Understanding Dispensationalism

“Dispensationalism and Evangelicals” episode of The Table Podcast

Kymberli Cook: 

Welcome to The Table Podcast where we discuss issues of God and culture to show the relevance of theology to everyday life. My name is Kymberli Cook and I'm the assistant director at the Hendrick Center. And I am so thrilled that you have joined us today as we talk about the theological concept of dispensationalism. And we are joined by two eminently qualified scholars to help us dig into this topic and the questions surrounding it. We're joined by Dr. Glenn Kreider and Craig Blaising. We're so happy to have you all here with us today. 

Craig Blaising: 

Thank you. 

Kymberli Cook: 

So to start off, if you guys wouldn't mind, if you gentlemen wouldn't mind to just introducing yourselves a little bit to our listener. And then letting us know how you ended up being so interested or spending so much thought if you're not interested, at least spending thought processes in this general area of theology. So Glenn, let's start with you. 

Glenn Kreider: 

Yeah. I teach theological studies at Dallas Seminary. I was raised in a dispensational tradition. I came to Dallas Seminary partly because it was a dispensational school, studied dispensationalism under Dr. Blaising and continue to… I'm interested in our tradition. I'm interested in why we hold this view and I'm interested in the kinds of things we're going to be talking about today. 

Kymberli Cook: 

Awesome. Well then we're glad that you're here. And Craig, what about you? 

Craig Blaising: 

I'm Craig Blaising. I am currently a senior professor. That means I'm retired at Southwestern Seminary, but for many years I taught here at Dallas Seminary. And was not originally raised in a church promoting dispensationalism, but through campus ministries and discipleship came to understand something about it. And the Lord led me to Dallas Seminary where I studied it, and then by God's providence was able to teach on the faculty. So since that time I've been quite interested in dispensationalism and have had opportunity to write on it. And so very glad to be part of the podcast today. 

Kymberli Cook: 

We've said the word probably 20 times at this point already. What do we mean when we are talking about dispensationalism or even dispensation? What do we mean when we're saying that with regard to theology? 

Glenn Kreider: 

I think first and foremost we're using a biblical word and trying to understand how the Bible uses that word, and how to read the Bible in light of the way Bible uses that word and the way it lays itself out. A dispensation is an administration, a stewardship, and Paul in Ephesians 2 and elsewhere describes these, actually it's in three, a dispensation given to him, which means there was a dispensation prior to that. So we're trying to make sense of the way the Bible uses that word, uses that term. 

Kymberli Cook: 

Craig, is there anything you want to add? 

Craig Blaising: 

Yeah, and so from the Bible's use of that term, we use it to talk about an administration or arrangement in the way in which God relates to human beings. The word dispensation is not a common word in English today. There was a time and when it was used more than it is now. And so it's a little new to people. They hear it and want to know, "Well, what is that?" Basically what we're referring to is that when you read the story of the Bible, you're reading a narrative, a storyline that passes through some different institutional arrangements that God has with people. And you can think of Israel in the Old Testament and when God can form them as a nation and gave them the law. 

There's requirements, there's regulatory matters that relate God to the people. When you come to the church, there are institutional issues, there are ways in which we relate to God that's different. So reading the Bible, dispensationally is observing those changes that happen. Some people talk about epochs in the Bible like phases of history and this sort of thing. This is what we're referring to. And most people in centuries past when they would read the Bible or talk about the Bible in terms of its storyline, would refer to these different dispensations. It came to be in the 20th century that dispensationalists got tagged with the term as the people who really talked about dispensations. But the word itself is really not that objectionable in terms of noting the way in which the storyline progresses in the Bible. 

Kymberli Cook: 

Go ahead. 

Glenn Kreider: 

So that the label dispensationalism, I take it, has come to represent a way of reading the history of redemption. It's a hermeneutic, it's a way of reading the Bible that doesn't impose upon the scriptures, these eras or these epochs, but recognizes that the Bible unfolds in such a way that there is evidence for these changes in the way God deals with this people. The change from the Old Testament to the new, the old Covenant to the new from Israel to the church is a relatively simple one that everybody acknowledges, although they might not call it for the reasons Craig just mentioned a dispensational change. 

