Dispensations & Covenants

1. Dispensations & Covenants Robert Thurman, MA Fall 2013

2. Presuppositions Everyone has presuppositions. Here are the ones I am bringing to this course… • I presuppose that we agree that the Scriptures are our ultimate authority and that they are uniquely sufficient to provide answers to the questions we will wrestle with during this course.

3. Presuppositions Everyone has presuppositions. Here are the ones your instructor brings to this course… • I presuppose that you are willing to engage in hard work and study to learn the Word of God. • I presuppose that you expect to get your money’s worth out of this class, and that you expect me to challenge your thinking and to stretch you academically.

4. Presuppositions Everyone has presuppositions. Here are the ones your instructor brings to this course… • I presuppose that you will not always agree with my understanding of the Scriptures. You are always free to disagree, but if you want to debate, I expect you to make your case using the Scriptures and with a loving and respectful spirit.

5. Presuppositions Everyone has presuppositions. Here are the ones your instructor brings to this course… • I presuppose that you will not always understand everything in the assigned readings. Read them anyway and get what you can. • I presuppose that you will not always understand everything I communicate during lectures. Ask me questions and don’t stop until I’ve made myself clear.

6. Presuppositions Everyone has presuppositions. Here are the ones your instructor brings to this course… • I presuppose that you want to do your best work, and that you want me to tell you how you can improve the work you submit to me. • I presuppose that you will face many challenges as you seek to complete this course. Please communicate with me if there’s something I can do to help.

7. Presuppositions Everyone has presuppositions. Here are the ones your instructor brings to this course… • I presuppose that we will grow in Christian love and in mutual respect for each other. • I presuppose that you are not here for mere intellectual stimulation, but to grow in the grace and knowledge of our Savior.

8. Why this course matters… Learning about the dispensations and covenants of Scripture is essential if you want to… • Interpret Scripture- • In particular this course will help you to understand the promises God made to His people in the Old Testament. • It will help you understand how the New Testament uses the Old Testament. • it will also teach you how to approach passages dealing with the doctrines of the people of God and passages dealing with the end times.

9. Why this course matters… Learning about the dispensations and covenants of Scripture is essential if you want to… • Understand the present nature of God’s kingdom and to anticipate the future nature of God’s kingdom (the Millennial Kingdom and God’s overall purposes for the future).

10. Why this course matters… Learning about the dispensations and covenants of Scripture is essential if you want to… • Identify the people of God and to understand God’s relationship and obligations to Israel, to the Church, to the Gentiles, and to the nations.

11. Why this course matters… Learning about the dispensations and covenants of Scripture is essential if you want to… • Relate the Law of Moses and the Law of Christ (the Mosaic Covenant and the New Covenant). • Discern how New Testament believers should respond to Old Testament Law.

12. Why this course matters… Learning about the dispensations and covenants of Scripture is essential if you want to… • Recognize and trace God’s overarching purpose for history. • Evaluate the teachings of Dispensationalism and the teachings of Covenant Theology.

13. Why this course matters… Learning about the dispensations and covenants of Scripture is essential if you want to… • Appreciate God’s sovereign rule over all creation and His faithfulness in keeping the promises He has made.

14. What Is A Dispensation? General Sense- • The English word dispensation is an Anglicized form of the Latin word dispensatio. • The Latin verb is a compound, meaning "to weigh out or to dispense.“ • Tertullian, a North African Christian, in the early third century used the Latin word dispensatio to translate the Greek word oikonomia.

15. What Is A Dispensation? • In ancient Greek culture, an oikonomos was a servant in charge of a household. • Oikonomia referred to his activity of managing the house. • These words came to be used broadly to describe any kind of manager or management activity.

16. What Is a Dispensation? • The management activity of an oikonomos usually involved financial transactions. The manager would receive money from his master, and he would be expected to use that money to run the household. • The financial aspect of oikonomia gives us our English word economy.

17. What Is a Dispensation? • Oikonomia and oikonomos appear in the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament. • The individual in charge of the King of Judah’s palace is called an oikonomos and his management responsibility over the king’s household is called an oikonomia (1 Kings 4:6; 16:9; 18:3; 2 Kings 18:18, 37).

18. What Is a Dispensation? • Oikonomia and oikonomos also appear in the New Testament. • In Romans 16:23, Erastus is the oikonomos of the city of Corinth. This probably means he was the chief treasurer or the C.F.O. for the city.

19. What Is a Dispensation? • Jesus also used these terms in some of His parables. • In Luke 12:42 there is an oikonomos responsible for making sure all his master’s servants were properly fed. • In Luke 16:1-13, there is an unjust oikonomos who is called in to have his oikonomia evaluated by his master.

