Responding to Dispensationalism, Installation # 24: T.B. Baines

Section 2 of: The Lord's Coming, Israel, and the Church. 4th edition, revised and enlarged. Broom, 1881.

Baines’ misunderstanding or misrepresentation of the Amillennial view aside, here is his view on several passages that consider the Church/Israel distinction:

“Now that believers are the children of Abraham is not disputed. The question is, whether they drain into themselves, and divert from Israel, the promises given under this head. In one of the Abrahamic promises, the seed named is Christ Himself; in the other it is a countless multitude. To this innumerable seed was promised the perpetual possession of a certain geographical area, together with national supremacy in the earth. Now how can this be interpreted as the portion of the Church? But since it has not yet been given to Israel, and since it is not the portion of the Church, the promise still has to receive its fulfilment outside the Church. In other words, the Church does not set aside Israel, or usurp the promise of national blessing and glory. This is enough for our purpose, for if the Church does not embrace all the unfulfilled promises, the common interpretation fails. It may be well, however, for the sake of clearing up what to some is a real difficulty, to look at the passages on which this interpretation rests.”

He then cites Romans 4:

11 He received the sign of circumcision as a seal of the righteousness that he had by faith while he was still uncircumcised. The purpose was to make him the father of all who believe without being circumcised, so that righteousness would be counted to them as well, 12 and to make him the father of the circumcised who are not merely circumcised but who also walk in the footsteps of the faith that our father Abraham had before he was circumcised. 13 For the promise to Abraham and his offspring that he would be heir of the world did not come through the law but through the righteousness of faith. 14 For if it is the adherents of the law who are to be the heirs, faith is null and the promise is void. 15 For the law brings wrath, but where there is no law there is no transgression. 16 That is why it depends on faith, in order that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all his offspring—not only to the adherent of the law but also to the one who shares the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all, 17 as it is written, "I have made you the father of many nations"—in the presence of the God in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist.

Baines continues this way,

“But the promise here is not the promise of the land. It is a summary of God's promises announcing his purpose to make Abraham the root of blessing. Thus believers are morally Abraham's children, as the father of the faithful. This is all that the passage states as to relationship. They will inherit the world as joint-heirs with Christ, and the promises to Abraham are varied and extended in God's grace to include them. This is all that the passage says about the promises. The specific promise to the descendants of Abraham is not transferred to the Church, and is altogether inapplicable to it. And so far are the literal seed from being set aside by the spiritual seed, that the promise is expressly stated to belong to the seed "which is of the law," as well as to that "which is of the faith of Abraham."

Romans 4 would not be the only time a New Testament writer brackets off a portion of an Old Testament quote, for the purposes of the Holy Spirit, yet still having the whole of its Old Testament context in mind. In other words, Paul can say that, “13 For the promise to Abraham and his offspring that he would be heir of the world did not come through the law but through the righteousness of faith.” and still have the entirety of the Abrahamic covenant promises in view; he does not have to reiterate every aspect of the covenant rewards in order for them to be included in his citation. The interpretation that Baines makes of this passage would not have crossed the minds of the first century Jews hearing the letter read aloud, though it was not written to them specifically in history, saved Jews of that day and ours should adore this Scripture just as any other. Furthermore, if Paul knew that God had two peoples in one (the remnant of spiritual Jews and the Church contained in one elect body) in mind and that the promises distributed to each group were not all the same, then it is the belief of this theologian that here in Romans he would have made that patently clear, but he didn’t, in fact, the exact opposite is expressed by the consideration of the text in the context of the rest of the letter and the entire New Testament. So I feel that the burden of proof lies with those dispensationalists who insist that Paul has that in view here. Baines asserts that the promise of land is not in view here, but any mention of the inheritance of Abraham’s children would have conjured up thoughts of the land and the rest therein unless the promises of such things were explicitly excluded, but they are not. So I think Baines’ claim that the promise of land is not here and that Paul only had in mind the promise God made to Abraham that through him all the nations would be blessed is very bold at best. In this isolated reward the essential thing in mind is that salvation is of the Jews but for the gentiles as well. If it were true, that this was the only thing Paul had in mind, then he never would have used the phrase, “heir of the world” because of the great confusion it would have caused. So, Baines continues, because this is the only aspect of the Abrahamic promises that Paul had in mind, he concludes that believing gentiles are only Abraham’s children “morally” because he is the father of the “faithful”. What he appears to mean here is that Abraham is the father of those who keep the law. But this directly contradicts Paul’s entire line of argumentation. Paul is arguing that all believers are Abraham’s children BY FAITH, not that those who ARE FAITHFUL to keep the law are his children; else he wouldn’t have said that Abraham was counted righteous before he was circumcised. This is symptomatic of the perennial dispensational confusion of justification and sanctification.

The larger Pauline purpose here (and I dare say that it is the purpose of the Spirit as well) is to solidify the idea that all believers in every age are the children of Abraham, and if his children, then joint heirs with Christ—receiving, as do all of Abraham’s descendants—all of the promises afforded thereunto. The real problem is that Baines has a view of the promises of God that is constricted by what I have referred to as the tenacist view. This view regards the historical grammatical interpretation of the Old Testament prophesies as their only interpretation. On the other hand, the covenant theologian (and the Amillennialists in particular regarding the fulfillment of the promises of God to Abraham) is concerned with the historical grammatical interpretation and believe that it is important to ascertain how the audience contemporary to the prophesy (prophet included) would probably have understood it, but he also affords a spiritual, divine, fuller and greater interpretation and fulfillment of many Old Testament prophecies to the degree that the New Testament or the metanarrative of the canonical context expands that interpretation. I suggest that the neglect of this method of interpretation has created more than one pitfall in the landscape of Christian theology and its application over the last 160 years.