Responding to Dispensationalism, Installation # 29: Conclusion

In conclusion to the series I have posted contrasting dispensational with covenantal hermeneutics , I would like to say that I certainly think of the vast majority of dispensationalists as my brothers in Christ, and most of popular dispensational teaching remains within the bounds of Christian doctrine, though portions of it (when one considers the context of the entire canon of Scripture and the great resources we have in studies of historical theology) tend toward aberrancy. As in all theological systems, there are doctrines which are byproducts of dispensational theory that are heretical. Take for instance the denial of possible apostasy which results from the “Lord less” Christ of Zane Hodges and others; antinomianism has always been a heresy. In kind, the pastures of covenant theology also have its black sheep in the federal vision camp. I also believe that (at least at its inception and the 50 to 75 years immediately following) the eschatological maze work of dispensational theology that results from an unbiblical separation of the “Israel of God” from the Church has a distinctly Gnostic character to it and has historically associated itself with semi-Pelagianism and sometimes even anti-Calvinistic rhetoric thus, in my mind, rendering it sub-biblical at those points as well.

As to its definition, based on my brief study and review of the history of Dispensationalism, I still only regard as true dispensationalist, Darby, Scoffield, Chaffer, and other likeminded folk who accept the two gospel, two peoples, two sets of promises, two eternal destinations and thus the two “ways” of salvation interpretation of God’s dealings with man in history. As for the others, I believe many (Walvood, Ryrie, Ice, Pentecost) have accepted the formal tenets of Dispensationalism, but have also accepted a contradiction because (thankfully) they reject the idea of two ways of salvation, and at least to the degree they regard the distinction of the Israel of God and the Church, and the hermeneutic it encapsulates, as important, in that measure they are dispensationalists of the semantic variety. But when one begins to negotiate that very important distinction between the Israel of God and the Church, whether by attributing even one promise made (exclusively they assume) to the nation of ethnic Israel to the New testament Church, or by denying a premillennial return of Christ, or by denying the literal fulfillment of Ezekiel’s temple/land prophesies in their absolute entirety then, in my humble opinion he (Blaising, Bock, MacArthur, and others) has formally stepped outside the walls of the dispensational camp.