Dispensationalism is a product, historically, of the Fundamentalist reaction to the ingress of Liberal theology into the halls of the revivalist and evangelical churches. The Fundamentalist movement, particularly in the late 19^th early 20^th century, allowed the anti-supranaturalist or naturalist theologians (mainly of German hue) to dictate the terms under which Christian theology felt compelled to develop within. Based on this capitulation, fundamentalist theologians sought to counteract the findings, say of a higher biblical criticism, of the type that saw errors in Scripture, rejected the miracles, rejected the deity of Christ, so on and so forth, by asserting and arguing the obverse. This is where we get 20^th century doctrines like biblical inerrancy from; creationism versus evolutionism etc. Fundamentalism is really just a correspondence to its predecessor founded in post-Enlightenment rationalism. It cedes ground to the come of age modernity that the higher critics moved and breathed within.

But, even after such a brief and oversimplified sketch, how does this relate to my initial claim that dispensationalism is a particular product of a reaction to the in-roads that liberal higher criticism had made into the sphere of biblical studies? I think the logic is simple: the dispensationalists, along with the fundamentalists, counter to the terms they were presented with by the higher critics, particularly their manhandling of the text of Holy Scripture, was to say: okay, well look at all of these biblical prophecies that have been and are currently being fulfilled in history and the contemporaneous. Dispensationalism is an apologetic for a doctrine of biblical inerrancy. It ties into the liberal notion of history being purely progressive and linear, thus landing on an absolute futurism, wherein as long as the researcher waits long enough their totalizing theory of reality, including natural history, will bear the fruits of proving this system or that system of thought right or wrong. This is how evolutionists operate just the same; it is the exact same prolegomenon as the dispensationalist thinks from. Or we could bring it back to the Bible and think in terms of inerrancy; with the normal caveat always attending said doctrine: i.e., that the original autographs of Scripture (which we don’t have, but one day might find) are indeed absolutely without factual error. If you listen to early Darwinists, or even neo-Darwinists, or even post-Darwinists, this is the same method. The future, history becomes the final stamp of proof and approval of the validity, the totalizing imprimatur of history’s verification of the explanation of all of reality; we just have to wait long enough, and the proof will finally apocalyptically descend upon us. Dispensationalists, especially popular ones, point people to the fulfillment of prophecy, in a futurist frame, as the sine qua non and proof that Scripture is in fact God’s more sure word of prophecy, indeed.

The dispensationalists aren’t alone in this type of verification processing. There are folks like Wolfhart Pannenberg, who would not fit into the fundamentalist frame, per se, at least not in the North American evangelical sense, who likewise thinks salvation history in terms of a linear progressive reality that is finally proven to be of God by way of the climaxing of history in the resurrection and the attendant second coming of Jesus Christ. Even so, Pannenberg, a German theologian in the heart of it all, in a way, serves as a more sophisticated illustration to what ends up happening in North American fundamentalism. What Pannenberg and the dispensationalists might have in common, though, is that they both, respectively, and from very different vantage points, take the work of the liberal theologians, and higher critics seriously enough to allow said work to set the agenda, to frame the categories that they feel compelled to work within; to respond to; to defeat, but on the higher critics’ terms and categories rather than the positive terms that a robustly confessional theology has set all along, within the ecclesiastical and ‘believing’ frame.

Others within the development of modern history, like Barth, feel the weight of the higher critics as well; but then say: “so what!” That’s a whole other complicated line of thought we will have to visit later. But suffice it to say, following someone like Barth, or TF Torrance, it is better, in my view, to simply move beyond the higher critics (by bottoming out) and allow the reality of Holy Scripture itself, who is the Christ, to set and determine the categories the Christian seeks to think and articulate theology from. If the resurrection of Jesus Christ is the primordial history de-limiting event of all of reality, as it is, then to allow folk, like the higher critics, who are thinking from terms laid down by the old creation to set the agenda and terms for the Christians, is backward thinking that is not befitting a truly Christian Dogmatic way.

We don’t need to “prove” anything about God’s existence, about His ways in history, about His written Word etc.; instead, the world needs to be proven and approved by His life for the world in Jesus Christ. And if this is the case, then the dispensationalists, as a prolongation of the broader fundamentalist way, is on an errand that is highly imprudent coram Deo. We are Christians, if we are; as such, we think “scientifically” only if we think from the triune God given for us in Jesus Christ. He is prior to the higher critics, and all of us. He re-created reality in the resurrection Jesus Christ. This must be allowed to set the ontological, ontic, and epistemological terms by which Christians engage with Scripture and its veritas for the world. The dispensationalists and fundamentalists, whether progressive or conservative, have ceded much much too much to the old-world order.