Dispensationalism and Covenant Theology

1. Dispensationalism and Covenant Theology

2. Dispensationalism is a Protestant evangelical tradition based on a biblical hermeneutic that sees a series of chronologically successive "dispensations" or periods in history in which God relates to human beings in different ways under different Biblical covenants. As a system, dispensationalism is rooted in the writings of John Nelson Darby (1800–1882) and the Brethren Movement.

3. The theology of dispensationalism consists of a distinctive eschatological "end times" perspective, as all dispensationalists hold to premillennialism and most hold to a pretribulation rapture. Dispensationalists believe that the nation of Israel is distinct from the Church,[3]:322 and that God has yet to fulfill His promises to national Israel.

4. These promises include the land promises, which in the future result in a millennial kingdom where Christ, upon His return, will rule the world from Jerusalem for a thousand years. In other areas of theology, dispensationalists hold to a wide range of beliefs within the evangelical and fundamentalist spectrum.

5. The label "dispensationalism" is derived from the idea that biblical history is best understood through division into a series of chronologically successive dispensations. The number of dispensations held are typically three, four, seven or eight. The three- and four-dispensation schemes are often referred to as minimalist, as they recognize the commonly held major breaks within Biblical history.

7. These different dispensations are not separate ways of salvation. During each of them man is reconciled to God in only one way, i.e. by God's grace through the work of Christ that was accomplished on the cross and vindicated in His resurrection.

8. Before the cross, man was saved on the basis of Christ's atoning sacrifice to come, through believing the revelation thus far given him. Since the cross, man has been saved by believing on the Lord Jesus Christ, in whom revelation and redemption are consummated.

9. Although the divine revelation unfolds progressively, the deposit of truth in earlier time-periods is not discarded, rather it is cumulative. Thus conscience (moral responsibility) is an abiding truth in human life (Ro. 2:15; 9:1; 2 Co. 1:12; 4:2), although it does not continue as a dispensation.

10. In every past dispensation unregenerate man has failed, and is failing in the present dispensation, and will fail in the future until Eternity arrives. But salvation has been and will continue to be available to him by God's grace through faith. (The New Scofield Study Bible, NIV 1984 Edition , pg. 3-4)

11. The relationship between the ancient nation of Israel and the church as the people of God is the key discriminator between Dispensationalism and other views.

12. In the dispensational view, the time in which the church operates, known as the church age or the Christian dispensation, represents a "parenthesis". That is, it is an interruption in God's dealings with the Jewish people as a nation as described in the Old Testament, and it is the time when the Gospel was preached and salvation in the present age is offered to the Gentiles and Jews alike.

13. God’s continued care for the Jewish people as a nation will be revealed after the end of the church age when Israel will be restored to their land and will accept Jesus as their messiah and therefore "all Israel shall be saved."

14. Jesus Christ will then sit on the throne of David and will begin the Theocratic Davidic Kingdom which is promised in numerous places in the Old Testament, in which believers and Christ reign together on the earth from Israel

15. Contrasted with this view are Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Anglicanism, Covenant Theology, and New Covenant Theology. In Catholicism and Covenantalism, the church is not a replacement for the nation of Israel but an expansion of it where Gentiles are, in the words of Romans 11, "grafted into" the existing covenant community.

16. All of these groups expect there will be an influx of Jews to the church before the second coming of Christ. However, dispensationalists do not view the Church as the promised covenanted kingdom in Old Testament prophecy. They believe such a kingdom is still promised to the Jews during the New Testament era, i.e. in Acts 3:19-21

17.  Acts 3: 18 – 21 18 But those things, which God before had shewed by the mouth of all his prophets, that Christ should suffer, he hath so fulfilled. 19 Repent ye therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord. 20 And he shall send Jesus Christ, which before was preached unto you: 21 Whom the heaven must receive until the times of restitution of all things, which God hath spoken by the mouth of all his holy prophets since the world began.

18. Dispensationalism was first introduced to North America by John Inglis (1813–1879), through a monthly magazine called Waymarks in the Wilderness (published intermittently between 1854 and 1872).[ In 1866, Inglis organized the Believers' Meeting for Bible Study, which introduced dispensationalist ideas to a small but influential circle of American evangelicals.

