Category Archives: Dispensationalism

On Ethnic Israel and Jesus

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Given what’s going on with Israel and Iran I jotted down some thoughts (elsewhere online) on Israel and how ethnic Israel continues to relate to the Man from Nazareth, Jesus Christ.

There is a right-wing movement among some so-called MAGA people who are highly antisemitic, or we could more accurately say: supersessionist. They have bought into the old rhetoric that Israel as a nation ceased to exist in 70AD, never to reunite again. But her ethnicity has always been vouchsafed in the Man from Nazareth (see Jeremiah 31). Her ethnicity transcends itself in its purpose as the Messiah bearer for the world. And yet, the promises made to the fathers remain irrevocable (see Romans 11:29). If the nation of Israel, as a people group ceases to be, this would entail that the Man from Nazareth, the Son of David, would cease to be. But since He cannot cease to be in his particularity as a regionalized man, then neither can the nation that bore him cease to be in its perdurance before God. And this is why, I would suggest, that whether leftist or rightist, antisemitism has continued to exist down throughout the ages. The Enemy of our souls seeks to kill, steal, and destroy anything that stands for the ultimate purposes of God; including the Jews. Rightists are just as malevolent as the Leftists, and of the spirit of this age; in the kingdom of darkness rather than in the kingdom of the Son of His love. The pattern has always been: “to the Jew first, and then the Gentile.” That motif has never changed.

Jesus is the true Israel; the Jew from Nazareth. The church is only the true Israel for supersessionists and some Catholics.

The whole Kingdom of Christ is contingent upon the fact that Jesus is the Son of David. That’s where his free election to be human was and is situated. Jewishness wasn’t abrogated by the ascension of Christ, Jewishness was amplified by the expansionism of becoming the one (Jesus) for the many in the organic fulfillment of both the Abrahamic and New Covenants, respectively (and all the covenants in between, Davidic in particular). The nation or eretz (Land) of Israel today isn’t the Kingdom, per se; but it is a foreshadowing and demonstration that God remains faithful to His promises; for the Jew first, then the Greek. Political Israel today isn’t the Kingdom of Christ, but it is a demonstration of God’s faithfulness to His Word; which He willingly descended into in a Jewish body by design and grace. Only a Gnostic or Marcionite could think that God emptied His “human shell” at the ascension. No Christian of canonical principle would ever affirm that ethnic Israel was superseded by the coming of the Son of Man. Lots of rubbish being pushed around in the “Christian” church on this.

The Higher Logic of Dispensationalism: An Antidote in Dogmatics

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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 19th early 20th 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 20th 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.

On One People of God in Jesus Christ: Contra Dispensationalism’s Two People of God in Israel and the Church

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Dispensationalism is a purported biblical hermeneutic that operates from its self-acclaimed sine qua non: a literal[ist] hermeneutic. Charles Ryrie writes: 

Literal hermeneutics. Dispensationalists claim that their principle of hermeneutics is that of literal interpretation. This means interpretation that gives to every word the same meaning it would have in normal usage, whether employed in writing, speaking, or thinking. It is sometimes called the principle of grammatical-historical interpretation since the meaning of each word is determined by grammatical and historical considerations. The principle might also be called normal interpretation since the literal meaning of words is the normal approach to their understanding in all languages. It might also be designated plain interpretation so that no one receives the mistaken notion that the literal principle rules out figures of speech….1 

A consequence of this results in the most basic sense of what it means to be dispensationalist. Dispensationalists, to lesser and greater degrees, emphasize a distinction between ethnic Israel (God’s chosen covenant people), and the Church (which Ryrie identifies as the mystery aspect of God’s kingdom). Because dispensationalists claim to follow a ‘common-sense’ notion of a literal reading of Scripture, they feel compelled to maintain that there are two people of God: Israel and the Church. When their literalistic reading of the Bible is coupled with the modern notion of progressive-revelation (which really comes, ironically, from the post-Enlightenment History of Religions train of thought), this results in reading national Israel as God’s primary focus of salvation-history; rather than seeing the One Israel was chosen to mediate to the world (Jesus Christ) as the primary focus of Scripture’s witness.  

Historically, and in the main, the history of interpretation (so the span of Church history) has read Scripture from a Christological orientation. In other words, the Church has sought to read the Old Testament promises in light of their fulfillment and reality in Jesus Christ. This then sees one people of God even while recognizing its two aspects in both Israel and the Church. The Apostle Paul illustrates this understanding quite well when he writes: 

Therefore remember that at one time you Gentiles in the flesh, called “the uncircumcision” by what is called the circumcision, which is made in the flesh by hands— remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility. And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.2 

Paul’s pattern, following Jesus’, was to the ‘Jew first, and then to the Gentiles.’ But because the Jews, in the main, rejected their own Messiah, by lineage, God turned to the Gentiles (cf Acts 10; Rom. 9—11), bringing many into the Kingdom, with the aim of making the Jews jealous. But what remains the same, in light of the promises made to Israel, as those have now been fulfilled in their reality in Jesus Christ, is that God has always already only had one people. But this can only be appreciated if we read Scripture, as the Apostle Paul does, along with Jesus and the rest of the NT writers, through a theological hermeneutical lens. In other words, the ‘literal hermeneutic’ doesn’t lead a person to the conclusions that Jesus maintained, in regard to the promises made to Israel with reference to Him; nor do they lead to the idea that God’s promises to Israel were always and only with reference, not to Israel, per se, but to Israel’s reality, in the Jew from Nazareth, Jesus Christ. Only a New Testament theological hermeneutic allows the Bible reader to arrive at this conclusion.  

What the dispensationalist cannot appreciate about this is that the non-dispensational people who read Israel and the Church this way are not engaging in some form of supersessionism or replacement theology. Non-dispensational readers of the Old Testament, like Jesus and the Apostle Paul, see ethnic Israel remaining, even as a preamble to the Church, but they don’t play Israel’s vocational role off against the Church, as if God has two distinct people. As Paul has clearly argued: God only has one people, and they are given their grounded reality in the singular person of Jesus Christ (the Messiah of Israel). National Israel, and the promises made to her, have not been revoked (cf. Rom. 11:29); God forbit it! It is just that national Israel has come to full blossom in her reality, as the mediators of the Mediator, in Jesus Christ. According to the Apostle Paul Jesus is the ‘Israel of God’; as such, Israel’s role and identity as God’s covenant people has been eternally established in the shed blood of the New Covenant as that is realized in Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is Israel; He is the reason none of the promises made to national Israel can ever be revoked. But He is also the reason why there is only one covenant people of God, because just as Israel found her reality, proleptically, as they were mediating the Messiah for the nations through her long and rugged history; likewise, the Church finds her reality, as she retrospectively, looks back to the promises fulfilled in Jesus Christ. In this sense Israel is in the Church, and the Church in Israel, just as both of her realities are united in the hypostatic union of God and all of humanity in Jesus Christ’s re-created humanity wherein there no longer is ‘Jew nor Gentile.’  

