Dispensationalism

This post will give a brief look at dispensationalism (and why it is wrong).

The story of dispensationalism begins in the early to mid 19th century in the British Isles. Usually dispensationalism is depicted (accurately enough) as arising largely from the teaching of a small sect known as the Plymouth Brethren, and one member in particular, John Darby. In the US dispensationalism took off with the support of such famous figures as Dwight Moody.

As with many of the movements in the history of the church dispensationalism grew out of reaction to real problems but went too far in its own teachings. Also like most movements it has its extremists, and its not so extreme members.

In the previous post I talked about the covenants God has made with man down through history. For most of the history of the church this covenantal view has been the predominant vision for understanding the history of God's dealings with man.
One of the problems that grew out of this covenantal view was the idea which is known today as "replacement theology". This view is not an inevitable conclusion from the covenantal view but its development was influenced by many causes.
Replacement theology teaches that the Church "replaced" Israel and thus the Jews are no longer God's chosen people. They are just people like anyone else and all of the biblical promises that God made to Israel now apply to the Church, and not to the Jews.
This view appeared very early in Church history and was undoubtedly partially due to the troubles between Jews and Christians. In the early Church the Jews frequently sought to persecute Christians even to the point of deliberately lying to Roman government officials etc. in order to bring the Romans down on Christians. The strategy worked very well.
The sad result was that Christians eventually turned against the Jews and returned hate for hate and spite for spite.

Dispensationalism seeks to provide an alternative view and thus goes away from the ideas of covenantalism which it identifies as "replacement theology".

Rather than simply organizing the bible history around the covenants God makes, dispensationalism organizes it into "dispensations" which roughly correspond to the covenants. The word dispensation means "economy" or "administration". It is supposed to identify the means by which God deals with mankind during a given time period.

For example dispensationalism usually divides biblical history up into seven dispensations. They are as follows...

the dispensation of innocence - this is the time before Adam fell. God dealt with man through man's innocence.

the dispensation of conscience - this is the time from Adam's fall to Noah. God dealt with each individual person through their own conscience.

the dispensation of government - From Noah to Abraham, God dealt with mankind through governments, God appointed kings etc.

the dispensation of patriarchs - From Abraham to Moses God dealt with Mankind through the Patriarchs of the Hebrew people.

the dispensation of Law - From Moses to Christ God dealt with mankind through the law of Moses given on Mt. Sinai.

the dispensation of Grace - From Christ until the millenium God deals with mankind through the Grace Christ purchased for us with his blood.

the dispensation of the millenium - God will rule man directly as Jesus Christ sits as king over the world.

Also in addition to those, dispensationalists tend to break the history of the world up into "ages" which sort of relate to those dispensations.

the first age is the age of gentiles which goes from the beginning until Abraham
then is the age of Israel from Abraham to Pentecost
then is the age of the Church from Pentecost until the rapture
then is a flash-back to the age of Israel in the tribulation
then of course the final millenial age

Each dispensation ends when the next begins, each age ends when the next begins etc etc.

Now, all branches of Christian theology contain the idea of progressive revelation. This is the idea that God has progressively throughout history revealed more and more of himself and his truth. Just as schools build education by starting with the simple and moving to the complex, so God has revealed his truth progressively, precept upon precept, principle upon principle.

Dispensationalism takes this idea and runs with it to a degree that I don't think is really biblical. It is clear in the bible that God judges people according to the light they are given. Thus he was more lenient with people in the past who did not have the same level of revelation that we do. However, there is no real indication in scripture that God has ever dealt with manking in significantly different ways. That is to say, people from Adam down to us have always been saved by grace through faith. No one has ever been saved by Law, or by Conscience, or by Government.
Just as the new testament writers say of Abraham, he believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness. Abraham was saved by faith, just as we are. The only difference is that he was looking forward to the cross in faith, we look back at the cross in faith.

One of the central issues (if not THE central issue) with dispensationalism is the relationship between the Church and Israel. Dispensationalism draws a stark distinction between the church and Israel. Israel is not the church, and the church is not Israel. In dispensationalism they are seen as two completely seperate entities.

In this understanding then the promises made to Israel in the bible apply only to Israel, and not to the church etc.

This issue is complex because both sides are wrong. Thus it is difficult not to get lumped into one side or the other simply because you disagree with the other side.

First, the Church and Israel are not seperate. Second, Israel is not permanently abandoned by God.

Israel was created by the covenant God made with Abraham. God told Abraham that he would bless the whole world through Abraham's house, and he told Abraham that he would become a great nation, numbered greater than the stars of heaven, or the grains of sand by the sea.