19. The energetic efforts of C.I. Scofield and his associates introduced dispensationalism to a wider audience in America and bestowed a measure of respectability through his Scofield Reference Bible. The publication of the Scofield Reference Bible in 1909 by the Oxford University Press was something of an innovative literary coup for the movement, since for the first time, overtly dispensationalist notes were added to the pages of the biblical text.

20. The Scofield Reference Bible became the leading Bible used by independent Evangelicals and Fundamentalists in the U.S. for the next sixty years. Evangelist and Bible teacher Lewis Sperry Chafer (1871–1952), who was strongly influenced by C.I. Scofield, founded Dallas Theological Seminary in 1924, which has become the flagship of Dispensationalism in America.

21. Dispensationalism has come to dominate the American Evangelical scene, especially among nondenominational Bible churches, many Baptists, and most Pentecostal and Charismatic groups, while mainline Protestants generally continue to reject dispensationalism.

22. "Ultra" Dispensationalists hold to the belief that the Church wasn't started till after the stoning of Stephen. The first reference to the church the body of Christ is in Romans and unlike most other dispensationalists they believe that the church started after Acts 2. Some begin the church with the salvation of Saul in Acts 9, while others move to Acts 13 with Paul's first missionary journey.

23. Dispensationalism rejects the notion of supersessionism, sees the Jewish people as the true people of God, and sees the modern State of Israel as identical to the Israel of the Bible. John Nelson Darby taught, and most subsequent dispensationalists have consistently maintained, that God looks upon the Jews as his chosen people even as they remain in rejection of Jesus Christ, and God continues to have a place for them in the dispensational, prophetic scheme of things.

24. Christian Dispensationalists sometimes embrace what some critics have pejoratively called Judeophilia—ranging from support of the state of Israel, to observing traditional Jewish holidays and practicing traditionally Jewish religious rituals. Dispensationalists typically support the modern state of Israel, recognize its existence as God revealing His Will for the Last Days, and reject anti-Semitism.

25. Covenant theology (also known as Covenantalism or Federal theology or Federalism) is a conceptual overview and interpretive framework for understanding the overall flow of the Bible. It uses the theological concept of covenant as an organizing principle for Christian theology.

26. The standard description of covenant theology views the history of God's dealings with mankind in all of history, from Creation to Fall to Redemption to Consummation, under the framework of three overarching theological covenants — the covenants of redemption, of works, and of grace.

27. Covenant theology is often referred to as "supersessionism," or "replacement theology" by its detractors, due to the perception that it teaches that God has abandoned the promises made to the Jews and has replaced the Jews with Christians as his chosen people in the earth.

28. Covenant theologians deny that God has abandoned his promises to Israel, but see the fulfillment of the promises to Israel in the person and the work of the Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth, who established the church in organic continuity with Israel, not a separate replacement entity.

29. Covenant of Redemption The covenant of redemption is the eternal agreement within the Godhead in which the Father appointed the Son Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit to redeem his elect people from the guilt and power of sin.

30. Covenant of Works The covenant of works was made in the Garden of Eden between God and Adam who represented all mankind as a federal head. (Romans 5:12-21) It promised life for obedience and death for disobedience. Adam, and all mankind in Adam, broke the covenant, thus standing condemned.

31. Covenant of Grace The covenant of grace promises eternal life for all people who receive forgiveness of sin through Christ. He is the substitutionary covenantal representative fulfilling the covenant of works on their behalf, in both the positive requirements of righteousness and its negative penal consequences It is the historical expression of the eternal covenant of redemption. Genesis 3:15, with the promise of a "seed" of the woman who would crush the serpent's head, is usually identified as the historical inauguration for the covenant of grace.

32. Adamic covenant Noahic covenant Abrahamic covenant Mosaic covenant Davidic covenant New Covenant

34. The following are quotations from: Dispensationalism – A Reformed Evaluation by J. Ligon Duncan, PCA

35. Classic dispensationalism, in addition to being premillenial, is also pretribulational. On the other hand, most Covenant Theologians have been either post- or amillenial. 

36. You can only have two views at the time of the millenium. Christ is either coming before or after the millenium.  Those are the only two possible views.  So, amillenialism is a subcategory of postmillenialism.  All believers are either premillenialists or postmillenialists. 

