The 3 things you need to know about Dispensationalism

What Dispensationalism Is and Is Not

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Welcome to The Rap Report. I'm your host, Andrew Rapaport, the Executive Director of Striving for Eternity and the Christian Podcast Community, of which this podcast is a proud member. On this episode of The Rap Report, we are going to be discussing a topic known as dispensationalism.

We're going to discuss what dispensationalism theology is and is not, and I know some of you already are going, wait, I don't want to hear about that. Well, let me encourage you. Next week, I will have Pat Ebendroth on discussing his new book on covenant theology.

So this was me on another podcast. Well, sorry, he calls it a podcast, but it's actually a YouTube channel, and therefore, technically, it's not a podcast. But that aside, it was a joy to be on here with Adam.

I met Adam through Twitter. We talked, and he is a covenant theologian, wanted to have me on his show to discuss, well, dispensationalism. And so he titled this Three Things You Need to Know About Dispensationalism with Andrew Rapaport.

Now, his channel is Curious Christianity, so I encourage you to check that out. You can watch the video of it, but this, I hope, will be helpful for explaining at least what I think is much confusion within the theological circles on what dispensationalism is and is not.

We're going to balance it out next week with a look at what covenant theology is with someone who's literally written a book on it. So check that out next week as well. So I hope you look forward to this episode of The Rap Report.

Welcome to The Rap Report with your host, Andrew Rapaport, where we provide biblical interpretation and application. This is a ministry of Striving for Eternity and the Christian Podcast Community. For more content or to request a speaker for your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.

Hermeneutics and the Basic Definition of Dispensationalism

Dispensationalism, covenant theology, what does it mean at all? Today, I have a very special guest, Andrew Rapaport, and he is here to help explain and, I don't know, hopefully bring some clarity to what dispensationalism is and why we should believe in it.

So myself, I have not converted yet. So Andrew, welcome to the channel and good luck. Maybe you can convert me to dispensationalism. No, that's not the goal.

The reality is that we'll all agree 100 about 10 ,000 years from now for sure, even a thousand years from now. So most of these issues that we debate over are not as big of issues as people make, but I do appreciate you having me on.

I thank you for having the discussion with me.

Yeah, no, I'm really excited. And you know what, honestly, I'm also just excited to hear you say exactly what you just did. You know, this channel actually is based on curiosity and the willingness to have conversation with people that we disagree and to be able to really explore.

So I really hope that this will be a great exploration for those that haven't heard of it. And I will just say, I haven't spent nearly as much time talking about this subject. So I am interested. I'm interested in hearing what it is you have to say.

So if you could help us, Andrew, what is dispensationalism? For most of us, it's just a big word that theologians argue about and the rest of the average person does not know why it matters at all. Yeah, well, let's start with what it is not.

Okay, tell me what it is not. It is not an end-time system. Most people, when they hear dispensationalism, if I say I'm a dispensationalist, the first thing they say is, well, I'm a millennial or I'm post-millennial or I'm not pre-millennial.

Yeah, I heard of somebody who did that recently.

Can't imagine who that might be. But that's the common response people give, which reveals that people don't understand what dispensationalism actually is. The end times view is not a requirement for dispensationalism.

It's a byproduct of it. So what is it? It's a hermeneutic. That's really what it comes down to. And for those who may not know that term, hermeneutics is the study of interpretation. So how do we interpret?

Every one of you listening is practicing hermeneutics right now. You're listening to my words, you're listening to Adam's words, and you are interpreting them. But most people don't even think about the rules they apply to interpretation.

And we recognize those rules most often when someone takes us out of context. And suddenly we get, hey, hey, hey, hey, no, that's wrong. You don't put the right context there. You took me out of context.

Most people recognize that one when done to them, not when they do it to others. So that's something we all do, but we don't think about the rules of it. And so when we think about the two big terminologies would be covenant theology and dispensational theology, they are primarily the differences is in how we interpret the Scripture.

And let me just give, if I could, a quick history lesson, just because when we say covenant theology, there is a different view of the way words are used today and the way it's used historically. And so let me give you a quick history lesson so that we understand it.

And that way, if I use terms, people understand what I mean by the terms, or at least how I'm going to use some terms together. Covenant theology is a way of interpreting that was born out of the Roman Catholic Church.

Now, stop. I'm not saying that every covenant theologian is Roman Catholic or that covenant theology is heresy because it's Roman Catholicism. I'm not saying that.

Because I was about to say, man, you're about to really anger everybody going deep on this one.

