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.
3. It's not Reformed/Calvinistic. First, some shocking news: my goal in life is not to be judged as perfectly Reformed or Calvinistic. (I'm hopeful that brother Hendriksen, now with the Lord, would concur.) When I stand before the throne, I don't expect the Lord to say, "Let's see... how Reformed were you?" Anyway, maybe someone can point out where Calvin (or Luther, or Knox, or Zwingli, or Owen) maintained that, after he himself died, nothing remained to be learned, because he/they had been perfect in all his scholarship and thinking, and had exhausted every last bit of truth from the Bible. I can't think that these great men imagined that they had mined every last grain of ore from the vast Biblical treasury, leaving us today only to visit theological museums, or reminisce about how great it must have been to live when the Bible still had more to teach, and we had more to learn.
   
   Hm. "Calvin the Apostle." Don't like it.
   
   One last thought on these first three. If these are really big, determinative factors -- they have been, to a great many of dispensationalism's bitterest critics -- then it seems to me that we owe Rome an apology. In that case, we agree with Rome that we dare not directly delve into Scripture for ourselves. We agree with Rome that we need a Magisterium to filter Scripture for us. Like Roman Catholics, we're not allowed to see anything in Scripture that our (Reformed) Magisterium tells us isn't there; and with Loyola, we should say that white is black (and Israel is the Church), if Mother (Reformed) Church tells us so.
   
4. So many dispensationalists are goofs. Sure they are. I'll tell you another truth: so many Covenant Theology types are goofs. So many amills are goofs. So many Trinitarian inerrantist monergists are goofs. In fact, so many Christians are goofs. Better quit them all, right? Just become an amorphous nihilist? Oh, wait -- lots of amorphous nihilists are goofs, too. Guess I'll just have to exercise my priesthood, and think for myself, under God -- like He says I should (John 12:48; Hebrews 4:13). Next?
5. Dispensationalist writers have made false predictions. First, let's be more accurate. Since another thing to love about dispensationalism is that its advocates also affirm the sufficiency of Scripture, they tend not to be Charismatic, and so they don't fake "prophecy." Therefore, they don't make faux-supernatural predictions, as if they were prophesying. But it's true: some have said "I think X Bible teaching means that Y will happen," and some have been wrong. Second, this game is a cheater's delight. Since the decoder-ring set spiritualizes all unfulfilled prophecy (except the bare fact of Jesus' eventual return) into shapeless goo, they have no specific predictions. No specific predictions = no falsifiability. So when you don't say anything is going to happen in the real world, you'll never be wrong. That's a coward's victory.
   
   I give a lot more credit to the man who expects to see prophecy actually fulfilled in history, and makes a tentative but well-reasoned application that doesn't come to pass, than I do to the counsel-of-despair man who throws prophecy in a blender, reduces it to paste, and then mocks those who don't follow suit.
   
   They are like the modern Charismatic counterfeit of "prophecy," whose perps hide under generalizations so vague that it is impossible to prove them wrong. Zero points for credibility.
   
   Isn't it ironic? Jesus faulted His generation for not looking for the fulfillment of prophecy (Matthew 16:1-3). These oh-so-sophisticateds fault those who do. Thus, they have deftly turned that vice into a virtue.
6. The best scholars hate dispensationalism. Depends on what you mean by "best," doesn't it? I keep hearing that the best scholars hate the Bible. The best scholars hate Calvinists. The best scholars hate Christ. If you've been around academia much, and surveyed its shifting sands, you'll know at least one truth: scholars are just as subject to peer pressure as anyone. Sometimes even more so. I'd say I've not seen too many Profiles in Courage in academia. So go back to #1.
7. But the Reverend Doctor Professor _____ wrote a 600-page book destroying dispensationalism! Yeah. Have you ever noticed that it takes an awful lot of very detailed, sophisticated argumentation to "prove" that a passage doesn't mean what it says? If we're talking about the meaning of yom in Genesis 1, I can say "It means a day" in four words -- but it'll take hundreds, or even tens of thousands to "explain" that yom doesn't really mean what it clearly seems to mean. Once, I was asked if I could explain what a prophetic OT passage meant. "Sure," I replied. "Means what it says." That was my complete answer, and everyone knew exactly what I meant by it. Ohh boy, but that ticked off a guy whose obnoxious new girlfriend was Covenant Theology. But you know, before I was a Christian, I was in a cult whose answer to every uncongenial passage was, "We have to look for the deeper meaning." Funny how the "deeper meaning" was always the precise opposite of what the passage said, and exactly in harmony with what our cult believed. I left that sort of gameplaying behind with my conversion, and anything that even smells like it to me, smells.
   