Kymberli Cook: 

So you cut my legs out from under me. Thank you there. No, I was just about to say, so it sounds like when you're talking about how we read the Bible, it sounds exactly what you're saying. It sounds like a hermeneutic, and sometimes it's referred to though as a doctrine. People talk about the doctrine of dispensationalism. What would you gentlemen say to that? Would that be a correction? Would you say, no, it's both a hermeneutic and a doctrine or how should people think about that? Is there something like a faith descent, a commitment specific that we need to believe for it to be a doctrine? What do y'all think? 

Craig Blaising: 

Well, let's say yes to both. What I would say is it's a theological interpretation of the story line of the Bible. And that theological interpretation particularly observes a distinction between Israel and the church in that story line all the way to the consummation of God's plan and purpose. In other words, dispensationalism observes that there is an Israel in the story line that's never replaced or redefined. 

Because the traditional way of reading the scripture for many centuries was to see that Israel dropped out of God's plan, that they were punished, and so the church took their place. Dispensationalism came in and said, "No, to really understand the Bible, you need to understand that Israel stays in the plan of God all the way to the end." So in the end, there's an Israel there and that's not the church, but the church comes into the story line and has its own purpose. And so to read it that way and to understand it that way has clarified the Bible for many people, and that's why dispensationalism became very popular. 

Kymberli Cook: 

So if I'm hearing you right with regard to perhaps doctrinal dimensions of it, it would be recognizing that there is a distinction between Israel and the church, it remains and that there remains a future and a role for Israel and God's plan. That would be the doctrinal dimension. Is that correct? 

Craig Blaising: 

Yeah. 

Kymberli Cook: 

Okay. What would you say? 

Glenn Kreider: 

Or if by doctrine you mean teaching, yeah, it's a teaching. So I like the way he articulated that. I would add to that in reading the history of redemption, there is a plan of God prior to Israel. There are people who are part of God's family who are not part of Israel and they're not part of the church. So that God's plan is bigger than the church in Israel, but it doesn't exclude the distinction between those two. 

Kymberli Cook: 

Interesting. So earlier, Craig, you mentioned in the 20th century that people reading the Bible in this particular way got tagged with being dispensationalists, even though the different epochs of Scripture have been widely recognized by many, many believers throughout the millennia. So what happened? How did they get that tag? 

Craig Blaising: 

I think to understand that, you have to understand the way in which Dispensationalists were making the distinction between Israel and the church. And that, really there's a door opening at that point of the conversation to the point that there are some different kinds of dispensationalism. All right? So not all make the distinction in the same way, but what was very popular at the time coming out of the 19th century into early 20th century was to distinguish the two as two different people groups. In other words, Israel is an ethnic people group, a nation, and so they're distinguished in Scripture from Gentiles. But it was a very common to see the church as a new people group. So when you come to the New Testament and you're reading about the church as this new group that God is putting together, it was interpreted as a different group of people. Now, in order to get in there, you believe in Jesus and so you're formed into his body. 

But it was thought that when that happened, you lose your older identity. So you're no longer Jewish. If you believe in Jesus or you're not really a Gentile, you're really a church person. And that in the consummation, when God completes his plan, there would be an Israel there and there would be Gentiles there, although some didn't talk about them too much. And then there's a church group there. So it's a different people group alongside. So your options at that time were either to read the Bible with the church as a people group replacing Israel as a people group or a church that comes as a people group alongside Israel, and that's the dispensational view. Now, the reason that they got tagged with the name dispensationalism is because when they would read the Bible, you're coming through the Old Testament and it's talking about Israel, and then you come to the New Testament and you hit a, well, they called it a parenthesis. 

Glenn Kreider: 

Or intercalation. 

Craig Blaising: 

Yeah, an intercalation or parenthesis. If parenthesis is not good enough, it's an intercalation. You hit basically a barrier because the storyline at that point stops and it's like you put the book down- 

Kymberli Cook: 

The storyline for Israel? 

Craig Blaising: 

Yeah, for Israel. 

Kymberli Cook: 

Yes. Okay. 

Craig Blaising: 

So you're reading the Bible, and you go all the way from Genesis before Israel, through Israel, all the way past Malachi coming down to the beginning of the Gospels, and you get all the way to the Pentecost and Jesus has ascended, and then he sends the spirit and we have the church being formed. And at that point it was thought, "Okay, we're really picking up a completely different story here. This has nothing to do with what went before." Okay. So all those promises and prophecies regarding Israel, they're now in suspension. And so we're dealing with a different people group. Now, the dispensationalists believe that that defines the present dispensation. So we come through dispensations of the Old Testament, through the history, the different administrative organizations and so on. And then we hit this parenthesis, and that's this dispensation. Now, this was so different from the way other people read the Bible that dispensationalists who were emphasizing this unique dispensation were called dispensationalists. They really are because of the way they're understanding this dispensation is so different. 

