Refining Dispensational Discourse: Reconsidering Four Common Expressions

by Mark A. Snoeberger¹

Fifteen years ago, my late mentor Rolland McCune passed me a baton, namely, his class on dispensational theology. Dr. McCune routinely taught that dispensationalism was still a good century away from status as a settled system, and encouraged us “young bucks,” as he called us, to be a part of the ongoing development. It is with this encouragement that I write this article.

My goal is not to move the dispensational system substantially away from what it historically has been. This occurred, I believe, in the development of progressive dispensationalism in the 1990s. I say this not to open up a skirmish line with those who embrace that approach, but simply to assure my present readers that I have not abandoned, in my suggestions below, what Charles Ryrie has labeled normative dispensationalism, or what has become known more broadly as traditional dispensationalism.² I do believe, however, that traditional dispensationalism can finesse some of its stock expressions so that the approach is more carefully expressed and more accurately understood—by its proponents and its detractors alike. That is the goal of the present article.

Revisiting the Definition…Again

Much ink has been spilt attempting to define the concept of a dispensation. Two definitions, arguably, have proven the most resilient in the history of dispensationalism. The first was offered by C. I. Scofield and stood as the reigning definition from the release of his “old” study Bible (1909, rev. 1917) until the release of the “new” study Bible bearing his name (1967): “A dispensation is a period of time during which man is tested in respect of obedience to some specific revelation of the will of God.”³ The second, which emerged the winner from the glut of definitions proposed in the 1960s and 1970s belongs to Charles Ryrie: “A dispensation is a distinguishable economy in the outworking of God’s program.”⁴

Ryrie’s definition improves on Scofield’s in observing that the operative idea is not time, but what was occurring within time—a series of economies. The term economy is a fine word in its own right, and etymologically connected to the Greek οἰκονομία (a connection that in retrospect is probably not that important); however, it is in two ways deficient. Firstly, the English term economy has evolved into a primarily fiscal idea, and for this reason alone is confusing to most. More significantly, and secondly, we note that Reformed and others have long used the idea of economies to identify chapters of the unfolding pactum salutis. By using this term, the dispensationalist invites a confusion that has long dogged the movement, namely, that dispensationalism offers multiple, “distinguishable” approaches to the doctrine of salvation—approaches that segregate the elect of God by as many redemptive methods as there are dispensations.

But if dispensationalists are not attempting to distinguish “ways of salvation” or “groups of redeemed people,” what are they distinguishing? The answer is clear in neither Scofield’s nor Ryrie’s definitions. Scofield suggests that we have dispensations of time, revelation, responsibility, and/or God’s will; Ryrie favors dispensations of God’s program. In criticizing these five terms, I am not suggesting that any of them is incorrect, per se, only that they all lack precision and comprehensiveness. Every one, I would argue, falls short of plainly identifying the dispensations as chapters of the government of God. That is to say, they identify sequential administrations of God’s sovereign oversight not only of the redemptive/cultic sphere, but also and especially of the civil and political spheres of world jurisdiction. Or, if I may, they detail the intricacies of evolving interrelationship between God’s two swords (Boniface), two laws (Aquinas), two kingdoms (Luther), and two governments (Calvin).

Clarifying this point, I would argue, is key to dispelling the persistent misunderstanding that dispensationalists advocate for multiple ways of salvation. I contend that dispensationalists are neither more nor less guilty than any of the four ecclesiastical stalwarts above, of advocating for “two ways of salvation” and “two peoples of God.” The distinctions are not of people groups severally redeemed, but of people groups severally governed.⁵

Dispensationalists, as we shall develop further below, have routinely pushed back against the Protestant scholastic consensus of biblical history as a history, principally, of divine redemption, preferring to see a history of the whole divine government. The nodal points of the biblical storyline in dispensational theology are not (or at a minimum, not merely) saving acts of God as Redeemer but rather ruling acts of a God as King. Nor are the “peoples” that feature in these windows of history distinct groups of redeemed people (though some are), but organized echelons of God’s citizenry. This distinction, I argue, must be pressed relentlessly in the face of persistent misrepresentation of the dispensational approach.

My first proposal, then, is that dispensationalists might benefit by reworking Ryrie’s definition of dispensation as “a distinguishable administration in the outworking of the whole government of God.”