I beseech my dispensational brothers and sisters to repent, and come to affirm the realization that there is simply one people of God in Holy Scripture; and His name is: Jesus Christ! The fallout of not affirming this is rather deleterious, spiritually. What happens is that the dispensationalist teacher focuses more on the nation of Israel than it does Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is not the centraldogma of Holy Scripture for the dispensationalist; national Israel is. And yet, as I have been arguing, this approach gives us a false-dilemma. There is no reason to create a competition between Israel and the Church as dispensationalists generally do (I am not referring to Progressive Dispensationalists, who avoid this “competition”). Instead, it is better to see all of humanity as Israel in and through the concrete and elect humanity of Jesus’ ethnically Jewish blood. Gentiles have been brought into the promises made to ethnic Israel, just as Jesus is the reality of those promises. In this way, the Church (Gentiles in the dispensational parse) is not ‘ethnic Israel,’ but she now finds her reality as the one people of God as she participates in Israel’s reality in Jesus Christ. When dispensationalists fail to appreciate this, they end up abrogating the very point of Israel:  

And now the Lord says, he who formed me from the womb to be his servant, to bring Jacob back to him; and that Israel might be gathered to him— for I am honored in the eyes of the Lord, and my God has become my strength— he says: “It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to bring back the preserved of Israel; I will make you as a light for the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.” Thus says the Lord, the Redeemer of Israel and his Holy One, to one deeply despised, abhorred by the nation, the servant of rulers: “Kings shall see and arise; princes, and they shall prostrate themselves; because of the Lord, who is faithful, the Holy One of Israel, who has chosen you.” -Isaiah 49:5-7 

The above passage from the Prophet Isaiah is what we see the Apostle Paul re-presenting in Ephesians 2 in light of its fulfillment in Jesus Christ. The point and telos of Israel has never been herself, but to mediate the Savior of the world to the nations; including herself, as part of those nations. She has a unique role in that mediatory process, just as the Virgin Mary did. But this role is only relative, and thus not absolute, in regard to its relationship to the reality it had been chosen to mediate to the world. Prophetic history pace dispensationalism is not about national Israel, per se, it is about her reality: the son of David, Jesus Christ. If this would take hold among dispensational teachers maybe they would spend less time teaching geo-politics from their pulpits, and spend more time educating their people on who this great God of Israel is. Maybe they would spend more time teaching their people Nicene theology, and thus the people could stand in greater awe of the God they have become participants with as they come to have a grammar that brings an intelligibility to their worship and witness that heretofore they never had.  

 

1 Charles C. Ryrie, Dispensationalism. Revised and Expanded (Chicago: Moody Press, 1995), 80.    

2 Ephesians 2:11-22. 

On Literalist Bible Readings, Supersessionism and Replacement Theology: As Riposte to James Kaddis and Olivier Melnick

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I just finished listening to someone I consider a friend, and someone who is definitely a brother in Christ: James Kaddis. He was having his weekly discussion with his friend, Olivier Melnick, on the nation of Israel; particularly as that pertains to biblical prophecy from the Dispensational framework. In this particular discussion the topic was what they call: Replacement Theology. Most people, in the “business” will know what this is referring to by its more common terminology of: Supersessionism. The idea is that the Church has become the new Israel, thus displacing Israel and all of the Old Testament promises made to her. James believes that anyone who holds to ‘replacement theology’ is ultimately evil, and probably not saved; Melnick seems to agree with that. The problem though, and this is what the rest of this post will engage with, is that both Kaddis and Melnick (and many in their tribe) are too reductionistic with refernce to the history of interpretation on this issue, thus leading them to construct a caricature of anyone who is not a Pretribulational, Premillennial Dispensationalist. Both Kaddis and Melnick maintain that if someone is operating with a proper biblical hermeneutic (meaning ‘literalistic’ V literalist), that they will arrive at the dispensational perspective (this is also what one of dispensationalism’s most prominent teachers, Charles Ryrie, maintained).

What I want to do in this post, in particular, is to engage with what in fact a ‘literal’ hermeneutic entails. Much of the body of this post will be in reference to a post I wrote some time ago dealing with the same issue. After we survey how ‘literal’ has developed in the history of interpretation I will close by applying that understanding to the question of so-called ‘replacement theology,’ and how much of what Kaddis and Melnick assert as entailing replacement theology reflects too facile of an understanding of the history of interpretation.

A Survey of ‘Literal’ vis-à-vis Biblical Hermeneutics

As theological exegetes of Holy Scripture, more so, we want to take the text as Literal. But what does this actually entail; what does it mean to be literal in our interpretation? Dispensationalists like Charles Ryrie assert that the sine qua non of the dispensational hermeneutic is to read the Bible literally; he asserts if the reader engages in this type of reading practice they will end up as a dispensationalist. Others, like Doug Hamp similarly assert that their method is of the literal type; but in Hamp’s et als. case he does not end up as a dispensationalist, instead he ends up focusing on a Jewish or Hebraic understanding of the text of Scripture—even in its New Testament iteration (e.g. rather than reading the Bible from an post-Nicene Christologically sourced tradition).

So what does it mean to read the Bible literally? Do we follow a wooden-literal approach, like the aforementioned, wherein what it means to be ‘literal’ actually entails being literalistic to the point that every word in the Bible is read without recognizing the various literary qualities inherent to the text (such as is presented by the types of narrative, poetry, or discourse inherent therein etc.)? I.e. that when figures of speech are used they are read as literal realities rather than figures symbolizing some greater reality that transcends its own figural reality. The Protestant Reformed, following their medieval forebears had an understanding of what interpreting Scripture ‘literally’ entailed, but it was much different than what we find in the modern-critical period wherein a rationalist positivism prevails. Note Richard Muller’s definition of the Latin sensus literalis:

sensus literalis: literal sense; the fundamental literal or grammatical sense of the text of Scripture, distinguished into (1) sensus literalis simplex, the simple literal sense, which lies immediately in the grammar and the meaning of individual words, and (2) sensus literalis compositus, the constructed or compounded literal sense, which is inferred from the Scripture as a whole or from individual clear, and therefore normative, passages of Scripture when the simple literal sense of the text in question seems to violate either the articuli fidei (q.v.) or the pracecepta caritatis (q.v.). See historicus; quadriga.1

As defined the previous adherents to ‘literal’ interpretation would want to affirm this definition (but they diverge radically from this premodern principle of biblical interpretation). We see, particularly in Muller’s notation on compositus, an allusion to what was called the analogia fidei (analogy of faith) or analogia scriptura (analogy of scripture); the principle where the clearer passages were deployed to shed light on the crux interpretums (the difficult passages to interpret). All of this presupposes a level of clarity or perspicuity inherent to the text that the Reformers held dear based upon their belief that Scripture was representative of the place where the living voice of God (viva vox Dei) could be encountered; undergirding this, further, was the belief that this God, in all of his graciously accommodating ways, intended to communicate exactly what he wanted within the providential unfolding of salvation history as disclosed in Holy Scripture. What is key to this, key for our purposes, is to recognize that in this sensus literalis it is largely funded by a very theological understanding of things. What it means to read the Bible literally is necessarily couched in and from the reality that God has spoken (Deus dixit), and thus to read the Bible ‘literally’ means to read Scripture with attention to the centrality of God’s voice given its primary vocalization through his Self-revealed and explicated reality in his Son, Jesus Christ.

To help us expand on this notion of reading Scripture in a literal key, in the historic mode of the sensus literalis, Stephen Fowl helpfully develops this further; and with reference to what I would contend is Scripture’s primary referent (cf. Jn 5.39), Jesus Christ. Fowl shows how in the case of the medieval theologian, Thomas Aquinas, a very ‘literal’ interpreter of Holy Scripture, what it meant to be a literal Bible interpreter wasn’t just to attend to the simplex, but more pointedly it was to recognize that the ‘simple’ (i.e. the grammatical, historical, literary contours) had a telos (purpose), that it had a res (reality) that it pointed to as its depth reality.