Kymberli Cook: 

Who was the first person to make that observation? 

Craig Blaising: 

Well, this came together with John Nelson Darby in the 1830s. Basically you're after the French Revolution and all of Britain, all of Europe, but especially Britain, is really interested in prophecy because of what's happening in the world. And they had been working on the idea of a future for Israel since the 16th century. This has been discussed by Puritans and so on, going to Romans 11 that there's got to be a future for Israel. And then in the 17th century there was a lot of speculation that, "Hey, maybe the appearance of Christ and the rapture is different from the descent." And so a lot of discussion about prophecy, but what sort of put it all together was when in the Bible conferences of the 1830s, they suggested that in order to really understand this, we need to understand that the church is not the same as Israel. There were people who are trying to apply Israel's prophecies to the church. 

So we have all the weeks of Daniel and this sort of thing. And so people are looking in church history, "When is the Lord coming," and all that. So what the Irish dispensationalist put forward was, "No, we can't do that. All of that belongs to Israel." And that's talking about the future of Israel and the church is something different. From that point on in the 1830s, it began to spread, "Hey, this is a way to really understand the Bible. We need to note the difference between the church and Israel. Don't try to confuse the two." And then after the Civil War and this country, it began to spread in the Bible conferences that were happening across the country, coming all the way down to the early 20th century. You have the first Scofield Bible, 1909, and you have this way of interpreting the Bible put forward, and it just spread because this was so helpful to people understanding how to put the Bible together, that you don't confuse Israel and the church. 

Glenn Kreider: 

Almost everybody acknowledges Darby as the father. He was not alone, there were several others like him. Also, the rediscovery in that era of premillennialism in a world that was largely post-millennial was an important factor. There were people, I think we mentioned earlier, there have been people throughout history who have seen these eras and different epochs. So some in order to defend dispensationalism as not a new thing, have identified some of those voices throughout history. I just don't think it's fair to say because this person used the word dispensation that this person is a dispensationalist in the 20th century, use of that term, words change their meaning. 

And that's part of the dispensationalism were called dispensationalists because they were dispensationalists in a way that nobody else was a dispensationalist prior to that. But I think the part of that history is important back to the way the Bible uses those terms, that their, throughout history, particularly throughout the history of the church, people have recognized that there are distinguishable eras in the history of the work of redemption. That God deals with his people differently in the days prior to Abraham than he does with the selection of Abraham and the promises that are made to him. And those differences, it seems to me they don't leap off the page, but they're clearly there. So I think that's an important part of what led to this focus on dispensationalism. 

Kymberli Cook: 

So I'm hearing that obviously during that time was helping believers understand the Bible and understand the content of Scripture and saying, "Okay, there are distinctions here that need to be made, and that's helping that." Craig, at one point you were emphasizing the ones who were called dispensationalists were emphasizing this specific dispensation. So it seems to me is there something there as far as it was helping them understand Scripture, but was there also something to helping them understand the moment in which they were in too, or a moment in which we are in? 

Craig Blaising: 

Yeah, I mean there was a lot of interest in prophecy because so many things have happened, but there was a lot of confusion with this. Whether we're talking about in early 19th century, both in Britain and America or in the 20th century, so many things have happened. And especially in the 20th century with the return of Jews to the land, and then finally in 1948 with the establishment of the state of Israel. But there was a lot of interest in that, in the early 20th century with the return of Jews to the land and of course the world wars and all of this, and people were very much interested in prophecy. 

What dispensationalists were saying is, "Look, in order to understand prophecy, you need to understand that that quite a bit of biblical prophecy is dealing with Israel. So don't get confused and just try to apply that to whatever, to yourself or whatever. Try to keep that clear." And then there were so many things that were happening with Israel, so people became very, very interested in what dispensationalists had to say about it. Basically, they became interested in the biblical prophecy and wanted to know what the Bible had to say about that. So it was an interest that kept developing as things were happening in the world and people were looking to the scripture to try to understand what it was saying and to what degree it related to what they were seeing around them. 