20. What Is a Dispensation? • From these references we can summarize the general sense of oikonomos and oikonomia. • Oikonomos refers to any type of manager or administrator. • Oikonomia, the word we translate dispensation, refers to the activity of a manager and to the way the manager organizes his activity (his plan, order, structure, etc.)

21. What Is a Dispensation? Theological Sense- • The parables of Jesus are not just stories about managers and households. Jesus told these parables to teach about the coming kingdom of God. • They speak to the relationship between God and Israel and to the fact that God will call Israel to account in the judgments that will precede God’s kingdom.

22. What Is a Dispensation? • Through this teaching, oikonomia acquired a theological sense; it came to designate the relationship between God and the world. • Paul uses both oikonomia and oikonomos in his writings to describe God’s management or plan for the world. • Most of these uses refer to Paul’s own office as an apostle.

23. What Is a Dispensation? • God, the Master of the world, entrusted to Paul and the other apostles the responsibility of proclaiming new revelation- the mysteries of God and Christ (1 Cor. 4:1-2; Eph. 3:2-6; Col. 1:25-29) • Pastors and teachers were also part of this stewardship (Titus 1:7). • Peter says that all Christians are all oikonomoi of the grace of God (1 Peter 4:10).

24. What Is a Dispensation? • In Ephesians 3:9, Paul speaks of the dispensation or oikonomia of the mystery of Christ. • Reading this in the context of verses 4-6, we see that Paul uses dispensation to refer to a new order or a new arrangement in the relationship between God and humanity.

25. What Is a Dispensation? • The relationship between God and human beings should be thought of as a dispensation, a management relationship, God has instituted. • We now live in a dispensation which has been established through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ and the coming of the Holy Spirit.

26. What Is a Dispensation? • This current dispensation or management relationship between God and humanity is different from the arrangement which had been previously in effect. • The previous arrangement was also a dispensation (Galatians 3:23-4:7).

27. What Is a Dispensation? Significance- • What is the significance of God calling His relationship with humanity or His management of our relationship to Him, a dispensation?

28. What Is a Dispensation? • God is sovereign over human affairs. Just as the master of an estate, God has the authority to manage, structure, or design human affairs in any way that He desires and He has the authority to hold His servants accountable. • God has a purpose and a plan. Management activity always has a vision or a plan or a purpose in view. There is a planned and purposeful order to whatever arrangement God institutes.

29. What Is a Dispensation? • A dispensation involves an ordered set of relationships. In any management plan there is organization, delegation, and accountability. • A dispensation involves responsibilities and requirements. • Dispensations can change. Managers often change their management plan when they’ve accomplished the goals set in the previous plan.

30. What Is a Dispensation? Summary- • A dispensation is a management relationship between God and humanity, in which God manages the way human beings are to relate to Him and to one another. God has progressively revealed Himself and His plans through successive historical dispensations and He is leading us to a future dispensation in which all of His promises and covenants will be eternally fulfilled.

31. What Are the Dispensations? • All Christian theologians admit the existence of identifiable dispensations in redemptive history, but not all use the term dispensation. • Charles Hodge, a Covenant Theologian, believed that there are four dispensations after the Fall -- Adam to Abraham, Abraham to Moses, Moses to Christ, and Christ to the end. • Berkhof, another Covenant Theologian believed that there were two dispensations -- the Old and the New, but within the Old he saw four distinct periods wherein God managed His relationship to humanity in distinctive ways.

32. What a Dispensation Is Not • Strictly speaking, a dispensation is not an age or an era. • Dispensations do exist in time- they begin and they end, but a dispensation is more than a distinct period of time. • We don’t talk about the dispensation of the Judges or the dispensation of the Divided Monarchy, or the Dispensation of the Exile.

33. What a Dispensation Is Not • All would qualify as distinct eras in Biblical history, but none are referred to as dispensations. • A dispensation is characterized by new revelation from God that changes the way in which He is managing humanity.

34. What a Dispensation Is Not • A dispensation is not a different way of salvation. • Some have suggested that people were saved by the works of the law in the Old Testament, but now they are saved by grace in the New Testament. • Unfortunately, that error was taught in the first edition of the Scofield Study Bible.

35. What A Dispensation Is Not • "As a dispensation, grace begins with the death and resurrection of Christ. The point of testing is no longer legal obedience as the condition of salvation, but acceptance or rejection of Christ, with good works as a fruit of salvation." Scofield Reference Bible (New York: Oxford, 1909)

36. What a Dispensation Is Not • The error in the original Scofield Study Bible, has unfortunately caused many people to associate dispensations with different ways of salvation. • This also leads to the charge that dispensationalism teaches that there have been multiple ways of salvation.