Revisiting the Sine Qua Non…Again

Just about every available course on traditional dispensational theology begins with a review of Charles Ryrie’s sine qua non of dispensationalism. Unfortunately, students (as they are wont to do) have reduced unmercifully its three elements for the sake of mnemonics:

• A distinction between Israel and the Church
• A literal hermeneutic
• A doxological center of the Bible’s message

John Feinberg and Michael Vlach have developed alternative lists, each with six elements, and while these lists have also been subjected to reduction, their sheer number has made their coverage more comprehensive.⁶ Both, however, push back at Ryrie’s third point. Vlach concedes that dispensationalists do a better job than others in seating human redemption within “God’s broader kingdom purposes,” but suggests that Ryrie’s wording was “not the best” and “did not bring clarity,” concluding: “I personally do not bring up the glory of God as a distinguishing characteristic of dispensational theology.”⁷ Feinberg flatly states that he “disagrees” with crucial details of Ryrie’s doxological center, but preserves Ryrie’s concern for a broader philosophy of history that exceeds the narrower, spiritual/redemptive focus observable in other theological systems.⁸ Other dispensationalists have been less kind, some expressing consternation and even embarrassment over Ryrie’s third point.⁹

In keeping with the foregoing section, however, I am convinced that Ryrie was on to something extremely important—so much so that I would elevate his third point, carefully qualified, to the place of principal distinction between dispensational and Reformed theologies. The argument is not (nor did Ryrie suggest as much) that dispensationalists are uniquely concerned with God’s glory or that dispensationalists are alone in discovering glory for God generally within the whole flow of history. Such suggestions are ludicrous in view of the crushing weight of Reformed literature to the contrary.

Instead, the Copernican distinction between dispensational and Reformed is that the former do not see redemption (much less a covenant of redemption) as the central organizing motif in ordering the Christian Scriptures. Treating biblical history principally as a history of redemption, dispensationalists have argued, is an idea too narrow, too anthropocentric, and too contrived to be an adequate one for the whole Bible.¹⁰ The unifying center, it would seem, must be something additional to or even other than redemption.

Where Ryrie fell short, I would suggest, is in successfully identifying an alternative governing center for understanding biblical history. Ryrie suggested God’s glory as a unifying goal (a marvelous concept, to be sure), but one that failed to set the dispensational system apart from any other biblical theological approach. As McCune has incisively observed, a goal without a carefully defined “plan of achievement” or “means of attaining it” is inadequate to grounding one’s biblical theology.¹¹ Instead, McCune proposed that the dispensational program itself, with its iterative stewardships of responsibility, supplies the framework for the biblical storyline. Reduced to a single word, he argued that dispensationalists should identify God’s kingdom (not redemption) as the mitte that best captures the whole flow of biblical history: the biblical storyline is less a history of redemption and more a history of the rule of God. God’s plan of redemption does, of course, unfold within the developing divine government, but redemption is subsidiary to something greater than itself. 

McCune was not a pioneer in this approach; he was following the lead of his mentor at Grace Theological Seminary, Alva J. McClain (1888–1968), whose Greatness of the Kingdom laid out this proposal is great detail.¹² McClain, in turn, leaned heavily on works by premillennial stalwarts such as Erich Sauer (1898–1959)¹³ and George N. H. Peters (1825–1909).¹⁴ For all of these, the idea of divine kingship played a pivotal role in establishing the biblical storyline.

In summary, then, my second recommendation is to finesse the third element of Ryrie’s sine qua non to identify not merely a goal (doxology), but to specifically seat the principal venue for rendering God glory in his manifold government, and most especially his kingdom program.

Revisiting “Literalism”…Again

The second piece of Ryrie’s sine qua non, noted above, is his “literal” hermeneutic. This adjective has proven to be less than ideal, regularly earning snickers from critics as connoting wooden interpretation that ignores figures of speech—and, to be honest, some dispensationalists have given credence to this criticism by being slow to admit to obvious figures in the Bible. Other dispensationalists have abused the principle of literalism variously by seeking meaning chiefly in etymology or strict dictionary definitions, by developing rogue hermeneutical principles (e.g., the “law of first mention”) or by being overly skeptical about the evolutionary nature of language.¹⁵

Because of these abuses, dispensationalists have for decades sought diligently for a better label for their hermeneutical approach, but a better one has proven elusive. Some have added adjectives (a consistently literal approach); others have offered alternatives such as “normal,” “plain,” or “ordinary,” but these beg the question, and often pejoratively. Others have opted for the more broadly accepted “grammatical-historical” rubric, but since a vastly diverse field of scholars uses this rubric, value of this phrase for identifying a distinctively dispensational approach is limited.

