Dispensationalism

Dispensationalism is a Christian theological framework for interpreting the Christian Bible which maintains that history is divided into multiple ages called dispensations in which God interacts with his chosen people in different ways. These are two competing frameworks of biblical theology that attempt to explain overall continuity in the Bible. The coining of the term "dispensationalism" has been attributed to Philip Mauro, a critic of the system's teachings, in his 1928 book The Gospel of the Kingdom.

Dispensationalists use a literal interpretation of the Christian Bible and believe that divine revelation unfolds throughout its narrative. They believe that there is a distinction between Israel and the Church, and that Christians are not bound by the Mosaic Law. They maintain beliefs in premillennialism, Christian Zionism, and a rapture of Christians before the expected Second Coming of Jesus, whom Christians believe to be the Messiah, generally before the Great Tribulation.

Although similar views were held by earlier authors such as Pierre Poiret (1646–1719), It began its spread in the United States during the late 19th century through the efforts of evangelists such as James Inglis, James Hall Brookes, and Dwight L. Moody, the programs of the Niagara Bible Conference, and the establishment of Bible institutes. With the dawn of the 20th century, C. I. Scofield introduced the Scofield Reference Bible, which crystallized dispensationalism in the United States.

Dispensationalism has become popular within U.S. evangelicalism, Latin American evangelicalism, and in the Faroe Islands, where they form the largest non-Lutheran Christian group in the country. In addition to the Plymouth Brethren, it is commonly found in various non-denominational Protestant churches such as Bible churches, as well as among Baptist, Pentecostal, and Charismatic groups, with traditional forms of dispensationalism being especially prevalent in churches that uphold Free Grace theology.thumb|330x330px|Dispensationalist chart of world historyCharles Ryrie took issue with Scofield's definition as too simple, stating that such a definition opened the system to attack from nondispensationalists. Dispensationalist theologians tend to hold "a particular view of the parallel-but-separate roles and destinies of Israel and the [Christian] church", with a "careful separation ... between what is addressed to Israel and what is addressed to the church. What is addressed to Israel is 'earthly' in character and is to be interpreted 'literally'." Charles Ryrie writes that dispensational soteriology focuses on man's salvation as the means God uses to glorify himself. In this method, scripture is to be interpreted according to the normal rules of human language in its entirety.

Progressive revelation

Progressive revelation is the doctrine that each successive book of the Bible provides further revelation of God and his program. Theologian Charles Hodge wrote that the progressive character of divine revelation is gradually unfolded until the fullness of truth is revealed. Charles Ryrie wrote that the Bible is not viewed as a textbook on theology, but rather as a continually unfolding revelation of God through successive ages where there are distinguishable stages in which God introduces mankind to new responsibilities. Each stands alone, rather than the Old Testament being reread through the lens of the New Testament. Christian Zionism has made evangelical Christians some of the most ardent supporters of the State of Israel in American politics. Classic dispensationalists refer to this period as a "parenthesis", a temporary interlude in the progress of Israel's prophesied history when God has paused his dealing with Israel and is dealing with his Church.

There are differing views within dispensationalism as to when the church age began. Classic dispensationalism considers Pentecost in Acts 2 to be the beginning of the Church as distinct from Israel. Charles Finney wrote in 1839 that Pentecost was "the commencement of a new dispensation", emphasizing the role of the Holy Spirit as a distinction. E. W. Bullinger and the ultradispensationalists taught that the church began in Acts 28. The overlap includes Jewish Christians, such as James, brother of Jesus, who likely aimed to integrate Jesus's teachings with the Second Temple Judaism practiced in Jerusalem during their historical context. Additionally, there were Christians of Jewish ethnicity, like Peter and Paul the Apostle, who had differing opinions about Jewish and gentile adherence to Mosaic law. Progressive dispensationalism "softens" the Church/Israel distinction by seeing some Old Testament promises as expanded by the New Testament to include the Church without replacing the promises to its original audience, Israel.

Dispensationalists thus do not view passages such as Romans 9:6 as teaching that the Church is the "New Israel", but rather arguing that it creates a distinction within the nation of Israel, distinguishing the whole from the believing remnant within Israel. In this view, although many commandments of the Old Testament are re-established in the New Testament, only the commandments explicitly affirmed there are to be kept; this excludes the ceremonial and civil aspects of the Mosaic law. Pretribulational rapture doctrine is what separates dispensationalism from other forms of premillennialism and other millennial views.