37. Amillenialists tend to stress the heavenly character of [the] millennium.  They will, for instance, stress that the millenial reign is going on now, in heaven.  It is a spiritual millenium.  Whereas postmillenialists tend to stress a more earthly character to that millennium, and often times project it as a golden age which is yet to be experienced, but which will occur before the time of Christ. 

38. “ ...it is perhaps the fundamental point of Dispensationalism that Israel and the Church are distinct, and the Law-Gospel distinction must be preserved at all costs.  That is the very heart and core of classic dispensationalism.  You should never, ever mix up Law and Gospel, and you should never ever mix up Israel and the Church.”

39. Dispensationalists do not believe that the Church is prophesied about in the Old Testament.  Covenant Theology on the other hand, sees the Church as the fulfillment of Israel in New Covenant prophecy.  Covenant Theology is happy to acknowledge the uniqueness of the Church, especially in its post Pentecost phase.  But Covenant Theology sees all believers in essential continuity.  There are not two peoples of God. There is one people of God. Dispensationalism, however,  contends that God has two peoples with two destinies.

40. Some modern dispensationalists generally argue that the saving faith of the Old Testament was substantially and materially different from the saving faith of the New Testament.  They tend to argue that sinners in the Old Testament were not justified by faith in the Gospel of the Messiah as sin-bearer (Christ crucified), but rather their faith was in promises that were peculiar to their individual era in redemptive history. Now, this isn’t just out of accord with Covenant Theology, but this is the area where dispensationalism has been most out of accord with Protestant theology.

41. Hebrews 4: 1 – 2 1 Therefore, since a promise remains of entering His rest, let us fear lest any of you seem to have come short of it. 2 For indeed the gospel was preached to us as well as to them; but the word which they heard did not profit them,not being mixed with faith in those who heard it.

42. Dispensationalists speak in terms of a literal interpretation of the Bible.  This is a major rhetorical thing that you hear in discussion with Dispensationalist friends.  “We interpret the Bible literally.”  Of course, the implication being that you don’t.  We interpret the Bible literally, you don’t.  You do something else to it. 

43. Covenant Theologians would argue, ‘We interpret the Bible literally, but, we believe that the New Testament interprets the Old Testament.”  We believe that the New Testament is the hermeneutical manual for the Old Testament.  And Dispensationalists are suspicious of that. 

44. For the Covenant Theologian, the New Covenant always has the final word as to the meaning of the Old Covenant passage.  It doesn’t mean that you don’t start with the original context, and that you don’t bother yourself about original intent, it just means that you recognize from a biblical theological standpoint that later revelation, by definition, controls the final Systematic Theological understanding of earlier revelation. 

45. Acts 2 (NKJV) 14 But Peter, standing up with the eleven, raised his voice and said to them, “Men of Judea and all who dwell in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and heed my words. 15 For these are not drunk, as you suppose, since it is only the third hour of the day. 16 But this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel:

46. Joel 2 (NKJV) 28 “ And it shall come to pass afterward that I will pour out My Spirit on all flesh; Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions.

47. For the Dispensational side, the Church is a parenthesis in God’s program for the ages. It is a temporary thing in the flow of history.  You have heard the phrase The Great Parenthesis, which is used to describe the time when Messiah came and the Jews shockingly rejected Him.  This actually thwarted God’s plan, because the original plan was for Messiah to come and set up a kingdom in Israel, but oops, the Jews rejected Him.......

48. At that point the prophetic clock stopped and we entered into the period of the Gentiles, the Great Parenthesis.  That is a period about which there was no prophecy in the Old Testament.  At the end of the period of the Great Parenthesis, the end of the time of the Gentiles, as the Dispensationalists interpret that section in Romans chapter 11,  the Church is removed.   That is the rapture.  Then the prophetic clock starts ticking again, and God’s dealings with Israel resume. 

49. [This] gives you a clue as to why a pre-tribulation rapture is so important for consistent classical Dispensationalism, because you have to get rid of Gentile believers in the program of God, before you can get on with the work that God is doing with literal physical earthly Israel. 

50. Pauline Dispensationalism