Others still have conceded the elusiveness of a trim label and have instead offered a series of descriptive principles that clarify what “literalism” means for them. The aforementioned works by Feinberg and Vlach are exemplary in this regard: Both argue that (1) the OT must be permitted to speak on its own terms without reinterpretation by the NT; that (2) promises made to ethnic Israel must be fulfilled by ethnic Israel (and no amount of typologism can alter this fact); that (3) while there exist multiple senses of key terms such as “seed” and “Israel,” no one sense swallows up the others; etc. Rolland McCune has offered, more abstractly, a series of four “received laws of language” that he defends transcendentally in defining what he means by literalism:

• The Univocal Nature of Language Meaning
• The Jurisdiction of Authorial Intent
• The Unitary Authorship of Scripture
• The Textually Based Locus of Meaning¹⁶

Each of these helps to clarify the idea of literalism and allays at least some misunderstanding; still, one longs for a nimbler label to precisely capture the traditional dispensational approach to hermeneutics. Most competing biblical theologies sport concise hermeneutical labels (labels like mythological, anagogical, typological, Christological (or Christotelic) complementary, and sensus plenior come to mind), but traditional dispensationalists have been stymied in this regard.

Thankfully, the discipline of secular jurisprudence has recently come through with a more carefully defined and more publicly accepted term that is positioned to compete for the elusive label that dispensationalists are seeking, namely, originalism.

Literalism as Originalism

Saying that originalism is a better-defined and more publicly accepted idea than literalism may be a case of faint praise. Originalism (and the subsidiary idea of textualism) have been widely misunderstood in modern literature and in the court of public opinion. Their newness, too, renders a settled definition elusive. While the idea of originalism is ancient, the modern label appeared for the first time in 1980, pejoratively, in Paul Brest’s critique of the conservative impulse then threatening the long-standing liberal control of the Supreme Court.¹⁷

Self-styled originalists argue simply (1) that a text’s meaning is fixed, and (2) that the locus of that fixed meaning is in the “original public meaning” of that text. The principal sparring partner of originalism is purposivism, the idea that interpreters should seek the “purpose,” “spirit,” and “intention” of a given text, then extrapolate from these to an updated understanding consistent with the original author’s trajectory of thought, offering suggestions about what the original author might say today had he survived to see the world as it has become.¹⁸ As time has passed, however, purposivism has proved fleeting—a clever stepping stone for progressive interpreters to achieve their real goal: opting, by any means possible, for “whatever they currently think it desirable for [the text] to mean.”¹⁹

Scalia’s concern about this sort of manipulation of meaning is shared by dispensationalists, who object to hermeneutical bids (faithful or faithless) to impose on the plain meaning of the text certain cultural norms, assured results of science, later revelation, and hermeneutical devices unknown to the original readers.

Despite a rosy initial comparison of constitutional originalism and biblical literalism, however, synonymy is difficult to maintain. Three major objections have mustered. Firstly, both Barrett and Scalia reject a favorable comparison of constitutional originalism and biblical literalism based on their understanding that biblical literalism is an approach to interpretation that “strips language of its context” and understands language by “mechanistically consulting dictionary definitions” apart from shared figures of speech and all the lively nuance that make up the social construct of linguistic communication.²⁰ Since, however, these are precisely the fallacies I am trying to avoid, this objection loses its force for the current study—their objection actually proves my point that dispensationalists need to abandon the term literalism in favor of a term that is more broadly understood.

More incisive, secondly, are the observations raised by Peter J. Smith and Robert W. Tuttle, whose article “Biblical Literalism and Constitutional Originalism” is the most comprehensive comparison by far of these two ideas.²¹ After documenting four key similarities between biblical literalism and Constitutional originalism (“commitment to the text,” reading as “restoration,” a “populist impulse” [the idea that ordinary people can understand ancient texts], and the “idea of a faithful interpreter”),²² they point out two key differences, viz., “the scope of and jurisdiction of the text” and “the duty of the interpreter.”²³ Unlike Constitutional originalists, they observe, biblical literalists read the Bible as an act of faith in a God with universal jurisdiction—God must be obeyed as a matter of absolute moral ought because he is always good, true, and right. Constitutional originalists, no matter how assertive, have never gone so far as this.

