HOW SERIOUS IS IT:

 

DISPENSATIONAL DENIAL

Dispensationalism is definitely in transition. And the transition is remarkably thorough. The denials by old line dispensationalists are growing louder. We who are interested in eschatological matters need to listen to the inter-family squabble of dispensationalism. There is a story there to be told.

DENIAL AND IGNORANCE

Dispensationalism is changing. But as I speak at Bible conferences and receive e-mail and letter responses to my published books and articles, I discover that many lay dispensationalists are either unaware of the changes or think the differences are greatly exaggerated — much like the famous pre-mortem for Mark Twain. Nothing could be farther from the truth. And all who are interested in theological systems, as well as eschatological issues, need to understand the system-wide nature of the transition process. Hence, our newsletter.

The new dispensationalism is known as "Progressive Dispensationalism." This descriptive label is due to the progressive development of the historical dispensations (as opposed to the compartmental dispensations of earlier types). Progressive Dispensationalism is a much hardier variety, having enjoyed some punctuated equilibrium-type evolutionary development (Ryrie prefers the term "change") since the 1980s. I believe these improvements are a sort of natural selection, or better, a theological selection which will allow dispensationalism to survive longer under the continued withering heat of reformed scrutiny. Progressive Dispensationalism is generally more palatable to the wider evangelical world, even making remarkable concessions to some of the reformed and covenantal insights into Scripture.

However, the sooner reformed Christians become aware of the system changes, the better. To debate dispensationalists today will require a major re-orientation of our thinking and approach in many areas.

As noted above, many lay Christians are not even cognizant of the changing of the guard; in fact, some still hold to an antiquated Scofield-type dispensationalism (which accounts for the continued production of the "Scofield Reference Bible"). Consequently, it is important that we awaken them to the theological pressures transmogrifying their system (to borrow a term popularized by the comic strip "Calvin and Hobbes".

Nevertheless, despite the widespread ignorance, the seismic reverberations of tectonic shifting are gradually beginning to be felt. Like the almost imperceptible tremors measuring a scant 2.5 on the Richter Scale, these go unnoticed by many. Although some people sense something is wrong, they just can't quite determine if the ground actually moved or their head merely swam because they arose from the couch too fast.

DENIAL AND ALARM

Fortunately, a growing number of dispensational adherents is beginning to take quite seriously the seismic warning signs, going public in the popular book marketplace. This is especially true among the Revised Dispensational theologians, such as Charles Ryrie, John Walvoord, J. Dwight Pentecost, and others. They know full-well what is happening: Their house "be come tumblin' down." (See, I am hep. I can speak Ebonics).

The Revisionist theologians are standing bravely against the sea of change declaring: "Thus far, but no further." Of course, anyone who stands at the sea to command it to halt is standing upon sand. Unfortunately, the bold challenges have not stopped the sea from advancing: the sand is now a soupy mix of quicksand.

In order to illustrate the grave concerns among the Revised Dispensationalists, I will survey some of their own concerns in a recently published book. These ought to enlighten us as to the growing division within dispensationalism, while documenting it from their own writings and providing insights into the particulars of the debate. In later articles I will highlight and analyze the various changes myself.

The book to which I refer is: Issues in Dispensationalism. It is published by Moody Press and co-edited by Wesley R. Willis and John R. Master, both of Philadelphia College of Bible. The consulting editor is Charles Ryrie (presently Adjunct Professor of Systematic Theology at PCB), who also writes the very revealing "Introductory Word." (The Evangelical Theological Society published my review of this work in the September, 1996 edition of Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society.)

Ryrie intends for his introduction to allay the fears of the more traditional dispensationalists. Portions of this introduction even appear as bolded back cover copy on the dusk jacket of the book. As I will show, although he writes with an air of brave self-confidence, unfortunately for him, his is a wind-beaten, beleaguered, and defiant confidence enduring an erosive storm of opposition. While Ryrie commands the sea to stop, the sea breeze accompanying it is whipping up a sand storm from the shore, causing a sand-blasting of the dispensational monolith. Ryrie's tone (as that of several of the chapters in the book) intensifies rather than allays the problem of concern. Let me cite a few sentences from this remarkable introduction:

"It was reported to me recently that someone said that dispensationalism is dying and there will be no dispensationlists left to attend the funeral.
"Is it? Or is it already dead? Or alive and well...? "In the past three years two books on this topic have been published by university presses. Christian publishers have issued three books (not counting this one) addressing the subject of dispensationalism. A corpse would not merit such attention, would it?" [p. 9]

Does this sound like a system in good health? When one of Revised Dispensationalism's most famous and able practitioners opens a book with these words, we sense the bravery of loved ones gathered into the family room at the hospital looking in the phone book for a non-traditional treatment.

What is more, Ryrie's last sentence is an odd assertion. He writes: "A corpse would not merit such attention, would it?"