It was God's intention from the very beginning to bring all nations into the assembly of his Chosen through this covenant with Abraham.
What the dispensationalists, and the Jews all failed to see in this was that this covenant was one of FAITH not of genetics only. This covenant was made with Abraham BECAUSE of Abraham's faith. Abraham is not only the father of the Israelites, he is the father of all who have faith.

ever sang the song "Father Abraham" ?? "Father Abraham has many sons, I am one of them, and so are you". A simple children's song but it captures the truth that Paul tried to teach in Romans. Paul makes it undeniably clear that ANYONE who believes in Christ by faith is a child of Abraham, and is made an heir with Christ in Abraham's covenant.

Dispensationalists tend to see the church almost as a footnote, a parenthetical note to the old testament. Something unforseen and unexpected. Yet if you read the Old Testament prophets carefully, you can see that God forsaw the church and intended it the entire time. All of the times God spoke through the prophets that in a later day he would do something new, something different than the covenant he made with their fathers etc.

There has ALWAYS only ever been one assembly of the chosen. Further that assembly of Chosen ones has ALWAYS been defined by FAITH.

Further, Paul tells us clearly that Jesus came specificly for the purpose of "breaking down the middle wall of partition between Jew and Gentile, and to make of the two, one new man." That one new man is the Church.

the dispensationalists, and even the covenantalists err greviously when they see the church as "gentile". The Church is not gentile, it is neither Jew nor Gentile, it is something new.

Now, on the other side of things those who believe in replacement theology have also made a mistake. For some reason or other people never seem to be able to just take scripture at face value.
When Paul says that all who believe in Christ by faith are Children of Abraham and true Jews, the dispensationalists can't believe him.
When Paul says that the Natural Jews still have great benefit and still are set apart and that God will honor his promises to them and call them back.. the replacement theology people just can't believe him.

In both cases they read it and think to themselves... this doesn't fit with my school of theology... thus obviously Paul must mean something else!

The truth is that we as Christians are the assembly of God's chosen, we are the body of Christ, the bride of Christ, we are the children of Abraham.
It is also absolutely true that God will honor every promise he made to Abraham natural descendants. The Nation of Israel will be brought back just as Paul said.


Now, Paul also makes it clear that God "vieled" natural israel. He removed them from their place because of their unbelief. He has prevented them from seeing and accepting the truth because of their unbelief. Paul tells us that in this God is working two purposes. #1 he is using the unbelief of the Jews to save the gentiles. The church is reaping a harvest among the gentiles because the Jews refused to believe. #2 Paul tells us that God is also using this to make Israel jealous.. to rekindle their old zeal and their desire for him. This is just as he did in the past when he sent them into exile.

The time will come when natural Israel will return to God and will be joined into the one Church along with the gentiles and together they will fulfill the one new man.

Now, back to dispensationalism.

There are varying extremes, however, it is not uncommon for dispensationalists to think that there are actually seperate gospels for the Jews and Gentiles. Often you will find dispensationalists who think, for example, that Peter was the apostle of the Jews, and Paul the apostle of the Church (ie gentiles) thus what Peter wrote is the Gospel for the Jews, while what Paul wrote is the Gospel for the gentiles.

Some of the more extreme groups will also argue that the gospels do not apply to gentiles since they were written before the church came into existence at pentecost. Some of the most extreme dispensationalists argue that the church did not come into existence until Paul was converted, and thus anything before that (including baptism) does not apply to gentiles.

All of this is in clear contradiction of what the bible says. There is ONE gospel, ONE baptism, ONE Church, ONE Spirit, ONE God, and Father of all.

Laws and Covenants

In response to a request this blog post will deal with the question of if we as Christians are required to keep the Old Testament laws.

This is an issue that has been fairly divisive (but then in the church today what issue isn't?). Generally you have two extreme views on this topic, and then a spectrum in between those two extremes. On the one hand you have the legalists who believe that we must keep the old testament laws in order to be righteous. I have rarely met anyone who believed that keeping the old testament laws was a prerequisit for salvation, but there are quite a few people around who believe that if you want to live a righteous life, you must adhere to the Law.

On the other hand there are quite a few people who believe that the grace of God has swept away the law and we are no longer bound by commandments and rules. I have heard some of the more extreme people on this side of things use phrases like "you're not free from sin, until you're free to sin" and things like that.

Then of course there are plenty of people who fall in between those two extremes, leaning towards one side or the other, or possibly right in the middle.

In order to understand this issue, we have to grasp that what we are talking about here are covenants. Throughout the history of God's interactions with man he has dealt with man in terms of covenants, or what we might more commonly call them today, contracts. There are seven different covenants spoken of in the bible (at least that I'm aware of). Each of these covenants was made for a specific reason, with a person, or a group of people. Each one contains specific promises from God to man, and specific requirements made upon man by God.

