Dispensationalism is goofy. At least that’s the opinion of some Christians – even scholars I hold in great esteem insofar as defending the gospel and the Bible.
After I left the New Age and started digging into my Bible, I reached a point when I felt the need to get a book on Systematic Theology. So I asked around for some opinions. One of the responses was memorable. The fellow adamantly advised me that I should avoid anything dispensational at all costs. At that time I only had a vague idea of what dispensationalism taught.
I later learned that it was sometimes referred to as “Left Behind” Theology. But I was still essentially a posttribulationist back then. My interests had little to do with rapture timing. My focus was on millennialism and Israel. I later discovered that Israel, the church and the millennium were indeed the real focus points of attacks on dispensationalism.
My New Age experience had exposed me to teachers who were adroit at looking at biblical texts in a different way to the straight forward understanding. So whenever I came across a re-interpretation of a prophetic verse concerning Israel or the millennium by a preterist or an amillennialist, I could see that they also were clever people. However, they didn’t convince me. They treated some biblical passages much like the New Agers did. The Bible would say one thing and these people would find clever excuses to change its plain meaning.
Over the years, dispensationalism has had many detractors. John Gerstner once wrote a scathing polemical attack on it. Unfortunately he seems to have often misunderstood and misrepresented the system, as Richard Mayhue and David L. Tuner, and others have demonstrated.
Vern Poythress was far more irenic in his critique Understanding Dispensationalists. Robert L. Saucy partially responded to him HERE.
Michael Vlach recalls an incident when he was listening to a Q & A session between R. C. Sproul and Sinclair Ferguson. Ferguson was under the mistaken impression that dispensationalism teaches multiple ways of salvation. It doesn’t. Meanwhile Sproul accused dispensationalists of holding to Antinomianism. They don’t. Sproul bragged about telling someone that dispensationalism was goofy. He even told his audience: “I think that people who are evangelicals and dispensational at the same time ought to run for their lives from it.” How can anyone legitimately criticize a system when they don’t understand it?
Given all this I have no qualms about endorsing Dan Phillips’ article Twenty-five stupid reasons for dissing Dispensationalism. Note that Dan isn’t saying that the critics are stupid – he’s saying that some of the reasons for attacking it are. I like his biting yet good-natured wit and I think he manages to hit all the targets. Here is his introduction along with the first two “stupid” reasons. Hope you enjoy reading them even if you’re not a dispensationalist.
Twenty-five stupid reasons for dissing Dispensationalism:
It’s just not “cool” to be dispensationalist, anymore.
The system had particular prominence in the seventies and beyond, which excited a lot of envy and resentment among the non’s (“Hey, what about us?”). So they produced a lot of sourpuss, wanna-be literature, trying to take back every area that dispensational writers had held.
They haven’t fully succeeded. This really irritates them, because many of them still think that dispensationalists are unsophisticated knuckle-draggers at best, or heretics at worst. It’s like listening to evolutionists talk about the Great Unwashed, who they see as too stupid to agree with them, still boneheadedly clinging to inane creationistic notions. They alternate between sniffing in disdain, and wondering why their outreaches fail to penetrate their foes’ Stygian darkness.
But anti-dispies have succeeded with some folks, more (I think) through image than substance. They have convinced them that it isn’t cool to be a dispensationalist.
Particularly, it’s not cool to be Reformed and dispensationalist. In responding to a letter of mine about something entirely different (the problem of evil), decades ago, the great commentator William Hendriksen slapped me down something fierce. I had made the mistake of mentioning in passing that I was a Calvinist, and a dispensationalist. The great man told me you can’t be “100% reformed/Calvinist” and dispensationalist. He told me to read this and that book, and not to write him again until I was 100%. As I recall, he even suggested that this doctrinal error lay at the root of my problem with evil.
Yet stubbornly here I am, still unrepentantly both, and still for the exact same reason: when I consistently apply the hermeneutic that God used to save me, I end up Reformed… and dispensationalist.
In the circles that my Reformedicity puts me in, I hear a lot of dissing of Dispensationalism. In hearing that, I also hear a lot of ignorance, a lot of envy, a lot of serious denial. This little essay addresses some of the worst that I most frequently hear. And so, without further eloquence:
1) All of the coolest guys are amillennial/”historical” premill/covenant/whatever. I suspect this is the real reason many adopt amillennialism. They want to be just like Augustine, or Calvin, or Owen, or Packer or Waltke or Whoever, or any of all those cool guys. It’s just so cool to be cool. I’ll admit it — I’ve felt that pull. Just give up, give in, join the RHRG (Really Hip Reformed Guys). Then when they mock and make fun of people who still take all of the Bible seriously, it’ll be okay. You’ll be on the giving end, instead of the receiving end! Plus, prophecy doesn’t require hard work anymore. Just shrug and say, “Jesus. The church. Whatever.” Here, I’ll show you:
Mount Zion to be made the capital of the earth? “Jesus. The church. Whatever.”
Israel to be fully restored in spite of all her sins? “Jesus. The church. Whatever.”
Wars and conflicts such as have never happened, followed by unprecedented deliverance for the nation of Israel? “Jesus. The church. Whatever.”
Nine chapters of detailed prophecy about a temple such as has never yet been built? “Jesus. The church. Whatever.”
See? Cool!And I’ll also say that it’s largely true that the coolest have been, to say the least, non-dispensationalists. Most of my greatest theological and otherwise-Christian heroes were not dispensationalists: Machen, Spurgeon, Calvin, van Til, E. J. Young, and on and on.
But then there’s that little principle that I also gained at my conversion, and that has saved my spiritual life countless times. I’m a Christian because of Jesus. My judge is God, my rule is His Word. Other believers (dead or living) are important, but not all-important. My business is with God’s Word (Hebrews 4:12-13). This focus has kept me Christian through countless instances of treachery, hypocrisy, betrayal, malice — and I’m not about to leave it when it comes to formulating my theology.
But if you’re going to let peer-pressure mold your theological system, you had best not think too deeply about John 7:48 (“Have any of the authorities or the Pharisees believed in him?”, the Pharisees snort). No, you’ll have to embrace your inner approbation-lust, and ignore the fact that it is the opposite of God-centered faith (“How can you believe, when you receive glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the only God?” — John 5:44).Especially try not to think of your Reformer heroes. In their day, all the coolest guys were Roman Catholic.
2) It’s new. Sorry, must have missed the memo — when was the last truth gleaned from the Bible? I knew the Canon was closed to addition; I didn’t realize it was closed to study as well. Funny that anti-dispensationalists would effectively relegate Psalm 119:18 to a different dispensation. And, while we’re at it, tell me again — how old are the five Sola’s as a formulation? How about the acronym TULIP? Um, Covenant theology — when was that systematized? And what was the chief objection raised to Luther by learned Roman doctors at Worms? Or go way back, fifth century — how old is the doctrine of the Trinity now? “Old as the Bible,” you growl? I totally agree. Same for dispensationalism…keep reading
Note: See also our previous article on Telos Theological Ministries where Dr. Paul Henebury responds to The Ninety-Five Theses Against Dispensationalism compiled by Ken Gentry and Jerry Johnson.
Sharing is caring!