More crucial still, and thirdly, is the observation that Constitutional originalism and “authorial intent” are increasingly at odds among Constitutional originalists. While some early expressions of Constitutional originalism spoke favorably of authorial intent (or authorial purpose), proponents now reject the idea in favor of “original public meaning”: the meaning that the words would have meant to an ordinary reader at the time of their writing. Contemporary Constitutional originalists believe the quest for authorial intent is both unnecessary (we have no window into intent apart from the author’s words), and also irrelevant (an author’s intentions may have been fleeting, conflicted, or even contradictory—what matters in legal documents is the author’s actual words, whether or not he intended them). In biblical originalism, on the other hand, the miracle of inspiration renders authorial intent and original meaning synonymous.²⁴ In inspiration, God supernaturally renders the human writer’s intention identical with His own, absolutely inerrant and inalterable, and, most salient to our discussion, perfectly consistent with everything else ever written under 1500 years of inspiration. This means that biblical originalists have at their disposal robust access to the analogia scriptura, whereby one may compare Scripture with Scripture to discover additional clues to original meaning. This is something that the Constitutional originalist cannot affirm about his governing document.

These differences of literature notwithstanding, however, I believe that the methods employed both by Constitutional Originalists and by dispensationalist literalists have remarkable continuity. The comparison is less than perfect, to be sure, but the label originalism certainly brings us much closer to an accurately descriptive label for the dispensational hermeneutic than any other label has managed to do.

The Question of Textualism

It is commonly believed that textualism is a rogue extrapolation from originalism, or even that the two ideas are incompatible. This is not the case. The term originalism is instead a broad category of which textualism is a part. Originalism is an approach to hermeneutics that can accommodate successfully any genre, figure of speech, rhetorical device, etc. What matters in originalism is the original public meaning that intelligent readers would have deduced by means of commonly shared linguistic devices. Textualism, more narrowly, reflects the application of originalist principles to statutory law—a literature type that is extremely precise and legally binding, and which allows almost no wiggle-room in interpretation.²⁵

Since little of the Bible falls under the category of statutory law (and most of what does is not a matter of serious hermeneutical debate), one might reasonably conclude that textualism has little to do with biblical hermeneutics. However, there is one important exception to this conclusion: biblical covenants. The covenants are precise legal contracts to which parties are bound by oath, and which countenance no changes to their terms or beneficiaries apart from formal emendation (or even a total replacement), complete with new certifications. Unlike a casual promise to which changes and additions might be made, a covenant is extremely rigid—much like a marriage covenant or “last will and testament” today.²⁶ This rigidity is established in the literature,²⁷ and is a critical consideration in the dispensational approach.

To conclude, my third recommendation is that traditional dispensationalists consider the merits of originalism and textualism, as defined in contemporary jurisprudence, for updating the much-maligned terminology of literalism to describe more accurately their hermeneutical theory.

Revisiting the “Dispensation of Grace”

Of all the recommendations in this article, my concern to abandon the language of a “dispensation of grace” is most urgent. Not only does the label derive from poorly exegeted texts of Scripture, it also lends credence to the widespread criticism that dispensationalists advocate for two (or more) ways of salvation. The latter criticism, however, is not all of a kind: some dispensationalists make incautious claims that might be interpreted as two ways of justification; many more call for two ways of sanctification. Both ideas, I would suggest, are equally objectionable. Finally, building on an earlier argument in this essay, I argue that the label grace does little to identify the new administrative vehicle that now exists within the whole government of God (viz., the church).

The Faulty Exegetical Basis of the “Dispensation of Grace”

Two key Pauline passages undergird the selection of dispensationalism of grace as a label for the present dispensation: Romans 6:14 and Ephesians 3:2. Neither passage supports this label.

Romans 6:14—You are not under the law but under grace. Many dispensationalists note the obsolescence of the Law here described and suggest that Paul is supplying a name for the new dispensation—the dispensation of grace. The context suggests, rather, that Paul is describing the anthropology of the converted man. Replying to the question whether the positional change wrought in justification might encourage believers to “continue in sin that grace may abound” (v. 1), Paul responds that the believer’s union with Christ does more than merely change his status; it changes his very nature. Some 14 times in as many verses, Paul then uses the metaphor of death to describe the believer’s newness as an eminently experimental concept. In effect, Paul is detailing the duplex beneficium of union with Christ: there is a forensic benefit (primarily justification [chaps. 4–5], but also adoption and placement into Christ’s “other sheep pen,” viz., the multi-ethnic body of Christ) and there is an experimental benefit (primarily regeneration, but also sanctification, perseverance, assurance, etc.). In Romans 6 Paul transitions to the second of these benefit classes and explains that the latter cannot accrue to the believer without the former. It is for this reason that we are forbidden to “continue in sin that grace may abound.”