The foundation for Aquinas’s scriptural interpretation was the “literal sense” (sensus literalis) of Scripture. For Aquinas, the literal sense of Scripture is what the author intends. Thomas holds that the author of Scripture is God, or more precisely, the Holy Spirit. The human authors under the Spirit’s inspiration are significant though secondary in this respect. The Spirit is capable of understanding all things and intending more by the words of Scripture than humans could ever fully grasp. This means that believers should not be surprised to find that there may be many manifestations of the literal sense of a passage. Here is what Thomas says in the Summa Theologiae: “Since the literal sense is what the author intends, and since the author of Holy Scripture is God, Who by one act comprehends everything all at once in God’s understanding, it is not unfitting as Augustine says [Confessions XII], if many meanings are present even in the literal sense of a passage of Scripture” (Summa Theologiae 1.Q.1 art. 10). This notion of authorial intention, which is very different from the modern hermeneutical accounts of authors mentioned above, will allow someone to treat christological interpretations of Isaiah as the literal sense of that text without disallowing other more historical accounts of the literal sense of Isaiah. Moreover, such an approach will allow Christians to treat Psalm 139 in ways that do not invite Christians to pray for revenge on their enemies. Thus, such an approach will keep theological concerns primary in theological interpretation rather than making theological concerns subsidiary to hermeneutical concerns.2

For Thomas Aquinas, and the premodern world he inhabited, what it meant to read the Bible ‘literally’ had range; what was privileged was the theological over the “historical-critical.” This belief, about the primacy of the theological, was fueled by the further belief that the world was God’s, that it was providentially administered and sustained by his Word and for his Word; as such interpreters like Aquinas (Luther, Calvin, et al.) felt it warranted to simply read Scripture as if the world belonged to God, and the cattle on a thousand hills, and that the reality of Scripture had an elevation point that redounded in God’s Self-revelation in Jesus Christ. So to read the Bible literally from this vantage point was to see the Christ as the primary referent point wherein all else, all the historical proclivities and contingencies unfolded in the panorama of salvation-history, were hued by their canonizing reality in Jesus Christ. Unsurprisingly we see this in Martin Luther’s interpretive approach as well; note:

Luther makes an important distinction between the literal-historical meaning of his Old Testament text (that is, the literal meaning of text, as determined by its historical context), and its literal-prophetic sense (that is, the meaning of the text, as interpreted as referring to the coming of Christ and the establishment of his church). The Christological concentration, which is so characteristic a feature of the Dictata, is achieved by placing emphasis upon the literal-prophetic, rather than the literal-historic, sense of scripture. In this manner, Luther is able to maintain that Christ is the sensus principalis of scripture.3

Here we have further elaboration of what Muller referenced for us as the simplex sensus literalis in Luther’s own approach to reading the Bible ‘literally.’ In flow with Fowl’s elucidation of Aquinas, Luther has literal-prophetic; this nuance between the ‘prophetic’ and the ‘historical’ nicely illustrates, again, how in the premodern era of biblical interpretation there was an emphasis upon the theological, more pointedly the christological character of the text of Scripture and its reading. All of this is couched in the theological ideation that this is God’s world, and under his providential governance and giveness. Viz. that there is not an abstract autonomous world of history and artifacts wherein the biblical interpreter can stand within as a ‘critical’ interpreter of Scripture that keeps them sanitized or unimplicated by their own locatedness as creatures before a holy Creator.

I confess that this is the way I approach my reading of Holy Scripture. Does this mean that some of the relative gains garnished by the turn to the modern must be completely evacuated? No, it simply means that the theological ought to be given priority of place in the biblical interpretive process, and that the so called ‘critical’ is given due notice only within this sort of humiliating reality (i.e. humiliating in the sense that the critical reader of Scripture is not so critical after all; in the sense that they/we are sinners). Does reading the Bible theologically mean that we cannot pay attention to various historical vicissitudes present within the text that might not seem to have direct relation to the Messiah? No, it just means that when engaging with historical instances, or personages in the text of Scripture, that we will always be cognizant of the fact that they are part of a greater historical sweep wherein their place within the salvation-history unfolded and deposited in the text of Scripture only has telos, only has meaning in light of God’s glory in the face of Jesus Christ.

Applying a Historical Biblical Literalism to Supersessionism

What the aforementioned survey reveals is that what it meant (and ought to mean currently) in the history of interpretation to be ‘literal,’ particularly as that is understood from within a medieval Catholic and Protestant frame, respectively, is that Christian biblical literalism, principially, finds its centrum and absolute focus on Jesus Christ. In other words, a historic understanding of a biblical literalism isn’t one that is grounded in a post-Enlightenment rationalism, such as we find that in the biblical theology movement and history of religions schools, which gets further distilled into something like we find in Ryrie’s and dispensationalism’s literalism; no, a historic Christian understanding of biblical literalism, again, sees Christ as the meaning and referent point of all the Old Testament promises (Jesus thought this too, see Jn 5.39 etc.). A historical biblical literalism sees Jesus Christ, not the nation of Israel, per se, as canonical regulator of how the Christian exegete arrives at their respective exegetical conclusions.

And this leads us into the question under consideration: has the whole Christian tradition and its history of interpretation suffered from a supersessionism or ‘replacement theology?’ If you’re a non-dispensational interpreter of Holy Scripture, as ALL Christians have been, up until the late 19th and early 20th centuries, as dispensationalism developed in the UK and the USA therein, does this mean you are an antisemite? The answer to that question is a loud NO! Have there been antisemites in the Church since its very inception? Yes, Marcion among others come to mind. But most in the history of interpretation, at least most who have been nuanced in this area, have outright rejected supersessionism as the Gnostic heresy of someone like Marcion and his so-called Marcionitism is. To hold to a biblical literalism, as our survey has helped to clarify, didn’t (and doesn’t) lead the exegete to be a ‘replacement theologian’ (so-called), but instead to see the promises made to the nation of Israel fulfilled in the person who served and serves as these promises’ reality; we are of course referring to the man from Nazareth, Jesus Christ.

Conclusion

In my view, Jesus Christ is the Israel of God. He is ethnically Jewish, and scandalously so (according to the Apostle Paul in I Corinthians 1.17-25); He was and is the One for the many; for the Jew first then the Gentile. He is the One new humanity of God (cf. Eph 2.12ff) wherein both Jew and Gentile alike are made one as they participate in Christ’s risen humanity. Christ is the ground that the root of Abraham and its olive tree finds its sustenance from. Jesus is God’s Israel, and all the promises have been and yet will be (now-and-not-yet) fulfilled in Him. Jesus made all of the promises to Israel, as actualized in Him, open for the whole world. He is the Jew first for the whole world; for the house of Israel, and for the Gentiles. Jesus will forevermore remain the Son of David, the seed of the woman referred to in the so-called proto-evangelium (cf. Gen. 3.15); He is forevermore the Jew from Nazareth. This is the historical Christian reading of biblical prophecy as that is realized in its reality in Jesus Christ. This reading has always already militated against heresy known as supersessionism and/or ‘replacement theology.’ Here is something I once wrote (circa 2007) back when I was still a dispensationalist. But I was attempting to offer a charitable reading of amillennialism (or any non-dispensational understanding of the Bible). You will notice how it militates against facile readings that renders anything other than a dispensational reading as an antisemite reading.

1) The non-dispensational reading of the Bible is highly Christocentric: it makes Christ the center of all the biblical covenants (even the “Land” covenant or Siniatic). 2) It notes the universal scope of the Abrahamic Covenant (as key) to interpreting the rest of the biblical covenants. 3) It sees salvation history oriented to a person (Christ), instead of a people (the nation of Israel). 4) It emphasizes continuity between the “people of God” (Israel and the Church are one in Christ Eph. 2:11ff). 5) It provides an ethic that is rooted in creation, and “re-creation” (continuity between God’s redemptive work now, carried over into the eternal state then) 6) It emphasizes a trinitarian view of God as it elevates the “person”, Christ Jesus, the second person of the trinity as the point and mediator of all history. 7) It flows from a hermeneutic that takes seriously the literary character of the Scriptures (esp. the book of Revelation).

