I mentioned in a previous post that “Dispensationalism” is a poor soubriquet for our system of belief. My reasons included the patent fact that “Dispensational Theology” is really not about the dispensations, but about the biblical covenants. Thus, for my part, I prefer to be identified as a “Biblical Covenantalist.” Now, I admit that “Biblical Covenantalism” is not the most attractive name. But it is far more accurate and more helpful than “Dispensationalism” – and that name hardly trips off …
Category: Hermeneutics
This is the outline I used for a presentation at a Conference in 2005. Let me begin this short study with a quotation from two former DTS graduates who have since abandoned and then rounded on dispensationalism: The passage most commonly mentioned that presents great difficulty to dispensational literalism is Ezekiel’s temple vision (Ezekiel 40-48). The dispensationalists are looking for a reinstitution of bloody animal sacrifices in a millennial temple built in accordance with the description found in …
Those in the progressive dispensationalist camp are comfortable with disposing of grammatical-historical hermeneutics, whereas normative dispensationalists align themselves closely with it. The fact that Darrell Bock could write a Forward commending William Webb’s controversial X-Y-Z approach shows that they are both influenced by modern hermeneutical theorizing. Bock himself emphasizes the supposed problem with saying that Scripture may be read in a consistently literal manner[1]; Schleiermacher’s warning about imposing a rigid set of rules upon the text before we actually read …
As I was doing my all-too-infrequent clearing up of my email messages I inadvertently removed a question I was asked about FF Bruce’s position on eschatology. I place an answer of sorts here in the hope that Prof. Fred Hall’s eyes might fall on it. As far as I can make out Prof. Bruce’s position was in line with the B. W. Newton stream of Plymouth Brethren interpretation. That is to say, he was a historic premillennialist in the vein …
The Rationale Behind Dispensational Hermeneutics Without a doubt, the issue of hermeneutics is one of the hottest issues in theology today. The word comes from the Greek hermeneia which basically means “interpretation.”[1] How do we interpret the Bible, and, in particular, those relatively few, yet significant parts of it which cause puzzlement or debate? No one can enter upon the task of theology without confronting this question. Yet the answer to it is not as straightforward as it may …
A Reply to “An Open Letter To Evangelicals and Other Interested Parties: The People of God, The Land of Israel, and the Impartiality of the Gospel,” issued by Knox Theological Seminary. This is a paper I wrote for the Conservative Theological Journal which never saw the light of day (I can’t grumble, I used to edit it). I have been reading Kim Riddlebarger’s A Case for Amillennialism and Timothy Weber’s On the Road to Armaggeddon and I remembered the piece, …
In many respects there is much ground that is mutually shared by evangelical/fundamentalist theology per se. However, consistent hermeneutics is the environment in which dispensationalism thrives. Outside of that environment it fades into nothing. In this little essay[1] I want to examine some of what is happening in the world of philosophical hermeneutics so that we can better understand the influences that are being seen in evangelical textbooks on the subject. Still more, we shall start to understand why …
The identity of the “Sons of God” in the sixth chapter of Genesis is and always has been, as one OT writer has put it, “the subject of a longstanding debate among biblical scholars.”[1] Whichever view is taken of them, it cannot be doubted that even amid the extraordinary stories in Genesis 1-11, the first four verses of Genesis 6 are extremely enigmatic. Why does the human author (Moses) use this term the “Sons of God”? Who are the “Nephilim” …
A Brief History of Biblical Interpretation – a paper. …
The history of the interpretation of the Bible is a long and involved one. For many centuries people have approached the Scriptures supposing that it should be interpreted literally whenever possible, or that one ought to look deeper than the surface meaning to find its true spiritual center. Still others have believed that the Old and (to a lesser extent) the New Testament is opened up by means of three or four hermeneutical categories. In this paper we shall try …