Glenn Kreider: 

I think that's important because many people think today that dispensationalism is largely a view of prophecy, when in reality it was a view of prophecy that was intending to make sense of the world in which people lived, and to get them to see that these prophecies in the Old Testament scriptures were focused on Israel, not on some replacement for Israel. And I think the other factor related to the popularity of the movement is that people, it actually made the scriptures understandable to people. They couldn't make sense of this. Dispensationalism has never been an academic movement. It's a populist and popularizing kind of tradition. It's not to say that there are not academics who are dispensational, but the system, and I use the word, because dispensational is not a system in the sense that Calvinism is a system and Arminianism is a system, it's a hermeneutic, it's a systematic reading of the scripture, but it's not driven by the system. 

And this is something I take really seriously the claim, because the claim, what you guys do is you have this system that you impose upon the scripture. No, the way interpretation works, the way hermeneutics works is there's a circle between us and the text. And as we don't pick up and read the Bible, forgetting everything we learned before that we are always in the process of coming to understand it better. And I think there's something in the way the hermeneutic work that has resonated with people. I mean, I've said in a lot of contexts there are a lot of people who are dispensationalists who had no idea they are dispensationalists until somebody tells them, "Oh, you're a dispensationalist." And they're confused by what that means because you say that it's a bad thing, but I don't want to believe something that's bad. So this is why understanding what dispensationalism is is so incredibly important. 

Kymberli Cook: 

So what are some examples of, let's say our listener is tracking what we're saying, but as far as applying the hermeneutic to scripture and what it means for how they understand prophecy, what are some examples of what this dispensationalist movement would've said, "Hey, this doesn't actually apply to the church, this applies to Israel, so we don't need to be worried about this or thinking through those things." What are some examples of that? 

Craig Blaising: 

I think an example can go very early in the history of dispensationalism because what was happening after the French Revolution was what we often refer to as a historicist, kind of pre-millennialism, which was attempting to take the chronologies in Daniel. So Daniel gives these prophetic chronologies. You've got the seventy-sevens, you've got 1,260 days, the 1335 days, 2,300 mornings and evenings, these time references in Daniel. And they were taking them and trying to apply them to church history. So in 1800, how far are we now into church history? So they were figuring, "Well, these must mean years and it must be thousands or hundreds of years, many, many centuries." So they were looking at it and trying to find appropriate points to begin these chronologies and end them somewhere in church history in their day. And this was not successful. It was incredibly speculative and misleading. So what dispensationalists did was to say, "Look, these are not symbolic numbers of years of church history. These refer to years of trouble that the Bible is predicting involving the fulfillment of Israel's promises." So days means days, years means years when they're used. 

And the great example is Daniel's seventy-seven. So you've got seventy-sevens, you've got 69 sevens from the beginning of the decree to rebuild Jerusalem all the way down to Messiah, and then you've got this other seven. And so when you look at that, well, that works out pretty close, this whole thing of lunar years versus solar years, that sort of thing. But moving from the 400s down to the time of Jesus, it's pretty literal. And so the point is that, "Well, this final seven is of that same order, and it has to do with things that are happening in Israel." Specifically Daniel talks about the city and the temple. These are things belonging to Israel, so don't try to go looking into church history. That was a help to a lot of people and cut off that very speculative approach. 

Glenn Kreider: 

Historicist's are doing the same thing with the book of Revelation. So they're reading this book trying to figure out where we were in history, and dispensationalists came along and said, "No, that book it's future, it's referring to events starting in chapter five or six, it's events that are yet in the future. So we're not in that era." Tragically, our tradition has not been consistent, and sometimes people who claim to be futurists have found signs of the times fulfilled in the book of Revelation. But yeah, that historicist's reading was the dominant view in the 17th and 18th century. It's almost everybody held that view. And so when dispensationalists came along and said, "No, not that." I mean, I think the other really obvious illustration is reading promises or commands made to Israel and then applying them to the church. "If my people who were called by my name, the promises made to Israel are promises that need to be fulfilled to Israel," dispensationalists arguing. 

Kymberli Cook: 

So who would be the one historicist, evidently, you can speak to that in a moment. Who would disagree? Who did disagree? Let's start there. Who did disagree with this even as it was rolling out? The movement was gaining steam. 

Craig Blaising: 

The controversies began especially, well, I guess there was always kind of some controversy somewhere, but especially early in the 20th century within reformed and Presbyterian groups, Lewis Chafer who began Dallas Theological Seminary was a Presbyterian. 

Glenn Kreider: 

As were several other of the founding fathers of the school. 