8. You can't prove all those dispensational distinctives and prophetic features from the New Testament alone! Um, Bunky? Three words? "Plenary verbal inspiration." Dispensationalists do what all Reformed folks say they do: they believe in the whole Bible. Sort of got that idea from Jesus. So, just as no Reformed guy worth anything would accept such a demand as "Prove sovereign-grace election solely from 1 Chronicles 1:1," so no dispensationalist who believes in the principles of the Reformation should rise to the demand, "Prove every detail of your system from 1/3 of the Canon!" There is no passage that teaches everything that every other passage teaches. If so, God would have inspired a Bible with one verse.Or perhaps a better statement would be that God did inspire a Bible with one verse. It's just a really, really long verse. And so, no believer in Reformed principles should indulge in trying to impose such a faulty premise. It's simply not Reformed to do so.
   
9. It isn't a spiritual hermeneutic. Gosh, this one's such a hanging curveball. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Where to start? First, take off that "Plato is my homey" T-shirt, so we can talk. Oops, didn't see that "The Docetists are my crew" T-shirt underneath. Off with that too. So, tell me: the resurrected body of Jesus -- carnal? Or spiritual? I'll play the Jeopardy music while you look up 1 Corinthians 15:44f. (Hint: God made matter. He's really okay with matter. Matter matters. Sin ruined matter, the regeneration will redeem it.)
   
   Finally, if none of that helped you out of your decoder-ring quagmire, this thought: try not to be more "spiritual" than God, 'kay? When God said Messiah would come from Bethlehem (Micah 5:2), He knew it meant "house of bread" -- but He meant the city anyway. I imagine what a CT would have done with that, before fulfillment: "What God is really saying would have been perfectly clear to the Jews. It was symbolic. Messiah would come from 'the house for bread,' from the storehouse of God's spiritual nourishment, and He would give life, as bread does. Those wooden literalists who look for fulfillment in an actual city are perverting the Word to their carnal imaginations."
   
   Trying to out-spiritual God is really stupid.
10. Dispensationalists are antinomian. Bologna. I'm the former, and yet I'm not the latter. (In fact, gutless-gracers say I'm a legalist.) Makes just as much sense as saying amillennialists are Roman Catholic, because Roman Catholics are amillennial. Not only is there no necessary connection between dispensationalism and gutless-grace insanity, but the very hermeneutic that produces dispensationalism also deals howling, shrieking death to antinomianism.
11. We should interpret the Old by the New. In itself, fine. Show me where the New says the Old is a lie, a fake, a trick -- because that's what replacement theology makes it. What I read in the New Testament is Jesus Christ severely blaming unbelievers for not accepting what's there in plain sight (Matthew 16:1-3; Luke 16:29-31; John 5:45-47). I don't see Him saying, "I really can't blame you for not seeing this -- who could have? It was totally hidden from everyone!" One hears, "The New is in the Old concealed; the Old is in the New revealed." Given the interpretive violence some folks do to the Word, a more appropriate version I've heard might be, "The Old is by the New restricted; the New is on the Old inflicted."
12. You can't take everything literally. Do you mean that literally? Of course you do. {pause}
13. Dispies are over-literal. Have you actually heard a dispensationalist lay out his hermeneutic? People who offer "over literal" as a seriously critique of dispensationalism have seemingly never read a book dealing with hermeneutics, written by a responsible dispensationalist. Try this for an interpretive principle:

    When the plain sense of Scripture makes good sense, seek no other sense. Therefore, take every word in its primary, ordinary, usual, literal meaning, unless the facts of the immediate context, studied in the light of related passages and fundamental and axiomatic truths, clearly indicate otherwise

    It's a totally dispensational hermeneutic, and it's an equally dandy Reformed hermeneutic -- or should be. There's quite the chasm between saying "Of course God isn't literally a 'rock'," and saying "Mount Zion -- oh yeah. Has to be the universal Christian church!" Dispensationalists are what all Reformed folks would be, if they were consistent in their hermeneutics.
14. I think Hal Lindsey is stupid, and I like to make fun of him. Really? I think Harold Camping is stupid and, well, he is pretty easy to parody. Is this helpful?
15. I know some big names who used to be dispensationalists, and aren't. Really? I know some big names who used to be Christians, and aren't. I know some big names who used to be Calvinists, and aren't. Besides, when I hear a guy like [big vaunted amill expert "ex-" author] open his mouth on the subject, it's easy to see why he's an "ex." No evidence of a clue about dispensationalism in what I see him saying now.When Peter, all full of himself, tells Jesus "We have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God" (John 6:69), Jesus replies, "Did I not choose you, the Twelve? And yet one of you is a devil" (John 6:70). I take it that our Lord saw Peter as relying on the consensus; so Jesus throws back at Peter, in effect, "...and what if your consensus becomes a consensus of one? What will you do then?" When Judas left, was Jesus less the Messiah and Holy One? (To be clear, my only point in this is that the issue is the Word and truth and what I, myself, do with it, and not how many are voting for an interpretation of it. Some -- in fact, I'd say most -- of the finest, holiest men and women who ever cracked a Bible were not dispensationalists.)
16. Dispensationalism is divisive. Just what Arminians say about Calvinism. I don't care from divisive. Everything Biblical is divisive to someone. My only concern: is it Biblical?
17. Dispensationalism is defeatist. Dispensationalism is just what you are when you treat all the Bible respectfully. That's defeatist? Let's see: man cannot solve his own problems, Christ must deliver His saints personally, must personally come in power, grace, and glory to set up His kingdom, human sin and rebellion are shown to be absolutely inexcusable, and Christ reigns forever to the eternal glory of the Triune God. Hunh. Sounds like Calvinism to me. But then again, happy-face Christianoids think Calvinism is defeatist. Guess there's a little Pelagius in everyone, eh?
18. Dispensationalism is fatalistic. Funny criticism, coming from Calvinists. If Calvinism is not fatalistic (and it isn't), neither is dispensationalism.
19. Dispensationalism is escapist. Hm, I hear a similar complaint about the Gospel all the time. "So let me get this straight: you sin and sin and sin, and then just believe in Christ, and it's all gone? But some humanitarian who isn't a Christian goes to Hell? How convenient." Viewed from one angle, yep: salvation is convenient. More than convenient, it's glorious, it's stupendous, it's amazing. When you think of all that Christ accomplished for His people on the Cross, all He rescued us from, and delivered us to -- yep, pretty darned convenient. The pre-tribulational Rapture is small potatoes compared to that great salvation, a fortiori. It's hard to understand shrugging at God's hot fudge sundae, but then carping when He reaches out to place a cherry on the top. Compared to the deliverance from Hell in which all Christians believe, deliverance from the great tribulation is just really nice of God. But certainly not non-credible, on the lame grounds that it is "escapist." What kind of criticism is that from a professedly sola Scriptura guy, anyway?
    
20. Dispensationalism teaches a false offer by Christ. This is yet another one of those oft-heard criticisms that is amazingly ironic to hear from Calvinist lips/pens. It is precisely the criticism Arminians of all stripes make of Calvinist evangelism. "You're telling this non-elect guy that if he believes in Christ he'll be saved, even though he'll never believe and never be saved, because he's not elect." We Calvinists reply that the offer is absolutely genuine: if the man repents and believes, he will be saved.So was the presentation of Christ to Israel.
    