Is he kidding? Corpses almost always merit attention — by family and friends, hospitals, the police, funeral homes, newspapers, and others! There is even a section in the newspaper every single day entitled: "Obituaries." There is a whole and very profitable industry for attending to corpses.

Nicole Brown Simpson's corpse has been in the news endlessly for two years; the news media reverberated with the Ice Age corpse found in the Alps four years ago; Hitler's corpse (or lack thereof) has been an issue of continuing historical debate; Lenin's corpse has been on display in the Red Square in Moscow and seen by millions since 1924; Jerome's "Lives of Illustrious Men" is about dead men; King Tut's tour of America in the early 1980s set off a news frenzy almost 2,300 years after he died! In fact, the world renown Pyramids of Egypt are all evidences of corpses meriting enormous attention. Yet Ryrie writes: "A corpse would not merit such attention, would it"! Ryrie looks like a dead man, all dressed up and no place to go.

Furthermore, the death of movements or civilizations is a common subject of books. They are called "history books." Consider "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" by Edward Gibbon. Or "The Wars of the Jews" by Flavius Josephus. And we now even have "The History Channel" on cable television. I am even a member of "The History Book Club," giving my time and money to the study of "corpses."

But let us continue Ryrie's citation. See if you do not think his statement are more bravado attempting to distract attention away from the death throes of traditional dispensationalism. Ryrie writes:

"Why this book? It is not a primer on dispensationalism. Nor does it promote the kind of changes that some who call themselves dispensationalists are making today.... "Not all of the contributors are from a past generation of dispensationalists.... But all are committed to normative dispensational teachings....
"Dispensationalist dying? Hardly — read on."

Remember Elvis's death? Some still don't believe it (and K-Mart has gotten a lot of publicity through Elvis spottings in their stores). But I rather suspect that the way Ryrie writes indicates his fear that gangrene is overwhelming his whole movement. He is in a state of denial. And if you do not believe a rumor until its officially denied, this is the official denial.

Notice what he calls those who are Progressive Dispensationalists: they are people who "call themselves dispensationalists." He will not even allow them the name. And yet these are the dispensational theologians of today — and tomorrow. Ryrie's statement sounds like John's denunciation of the Jews who deny Jesus' Messiah ship (Rev. 2:9; 3:9) — not long before the Temple and Bible-based Judaism were dismantled: they "say they are Jews but are not."

Later Ryrie calls the new improved dispensationalism "an aberration" (p. 20). He bemoans the fact that "newer dispensationalists seem to want to get the attention of covenant theologians and other scholars within the broadest scope of dispensationalism but not rank-and-file dispensationalists" (p. 24). He notes that "most of the 'give' is from dispensationalists and not from covenant people" (p. 24).

Notice also that he takes pains to remark that "not all" of the contributors to the book are "from a past generation." He admits several of the defenders are from the past generation and inadvertently admits that old-line dispensationalism is suffering diminishment by accretion.

Later, in chapter 4 of Issues in Dispensationalism, John F. Walvoord seems to charge Blaising and Bock with lying: "Both Blaising and Bock assert that they accept the doctrinal statement of Dallas Seminary.... They say that they are just as dispensational as ever..." (pp. 88-89).

Zane Hodges really gets put out with Progressive Dispensationalists: "Were it not for the fact that serious men have proposed this view, it might well be dismissed out of hand" (p. 174). He calls Progressive Dispensationalism an "unfortunate trend," even paralleling its messianic exegesis with that of "liberal exegetes," noting that "the wholesale abandonment of direct messianic prophecy by many evangelicals is a capitulation to this view, for which 'typology' is a fig leaf" (p. 180).

This is the state of the house that Scofield built. Internal tension is mounting to the breaking point. The simple days of "Thus saith Scofield" are past; the cavalier dismissal of covenantal theology by reference to "the prophecy experts" (almost always dispensationalists) is over. As Bock now observes: "Dispensationalism is not a monolithic movement; diversity exists today on a number of matters of interpretation" (Blaising and Bock, Progressive Dispensationalism [Wheaton: BridgePoint, 1993], p. 13). Indeed, Bock notes that "sufficient revisions had taken by 1991 to introduce the name progressive dispensationalism at the national meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society that year" (Ibid., p. 23).

The changes dispensationalism is undergoing are system-wide. But one of the most important changes is in the field of hermeneutics, which leads me to consider:

HERMENEUTIC HYSTERIA

Ryrie not only provides the "Introductory Word" to Issues in Dispensationalism, but also the first chapter: "Update on Dispensationalism." And the first chapter sounds a shrill alarm, showing the introduction was not an "uncertain sound of the trumpet" (indeed, I recognized the sound immediately: it was the famous military tune "Taps").

On page 16 Ryrie writes: "This is the question: Is dispensationalism developing or changing?" He argues — and I agree with him — that it is changing; that is, it is becoming something quite different from what it was.