Yeah, but we have to understand because most people historically that say they believe in covenant theology believe in Reformed theology, not covenant theology. And so what you have is the Catholic Church that started to kind of replace themselves with Israel, kind of take on the view of priesthood and things to give themselves credibility by saying, oh, see, we're like Israel.

You had some of that. You had some of the interpretation. But then you also have where they weave in tradition. And over time, they start weaving in a whole lot of things to the point that right now, the Catholic Church is the authority over the Bible because it's the Catholic Church that has to interpret the Bible.

That, by definition, makes them a higher authority if they're the only ones that can interpret. But the Reformers came along and said, OK, look, there's a lot of good that we have in this hermeneutic, but there's a lot of bad that comes with it from the Catholic Church.

So what they did was create what we would know as historically Reformed theology, which many would argue that Baptists couldn't be Reformed because part of the Reformed theology often has the view of covenants, of viewing the confessional statements, things like that.

That's a separate discussion. So what we call covenant theology today is historically what's referred to as Reformed theology. So if I use the terms covenant theology or Reformed theology, I'm using them interchangeably because of the fact that we have this historical view.

We have this more modern view. The word Reformed theology or Reformed has morphed as well historically because, as I just told you what it is historically, people today think, oh, well, if you believe in, let's say, the doctrines of grace is probably the better term, but what is referred to as Calvinism.

If you believe in Calvinism, you're Reformed. Well, Reformed theology is much more than just the soteriology, which that big word just means the study of salvation. It's much more than just how we get saved.

Reformed theology is far more robust than that, but in today's day and age, people just mean it to refer to that.

Hey, man, the rest of us got to think in sound bites, okay? We can't all be up in the clouds all the time.

If it doesn't fit on a meme for social media, it just isn't theology, right? That's right. That's the modern way. That's how you get your theology. Yeah, so I'm going to use Reformed theology, covenant theology interchangeably to refer to those rules of interpretation, the hermeneutic, used by those in more of a covenantal camp rather than a dispensational camp, and we'll explain those differences, I'm sure, as the show goes on.

But if I refer to Calvinism or doctrines of grace, then I'm being more specific to the doctrine of soteriology. Okay.

Yep. So, dispensationalism is kind of contrasting covenant theology, and it's more of a way of thinking about and interpreting the Bible than it is like just a particular small doctrine.

Is that kind of the point? Yeah, that'd be an excellent explanation of it. And there's three key areas that we would see the difference. Okay. And so, I mean, historically, some would say dispensationalism is a new system.

You know, it's been over 100 years, so that's not all that new, but in the grand scheme of things. Now, it is quite interesting because a dispensationalist like myself can find the beliefs even in the early church fathers, but they weren't laid out as clearly, which we shouldn't be surprised at because one of the things with theology is all theology is rooted from heresy.

So let me explain that. You have, you know, you have someone come along and say, well, Jesus wasn't God, Irenaeus. What's the response? Well, we need to look at Scripture and, oh, we get the, you know, a definition of the Trinity.

Well, that doctrine was developed because someone taught heresy. And so over time, we continue to refine and refine our theology. So that in itself, we shouldn't be surprised that amillennialists, premillennialists all find their root in Augustine because Augustine believed in a literal thousand years.

So I could argue that. He just thought he was in it. So amillennialists can argue it. And so it offers this view that some of the early church fathers were not as precise as we are. So it makes it really hard to say this is what the early church believed when looking in our day and age.

So I can look to some of the early church fathers and see them teaching some of the same principles of dispensationalism, but not specifically the way we would today. Okay, that aside. So that's as my buddy Matt Slick says, when it comes to early church fathers, he always says, well, my early church father can beat up your early church father.

In other words, they're all over the map because they don't have it so precise and defined like we do today. So everybody roots themselves in early church fathers. So that's to say that just because it seems like a newer system doesn't necessarily make it wrong, especially for reformed folks who should believe that we're reformed and keep reforming.

I would say dispensationalism is the keep reforming part. Many, many reformers would disagree. Obviously, obviously. So let's look at these three. The one that I already alluded to, and probably the biggest one that we end up having disagreement on, that you and I would disagree on, would be this idea of the relationship or the continuity, discontinuity of Israel and the Church.

Okay. Is the Church Israel, is the Israel Old Testament Church, and is the Church New Testament Israel? I'm going to hold off on that one because I think that's going to be our bigger discussion. Could be.

And so that's one major one. But what that comes out of, and when we think about the history of dispensationalism, it really was people that looked at the Reformation, that it still had remnants of the Roman Catholic Church, and they said, let's take a step back and interpret the Bible in a normal sense.