Craig Blaising: 

They weren't all Presbyterian. There were different denominations represented in the faculty, but Chafer himself was Presbyterian. Scofield had been Congregationalist, and in those days there was not much difference between Congregationalist and Presbyterian. But the issue among the Presbyterians had to do with a Westminster Confession and whether or not people who were holding to dispensationalism were really holding to the Westminster Confession, which talked about the unity of the covenant of grace. So what that does is that takes you to this whole issue of how did people who were covenentalists interpret the storyline of the Bible. 

Kymberli Cook: 

Sorry. Can you unpack what you mean by the unity of the covenant of grace? What does that- 

Craig Blaising: 

Yeah. So in other words, covenentalists, and I'll try not to get too much- 

Kymberli Cook: 

No, I know. Yeah, you're okay. I understand, I asked you to dig in. 

Craig Blaising: 

They believe that there are these theological covenants and a covenant of redemption and a covenant of grace, a covenant of works, and then a covenant of grace. And for those who follow Reformation theology, this was a reformed attempt to address what in Reformation theology was a distinction between law and grace or law and gospel. So all of that is fine. This Reformation view, look, there's a difference between law and gospel. And they said there is a covenant of works that's law, a covenant of grace. The distinction between the two. What they were trying to do is emphasize the distinction of salvation by grace as opposed to works. And that's very important distinction to make. Again, I'll try not to get too much. 

Kymberli Cook: 

No, you're okay. You're okay. 

Craig Blaising: 

So actually the issue was raised in the 16th century in Switzerland, in Zurich with the beginning of the Anabaptist movement. Because the Anabaptists who were all disciples of Zwingli, who was the reformer in Zurich, believed that they rejected paedobaptism. So you had to have believers baptism. Well, the argument against that was that paedobaptism is rooted all the way back in the Old Testament, in the covenants to Israel, where they circumcised the male babies. So the babies are circumcised, so we baptize the infants and the Anabaptists said, "No, that's old covenant. We're under new covenant." And when you move from the Old Testament to new, that changes. And the response was, "What? No." So there developed this covenant theology that argued, "No, the covenant of grace is the same from Old Testament to new." 

And so that was very easily a connected to the idea the church remember replaces Israel. And so the covenant that ruled Israel is really the same covenant that's over the church. So when you read through the storyline, you carry the institutions and so on that belong to Israel to the New Testament with appropriate changes, spiritualization and so on in order to accommodate the church. That's how that started. And then it's not until the 19th century that the argument comes back again. No, look, the church in the New Testament is different. Okay? It's not the same as Israel. And so you can't do that with the covenant. So the point is that the issue in the 20th century with Lewis Chafer and other dispensationalists was, "Hey, do these people hold to the covenant of grace?" You have to keep that thing the same. 

Kymberli Cook: 

These people being the dispensationalists? 

Craig Blaising: 

Yeah, the dispensationalists. Do they read the Bible keeping the unity? Well, no. They read the Bible seeing the difference that the church is different from Israel. So that's how that began. And then it became an issue in the 20th century evangelicalism between covenantalists on the one hand, dispensationalists on the other hand, but that's part of that. There were other issues in terms of millennialism. Dispensationalists were premillennialists, but they were premillennialists who were covenantal and not dispensational. So that just accentuates some of the difference. 

Glenn Kreider: 

Part of what happens too, there, Kym, is when dispensationalists were recognized and when they recognized that they were different in order to articulate what that difference is, the anthropological dualism that was rooted in the system at the beginning, and I'm using the word system there intentionally. That's all these two different peoples, that God had one plan for Israel and another plan for the church that he made promises to Israel, different promises to the church. He made covenants with Israel, different covenants with the church, which ultimately led to some unclear statements about how Israel was saved by keeping the law instead of by grace through faith. 

Kymberli Cook: 

Well, that's what I was just about to ask was, so the question then if I'm sitting in a covenantalist chair, would be, so are you saying that the church isn't then saved by grace? 

Glenn Kreider: 

And that was the charge. That continues to charge- 

Kymberli Cook: 

I'm just trying to make sure that we're being clear as to what the disagreement is over. 