It is not insignificant that a site like Monergismdotcom picked my description up, and used it (and continues to) as a summary of what the amillennial position entails.4 This shouldn’t be seen as insignificant because Monergismdotcom is a proponent of classically Reformed theology (which I am a well-known critic of online and in print), of the sort that Kaddis and Melnick would label as promoting ‘replacement theology.’

I would invite James Kaddis (who I love as a brother), and Olivier Melnick to dig deeper on these things, and push past the superficial caricatures that are often pervasive in the evangelical world. There are surely mainline Protestant traditions out there, such as the PCUSA et alia, that do operate with a supersessionism (which is illustrated by their support of the BDS movement etc.), but most Reformed and Lutheran people are not supersessionist; even if they aren’t dispensational, which they of course are not. Thus, I would ask my brothers to consider these things more carefully and with a more nuanced brush. We should want to accurately represent even those we consider our theological opponents; this is a sword that cuts both ways.

1 Richard A. Muller, Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms: Drawn Principally from Protestant Scholastic Theology (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1985), 279. 

2 Stephen E. Fowl, Theological Interpretation of Scripture (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2009), 49-50 kindle. 

3 Alister E. McGrath, Luther’s Theology of the Cross (Oxdford/New York: Basil Blackwell, 1985), 80. Quote sourced from this post: The Quingentesimus of the Protestant Reformation and the Analogia Lutherano in Christ Concentrated Biblical Exegesis. 

4 Monergism.com.

 

Eschatomania: How Radical Futurism Has Negatively Impacted Church and Culture

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I grew up as a dispensationalist[1], as many of you know; we won’t rehash that. But I wanted to write something, quick, on the role that I see dispensationalism playing in America, in particular, and in the Western world more generally. Dispensationalism is known for a radical notion of futurism; radical because it ties its futurism into various signs that dispensationalists believe portend of the very end. More generally I still maintain that there will indeed be various signs that the world is close to the return of Jesus Christ, but I differ from the dispensationalist in the sense that I don’t see these signs as, as clairvoyant as they seem to think. In other words, I don’t think the ‘end of the end’ can be linearly charted in the way that dispensationalists famously are known for. While I reject the other alternative to dispensational futurism, which ostensibly sees history as almost purely cyclical, I do think that awash in the unfolding of eschatological history, that we can start discerning patterns of intensity vis-à-vis some of the features that Jesus taught would be present just prior to His coming.

What I want to focus on though is the cultural impact dispensationalist futurism has had upon the American world at large. As a society there is a chialistic (millenarian) expectation that the world is winding down; ultimately this typically eventuates in some sort of dystopian version of the world—like what we see depicted in Hunger Games. I would contend that dispensational futurism has helped contribute to this sort of expectation for the world; i.e. that we are on a linear slide into some sort of oblivion. Books like Hal Lindsey’s Late Great Planet Earth (1970), or Tim Lahaye and Jerry B. Jenkins’ runaway success Left Behind series (1990s) have helped perpetuate a Christian version of dystopia that the broader culture has picked up on and imported into their own end-time understandings of the world. As George Marsden in his book Fundamentalism and American Culture and Ernest Sandeen in his book The Roots of Fundamentalism: British and American Millenarianism, 1800—1930 have helpfully identified is that dispensationalism, in particular, and millenarianism, in general, have rootage back into the late 19th and early 20th centuries, both in America and the United Kingdom. There was time for what we see woven into the fabric of the American psyche, both Christian and non-Christian alike to flourish and come of age (or even seed).

My concern isn’t that Christians are too overly eager for the second coming of Jesus Christ; in my view, you can never be too over eager for that. My concern is that radical futurism ends up reducing to a sensationalism that ends up causing the person to be looking for the signs of the times in their newspapers, and now on social media, more than they are induced to inhabiting Holy Scripture and living soberly and righteously as we see the day approaching. Don’t get me wrong, I do think it is important to be excited about the coming of Christ; I also think that there are certain ‘signs’ that ought to indicate to people that the return of the Lord might well be upon us (the Apostles in the New Testament lived with this expectation even in their period, which is to my point). What I am warning against, though, is when people start to engage in what is called pesher (which is what the eschatological cult, the Essenes, of Dead Sea Scrolls fame, engaged in as their interpretive method for discerning the times of their day). Pesher simply means ‘this-is-that,’ and it is an attempt to correlate some current event with a biblical prophecy. I would suggest that dispensationalists, and other like-chialistic sects are the contemporary versions of the Essenes; insofar as they engage in pesher. I think doing pesher-type exegesis of the biblical text lends itself to the sort of radical futurism I have been referring to throughout this post. It causes the person to take their eye off the ball that the living Christ would have us focused on. Yes, He wants us to be looking for His coming, but this means living holy and sober lives.

One side-effect of living with a radical-futurist position, in the sense I’ve been describing, is that it makes people prone to get caught up in sensationalistic movements of thought in general. One clear and present example of this could be the so-called Q phenomenon, or its counterpart, the Antifa/BLM phenomenon. Both movements of thought are premised on a linear conception of the world-system; both maintain that some level of activism is required in order to cause apocalyptic events to obtain in order for their version of the ‘time-of-the-end’ to come to pass. These groups have their prophets calling them to action, pointing them to their messengers, and asking them to inhabit a projection of a world-picture set out by a sensationalist expectation of apocalyptic doom. Both believe that some level of human violence is required in order to ingress their world-picture; whether that be street-thugs, or the US Military. I would argue that these two groups (I place Antifa/BLM together), and any other groups that might fall into this continuum, are a product of the sort of radical millenarian futurism projected by dispensationalism, or even Marxism, respectively. Radical futurism is typically abstracted from a sober notion of futurism that orthodox Christianity has maintained since the beginning. Orthodox Christianity has maintained, simply, that Christ will come again and establish a New Heavens and Earth. But orthodox Christianity does not collapse this happening into ‘our’ capacity to discern various signs, in a chart-like fashion, as its mode of actualization. In other words, orthodox Christianity simply believes that the world will be in utter chaos, and in intensifying ways, right up until Jesus comes again (e.g. think the birth pangs analogy).[2]

I would simply exhort my Christian brethren and sistren to abandon radical futurism, and take this sort of dystopian apocalypticism away from the broader culture. I am not saying we shouldn’t be aware of what is going on in the world, in current events. I’m also not saying that Christians shouldn’t be discerning about the time of the end of the end; indeed, I think of all people, as people of the light (cf. I Thess 5) we ought to be able to have a real sense of the times we inhabit. But I think until after the fact (just as at the first coming of Christ) being able to see, in an absolute way, that this-is-that (pesher) is not really possible; and it isn’t an advisable mode of being for the Christian person. But full disclosure: I still struggle with this temptation.

[1] Which I repudiated about 12 years ago (at that point I was a Progressive Dispensationalist).

[2] Unless of course if your postmillennial. But I outright reject postmil as a viable interpretive option of the biblical text. I believe the only viable options, from a biblical eschatological perspective are: Historic or Covenantal Premillennialism, or Amillennialism; I am the latter these days.

The Pretrib ‘Rapture’ People Set to be Some of the Most Confused Among Us

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I come from a dispensational, pretribulational, premillennial background; as many evangelicals in North America do. Indeed, I was formally trained in this hermeneutic and theology at the Bible College I attended; which historically is known for it (it is known as mini-DTS). Even in Seminary, the same institution, I was influenced by this hermeneutic, but less. In this post I briefly want to touch on one aspect of this theology, or hermeneutic; in this post I want to sketch just one practical problem with the pretrib rapture view.