They used to call it a literal sense, but the problem with calling it literal is people assume that that means I have to take every word absolutely literal and ignore things like idioms. If I say I'm so hungry I can eat a cow, most people understand that idiom to mean I'm starving, not that I can literally eat an entire cow.

So you know what?

A Normal Reading, the Offering of Isaac, and Jonah as a Type of Christ

I think that we're going to have to create a new English word for this because in this conversation, like it happens so many times where, yeah, someone wants to use normal. I've heard plain reading of the text.

I've heard, you know, a variety of ways to try and explain what everyone means is just like, hey, you read it and you get a basic idea, understanding, yeah, idioms, expressions, things like this. So we're going to have to coin a phrase.

So here's the thing. Both covenantal theologians and dispensational theologians agree there that they're going to say it's in a normal way of reading, right? They're going to see that idioms should be interpreted as idioms.

Where we have the difference is if there's any Presbyterians out there that understand the regulative principle of worship, this is my way of explaining it. I have a regulative principle of interpretation.

In other words, I don't say the Bible says more than it says, and this is where the difference is. In other words, this is the example I like to use. Is the offering of Isaac a type of Christ? And I would say no, because Scripture doesn't say so.

Is Jonah a type of Christ? Yes, because Scripture says so. Okay. But a covenant theologian would say yes, it is, because look at all the similarities. I can agree with the similarities. There's a ton of similarities in the offering of Isaac, but I won't say it is.

Now, if I get to heaven and God says, Andrew, you didn't go far enough. Okay, I'm perfectly fine with that. What I don't want to hear is, Andrew, you went too far. You started saying something I didn't say.

I don't want to hear that. And so I will freely admit I think dispensationalism is probably a safer hermeneutic because of that.

Can we say it's perhaps a more conservative hermeneutic? Yeah, we could say that. Sure. Yeah, yeah. You just seem like you're just trying to be cautious with your words and be like, I don't want to assume or I don't want to...

Where God has not spoken, I will not open my mouth.

That's exactly it, right? I mean, I don't want to put words in God's mouth. And so... It sounds a little unsafe. It's unsafe, very. But see, what we end up seeing is that in a covenant view, you're going to have a little bit more figurative.

So you're going to see things that are figurative that a dispensationalist would take literally. Example, a thousand years mentioned in Revelation 20, mentioned six times. Dispensationalist is going to take that literally.

And some, and I'm being careful because not all covenantalists would do this, but some covenantalists would take that figuratively. Most would. Anyone that's amillennial is going to take that figuratively.

Now, I would like, could you give me an example that's not that? Because you began with this idea that it's not about end times eschatology. So let's use a different example then. Otherwise, I feel like it's...

I gave you another with the offering of Isaac.

Okay. So it's taken figuratively to point to Christ and say, this is an example of Christ, a type of Christ. And I would say it isn't because scripture doesn't say it is. So I see that distinction there that we would have.

When we get to whether Israel is the church, that's going to be a major one that, I mean, that's so major that it's one of the defining things of dispensationalism. What we would call the sine qua non, that's a French, sorry, Latin for, you know, without there is not so much.

You can't have dispensationalism with these three things. The first being the normal hermeneutic that we're talking about now. The second being the view of the distinction between Israel and the church.

And the third we'll get to is a doxological view of scripture instead of Christological. Well, let me mention that one quickly because that... Let me give that and then dive into questions with all. So the doxological view is the fact that we would take the purpose of scripture as being for God's glory, not specifically Christ.

So I'm not looking for Christ in every passage. I'm looking for God's glory in every passage. So if I come to the Song of Solomon, I'm not saying this is about Christ and the church. I'm saying this is about the love and beauty of a marriage.

Now, the love within marriage gives God glory. But if the purpose of the book was about Christ and the church, now we have some things. A, it wouldn't have had a meaning for a thousand years, or it had a meaning that we didn't see for a thousand years.

The other thing is there's some graphic language in that book that I don't know that that's exactly how we want to describe our relationship with our Lord. Okay? So when we look at that, I mean, if you look at it, and one of my seminary professors did his dissertation on the Song of Solomon, like I could think of other things to do a dissertation on, but he lays out that it is a wedding, that the whole thing is about an ancient wedding.

So I would see that as giving God glory. I struggle with what we do when we get to, you know, leprosy on houses, you know, that we see in Leviticus. I think it's 14. How does that point to Christ? And I've heard people, you know, try, you know, okay, granted, this is a really, really bad one.

But if you remember Harold Camping, he used to be on Family Radio. Nope. He was a really bad representation of covenant theology. Actually, he's a really bad representation of a lot of things. I mean, he'd have people call up his program and ask how to get saved.