    I genuinely wonder, since such otherwise-smart people keep making this stupid criticism -- what do you think would have happened if Israel had, en masse, repented and believed in Christ at the First Advent? Nothing? Nothing would have been different? What if Adam had never sinned? What if Noah had swatted those two mosquitoes? What if, what if, what if?
    
    I've got another. What if we left off the what-if's, and contented ourselves with the text of Scripture? Wouldn't that be nice? Wouldn't that be Reformed?
21. "For all the promises of God find their Yes in him" (2 Corinthians 1:20a). As if there's a dispensationalist who disbelieves this verse. I'd suggest that it's the decoder-ring set that disbelieves it. Dispensationalists believe that Christ will make good on all the Trinity's promises, as He carries out all the will of the Father, and is King of the mediatorial Kingdom. It's the CT's who would turn this verse to "For all the promises of God find their 'Ha-ha, fooled you!' in him," or "For some of the promises of God find their No in him."
22. Dispensationalism teaches two ways of salvation. Sigh. Maybe if this is answered for the 950,000th time, it will go away? This old corker has been responded to and documented more times than a department-store "Santa" has said "Ho ho ho." So what, exactly, are we talking about? Oh, you mean like this? "Grace offers escape from the law only as a condition of salvation -- as it is in the covenant of works --, from the curse of the law, and from the law as an extraneous power." Oh yeah, that's bad. What rotten dispensationalist wrote that? That "rotten dispensationalist" Louis Berkhof (ST, p. 291). Allis and others have made similar statements that, isolated, sure sound like offers of two methods of salvation. Statements capable of misunderstanding and misrepresentation are not the sole provenance of dispensationalists. Golly, it'd be nice to wake up tomorrow to a world in which I can focus on the text, and not constantly see the discussion derailed by red herrings like this one. Could there be a reason why anti-dispies don't want to do that?
    
23. "Hey, I'm a CT/amill/postmill/preterist whatever, and I use grammatico-historical exegesis on everything!" Suuuuure you do, Bunky. And I'm a muscular, slim 25-year old published author with multiple doctorates who pastors a successful church and  teaches in seminary — plus I have a full head of hair! It's really more than just a river in Egypt for you, isn't it, brother? When you tell me that Israel is the church, that only the prophetic curses have realtime fulfillment, but that the prophesied blessings are all spiritualized, you and G-H exegesis have long since gone the way of the Beatles. CT is your Yoko. [NOTE: had to update this one!]
24. Dispensationalism divides the people of God. Wait -- isn't it complementarianism that does that? The Bible says, "there is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus" (Galatians 3:28) , but complementarians teach that men and women are still distinct, even though they're in Christ, and have distinct roles. Calvinists/Reformeds tend to be complementarians, yet they affirm that men and women are distinct in Christ in one way, yet they affirm that they are one in Christ, in another way. Isn't that a contradiction? "But-but-but," sputters a Reformed complementarian, "that's stupid! You can be distinct, and yet one! Look at the Trinity! The Persons are distinct, yet they are one God! They have different functions, and there is an economy of relations, yet they are one! That's an inane criticism!" Oh, I totally agree. It's inane. It's stupid. It's lame. So... why do you go for the same inane, stupid, lame line of reasoning when it comes to Israel?
    
    I just keep wondering why the same people who have no trouble understanding why men and women can be distinct and yet one, fall all apart into hysterics and start doing horrible things to the Bible when it comes to Israel. Why can't Israel have a certain and sure ethnic future (as God promised, in the starkest and most undeniable terms, about a gazillion times), and yet be part of one people of God? Why do we have to turn God into a liar and a promise-breaker (see Jeremiah 31:35-37), in order to salvage some preconceived construct we made up?
    