The first 14 verses of Romans 6, then, are not a description of the new dispensation, per se, but a new experience enjoyed by believers in every age when they are definitively sanctified. The “law” in view, as such, while impossible to extract entirely from Mosaic imagery, is not reducible to the body of Mosaic stipulations;²⁸ instead it is the “power realm” of “sin and death” (cf. 8:2) by which unbelievers in every age are bound by a common and total depravity. To be “no longer under law,” then, is to experience “emancipation” from “our helpless enslavement in the service of sin.”²⁹ Doug Moo teases out the implications of Murray’s understanding in denominating the dispensations:

A neat transfer into straightforward temporal categories is impossible. People before the coming of Christ, while still “bound” to the law, could nevertheless escape its condemning power (e.g., Abraham, David—chap. 4). Moreover, people after the coming of Christ can still be subject to its rule. While, then, it is fair to speak of all of Israel between Moses and Christ as being “under the law” (cf. especially Gal. 3–4)—insofar as it was the ruling authority of that dispensation—we must at the same time recognize that people during that time could escape the condemnatory rule of that law by faith in the God who had made promises to Abraham.³⁰

I conclude that it is imprudent to cite Romans 6:14 as offering new nomenclature for the current dispensation; indeed, it is dubious that it speaks at all to the dawn of a new dispensation.

Ephesians 3:2 (nkjv)—You have heard of the dispensation of the grace of God which was given to me for you. Again, a simple look at the words in view could suggest that Paul is offering the name of the current dispensation: the “dispensation of the grace of God.” But context suggests that Paul’s “stewardship” (οἰκονομίαν) is not the personal administratorship of a new chapter in the history of the whole government of God, but something much more modest, namely, the gracious revelation of the mystery of an ethnically homogenous people of God (the NT Church) that had been entrusted to him. As such, to cite Harold Hoehner,

Dispensationalists could construe that Paul is speaking of the administration of grace in contrast to the dispensation of the law, thus negating that there was grace in the OT. However, most dispensationalists deem that God’s grace was abundantly exhibited in the OT…. This “special” grace is the revelation of the mystery regarding the church, which is composed of believing Jews and Gentiles united into one body. Hence, rather than call it a dispensation of grace, a better designation would be the dispensation or administration of the church.³¹

I concur with Hoehner. As in Romans 6, the presence of historical-developmental themes in this passage may initially confuse, but with more scrutiny, it is clear that the phrase “dispensation of grace” is not offering us a name for the present dispensation.

The Specter of Two Ways of Salvation

It is an unfortunate reality that some historical dispensationalists have erred by suggesting two ways of salvation.³² It really will do us no good to dismiss these as mere slips or careless wording—we need to acknowledge the historical missteps of our forebears, then condemn and correct them. And one of the most important ways to escape the longstanding charge of “two ways of salvation” is to abandon language that suggests that dispensationalists still harbor this error.

By contrasting the Mosaic and NT administrations as dispensations of law and grace, respectively, it is almost impossible to prevent people from hearing that the present dispensation is marked by greater and/or more abundant special grace, that is, that salvation is easier now than it was previously, or even that faith has replaced obedience as the means to salvation. We may stand on our heads and deny these ideas, but the very nomenclature we use works against us. And since we have demonstrated that it is Paul’s intent in neither passage to “name” the dispensations, it behooves us to discover a better label.

The (Lesser?) Error of Two Ways of Sanctification

While preparing my Ph.D. dissertation (on initial sanctification, including a chapter on Rom 6:1–14), a reader chided me for using OT texts in my discussion of NT sanctification. Believers, he informed me, grew in holiness differently in the OT and NT eras, respectively—there are two ways of sanctification. Specifically, he argued that OT saints were freighted with numerous and oppressive rules, which they obeyed in fear and with minimal assistance from the Spirit, resulting in much failure; NT saints, contrarily, are liberated from obeying rules to enjoy the delights of “grace living,” restricted in their moral choices only by the promptings of a gracious, indwelling Spirit. This, he told me, was Paul’s primary point in Romans 6:1–14.

This understanding is, in my experience, somewhat common within dispensational life, and likely has long roots in Keswick Theology, a movement with which dispensationalism grew up, but to which has no necessary theological connection.³³ Its highwater mark is likely to be found in The Grace Awakening, by Charles Swindoll (a dispensationalist),³⁴ but is not universal among dispensationalists, or even limited to dispensational scholarship.³⁵ Still, if dispensationalists seek to avoid the “two ways of sanctification” criticism (and sanctification is, after all part of salvation), part of that quest should include the abandonment, I would argue, of the confusing label “dispensation of grace.”