If you don’t know by now, pretrib rapture theology entails the idea that Jesus will ‘secretly’ come back for the church; taking the church to abide with Him in heaven while all hell breaks loose on earth during the 7 year Great Tribulation. Typically the chronology goes like this: 1) Jesus raptures the church; 2) the 7 year Great Tribulation (or ‘Jacob’s Trouble) kicks off at that point, or shortly thereafter; 3) Jesus comes again (His second coming) at the end of the Tribulation defeating the armies of the world (at Armageddon); 4) at this time the ‘Messianic Age’ or Millennium ensues where Jesus, the Son of David, rules and reigns with us, the church, over a regenerated earth (although not what we read of in Revelation 21—22) for a 1000 years; 5) at the very end of this period satan will be released from his holding tank to deceive the nations (the people who made it through the Tribulation and began to repopulate the earth during the 1000 years) for a final time; 6) Jesus puts this ruse to death, the Great White Throne Judgment obtains; 7) the New Heavens and Earth are created constituting the eternal state. The problem with this timeline is that the notion of a secret rapture that is distinct from the second coming of Christ is nowhere to be found in Scripture; Thessalonians makes clear that they are the same event.

But here’s the problem: all these North American Christians who still believe in so called ‘Left Behind’ theology or pretribulational rapture theology are going to be, potentially, some of the most confused among us. They won’t be able to identify what in fact is going on when the Antichrist comes on scene, because they are operating under the assumption that by time that happens the church will have already been raptured. I still listen to dispensational, pretribulational teachers—at the popular level, they are all Calvary Chapel pastors and teachers—and they constantly make the claim that we will not be here to see any of these ‘end time’ things unfold. But given the lack of exegetical support for their position (in fact there is absolutely none), they are sorely mistaken on this highly significant point. One thing they have going for them, though, is that they actually take the second coming of Christ as a serious and real event just on the horizon. It seems that many of my academic theology friends are in fact almost totally agnostic and thus aloof when it comes to these things; that’s a real shame. I digress. I think these pretrib teachers need to really attempt to honestly make an exegetical argument (which they never actually do) for the pretrib rapture position, and quit repeating the same tropes that have developed since the inception of the dispensational system; those aren’t exegetical arguments.

I strained for years to make exegetical arguments for the pretrib rapture position. I figured once I learned Koine Greek that I would finally be able to do that. Well I learned NT Greek, and it actually militated against the pretrib position, not for it. I understand the zeal with which some of these teachers make their claims about this position from; but I would challenge them to attempt to think critically about these things. They should try to imagine that the sub-culture they are ensconced within just might be what is forming their zeal, rather than actual biblically attuned exegetical arguments. Indeed, this is not a hard case to make; that is the case contra the pretrib position. The burdenous position is to argue for a coming of Christ that is distinct from His second coming. That is nowhere to be found in the Holy Scripture.

Miscellanies on COVID – 19 and End Times

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Strange times we are living in; the strangest I’ve ever lived in, as I’m almost positive is the same for you! Yes 9/11, and its aftermath was a radical jolt to the rhythms and norms of society and daily life. But what is happening currently, as a result of COVID – 19, is on a totally other level. This post is really just going to be me venting, and thinking out loud about all that is going on. I plan on talking about ‘end times,’ and how I think about that from a theological-exegetical standpoint, biblically, and how that might relate to what we are currently encountering in the global society by way of the pandemic that is underway.

I have been going back and forth with all the news sources, and data streams that are seemingly coming forth with new insights and more info by the minute; it is hard to keep up, and process. At first, I believed that the response to COVID – 19 was utterly disproportionate for a virus that we have very little data on. Then I was confronted, as were you, with more data, and modelling built on that data, ostensibly, that made me shift and think that this virus actually is more serious than I first imagined. But I have continued processing things, and I’m currently back at the juncture I started at; I am starting to think, once again, that the global reaction to the coronavirus is highly out of proportion with the actual data. In fact, I just came across an article that has helped me re-think the way we are approaching this virus; the article was written by ‘Stanford’s John P.A. Ioannidis — co-director of the university’s Meta-Research Innovation Center and professor of medicine, biomedical data science, statistics, and epidemiology and population health.’ He believes that the now infamous Imperial Modelling (headed by Dr Neil Ferguson of Imperial College London), which is driving the current responses of both the UK and the USA, is seriously flawed; and I agree with him. You can read Ioannidis’ analysis, which is framed as opinion, here. Even though I agree with Ioannidis, it seems that we are where we are, in America, and the West in general, and it seems best to me, at least for the next two-weeks to ride out this virus under the strictures and restrictions placed on American society at large. I don’t think being more aware of germs, viruses, and their transmission is a bad thing, per se. But I do think that the response to these sorts of threats need to be commensurate with said threat. The price we are paying economically, in my view (currently), is not commensurate with the threat of a virus that may well be less deadly than the common flu which we deal with on an annual basis. So, this is where I am on this most pressing of issues.

Someone asked me (through my wife) how I see all of this fitting in prophetically; if I do. As an evangelical, and one schooled in Pre-Tribulational / Dispensational / Premillennialism I have been conditioned to view the world through this sort of futuristic and anticipatory lens. About a decade ago I finally abandoned that lens, and adopted a more ‘covenantal,’ or even more appropriate, ‘apocalyptical’ lens for the way I view the world as it is presented in the canon of Holy Scripture. What this has meant for my approach, in regard to millennial schemes, is that I have appropriated the so called amillennialist lens; with all of its attendant hermeneutical schemata. The biblical exegete who pushed me over the edge, with particular focus on biblical interpretation, was Richard Bauckham, and his two books: The Theology of the Book of Revelation and The Climax of Prophecy. It has been quite a few years since I first read these works, so I may have modified some of views relative to Bauckham’s. In other words, I think I am actually still more futurist oriented than Bauckham; he is more historicist or partial preterist than I am in certain ways, I think. That said, in general, the way he interprets the book of Revelation, contextually, per its historical milieu and composition therein, still remains the most compelling telling of that book of the Bible for me. If you really wanted to pin down Bauckham’s approach to the book of Revelation, per the available models, I think it would be a mix of: idealism and historicism. For me, I think some of Bauckham’s historicist views (meaning the way he sees almost all of the book of Revelation being fulfilled very near to, or even concurrent with the writing of the book itself) can actually be redressed in more of a prophetic and thus futurist form than does, Bauckham; he is, I think, when it comes to the way he sees apocalyptic in the Bible, much less supernaturalistic than I am. The above noted, after I finished reading the aforementioned books from Bauckham, I contacted him, and we had a bit of correspondence. What surprised me was that he seems highly open to the idea that there could be a personal anti-Christ figure who is, yet future, still to show up on the scene, and ‘fulfill’ what may have been foreshadowings and fulfillments, initially, in the emperors of Rome; particularly as those are understood in Nero.

So, with that rather lengthy (for a blog post) engagement with and impression of Bauckham’s thinking on Revelation, let me attempt to apply some of that framework to the ‘current events’ (some pesher, eh) we are facing; most pressingly, with the COVID – 19 virus, and the global societal fall-out it is producing. In the following I will sketch out some thinking on the anti-Christ; one-world-government; and the second coming of Christ.