Dispensational eschatology was popularized in Hal Lindsey's book, The Late Great Planet Earth (1970). In Lindsey's version, the unfolding of events includes the establishment of modern Israel in 1948, Jews regaining control of Jerusalem's sacred sites in the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, a rebuilding of the Temple which has yet to occur, an Antichrist who will come to power, Christians to be removed from the earth in a rapture of the Church, and seven years of tribulation (Daniel's seventieth week) culminating in a great battle of Armageddon in which Christ will triumph over evil and establish a literal 1,000 year reign of his kingdom on earth. Israel and the Church being distinct in this view, the rapture must remove the Church before remnant Israel can be gathered. Joachim's theory of three stages of human history has been argued to have anticipated the later dispensationalist view of organizing history into different dispensations. However, the source is an anonymous 1316 Latin text titled The History of Brother Dolcino, so it is uncertain whether Dolcino actually taught it.

Christian mystic and philosopher Pierre Poiret (1646–1719) is said by some to have been the first theologian to develop a dispensationalist system, writing a book titled The Divine Economy. Poiret taught that history should be organized into multiple dispensations in which God works with humans in different ways, including the millennium as a future dispensation. Poiret's eschatology includes a belief in two resurrections, the rise of the Antichrist, and the nation of Israel being regathered, restored and converted. Charles Ryrie states that Scofield's outline of dispensationalism, with the exception of the millennium, is exactly that of Watts, and not Darby.

Formalization by Darby

thumb|[[John Nelson Darby systematized and promoted dispensationalism.]]

Dispensationalism developed as a system from the teachings of John Nelson Darby (1800–1882), considered by many to be the father of dispensationalism.

In Darby's conception, dispensations relate exclusively to the divine government of the earth. The Mosaic dispensation continues as a divine administration over Earth up until the return of Christ, and the church, being a heavenly designated assembly, is not associated with any dispensations.

Darby's Brethren ecclesiology failed to catch on in America, but his eschatological doctrine became widely popular, especially among Baptists and Old School Presbyterians.

Expansion and growth

James Inglis (1813–1872) introduced dispensationalism to North America through the monthly magazine Waymarks in the Wilderness, published intermittently between 1854 and 1872. In 1866, Inglis organized the Believers' Meeting for Bible Study, which introduced dispensationalist ideas to a small but influential circle of American evangelicals. who reached very large audiences with his powerful preaching in the latter half of the 19th century. Moody worked with Brookes and other dispensationalists, and encouraged the spread of dispensationalism. It also marked a shift in dispensational theology under evangelists like Moody, from Darby's Calvinism and doctrinal rigor to a non-Calvinist view of human freedom in personal salvation.

Other prominent dispensationalists in this period include Reuben Archer Torrey (1856–1928), James M. Gray (1851–1925), William J. Erdman (1833–1923), A. C. Dixon (1854–1925), A. J. Gordon (1836–1895), and William Eugene Blackstone (1841–1935). These men were active evangelists who promoted a host of Bible conferences and other missionary and evangelistic efforts. They also gave the dispensationalist philosophy institutional permanence by assuming leadership of new independent Bible institutes, such as the Moody Bible Institute in 1886, the Bible Institute of Los Angeles (now Biola University) in 1908, and Philadelphia College of Bible (now Cairn University, formerly Philadelphia Biblical University) in 1913. The network of related institutes that soon developed became the nucleus for the spread of American dispensationalism. When the Bible Institute of the Chicago Evangelization Society (now Moody Bible Institute) formally opened in 1889, Torrey served as its first superintendent.

Revivalist evangelicals such as Moody and Torrey did not believe the gift of tongues continued past the Apostolic age, but their emphasis on the baptism of the Holy Spirit merged well with holiness ideas. This encouraged the spread of dispensationalism within the Pentecostal movement.

The Baptist Bible Seminary now located in Clarks Summit, Pennsylvania, became another dispensationalist school.