The Failure of a “Dispensation of Grace” to Identify the New Administrative Instrument of the Present Chapter of the Divine Government

If, as I have argued above, the dispensations are administrations of the whole government of God, it follows that the labels we use to identify them should highlight the instrument of the divine government that is “new” to that era. This is the case with the dispensations of human government, conscience, law, and kingdom, and to a lesser degree promise. ³⁶ The very obvious name for the present dispensation, as suggested above by Hoehner, is the dispensation of the church.

In sum, then, the fourth suggestion I would like to make for improving the stock of traditional dispensational theology in the marketplace of ideas is to replace the confusing label dispensation of grace with the more accurately descriptive dispensation of the church.

Conclusion

The preceding has been an attempt to dispel confusion and add clarity to a theological system I hold dear—normative or “traditional” dispensationalism. By (1) more accurately defining dispensation as a distinguishable administration in the whole government of God; (2) more precisely identifying the distinctive arena for doxology proposed in dispensational theology (the manifold government of God); (3) carefully defining the dispensational hermeneutic away from the confusing concept of literalism and replacing it with the clearer concept of originalism; and (4) relabeling the current dispensation as the dispensation of the Church, I would like to think that we might achieve greater understanding within dispensationalism, and with understanding, greater respect from dispensationalism’s detractors.