Just as at the first coming of Christ, I think with the second coming, things will be very fluid and organic on the ground. In other words, unlike dispensationalists, who famously have the ‘end-times’ all charted out in linear fashion, I think the second coming of Christ will come at a very unexpected time; which means, that I do not think it can fit easily into a charted pictogram. That said, like a dispensationalist, I do think, according to Scripture, that there will be signs and events that ought to cause us to have heightened awareness about His coming. Along those lines, I believe that a personal anti-Christ (or ‘man of lawlessness’) will rise up prior to the coming of Christ and attempt to set up a world government; something in the type of the Babylonian and Roman empires of yesteryear. But I think this will be harder to recognize than many think. In other words, I don’t think this anti-Christ (who I also think could be a conglomerate of “kings” or “rulers”) is going to stand up and say: “hey, I’m the anti-Christ.” Indeed, this is why I’m never really sure if we aren’t already living under that sort of specter, or if we should expect something even more overt than what we see occurring among the globalists and bankers of the world currently (along with their social engineering etc.). What I do know is that this shadow kingdom of darkness will be characterized by outright lustful power, and all sort of sexual deviance and immorality; that it will be underwritten by the wealthy, and supported by a military might that believes it can fight against the living God, and win. It seems to me, that in order for something like this to obtain, on the ground, if it hasn’t already, is that there must be societal forces and conditions that require an anti-Christ to rise up and offer peace and safety to the world; particularly as that is needed in the face of seemingly insurmountable crises the world over.

How might my above sketch apply to the current global pandemic, and now economic fall-out, we are experiencing? It seems easy to see how a world leader or group of leaders could rise up, and have the ostensible answers to all the world’s woes. We can see, most pressingly, just how easy it is to bring society to its knees, and just how quickly people are willing to give up everything when a real-life existential threat confronts them; like COVID – 19 is being presented as. Am I confident, like dogmatically, that what we are seeing right now is some fulfillment of last days or end-times biblical prophecy? No, not necessarily. But I can see how it could lead to or easily fit into a scenario that we might expect at the very end; just prior to or concurrent with the second coming of Jesus Christ. When something seemingly apocalyptic confronts us, in the moment, it is easy to think: “okay, this has to be it!” But when we view things from the vantage point of history, we can see other moments in world history where our brothers and sisters thought the same about their plagues and wars, only to come to the conclusion that that wasn’t it.

I do think we are far along in ‘prophetic’ history, and that what the globe is currently experiencing has never really been observed at this sort of techno-level. We live in strange times, and in an era of world history that is no longer agrarian based, but technology and information based; this changes the calculus of things at important levels. I surely hope we are at the very last moment; that Jesus is coming again very quickly! But I cannot know though for sure, of course. I can hope it. I can look out, and think that this might be it. But along with Martin Luther, even in light of apocalyptic events, we ought to still plant trees. Personally, I never thought we would live something like we are living now. It seems at dystopian level; it is difficult, and even stressful and angst-causing to process. The pain and suffering being thrown upon the masses in the world, whether that be from this current virus, other viruses and diseases, starvation and famine, poverty and blight, wars and rumors of wars, these are all things I’d like to escape. But in the midst of it, we have been called to bear witness to the risen Christ, to a lost and dying and hopeless world. We must keep our eyes on Christ if we aren’t to sink. Come quickly, Jesus! Maranatha

 

What is the Secret Rapture of the Church?: With Some Reference to Calvary Chapel

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Like many out there I grew up as a so called Pre-Tribulational (Pretrib), Dispensational Premillennialist. I was weaned on books by H. A. Ironside, and influenced by people like Charles Ryrie, Dwight Pentecost, John Walvoord, and the whole company of characters at Dallas Theological Seminary. I ended up attending a school founded by John Mitchell, Multnomah Bible College and Biblical Seminary, which was endearingly known (back then and prior) as ‘Mini-Dallas.’ Multnomah had its roots in Dallas; not just ideationally, but relationally. So, as a son of a Conservative Baptist pastor, and one trained at a decidedly ‘dispensational’ school, I am well worn and schooled in this area of consideration; and beyond just its popular representations, but in its most rigorous and academic form. Even so, as I continued to study, and even with some at my seminary (profs who were not really dispensational at all, in fact some silently repudiated it), I began to see some serious holes in the whole dispensational framework. As a result, I kept studying after graduating seminary in 2003, and by the time I read Richard Bauckham’s little book The Theology of the Book of Revelation I was ready to be persuaded away from the whole system (probably around 2010); and I was. After reading Bauckham’s work I finally and fully repudiated dispensationalism, and its attendant teachings, and, at least as far as thinking about the millennium and the second coming of Christ were concerned, accepted the Amillennialist perspective (and I still do).

In case you still aren’t clear though on what Pretrib rapture theory entails, a primary teaching of Dispensational thought, I thought I would share a nice summation of its historical development as that took place through the teaching of John Nelson Darby. Ernest Sandeen in his book The Roots Of Fundamentalism: British And American Millenarianism, 1800–1930 offers a really nice presentation on the entailments present in the so called ‘secret’ rapture teaching developed by Darby, and currently held to by a plethora of an aging American evangelical populace. He writes (in extenso):

The focus on their disagreement was Darby’s teaching about the second coming of Christ, known at that time and since as the secret rapture and one of the most distinctive teachings of dispensationalism. Darby, in company with all the Plymouth Brethren, believed that the church could not be identified with any of the denominational and bureaucratic structures which historically had made and presently were making that claim. The true church, the bride of Christ as Darby often referred to it, could only exist as a spiritual fellowship. The consummation of the church would take place at the second coming of Christ when the members of the body of Christ, both living and dead, would be caught away to dwell with Christ in heaven. Darby’s view of the premillennial advent contrasted with that held by the historicist millenarian school in two ways. First, Darby taught that the second advent would be secret, an event sensible only to those who participated in it. Darby did not expect the kind of public and dramatic event so graphically described in Matt. 24:27: “For as the lightning comes from the east and shines as far as the west, so will be the coming of the Son of man.” The character of the church required that the coming be secret and mystical.

It is this conviction, that the church is properly heavenly, its calling and relationship with Christ, forming no part of the course of events of the earth, which makes its rapture so simple and clear; and on the other hand, it shews how the denial of its rapture brings down the church to an earthly position, and destroys its whole spiritual character and position. Our calling is on high. Events are on earth. Prophecy does not relate to heaven. The Christian’s hope is not a prophetic subject at all.

There were, in effect, two “second comings” in Darby’s eschatology. The church is first taken from the earth secretly and then, at a later time, Christ returns in a public second advent as described in Matthew 24. As Darby put, “The church’s joining Christ has nothing to do with Christ’s appearing or coming to earth.”

Second, Darby taught that the secret rapture could occur at any moment. In fact, the secret rapture is also often referred to as the doctrine of the any-moment coming. Unlike the historicist millenarians, Darby taught that the prophetic timetable had been interrupted at the founding of the church and that the unfulfilled biblical prophecies must all wait upon the rapture of the church. The church was a great parenthesis which Old Testament prophets had not had revealed to them. As was true of all futurists, of course, Darby maintained that none of the events foretold in the Revelation had yet occurred nor could they be expected until after the secret rapture of the church. Christ might come at any moment; the watchful believer might have been, and indeed should have been, waiting faithfully and patiently for that return, like the ten virgins in Jesus’ parable, ever since the day of Christ’s ascension. Darby avoided the pitfalls both of attempting to predict a time for Christ’s second advent and of trying to make sense out of the contemporary alarms of European politics with the Revelation as his guidebook.

To me the Lord’s coming is not a question of prophecy, but my present hope. Events before His judging the quick are the subject of prophecy; His coming to receive the church is our present hope. There is no event between me and heaven.

This expectation of the imminent advent, with no obstacle in the way of Christ’s return, proved to be one of the greatest attractions of dispensational theology.