As a side note, you may notice some similarity in this idea to dispensationalism, which breaks of the history of God's interactions with man into "dispensations" rather than "covenants". There are a couple of important differences. Dispensationalism tends to suggest that each dispensation applies to all humanity, and each one ends when the next one begins. This is nice and neat, but it doesn't really fit with the bible. Some of the covenants God made were with limited groups of people, some were with all people. Most of them have terms on which they would be fulfilled, and come to an end, but in most cases, they have overlapped in terms of time.

The seven covenants generally recognized in scripture are; the Adamic covenant, the Noahide covenant, the Abrahamic covenant, the Mosaic covenant, the Aaronic covenant, the Davidic covenant, and the New Covenant.

Throughout the bible refrences to "The Law" refer to the Mosaic covenant in which God gave a specific legal code to the Israelites and established their religion and worship as an organized, codified practice. Before we get to this I'm going to back through the other covenants and give a brief over-view of them.

Adamic covenant - This covenant was made by God with Adam at the creation. In this covenant God granted man dominion over the earth, and tasked man to be fruitful, multiply, and subdue the earth. Also contained here is the establishment of the husband and wife relationship. It is commonly stated that God performed the first wedding here and in a sense thats true. However, marriage is a human legal contract which is seperate from the sacred relationship that exists between husband and wife. So technically marriage did not exist until human laws were first made. This covenant applies to all people because all are descended from Adam, and it will last as long as the earth does. This covenant is the foundation of both the right to own property, and the rights involved with family.

Noahide covenant - Prior to the flood the world had become filled with violence to the point at which the righteous could no longer survive. The result was the flood. This came about because there was not law. No human law. God had not given authority to man to make laws, or to punnish crimes etc, the result was that the wicked ran wild and the righteous were oppressed. Thus the major point of God's covenant with Noah after the flood was that God granted authority to mankind to punnish crimes up to and including the death penalty. The original intent was that man would be ruled by God directly. When man refused God's rule, God had to give authority to rule to other men in order to maintain law and order. All authority to make governments and laws derives from the Noahide covenant.
Also, in the Jewish view the Noahide covenant contained the basic requirements for gentiles to be 'good people'. Like the adamic covenant, the Noahide applies to all people, and it will endure at least until Jesus returns and we are returned to God's direct rule.

Abrahamic covenant - This is the covenant where God promises to make Abraham a great nation and promises to bless the entire world through Abraham's house. This is the covenant that establishes the Israelites as God's chosen people and the covenant which promises salvation for the whole world to come through Abraham's house. This is the first covenant of faith. This covenant has a definite fulfillment and is enfolded within the new covenant.

Aaronic covenant - this is the covenant where God promises the descendants of Aaron that they will be reserved as priests before him forever. He made this promise in response to the faithfullness of Aaron's descendants. It applies only to the descendants of Aaron.

Davidic covenant - this is the covenant where God promised David that one of his descendants would sit on the throne of Israel forever. This was and is always seen by both Christians and Jews alike as a messianic covenant. The messiah is the heir of David who will sit on the throne of Israel forever. This is why the messiah is called "son of David" because he is the heir of this promise. This applies only to the messiah, and has no end.

New covenant - of course this the covenant that Jesus made with us through his broken body and shed blood. This covenant is both the fulfillment of, and the continuation of the Abrahamic covenant. In both people are made God's people, God's chosen through faith. This covenant is eternal and like the Abrahamic covenant is extended to those who enter by faith.

That brings us to the Mosaic covenant. The one around which all the questions revolve. Like all the other covenants this covenant was made with a specific purpose. When that purpose is fulfilled, so is the covenant. In this covenant God gives a bunch of laws (about 613) to the Jews, and the authority to enforce those laws. The pay off (so to speak) is that the Israelites will build a house for God, and God's visible, special presense, will dwell among them. In addition to that, if they keep the laws, they are promised immense blessing in health, wealth, and general well being.

There are actually two primary purposes in the Mosaic covenant.

#1. To enable God to dwell "physically" among his people. God can not be in the presense of sin, thus in order for his special presence to dwell visibly among the Israelites sin had to be purged or hidden. This is why the laws imposed by the mosaic covenant were so strict. No visible sin could be tolerated. This also is at the focus of the ceremonial law and the sacrificial system and the temple worship.

#2. As Paul points out, the Mosaic covenant was given for the purpose of instructing humanity. The Law served as a teacher and it points us to Christ. Also, again as Paul points out, the Law reveals the sinful condition of the human heart. Sin was in the world since Adam, and with sin came death. Before the law came, however, sin was not counted, it was invisible. There was no standard by which sin could be revealed.