1. Dr. Snoeberger is Professor of Systematic Theology and Apologetics at Detroit Baptist Theological Seminary.[↩]
2. I resist the pressure to call Ryrie’s dispensationalism “revised” dispensationalism, as some have. The refinements proposed in the 1960s were, in my estimation, more of a standardization than a revision. Progressive Dispensationalism, on the other hand, revised substantially.[↩]
3. Scofield Reference Bible (New York: Oxford University Press, 1917), 5.[↩]
4. Charles C. Ryrie, Dispensationalism (Chicago: Moody Press, 1995), 28. This definition is unchanged from his earlier work Dispensationalism Today (1966).[↩]
5. That some dispensationalists freely speak of Israel and the Church as distinct “peoples” of God is conceded. But saying that Israel and the Church are disparate peoples of God is not the same as saying they are disparately redeemed; rather, the dispensationalist argues that they are severally governed. The divine election of Israel is of a privileged ethnic/civil community that can exist (though not ideally so) irrespective of faith—even the faithless are called “citizens” (Luke 19:14); the election of the Christian Church is of an exclusively regenerate community, united by a common faith, that thrives irrespective of ethnic or civic disparities. To say that these “peoples” are distinct is no more objectionable than saying that apples and oranges are distinct. Indeed, the dispensational concern is that the Reformed, by identifying Israel with the Church, unnaturally identify apples as oranges, forcing continuity where it cannot be observed.[↩]
6. John S. Feinberg, “Systems of Continuity,” in Continuity and Discontinuity: Perspectives on the Relationship Between the Old and New Testaments, ed. John S. Feinberg (Wheaton: Crossway, 1988), 67–85; Michael J. Vlach, Dispensationalism: Essential Beliefs and Common Myths, rev. and upd. ed. (Los Angeles: Theological Studies Press, 2017), 30–50.[↩]
7. Dispensationalism: Essential Beliefs and Common Myths, 25.[↩]
8. “Systems of Discontinuity,” 84–85.[↩]
9. See, e.g., Craig A. Blaising, “Dispensationalism: The Search for Definition,” in Dispensationalism, Israel, and the Church, ed. Craig A. Blaising and Darrell L. Bock (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1992), 27.[↩]
10. By “narrow,” I mean that while God surely receives glory by his redeeming acts within history, he received glory by substantively other means before the Fall and will continue to receive glory after God’s redemptive work is complete. He also receives glory from those he does not redeem (i.e., the non-elect, who by all appearances greatly outnumber the elect) and from those that cannot be redeemed (e.g., angels). Further, he receives glory, apart from redemption, from the dominion, industry, creativity, and beauty wrought by fallen man in the common sphere (note esp. the contributions by Erich Sauer, discussed below).[↩]
11. Rolland D. McCune, A Systematic Theology of Biblical Christianity, 3 vols. (Allen Park, MI: Detroit Baptist Theological Seminary, 2008–2010), 1:137.[↩]
12. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1959; copyright renewed in 1974 by BMH.[↩]
13. Sauer, raised in a loosely organized free church Brüderbewegung with Darbyite provenance, plainly saw the Bible as a history of redemption (his Dawn of World Redemption and Triumph of the Crucified [both published in German in 1937; in English by Eerdmans in 1951 and 1952 respectively] amply testify to this theme). In his later writings, however, Sauer spent much time developing a second theme, viz., kingdom, and especially the notion that God was not finished, in the wake of the Fall, with the balance of his creation, and most especially was not finished with unredeemed humanity (see the second half of his From Eternity to Eternity: An Outline of the Divine Purposes [1950], trans. G. H. Lang [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1954] and especially his King of the Earth. A Testimony to the Nobility of Man According to the Bible and Natural Science [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1959]).[↩]
14. Peters, a conservative evangelical Lutheran, released in 1884 his three-volume magum opus, The Theocratic Kingdom of Our Lord Jesus, the Christ, as Covenanted in the Old Testament and Presented in the New Testament (New York: Funk & Wagnalls). This work contains the seeds (and much of the outline) for McClain’s later study.[↩]
15. During my first year of seminary, one of my professors, himself a dispensationalist, encouraged me to read Vern Poythress’s Understanding Dispensationalists, 2nd ed. (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1994). Nestled among some of Poythress’s less-than-fully-convincing criticisms of dispensationalism, my professor told me, were some valid criticisms of hermeneutical fallacies sometimes committed by dispensationalists under the banner of “literalism.” This volume, together with D. A. Carson’s iconic Exegetical Fallacies (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1984), supplied me with helpful correctives that refined my conception of literalism away from some of its historical abuses.[↩]
16. Rolland D. McCune, “The Hermeneutics of Dispensationalism, or, What Is Literal Interpretation?” presentation at the Mid-America Conference on Preaching held at Inter-City Baptist Church, Allen Park, MI (March 11, 1994), 39–44.[↩]
17. Paul Brest, “The Misconceived Quest for the Original Understanding,” Boston University Law Review 60 (1980): 204–38.[↩]
18. Amy Coney Barrett, “Assorted Canards of Contemporary Legal Analysis: Redux,” Case Western Reserve Law Review 70 (2020): 856­­–57.[↩]
19. Antonin Scalia, “Originalism: The Lesser Evil,” address delivered at the William Howard Taft Constitutional Law Lecture, Cincinnati, OH (September 16, 1988).[↩]
20. Barrett, “Assorted Canards,” 857; cf. Scalia, A Matter of Interpretation: Federal Courts and the Law, ed. Amy Guttmann (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), 24. Their concern is also reflected in Elizabeth-Jane McGuire and Steven F. McQuire, “Originalism Isn’t the Judicial Version of Biblical Fundamentalism,” Church Life Journal (12 October 2020), available at https://churchlifejournal.nd.edu/ articles/originalism-isnt-the-judicial-version-of-biblical-fundamentalism/.[↩]
21. Notre Dame Law Review 86 (2011): 693–763; cf. also Frank S. Ravitch, “Interpreting Scripture/Interpreting Law,” Michigan State Law Review (2009): 377–85.[↩]
22. Ibid., 721–50.[↩]
23. Ibid., 750–54.[↩]
24. To use John Frame’s excellent definition, Inspiration assures us that “there is an identity between [the authors’] words and [God’s]” (Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Christian Belief [Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 2013], 562).[↩]