Darby never indicated any source for his ideas other than the Bible — indeed, he consistently affirmed that his only theological task was explicating the text of Scripture. The secret rapture was a distinctive development, however, and considerable interest has been aroused about the source of the doctrine. As late as 1843 or possibly even 1845, Darby was expressing doubts about the secret rapture. In later years he seems to have felt that he was convinced about the doctrine as early as 1827. Darby’s opponents claimed that the doctrine originated in one of the outbursts of tongues in Edward Irving’s church about 1832. This seems to be a groundless and pernicious charge. Neither Irving nor any member of the Albury group advocated any doctrine resembling the secret rapture. As we have seen, they were all historicists, looking for the fulfillment of one or another prophecy in the Revelation as the next step in the divine timetable, anticipating the second coming of Christ soon but not immediately. After Irving’s death the Catholic Apostolic church continued to teach historicist doctrines. It is true that among the English phrases pronounced by one or another of the illuminati in Irving’s church there occurred fragments such as “Behold the bridegroom cometh,” and “count the days one thousand three score and two hundred — 1,260 — . . . at the end of which the saints of the Lord’s should go up to meet the Lord in the air,” but such utterances can scarcely be considered as evidence for any doctrine and have, in any case, little reference to the secret rapture as Darby taught it. Since the clear intention of this charge is to discredit the doctrine by attributing its origin to fanaticism rather than Scripture, there seems little ground for giving it any credence.[1]

As is clear, as Sandeen develops for us, even in the house of the millenarians, there was intramural debate of no small contest. But our focus, in particular, is on the sketch that Sandeen provides in regard to what the teaching of the secret rapture entails, in itself, and what the broader framework was that supported it. Further, Sandeen, and I think this is significant, and important towards making a critique, gives us the genealogy of Dispensationalism, and the secret rapture teaching. John Nelson Darby, and this is well known, is the source for this rapture theology in the history of its relatively recent development. In other words, this teaching is idiosyncratic to Darby, despite the claims of folks like Ryrie who attempt to find a red thread of its belief back to the Apostolic age. More importantly, in order to get the rapture teaching from Scripture, the exegete must manhandle the text to a point that it no longer is contextual to the canonic text.

As I alluded to above, I think that this teaching, both the framework of Dispensationalism, and its adjunct teaching of the secret rapture are on the wane. This is for a variety of socio-cultural and demographic reasons, but also because most of the evangelical churches have gone the seeker-sensitive route; a route where they perceive that the seeker desires to be titillated by bright lights, smoke machines, and loud music rather than engaging in any sort of doctrinal teaching. That’s one primary reason I think dispensational teaching is dying. But then, like with people like me, as we continue to study and attempt to engage the text of Scripture more critically, it becomes clear, through studies like Sandeen’s, that Dispensationalism and the secret rapture are simply too ad hoc and artificial to actually be defended from Scripture. This is why the appeal for this teaching and framework largely remains one made to the popular rather than the academic or in the confessional sectors of the Church.

One denomination that still presses this teaching more than any other that I am aware of is, Calvary Chapel. In a formative period of my life I attended their bible college for a year, and was a ‘member’ of the mother church, Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa, for about five years. During this period of my life I literally attended church five days a week, and absorbed the life and culture of the church; that church, but not fully in the end. The founding pastor of CC, Chuck Smith, whom all following pastors in Calvary Chapel elevated and attempted to imitate down to listening to him teaching through the Bible (“Chuck Tapes”), was an ardent proponent of Dispensationalism and secret rapture teaching. Attendant with this, Smith was also a strong Christian Zionist, and spent much of his time leading trips to Israel; he also gave financially, as I recall, to the cause of Israel through various mediators, so on and so forth. As a result, Smith was known by many of the leaders (like prime ministers/presidents) of Israel. It was this influence that shaped Calvary Chapel until his death on October 3rd, 2013. Since then there has been a split within the many Calvary Chapel churches. Some of the churches have moved away from this heavy emphasis on prophecy teaching and dispensationalism (including CC Costa Mesa under the leadership of Smith’s own son-in-law, Brian Brodersen), but others have doubled down and remained committed as ever to this Smithian emphasis. Teachers like Barry Stagner, Don Stewart, Mike MacIntosh, Jack Hibbs, Tom Hughes, David Hocking (who isn’t officially CC, but might as well be), Jon Courson, and a host of others continue to propagate this teaching of Darby’s as if it is a preamble of the faith.

Calvary Chapel serves as one example, a significant example, of how Darby’s teaching remains in the mainstream of conservative evangelical teaching. Dallas Theological Seminary, Multnomah University (my alma mater), Biola University and Talbot School of Theology, Western Seminary (Portland, OR) among other like schools continue to maintain a dispensational character; albeit less prominent for some of these schools, respectively, relative to years past. All this to say that this teaching has a history, and places of education that continue to provide context that allows it to be fostered in the North American context. While I think Dispensationalism is indeed on the wane, I don’t really think, especially at a popular level, that is going away anytime soon.

One thing that I can say positive about my background in this area is that it did instill an excitement about the return of Christ into my life that outwith this teaching I’m not sure I’d have. The one element that I think is true about the intent of the ‘secret rapture’ is the emphasis it supplies in regard to focusing on the return of Christ. As an amillennialist I maintain this same sort of fervent hope that was instilled into me originally by my Dispensational, Pretrib background. Even if I have eschewed the whole framework as artificial and not organic with the whole canonical teaching of Scripture, at the same time I can lock arms with them in the hope of Christ’s soon and any moment return.

My style of amillennialism, at least as I have attempted to think it, maintains that just like with the first advent of Christ, there was a whole complex of historical on the ground factors occurring that made His coming very hard to discern for most. I think similarly at the second coming, while there are prophetic details presented in Scripture that ought to cue us into this coming, that it will be impossible to ‘chart’ a timeline of just how things will look exactly at His coming. I think, along with Bauckham, that there will be a Babylonian character, on a global scale, at the second coming of Christ. I think we are there in intense ways, and so I actually do expect that Christ could return at any moment; or at least “any moment” relative to my capacity to actually penetrate what in fact is happening on the ground as they precede His coming. We can get into the details of what I actually believe about these details in a later post.

[1] Ernest R. Sandeen, The Roots Of Fundamentalism: British And American Millenarianism, 1800–1930 (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1978), 62-5.

Can We Stop Mocking ‘Rapture’ Christians?

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I believe in the Holy Spirt, the holy catholic church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen.[1]

9 Now when He had spoken these things, while they watched, He was taken up, and a cloud received Him out of their sight. 10 And while they looked steadfastly toward heaven as He went up, behold, two men stood by them in white apparel, 11 who also said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand gazing up into heaven? This same Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will so come in like manner as you saw Him go into heaven.” –Acts 1.9-11

If you are part of the catholic hope of the historic Church of the risen Christ, then you confess and believe in the bodily (second) coming of Jesus Christ. Clearly, there are a massa of views on how that will all unfold. But at base what the Christian must maintain is what Acts teaches, through the angelic witness; and what the Apostle’s Creed confesses in regard to ‘the resurrection of the body.’ The Christian faith has always been an eschatological faith, and this is because her Lord is an eschatological God.

Something that somewhat bothers me is how Christians who find themselves in ‘high churches’ often mock those who are of low church orientation; particularly in North America in the ‘dispensational’ pretribulational/premillennial churches. I grew up in this large sector of American evangelicalism, and held these views myself for the majority of my life; I only repented of them about eleven years ago. What bothers me is that these high folks make it seem as if these “low” folk don’t seemingly believe in what counts as the aspect of the historic faith; but they do! While they have made a whole theological schema out of the word ‘rapture,’ and created a two-stage coming of Christ therefrom, this does not mean that they are no longer adherents to the historic confession of the Church in regard to the resurrection of the body.

