics
10. Contrary to the dispensationalists’ commitment to compartmentalizing each of the self-contained, distinct dispensations, the Bible presents an organic unfolding of history as the Bible traces out the flow of redemptive history, so that the New Testament speaks of “the covenants [plural] of the [singular] promise” (Eph 2:12) and uses metaphors that require the unity of redemptive history; accordingly, the New Testament people of God are one olive tree rooted in the Old Testament (Rom 11:17-24). Response: Dispensationalists see the …
7. Despite the dispensationalists’ general orthodoxy, the historic ecumenical creeds of the Christian Church affirm eschatological events that are contrary to fundamental tenets of premillennialism, such as: (1) only one return of Christ, rather than dispensationalism’s two returns, separating the “rapture” and “second coming” by seven years; (2) a single, general resurrection of all the dead, both saved and lost; and (3) a general judgment of all men rather than two distinct judgments separated by one thousand years. Response: We …
95 THESES AGAINST DISPENSATIONALISM 1. Contrary to the dispensationalists’ claim that their system is the result of a “plain interpretation” (Charles Ryrie) of Scripture, it is a relatively new innovation in Church history, having emerged only around 1830, and was wholly unknown to Christian scholars for the first eighteen hundred years of the Christian era. Response: By “plain interpretation” Ryrie simply meant grammatico-historical hermeneutics (G-H) (see his book Dispensationalism, 79-88). There is nothing novel about this. G-H was employed by …
Introduction to this Series Monergism.com, that excellent source for all things Reformed and Covenantal, has recently posted some more rebuttals of Dispensational Theology on its website. Included is a set of 16 lectures by James Grier and a series of “95 Theses Against Dispensationalism” brought together by a group of believers (mostly if not all of them Partial Preterists) calling themselves by the collective nom-de-plume, ‘The Nicene Council.’ There is also a DVD out criticizing this pernicious doctrine to which …
I have now returned to the Texas heat from a nice time in San Jose, doing a Veritas Conference for my friend Will Dudding. We covered a lot of ground. I spoke on “Bible Interpretation for the Rest of Us,” “The Temple,” “Islam,” “Views of the Rapture,” and “Covenant Theology v. Dispensational Theology.” Of course I was biased for pretribulational dispensationalism, but I think I steered a fairly non-radical course. What was interesting is that there were some post-mils. and …
The Theological-Historical Motif of the Bible The God of the Bible is a God who is intimately connected with what He has made. This world is personal in a very genuine way. This personal dimension to reality is what makes the Cross of Christ comprehendible (because the “Sin Problem” – what is wrong with this world – must be resolved from above, on behalf of sinners) and also interpretative of history (since it is God’s “marker” testifying to His ongoing …
In previous assorted posts I have now and then called attention to the fact that as “plain-sense” readers of Scripture, we are concerned more with the covenants in the Bible than with the dispensations. Hence I coined the term “Biblical Covenantalist” in preference to “dispensationalist” to describe myself. But it is a fact that Christians do not always have the same thing in view when speaking about the covenants of Scripture. For one thing, those calling themselves “Covenant Theologians” (CT’s) …
The Attack on Propositional Revelation: Scholars from across the theological spectrum whether Neo-Liberal, Neo-Orthodox, or Neo-Evangelical, are quick to argue against the more conservative view of the propositional character of the Bible.One objection, as we have seen, is that of treating the Bible as a sort of theological concordance irrespective of the original contexts of the passages.Another objection has to do with the propriety of associating the “ineffable” God with human linguistic forms.Some scholars balk at the idea that God …
N.B. Some of this material has appeared in a previous post. Introduction Many moons ago evangelicals could be relied upon to hold a generally agreed-upon opinion on the revelatory character of Scripture.There were some who tried to formulate the “Scripture Principle” using evidentialist apologetics (Warfield, Sproul, Pinnock), and others who laid stress upon the Divine initiative in revelation by employing ‘presuppositionalist’ approaches (Turretin, Kuyper, Van Til), but, for all that, the Bible was thought to contain God’s verbal disclosure in …