25. In the run-up to the Neil Gorsuch confirmation, an example of the textualist approach circulated widely. In the case TransAm Trucking v. Administrative Review Board, for which Gorsuch wrote a minority dissent, a trucker, Alphonse Maddin, lost the function both of his cabin heat and of his trailer brakes (though not the brakes on his cab) on a bitterly cold night. Bound by contract to stay with his load, he called his supervisor and requested assistance, but the response was slow. After additional calls and fearing for his life, Maddin unhitched the trailer, abandoned his cargo, and drove his cab to safety—an offense for which he was fired. A majority of judges ruled in favor of Maddin, arguing that he had obeyed the “spirit” of his contract (though not the letter), and that he had assumed reasonably and in good faith that his employer would view his circumstances as extraordinary, releasing him from the stringent demands of their contract. Gorsuch demurred, arguing that contracts, being precise legal instruments, are to be read exactly—the trucker had violated his contract and could be fired. Gorsuch’s concern was precedent: if one trucker was free to impose his own personal ethical standards on, and invent exceptions in the discharge of a contract, then any party to any contract might potentially do the same, eventually destroying the very concept of a legal contract entirely (for further detail, see “TransAm Trucking, Inc. v. Administrative Review Board, United States Department of Labor,” case 15-9504, 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, filed 8 August 2016, available at https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/ca10/15-9504/15-9504-2016-07-15-0.html).[↩]
26. In a course I teach on the topic I argue, were I to make a casual agreement, before the fact, to watch a ballgame on TV with my older son, that I could later include my younger son and make it a family event. I could even improve the plan by buying tickets and taking both sons to the game. Neither son would complain that I had violated any hermeneutical standards. The genre is a relaxed one that renders its outworking somewhat malleable (though, to be sure, there are limits: no appeal to genre will let me take my younger son to the game and leave my older son home).[↩]
27. As Beacham notes, “Only the stated, contracting parties partook directly of the covenant responsibilities and benefits. To be named in the legal instrument as an enacting party to the instrument was to incur, legally, its responsibilities, advantages, and/or penalties. By nature and design, covenants were exclusive: they established an absolute and unique relationship of fealty between the contracting parties” (Roy Beacham, “The Church Has No Legal Relationship to or Participation in the New Covenant,” update of paper presented at the Council on Dispensational Hermeneutics, Baptist Bible Seminary, Clarks Summit, PA [23 September 2009], available at https://dispensationalcouncil.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/09_Roy_Beacham_ANE-Covenants-and-NC.pdf 11). Moshe Weinfeld draws further attention to the marital language incorporated into the new covenant as uniquely designed to emphasize exclusivity. Both parties (the Suzerain and his vassals) are narrowly and deliberately named so as to prohibit expansion and emendation (TDOT, s.v. “בְּרִית, berîth,” 2:278).[↩]
28. So John Murray: “That [law] is not to be understood in the sense of the Mosaic Law appears plainly from the fact that many who were under the Mosaic economy were the recipients of grace and in that regard were under grace, and also from the fact that relief from the Mosaic law as an economy does not of itself place persons in the category of being under grace” (Murray, Romans, New International Commentary on the New Testament [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1959, 1965], 1:228).[↩]
29. Idem, Principles of Conduct (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1957), 204.[↩]
30. The Epistle to the Romans, 2nd ed., New International Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2018), 413. Moo allows for more redemptive-historical progression in this chapter than Murray does; still, he cannot reduce the passage to information about a new dispensation: whatever appeal Paul makes to the Law of Moses in this chapter is representative in scope. So also Tom Schreiner:[↩]
31. Ephesians: An Exegetical Commentary (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2002), 424.[↩]
32. The most regularly cited instance of this problem is C. I. Scofield’s infamous statement: “The point of testing is no longer legal obedience as the condition of salvation, but acceptance or rejection of Christ” (Scofield Reference Bible, 1115). Many have observed inconsistency in Scofield’s position—on other occasions he disavows obedience to the law as a “condition of salvation.” Still, his words as they stand are quite damning—and have confused many.[↩]
33. The Keswick approach views NT sanctification as a work wholly of grace in which the believer participates, ironically, by not participating (he functions instead as a “channel,” passively “letting go and letting God” perform his sanctifying work). This infusion of sanctifying grace is not immediate, but usually occurs after a period of futile “striving” to obey God’s many laws, deliverance from which occurs when the believer “consecrates” himself to God. The contrast here is not between OT sanctification and NT sanctification, but between the strivings of the “carnal man” and the successes of “he that is spiritual.” Still, it is likely that Keswick influence at least colored the approach championed by my dissertation reader.[↩]
34. Dallas: Word, 1990.[↩]
35. Tullian Tchividjian, for instance, in his little book Jesus + Nothing = Everything (Wheaton: Crossway, 2011), argues similarly from a quasi-Lutheran perspective. What ties together advocacy for this approach to sanctification is not, it would seem, dispensational theology; rather, the unifying factor is to be an unrelenting aversion to rules—an aversion that flourishes by redefining and weaponizing the notion of legalism, much as modern society has weaponized the notion of racism. One wonders, having read materials like Tchividjian’s, whether this might be the very sort of concern that Jude had when he warned of those who “turn the grace of God into lasciviousness.”[↩]
36. Really, the only dispensational label that does not highlight its administrative instrument is the dispensation of innocence, which I would dearly like to see renamed—but that is a subject for another day.[↩]