As the developer of the so-called sine qua non of dispensationalism (see his landmark Dispensationalism Today, first edition, 1965, pp. 43ff.), Ryrie quite naturally begins his alarm by commenting on the highly-marketable, but hardly-defensible "insistence on literal interpretation" (p. 17). The second and third chapters also focus on this linchpin in the classic dispensational argument. Unfortunately, for Ryrie and Co., enormous strides are being made by Progressive Dispensationalists in the important field of biblical hermeneutics. Strides that step over Ryrie's literalism line-drawn-in-the-sand.

Ryrie writes: "One important element was an insistence on literal interpretation as opposed to a historicist one. This literal hermeneutic was deemed especially important to the correct understanding of Revelation, Daniel, and other Old Testament prophecies" (p. 17).

One would think Revelation, of all biblical books, would be the one place where the literalist principle could be slackened. And it is, of course, though many absurd attempts at literalism are made in various places in the exposition of the book.

For instance, Robert L. Thomas, a traditional dispensationalist, holds that the eerie locusts of Revelation 9 and the strange frogs of Revelation 16 are demons who literally take on those peculiar physical forms; that the two prophets of Revelation 11 literally spue fire from their mouths; that every mountain in the world will be abolished during the seventh bowl judgments; that the fiery destruction of the literal city of Babylon will smolder for more than 1000 years; that Christ will return from heaven to earth on a literal horse; and that the new Jerusalem is literally a 1500 mile high cube (Thomas, Revelation 1-7 [Chicago: Moody, 1992], pp. 455 and Revelation 8-22 [Chicago: Moody, 1995], pp. 30, 46, 49, 90, 264, 360, 386, 467).

Thomas Ice in chapter two of Issues in Dispensationalism quotes Ryrie's 1965 statement: "Consistently literal or plain interpretation is indicative of a dispensational approach to the interpretation of the Scriptures" (p. 29). He cites Earl Radmacher as noting that literal interpretation "is the 'bottom-line' of dispensationalism" (p. 29). Then he joins with Ryrie's lament: there "appear to be signs of hermeneutical equivocation within the ranks of dispensationalism" (p. 29).

Progressive dispensationalists Craig Blaising and Darrell Bock in their Progressive Dispensationalism clearly disassociate themselves from claims to a distinctive, literalistic hermeneutic. Bock comments: "For some, interpretation is like the popular Nike television commercial: just as one merely laces up new basketball shoes and hits the floor to 'just do it,' so the interpreter should merely open up the text and 'just read it.' Unfortunately, it isn't quite that simple" (p. 58).

Elsewhere Blaising writes: "consistently literal exegesis is inadequate to describe the essential distinctive of

dispensationalism" ("Development of Dispensationalism," Bibliotheca Sacra, #579, p. 272). Serious trouble is brewing when one of a system's sine qua non is "inadequate."

Blaising & Bock, in their important Dispensationalism, Israel, and the Church, note that "hermeneutical methodology has been rethought and is no longer perceived as an exclusively dispensational hermeneutic" (p. 378). This is due to the "conceptual naivete" of Ryrie's hermeneutic which involves a "methodological deficiency in the very hermeneutic that it proposed," which is gravely serious in that "this hermeneutical deficiency was structured into the very meaning of dispensational thought and practice in its advocacy of clear, plain;, normal, or literal interpretation" (p. 29). Thus, today there is "the present-day inapplicability of Ryrie's exclusive hermeneutic" (p. 32).

Is it not ironic, then, that those classic dispensationalists who charged the evangelical world with error regarding interpretive principles find their own system going over to the opposition? This should be pointed out to erstwhile dispensationalists today. And in upcoming issues of Dispensationalism in Transition I will provide more ammunition for such an endeavor, while critiquing the methodological deficiencies that plague Progressive Dispensationalism.

SPECIAL NOTES

Christian Educational Materials

Make checks payable to and order from: Kenneth Gentry, 46 Main St., Conestee, SC 29636.

"The Divorce of Israel" (22 tapes: $85; syllabus: $15)

This set is a formal, college level introduction and survey. In it I survey some of the major introductory questions: authorship, date of writing, theme, interpretive principles, and schools of thought. The bulk of the set gives exposition to all major sections of Revelation, defending an orthodox preterist interpretation, demonstrating that Revelation prophesies the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70, that the Beast is Nero Caesar, that the Babylonian harlot is first century Jerusalem, that the millennium begins in the first century and continues until the Second Advent close of temporal history, that the New Jerusalem is established in the first century, and that the New Creation begins in the first century and is perfected in eternity.

"Dispensational Distortions" (3 tapes: $15)

A critique of revised dispensationalism (Ryrie, Walvoord, Pentecost type), showing various historical, theological, and exegetical problems.

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