Glenn Kreider: 

Yeah, I just read another book published in 2023 that repeats that same tired old canard that dispensationalists believe that Israel was saved by works and the church by grace. And nobody has argued that for years. Dr. Ryrie said in the 1950s that that view is gone, but it still keeps popping up, which is part of the phenomenon of theological conversations and theological non-conversations. That if we sit down and talk to one another and say, "What is it that you actually mean by this? Do you mean that?" We might find out that there's a whole lot more in common that unites us than what appears to be differences? I mean, I don't want to the importance of precision and language, but sometimes we're using the language in two different ways. 

And I don't want to blame covenantalists for that. I don't want to blame dispensationalists, but it's a phenomenon in the midst of theological controversy. And then you have charges of heresy and things that are happening with Chafer back in those days. There's fault all around. What we need to be clear on as dispensationalists, we are Christian, we believe that salvation from beginning to end has always and always will be by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. On that, the Scripture is clear, on that the Christian tradition is clear. Nobody is ever saved by works. The only person who ever kept the law perfectly didn't need salvation because he kept it perfectly. 

Craig Blaising: 

He was a savior. 

Glenn Kreider: 

Everyone else has failed and continues to fail. Yeah, salvation. That's one of the frustrating things, and you probably felt a little of the frustration in my tone to have to continue to respond over and over and over again to, if you're a dispensationalist, you believe in two ways of salvation. No, actually we don't. 

Craig Blaising: 

Well, part of the problem was the way in which these issues came together. So you have an approach to the Bible that's reading it primarily in terms of law and gospel, works and faith and so on, and that's the only distinction they're looking for. And others are saying, "No, there's a whole lot more in the Bible and we need to distinguish between Israel and the church." Well, that distinction, does that line up with a distinction between salvation by works and salvation by grace?" Well, no, it doesn't. But explaining it, and this is where Glenn was saying at the time, not everything was explained well, you get into polemics. And especially it's a problem when people are using slogans and banners rather than drilling down to understand what are you talking about? What is the Bible actually saying? And how do we- 

Kymberli Cook: 

There are versions of tweets, right? 

Craig Blaising: 

Yeah.  

Kymberli Cook: 

Okay. So we've talked a little bit about the objections and that a lot of the objections were grounded in perhaps legitimate questions due to unclear language there for a while coming out of the dispensationalist camps. But dispensationalists have been trying to make themselves clearer with regard to by grace, through faith, based on the shed blood of Jesus Christ always. So tell me a little bit about those efforts and even y'all's roles in those efforts to say, "No, it's not. Dispensationalism even today isn't necessarily what was being said all that time ago." Even if scholars from, quote, unquote, "the other side" are trying to go back to original sources to talk about what it is, but there's some legitimate differentiations that need to be made. So talk to me about y'all's role and understanding in that effort on the part of dispensational. 

Glenn Kreider: 

All of those who have had children know that children develop really quickly when they are little, much more rapidly than they do as they get older. And dispensationalism as a way of reading. The scripture is a baby. It's relatively new. That actually has been a charge that's often leveled against us. This is some new thing that was invented. That's why emphasizing the things which we have in common, the unity that's so incredibly important. Another charge we often hear is that you're denying the covenants as a means of outworking of God's work, of redemption. No, actually we're not doing that. And there are dispensationalists, John Walvoord was one who affirmed the covenant of grace. Chafer called it the so-called covenant of grace, that it's possible to be a dispensationalist and a Presbyterian, Dr. Walbert was that too. 

And to affirm the covenant of grace and to see that God deals with his people, not simply through biblical covenants, but through the theological covenants, which for which there are no Bible verses per se. But just the idea that God, whether we call, I am perfectly fine calling the covenant of redemption, that the Trinity agreed together, this is how they would save the world. And whether or not there's a Bible verse that supports this, the idea that God has an eternal plan and he's working out that plan. He doesn't have plan A and plan B. He has this plan that he's working out kind of what Paul says in Ephesians 3. I mean that actually works, and that's one of the places we can come together. Also, then to recognize that God's biblical covenants that he makes with his people are not only connected to those theological covenants, but they're connected to his plan of redemption, that this is the way he carries out his plan of redemption. I'm not sure I answered your question. 

Kymberli Cook: 

You're all right. But you further clarified. 

Craig Blaising: 

Yeah. I would go back and pick up something that Glenn said a way back when, Glenn, you mentioned it being a hermeneutic. And as a hermeneutic, one of the things that you do when you read is you take the results of that that you read and you reassess that with respect to the text. And what dispensationalism in its development has shown is that high regard for scripture with a desire to reconfirm and to reassess even what we are saying. And so there have been over the decades, some adjustments in dispensational interpretation, the things that have been brought back to the text that said, "No, look, that's really not the best way to understand that. There is a better way to understand that." So that has brought some changes. Now, you had asked earlier on what are some of the controversies, things that people find problematic? And we mentioned some things, but some of the things that people found problematic were a result of using the dispensational distinction of Israel and the church as two separate people groups with the church as a parenthesis, the New Testament. 