The Fundamentals

thumb|upright|[[Lyman Stewart, co-founder of Union Oil]]

In the 1910s, another publication took hold within American evangelicalism. Known as The Fundamentals, its twelve volumes were published in quarterly installments between 1910 and 1915 by the Testimony Publishing Company. Funded by Union Oil co-founder Lyman Stewart (1840–1923) and managed by an executive committee of dispensationalists that included Clarence Dixon and Reuben Torrey, The Fundamentals helped solidify dispensationalist views within American Christian fundamentalism and the evangelical movement. All five of these men either studied or taught at Dallas Theological Seminary (DTS). Televangelist Jack Van Impe covered current events in light of Bible prophecy with a dispensational premillennialist spin.

Emergence of the Christian Right

The late 20th century marked a shift from the separatism practiced earlier in the century to more political engagement. This era saw emergence of the Christian Right, rooted in the dispensational theology that places Israel at the center of God's purpose in the world. Falwell listed Feinberg, Pentecost, Hoyt, and Walvoord as his most important influences. The Moral Majority also provided a platform for political activism. LaHaye, a lifelong fundamentalist and dispensationalist, became a prominent figure in the Christian Right.

Influenced by dispensational premillennialism, the Moral Majority lobbied for pro-Israel U.S. foreign policy positions, including protection of the Jewish people in Israel and continuing U.S. aid to the state of Israel. Opposed to Jimmy Carter's affirmation of a Palestinian homeland, the Moral Majority endorsed Ronald Reagan for President in 1980. In Reagan, they found a candidate who shared their apocalypticism. Reagan had read Hal Lindsey's The Late Great Planet Earth, and it has been suggested that this eschatological view drove his Middle East policies. In an interview with televangelist Jim Bakker, Reagan said "[w]e may be the generation that sees Armageddon." Dispensational theology affected more than the Reagan administration's Middle East foreign policy. James G. Watt, a member of the Assemblies of God and Reagan's first Secretary of the Interior, told Congress that preservation of the environment was made irrelevant by the imminent return of Christ.

In 1980, Hal Lindsey wrote a follow-up to his book The Late Great Planet Earth. Lindsey had not previously drawn a connection from a Christian's personal obligations to a responsibility for social change, but this changed with his new book, The 1980s: Countdown to Armageddon. He began encouraging his readers to elect moral leaders who would reflect that morality within government, an agenda closely aligned with Ronald Reagan's administration.

As with Reagan in the 1980s, the New Christian Right helped elect another 'born again' president, George W. Bush. Like Reagan, Bush spoke in terms of prophecies being fulfilled in a way that had meaning to dispensationalists.

Dispensational ideas were experiencing political and commercial success, but Hal Lindsey and Tim LaHaye, who had become the public standard-bearers of dispensationalism, were different from their academic predecessors John Walvoord, Dwight Pentecost, and Charles Ryrie.

Although dispensationalism had collapsed in academic areas, its cultural influence remained. Dispensationalist ideas have persisted in popular culture. A 2004 Newsweek poll indicated that 55 percent of Americans believe Christians will be taken up in the rapture. By the turn of the 21st century, the term dispensationalism had become synonymous with "sectarian fundamentalism", and had come to be more of a political identity than a theological doctrine. The majority of those associated with the Free Grace Alliance support dispensationalism and it is taught by the Grace Evangelical Society.

Criticism

The term dispensationalism originated with Philip Mauro. His critique of the system is found in his 1928 book The Gospel of the Kingdom, in which he wrote that "evangelical Christianity must purge itself of this leaven of dispensationalism". He used the term to group the new premillennialism, the idea of dispensational time, and the Israel–Church distinction into a single bundled idea. The Churches of Christ became divided in the 1930s as Robert Henry Boll (who taught a variant of dispensationalism) and Foy E. Wallace (representing the amillennial position) disputed severely over eschatology.

Soteriology

Some dispensationalist Christian Zionists, such as John Hagee, reject the need for Christians to pursue the conversion of the Jews to Christianity.

Political influence

In American Theocracy (2006), political commentator Kevin Phillips wrote that dispensationalists and other fundamentalist Christians, together with the oil lobby, provided political support for the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. He wrote that most theologians acknowledge there is no specific sequence of end-times events in the Bible, and that such a belief is the result of a century of "amplified Darbyism". He quoted theologian Barbara Rossing that such hyper-literalism is a "dangerous and false view".

References

External links

O'Hair, J. C. The Unsearchable Riches of Christ