37. What a Dispensation Is Not • According to Ryrie, “the most frequently heard objection against dispensationalism is that it supposedly teaches several ways of salvation.” John Wick Bowman made this accusation in 1956 when he said that dispensationalists are “clearly left with two methods of salvation.” In 1960, Clarence Bass argued that dispensational distinctions between law and grace and Israel and the church “inevitably result in a multiple form of salvation—that men are not saved the same way in all ages.”

38. What a Dispensation Is Not • In his 1991 book, Wrongly Dividing the Word of Truth: A Critique of Dispensationalism, John Gerstner accused all dispensationalists of teaching more than one way of salvation. He said, “We must sadly accuse dispensationalists (of all varieties) of teaching, always implicitly and sometimes explicitly, that there is more than one way of salvation and, in the process of developing that theology, excluding the one and only way even from this dispensation of grace.”

39. What a Dispensation Is Not • However, the dispensations are not to be seen as different ways of salvation. • The error in the Scofield Bible was corrected in later editions. • No one is saved apart from faith in Christ. • The Old Testament saints were saved by believing in what Christ would do, and we are saved by looking back at what Christ has done (Hebrews 11).

40. What a Dispensation Is Not • Paul makes it very clear that no one can be saved by keeping the Old Testament law (Romans 3:20) • A dispensation is not evidence that God has changed or that He is reacting to human events. God is sovereign and His purposes cannot be thwarted. • The attributes of God remain consistent in each dispensation. • God is sovereign and has a plan.

41. Characteristics of a Dispensation • What are the primary characteristics of a dispensation? • A dispensation is characterized by • New revelation • A distinct management relationship between God and humanity (or a portion of humanity) • Responsibilities for humans

42. The Dispensations • Some theologians have added secondary features to the dispensations. • A test • A failure • A judgment

43. The Dispensations • Throughout the centuries many dispensational schemes for understanding the progress of God’s revelation have been developed (See handouts) • Traditional dispensationalist have typically pointed to seven distinct dispensations.

44. The Dispensations • Innocence or Freedom- Genesis 1:28-30; 2:15; 2:17 • What is the new Revelation? • What are the specifics of the management arrangement instituted by God? • Is there a covenant? • Is there an obvious test or tests? • Is there a failure? • Is there a judgment?

45. The Dispensations • Conscience- Genesis 3:14-19; 3:21; 4:1-5; (possibly Jude 14-15) • What is the new Revelation? • What are the specifics of the management arrangement instituted by God? • Is there a covenant? • Is there an obvious test or tests? • Is there a failure? • Is there a judgment? • Is there a continuation of any divine principles from the previous dispensation?

46. The Dispensations • Human Government- Genesis 9:1-17 • What is the new Revelation? • What are the specifics of the management arrangement instituted by God? • Is there a covenant? • Is there an obvious test or tests? • Is there a failure? • Is there a judgment? • Is there a continuation of any divine principles from the previous dispensation?

47. The Dispensations • Promise- Genesis 12:2; 13:16; 15:13; 17:2-6 (seed); 12:1; 7; 13:14, 15, 17; 15:18; 18:18-21 (land); Genesis 12:2-3, 13:2; 22:17-18; 26:4; 28:14 (to be a blessing). • What is the new Revelation? • What are the specifics of the management arrangement instituted by God? • Is there a covenant? • Is there an obvious test or tests? • Is there a failure? • Is there a judgment? • Is there a continuation of any divine principles from the previous dispensation?

48. The Dispensations • Law- The Mosaic Law (Exodus 19 ->; Leviticus; Numbers; Deuteronomy) • What is the new Revelation? • What are the specifics of the management arrangement instituted by God? • Is there a covenant? • Is there an obvious test or tests? • Is there a failure? • Is there a judgment? • Is there a continuation of any divine principles from the previous dispensation?

49. The Dispensations • Grace- Crucifixion-> continuing at present (John 1:17; Acts 2; Rom. 6:14; 7:22, 1 Cor. 6:19-20; 2 Cor. 3:3-11; Heb. 8:8-12; • What is the new Revelation? • What are the specifics of the management arrangement instituted by God? • Is there a covenant? • Is there an obvious test or tests? • Is there a failure? • Is there a judgment? • Is there a continuation of any divine principle from the previous dispensation?

50. The Dispensations • Tribulation* (Revelation 5-18) • What is the new Revelation? • What are the specifics of the management arrangement instituted by God? • Is there a covenant? • Is there an obvious test or tests? • Is there a failure? • Is there a judgment? • Is there a continuation of any divine principles from the previous dispensation?