And working that back through explaining the New Testament text and so on, that created real problems. And people were seeing that and saying, "No, that's not explaining that text." There were approaches to the Sermon on the Mount that said, "Oh no, that's just totally law, that belongs to a Jewish view. That doesn't apply to us." And that sort of thing. There was a tendency to overlook the way in which the New Testament connected itself to the Old Testament. And much of evangelical biblical scholarship over the past few decades has been focusing on the New Testament use of the Old Testament and emphasizing the connection. Well, as a result of that, there have been developments in dispensationalism so that there is another view of dispensationalism, which some of us have written about that does not see a distinction between Israel and the church as two different people groups. And that really is a pretty significant difference. There are a lot of similarities. It's a variety of dispensationalism, but it does not see the church as a distinct people group. 

Rather it sees the continuity of the identity of Israel as a people, a nation, even in this dispensation all the way to the consummation. When the church comes into existence in a progressive dispensational view, the church is not a new people group. What the church is, is the spiritual communion of kingdom peoples that's beginning to be formed with the ascension of Jesus and kingdom peoples, you have to bring a third thing in to explain Israel and the church. And the third thing is the kingdom of God. The kingdom of God in its final consummation is a multinational kingdom of redeemed peoples over which Jesus rules forever. There is a millennial form of it, but that doesn't explain it all. It's the everlasting kingdom over which he rules and reigns. There's an Israel there and there are Gentile peoples there, but all of them are united to him. They're redeemed by him. They are united by his spirit to him and to one another no matter what their ethnicity or nationality in that kingdom order. 

Kymberli Cook: 

And those are kingdom peoples? 

Craig Blaising: 

Those are kingdom peoples. 

Glenn Kreider: 

And they're Jews and Gentiles? 

Kymberli Cook: 

Yes. 

Craig Blaising: 

They're Jews and Gentiles. So when the church begins, it's the beginning of the salvation that marks that kingdom. It's an inaugural form of that kingdom is we have justification, we're regenerated, but we're not glorified. We're still in mortal bodies. We're positionally sanctified, but we're not totally sanctified in terms of our behavior and so on. But that will happen. But the beginning of that, that spiritual communion is what we call the church. And it manifests itself in a certain way in this dispensation. We have local churches and this sort of thing, but its ultimate destiny is that kingdom. So there's no conflict between Israel and the church. In fact, I would argue the New Testament does not contrast Israel and the church like dispensationalists or covenantalists or anybody else typically did that contrast to the New Testament with Israel is Gentile. 

The church however comes in there and there'll be Jews in there. There'll be Gentiles in there and it grows up. It may be a local assembly of all Jews. It may be all Gentiles, may be mixed, all kinds of Gentiles. It can be any of those things which bears on how we understand the local church today. As a result of that, what you're seeing is that this dispensation is not a parenthesis, is not an intercalation. It's actually part of the storyline. It's part of the one storyline. So you don't break up into two stories like traditional dispensationalists did. It's the same storyline. It's just a progression of the plot. Now that enabled progressive dispensationalists to talk with covenantalists who were arguing, it's a one storyline. 

There's not two stories. And we'd say, "Yes, it's one storyline." But you have to see that the church is not the replacement of Israel. There's still a place for Israel and there's a place for other ethnic peoples and nationalities. God has a plan for all of that. And so that is a difference. So you have then the dispensations not as parentheses or silos or that sort of thing, but there's a movement and a progression in the storyline of the Bible. And that has opened up a much better way to understand the New Testament, to understand the epistles, for example, in relationship to the gospels. And it has brought a great deal of unity within evangelical biblical and theological conversation. 

Glenn Kreider: 

Which among other things is key for recognizing that the church replacing Israel is a relatively flat way of reading the story of redemption. That what happens when the church comes into existence on the day of Pentecost with the new covenant is that this is something new that has not replaced this. But it's better than this because it includes Jews and Gentiles together, the citizens of the kingdom. And I was shocked when I first read this, our teacher, Charles Rory wrote, that only dispensationalism has an optimistic view of history. Because as the dispensations unfold, things get better and better and better. So there's not this flat read from Genesis through Revelation, but each time God intervenes with his people, things become better than they were before because God's grace always conquers rebellion and his grace always gets the last word. 