We all, as Christians, as earlier noted, affirm the bodily return of Christ; as corollary of the bodily resurrection and ascension of Christ—these are of apiece. The obverse of this confession is illustrated, unfortunately, by someone like David Congdon. He ostensibly rejects the bodily resurrection of Christ, as such he rejects an actual second coming of Christ; indeed, even more radically he rejects the concept of an “after-life” at all. Those of us, though, who are still catholic in the “Apostolic” sense, are adherents to a bodily faith wherein blood, skin, hair, and fingernails, among other things, will last for eternal life; that is through Immanuel’s veins.

If the above is the case, can we as Christians, no matter what our “biblical eschatological” schema place a moratorium on mocking evangelicals who affirm and argue for something like the pretrib rapture theory? I’m not saying we shouldn’t debate these things, or even strongly repudiate them. But what I am saying is that evangelicals who affirm so called “rapture theology” are not part of a cult, nor are they heretics. If they rejected the bodily resurrection and return of Christ, indeed, like our example, they’d be heretical in significant ways; but they don’t reject these things. So, while we may sneer at rapture theology, particularly those of us who grew up and out of it, we should abstain from mocking those who continue to hold to it. Dispensationalists hold to everything, at base, that the Church catholic has for millennia. Dispensationalists, as fundamentum, affirm the bodily return of Jesus Christ. The framework they use to explicate this might be outlandish, I now think it is; but they are brothers and sisters in Christ who are participants in the Church universal, and will finally come to the truth (haha) at the second coming indeed.

Don’t get me wrong: I will be the first in line to debate with Dispensationalists these days. But I am referring to attitude and posture towards our dispensationalist brothers and sisters; they are brothers and sisters, that’s what I’m trying to impress through this post. Their view of ‘rapture’ while, I’d argue, artificial to the prima facie teaching of Holy Scripture, does not place it outside of the pale of orthodoxy. Maybe it rubs up against heterodoxy in certain ways, but it certainly isn’t heretical. I just see too many sweeping generalizations about this ‘theology,’ a dismissiveness that simply glosses and mocks its way past actual engagement with folks who affirm this sort of biblical interpretation.

My hope, my great hope is that Jesus is coming again. The reality is, if you hadn’t noticed in your own life, is that Jesus is an advent Christ everyday of our lives. This sort of advent characterizes His interaction with us as His children. He in-breaks into our daily lives, coming again, bringing His Holy parousia or presence into our moment by moment circumstances in such a way that He, by the Spirit, bears witness to Himself that He will finally once and for all come again for the whole world to see; such that the whole world will bow the knee and say that Jesus is Lord. I yearn for this day, and hope it happens right now. I need to be delivered from this body of death; this body of sin I inhabit daily. This is the Christian’s great hope. Come quickly, Jesus! Maranatha

 

[1] Third Article, Apostle’s Creed [Emphasis Mine].

 

Responding to the Christian Despisers of All That Was Good About Notre Dame Cathedral

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The burning of Notre Dame is tragic, as I noted earlier on my Facebook account: The burning of Notre Dame Cathedral is emblematic of the Church’s pervasive loss of historical Christianity in the main. There is no sense of the transcendent, or the layered reality of historical teaching (sacra doctrina) found within the halls of the ancient Church. All things have been domesticated, and essentially burned to the ground of our own subjective and culturally conditioned desires as Christians.” And it is out of this overly-domesticated sense of the Gospel that I don’t think many evangelical (and other) Christians appreciate just what something like Notre Dame symbolizes.

But why don’t many Christians appreciate what Notre Dame symbolizes? The branch of Christianity I grew up in is shaped by a commitment to a dispensationalist hermeneutic. This hermeneutic, as many of us know, operates from a dualistic (even Platonic) conception of eternity and time. One impact this has is that ‘this world’ is viewed as a shadowy existence that only shadows forth the really real existence back up in eternal form. The ultimate goal for this perspective is to gnostically escape this world, and start the eternal state [cf. Rev. 21–22] (but only after the Great Tribulation and Millennium). So, if this is the case, we can see why some Christians would have an indifference to ‘these worldly’ sorts of concrete realities; such as we have in the architectural masterpiece of something like the Notre Dame Cathedral. If this world, and all it contains, is ‘going to hell-in-a-handbasket,’ then who really cares if a structure like Notre Dame burns to the ground; as long as no souls are lost in the process, that’s all that matters.

But what if that isn’t the biblical view? What if the biblical view, on the analogy of the incarnation, thinks that ‘this world’ is in fact a good? What if the Christian perspective actually maintains that there is a continuity between this creation and the next? I would argue that based upon the analogy of the incarnation, where “eternity” and time are united in the hypostatic union of Divinity and humanity in the person of Jesus Christ, that this creation is good and redeemable. I would argue further, based on the analogy of the incarnation, that there is a continuity between this current iteration of creation and the one to come in the consummate re-creation that will be realized in the eschaton of God’s life in Christ. So, I would argue that Christians need to operate with a doctrine of creation that thinks from the eschatological reality it has in Christ. In other words, I would argue that creation’s ultimate purpose has always already been to be redeemed and recreated in the Christ event. The implication of this, one of many, is that there is purposiveness to this creation—inclusive of art, architectural feats, culture, industry so on and so forth—that finds continuous reality in and through the grace of God in Christ. Meaning that even something like the Notre Dame Cathedral carries forth the ingenuity that God has placed in His good and renewed creation as those who constructed it did so from the resources that God gave them to bear witness to His beauty through the artistry they participated in and from as they sought to glorify God in this architectural wonder. In other words, Notre Dame typifies the sort of good that will be carried into the eschaton, precisely because it is a work of artistry that finds its genesis in image-of the image bearers who did what they did from participatio Christi and as they were seeking to please and magnify the living God.

Just to drive this point home further, let me point us to the biblical text itself. Here is what the Revelator thinks about the continuity between this creation and the one to come:

22 But I saw no temple in it, for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. 23 The city had no need of the sun or of the moon to shine in it, for the glory of God illuminated it. The Lamb is its light. 24 And the nations of those who are saved shall walk in its light, and the kings of the earth bring their glory and honor into it. 25 Its gates shall not be shut at all by day (there shall be no night there). 26 And they shall bring the glory and the honor of the nations into it. 27 But there shall by no means enter it anything that defiles, or causes an abomination or a lie, but only those who are written in the Lamb’s Book of Life.[1]

In particular notice verse 24. ‘The kings of the earth bring their glory and honor into it.’ What do you think that entails? Might the glory of the kings kingdom entail the works of art, architecture, industriousness their respective cultures produced as they participated in and from the glory or weightiness of God’s life for them in Christ? If we were to do a study of just exactly what ‘their glory and honor’ entailed in the Second Temple Judaism that this book was written in, I’d be willing to bet a lot that this honor and glory entailed just exactly what I just noted (indeed, just read the Old Testament, and see what sort of stuff shaped the glory of the various kingdoms therein).

This is what I am getting at. So next time you want to de-emphasize the value of something like Notre Dame Cathedral, and other like realities, think about these things from a genuinely Christian perspective. God in Christ came to redeem not just ghostly souls, but embodied persons who create things as they operate as images of the image of God in Christ. Do people matter more than buildings, ultimately? Yes. But that is a rather weighted and relative scale vis-à-vis God. The ingenuity and work that went into building something like Notre Dame Cathedral didn’t come from empty suits, it came from flesh and blood people working as unto God rather than unto men. As such, it reflects a work of art that magnifies and bears witness to the living God. As such, it has redemptive characteristics that God came to save not destroy. If this is so we ought to ache as God aches when death and destruction rather than life and shalom seem to reign.

There are other ways to look at all of this as well. But this represents one way.

 

[1] Revelation 21, NKJV.