    Having said all that, I don't think it's fundamental to dispensationalism to make divisions as stark as some pioneers did, as if Israel's eternity is 'way over there, and the Church's is right over here, and never the twain shall mix. I don't tend to think that way, myself.
25. Dispensationalism fails to see Christ in every verse of the Bible. Again with the being-more-spiritual-than-God sin. This is maybe one of the most damaging Reformed traditions (in the worst sense of the word): the insistence by some of putting perfectly innocent texts on the rack, and torturing them until they scream "Jesus!" This turns God into a Clintonesque, smooth-talking trickster. He fools His audience into thinking He's talking about Israel, but He's really talking about something they couldn't have conceived of. He offers them an egg and some bread, and then gives them a stone and a serpent. "I promise to bless you, I swear it. {Later} Oops, presto! Not really you at all! Someone else! But I do have a dandy curse just for you -- and this time, I really do mean you!"
    
    Christ is indeed all over the Bible, directly or indirectly (Luke 24:27, 44, etc.). But to insist that a text is unworthy of God if it really talking about what it seems to be talking about is (A) to adopt a suicidal hermeneutic, (B) to make God into the worst unethical bait-and-switch salesman, and (C) to pour shame on the very hermeneutic of Christ and the apostles. If we abandon Scripture to adopt this hermeneutic, we invalidate Jesus' constant refrain to His enemies:
    

    "Do not think that I will accuse you to the Father. There is one who accuses you: Moses, on whom you have set your hope. 46 If you believed Moses, you would believe me; for he wrote of me. 47 But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words?" (John 5:45-47)

    If this decoder-ring hermeneutic were true, his enemies could justly and correctly have replied, "There is no way we could be judged by Moses' writings, or the prophets. God said 'Israel' and meant 'not ethnic Israel at all, but the Christian church.' He named cities, but didn't mean them. He promised full national restoration in the most specific terms, again and again, but never meant it. All His threats He meant exactly as He said them, and all His promises meant something totally unrelated. So no, Jesus, Your teaching turns revelation into obscurement, and gives us a perfect, bona-fide excuse for rejecting You. God didn't give us the right decoder-ring when He put out the garbled, encrypted code. It's not our fault." Of course this is nonsense. Christ and the apostles treated the OT with full respect. Bethlehem meant Bethlehem, a donkey meant a donkey, Jerusalem meant Jerusalem, Israel meant Israel. It was because the OT was to be read as outlined in point #10, above, that Jews (and everyone) could then (and now) be held guilty before God: because they rejected the plain and clear sense of the text. What was bad for them is bad for us.
    
    God forbid we "honor Christ" in theory by dishonoring Christ in practice.
    
    This is the hermeneutic God saved me from in saving me from the cult of Religious Science, decades ago. We did the same thing, always finding "deeper meaning" that was in fact opposite meaning to texts we simply didn't like, because they didn't fit into our system. By the grace of God, the folks I'm criticizing don't do it to Christological, soteriological, or other passages. Only to prophetic passages. If they did the same across the board, they'd not be Christian. It is not dishonoring to Christ to believe that He said what He meant, and meant what He said. The reverse is what dishonors Him, no matter how honorable the intent.

I reserve the right to revise and expand this list, but I see these as top repeat-offenders.

So in close: do I respect anti-dispensationalists? Some of the anti's are people I immensely respect in many ways. They are my betters, and that, too, in many ways. I mean that with total sincerity.

But in their criticism of dispensationalism?

Not so much. These brothers and sisters are better than the position that's holding them back. Would that they'd take their fine minds, the fervent and godly hearts, their mighty pens, and their bold spirits, and do as much justice to Moses, Isaiah, Jeremiah and the other prophets, as they have done to Paul and the other apostles. It's hard work. It'd be great to have their help, to have them lay some bricks, instead of just throwing them.

For more information:

• Check out this essay (and its links) on what dispensationalism is and isn't.
• For a grounding, explication, exposition, and application of the hermeneutic that (equally) produces the Sola's and dispensationalism, see this essay.