Kymberli Cook: 

So this progressive dispensationalism is then part of the overall dispensationalist movement's response to some of those critiques that it received. And just working out some of the kinks that the younger hermeneutic child, like you were talking about, in its infancy or it's young. But just to be clear, there do remain different versions of dispensationalism, correct? Not everybody would sign on to this progressive one, just for the person listening so that they're clear. Is that correct? 

Glenn Kreider: 

I want to insert something here- 

Kymberli Cook: 

Go for it. 

Glenn Kreider: 

… before Craig talks about progressive dispensation. 

Kymberli Cook: 

You're okay. 

Glenn Kreider: 

What he said earlier is so incredibly important. We are a biblical people and we are always in conversation with the text. So as the tradition develops, as dispensationalists continue to wrestle with the text, they sometimes see, "Oh, we need to change. This doesn't actually work, this works with this text. But if we read the canon as a whole, this doesn't work here." And so that many of the developments and the changes and the diversity that exists within dispensationalism as a result of that, it's a result of wrestling with the text. I remember the question you asked earlier. I'll just answer it now. I am particularly interested in helping people understand that this is a tradition that has been developing and that there's a great deal of diversity. You've represented in this conversation people who would probably define where our allegiances are, where our camps are within dispensationalism representing a bit of the diversity that exists within the tradition. But you asked him about progressive. 

Craig Blaising: 

Yeah, I think that makes it difficult for critics of dispensationalism, some books that come out criticizing dispensationalism. The question is what dispensationalism do they have in mind? One of the things that we did in progressive dispensationalism was to try to address the history of the movement, which had not really been done. And in light of that, we were able to see some of the changes that had taken place. And so I talked about a classical period, a revised period, and a progressive dispensational period. And not everybody uses that terminology. 

A number of people will refer to themselves as traditional dispensationalists in order to distinguish from progressive dispensationalists, but it's not always clear what they mean by that. Sometimes when I've talked with them, they tend to focus on a particular issue. "Well, what is your interpretation of this?" Well, we have the same interpretation of that or we have a little slightly different interpretation of that. But the real issue I think, for what controls traditional dispensationalism is this issue of the church as a separate people group. And I've talked to some and I've said, "Do you view the church as a separate people group?" And they say, "Oh no, but I'm a traditional dispensationalist." 

Kymberli Cook: 

So there's a lot of diversity's. 

Craig Blaising: 

So it's not really clear what they mean by that. But I think if we're trying to be clear, that's the most important issue is whether the church is to be seen like that. And that will drive the way people view eschatology. A lot of the controversies about dispensationalism, people who critique it have to do with eschatology. And the eschatology looks maybe a little bit different depending on how one defines the church. And so all of that is maybe more conversation, but to help people understand, to go into it, to understand that there are some differences among dispensationalists. Some see a more unified storyline to the Bible that would be progressive dispensationalists. Some see a more bifurcated storyline with the church completely in its own story unrelated to the Old Testament. That would be more the traditional side. But people use these terms somewhat differently and sometimes idiosyncratically. 

Kymberli Cook: 

No, that's really helpful and that's even helpful if you, the listener, have been following our podcast, we even had another podcast that released quite a while ago with Darrell Bock who also wrote Progressive Dispensationalism with Craig Blaising. And another one of our professors here at DTS, as well as a gentleman who was critiquing dispensationalism as a method, as the hermeneutic that it is. And so if this has been interesting to you as you're listening and you think, "Oh yeah, I've tracked all of this and I want to hear even more of those conversations." 

Then you should definitely check that podcast out because they dig into this very topic of this is what it looks like on the ground in the conversations when we have these differing views interacting with each other. 

So gentlemen, I want to thank you so much for giving us this really basic introduction to the hermeneutic of dispensationalism and the doctrine, the teaching behind it. We really appreciate your time and your expertise and the love of the Lord and his word that you have poured out for all of these years in trying to make sense of this and to contribute to the Church's understanding of it. So I really thank you for being here. 

Craig Blaising: 

Thank you, Kym. 

Glenn Kreider: 

Thank you. 

Kymberli Cook: 

And we want to thank you for listening and we ask you to be sure to join us next time when we discuss issues of God and culture.