There are also other benefits to the laws given in the covenant of Moses. For example there are many health benefits that the Israelites would have gained from keeping the law. It would reduce the instance of disease due to eating high risk foods, through limiting contact with dead bodies, and through increasing general cleanliness due to frequent ceremonial bathing.

Now, the question asked by so many is, Does this covenant still apply? are we required to live by it? Are the laws of Moses necessary for righteous living?

The short answer is No. I'll explain why.

The covenant of Moses was given for two purposes. Both of those purposes are fulfilled and thus the stipulations of the covenant are no longer in effect.

The first purpose for the harsh laws of the mosaic covenant was to remove sin from visibility before God's presense. This was accomplished in a far better and more thurough way through the ministry of Jesus Christ. Under the Mosaic law sin was not forgiven, it was hidden, or passed on to another. No one has ever been saved by keeping the law because law does not forgive, it is only capable of condemning.

The stipulations of the mosaic covenant are no longer necessary for hidding sin because the Blood of Christ removes our sins.

The second purpose of the law was to be a teacher. All of the law is allegory and example to teach us the principles of truth. Now, however, we who are in Christ have the Holy Spirit who convicts our hearts of truth and He engraves the truth upon our hearts. Thus we no longer have need of the law to force lessons upon us.

Both of the purposes of the covenant have been fulfilled, this means that the stipulations of the covenant cease to be enforced.

One example of this scripturally comes from the example of the woman caught in adultery. According to the Mosaic law, the Jews were REQUIRED to stone that woman to death. Under the Mosaic covenant it would have been a violation of the Law, a sin, for the Jews not to stone her. Yet Jesus stopped them from doing so. Most people see this as an example of God's forgiveness... but they miss the significance that this has for the covenant. In this act Jesus was essentially telling the Jews that they no longer had the authority given under the mosaic covenant to punnish sin with death.

The right to punnish murder with death was given to all men under the Noahide covenant, but in the mosaic covenant the Jews were also given the right to punnish homosexuality, witchcraft, adultery, rebeliousness and disrespect to parents, etc all with death.

All of that ceased to be in effect when Jesus came. Many would answer with "but Jesus said that he came not to destroy the law, but to fulfill the law." The issue there is not that the law continues to be in effect, the issue is that Jesus was not the enemy of the law, he was the point of the law. Further Jesus makes the statement that not one bit of the written law will pass away. This is also true, however, it does not mean that the covenant is still in effect. In law, when a contract or covenant is fulfilled and ceases to function it is still kept on record as a witness.

Lastly there are those who argue that even though the covenant is no longer in effect, we still must live by the law in order to be righteous. The assumption here is that the laws given were for the purpose of making the people behave righteously.. thus we should obey them as well.

However, this is plainly shown not to be the case biblically in several cases. The easiest cases are circumcision, and the food laws. In the new testament both are plainly stated to be of no moral value in an of themselves. Why is this?

These things were given as object lessons. To focus on the object is often to miss the point of the lesson. God knew that we in our fallen state have trouble with understanding and percieving spiritual things. The result is that he had to give us physical lessons to teach us spiritual truths. In the case of circumcision the point was not that you must remove physical skin in order to be righteous. The point was that we must circumcise our hearts. We must cut away the flesh (ie the soulish, natural will) from our hearts in order to be set apart to God. The point of the food laws was not that you sin when you eat bacon. The point was that there are many things that are spiritually unclean and we simply can not partake of them and remain clean ourselves. Things like adultery, hate, jealousy, lust.. The same thing with all the ceremonial bathing etc.. its not that your body must be clean in order to be righteous.. the point is that when you partake of that which is unclean, you are tainted by it and you must become clean again by being bathed. Compare this with what Jesus said to Peter when he washed the disciple's feet and Peter refused at first.

A great deal of the ceremonial law in the mosaic covenant has no value whatsoever for making a person righteous. It was given to serve as an object lesson of spiritual truths. This is why Paul goes so far as to say that a christian who gets circumcised(for religious purposes) is going against faith. Such a person is missing the entire point of circumcision and thus it is useless to them.

One issue that can be confusing in this is the fact that there are laws like "thou shalt not commit murder" and "thou shalt not steal" which are obviously moral codes. This is simply the fact that the covenant over-laps and includes the same laws which were given to all mankind. Paul talks about how the gentiles are a law unto themselves etc, The Jews have always recognized a 'lesser' more basic moral code which is applied to the gentiles etc.. the bible is clear that these basic laws have been revealed to everyone and are not specific to any covenant. The fact that they were included in the Mosaic covenant as well does not mean that they ceased to be with that covenant.

The final word on this I will refrence from Hebrews 8:13 referring to how Christ affected the covenant of Moses.

"In speaking of a new covenant, he makes the first one obsolete. And what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away."