And he would just say, well, if you're one of the elect, God will bring you to repentance and we'll go to our next caller. And it's like, no gospel, you know? He was the epitome of how not to interpret the Bible.

But I called in his program to ask him that because I was curious since, you know, he tries to jump, he does these really crazy gymnastics to fit Christ into everything. And so he was going through, well, house means church, and Christ is the head of the church.

And like, this was the gymnastics that some would do. And granted, I've said, he's the worst example of covenant theology. But that would be what some would do when they're trying to look for Christ in every single passage.

And they will get that from a view that says Christ is talking with the disciples after his resurrection on a way of Emmaus. And he said, you know, the Old Testament points to him. It doesn't mean every single verse.

Sure, sure, sure. I think that it just means the Old Testament. And so we would see a distinction there. When it speaks about Christ, does that give God glory? Yes. So I have a broader view of, as a dispensationalist, to what the view of Scripture is than a covenantalist would do.

And so in some areas, I'm more specific, in other areas, more broad. So those are the three overviews. Notice I didn't mention anything about times, by the way. I know, I know.

You should have. No, I'm just kidding. Okay, so you've got doxological versus Christological, right? And what's the second one and the third one again?

Well, it would actually start off with a normal or literal or plain reading of the text versus a figurative meaning. A distinction between Israel and the Church.

Okay, Israel and the Church are not the same thing.

They're not the same entity. We could dig into that more. And then a doxological versus Christological view. Those are the three things.

Israel, the Church, and the Progression of Covenants

So I'm curious then. Okay, so you would say that the focus of Scripture is to give God glory, right? Yes. That sounds very covenantal. Now I'm just joking with you a little bit, but that is sort of true, right?

Because here's an interesting thing. Okay, when people think of dispensationalism, they think of the guys 100 years ago with charts, laying out end time views. And that's what dispensationalism is known for outside of the camp, for the charts and the premillennialism, laying out all this timeline.

And I've never really looked at the charts. I mean, I've seen them, but don't use them, right? So it's a thing where when we look at what dispensationalism is, we talk about things like the continuity, discontinuity of Israel.

There's a range within covenant theology, just like there is a range within dispensationalism. You have the hardliners. I mean, the extreme on dispensational side says there's a complete discontinuity.

I would call this hyper-dispensationalism. They don't read the writings of the Gospels. They don't read the Old Testament, just the writings of Paul. I would say that's extreme. That's pretty extreme.

Yep. The other side on the extreme on the covenant camp sees that everything that was promised to Israel is the church. And so you'll have some that try to keep the laws because they're Israel. And so you get into that.

The reality is there's a lot more, we're a lot closer now. Where you get really close is what used to be, I guess it used to be called new covenant theology, which is out of the covenant theology camp, where they see distinction between, more distinction with Israel and the church, a more literal interpretation.

There's some things that as that, and that's actually a very newer, when I say that's a new system, I know the guys that wrote the first book on new covenant theology. So they're alive today and very well.

So it's within the last 50 years that that has been developed. And that's now got a new name because that kind of went off in a different way, I guess. But that you can compare to progressive dispensationalism.

And so the other view is called progressive covenantalism, the new covenant theology view. And I think that whoever came up with the terms really was wrong. Like we don't want to be progressive on either side.

But progressive covenantalism and progressive dispensationalism are pretty close. They're very much, they see a lot of similarities. It's just when it comes to the end times, future prophecy, there's differences there.

So they don't, they interpret that different.

Continuity, discontinuity. So if I ask you this question, do you think the Bible is one story? What is the response to that? Yes. Okay, Bible is one story. What is discontinuity? What part of this has discontinuity?

And this is where I'm going to joke with you because many people think that, well, covenant theology is more biblical because the Bible talks of covenants and we don't see dispensationalism in there. Well, we do.

The word that we get, dispensationalism, is there once in Ephesians. But when we look at the covenants God makes with his people, this is back to what I said with the charts that people were doing. You have the charts of all these dispensations and there's some people that focus on, is there five dispensations, seven dispensations?

Okay. A dispensation is nothing more than an economy, a way that God works with his people. It's instructions that he gives to a group of people for a time. And those are defined by the covenants. So dispensationalism is heavier on covenants maybe than covenant theology because we would look at each of the covenants, right?

So there was a covenant given to Adam, and he had some rules and responsibilities. There was a covenant that was given to Noah, and that had more things. But we end up seeing that then there's a covenant given to Moses.

Some dispute whether there was a covenant to David. Then there's a new covenant. So what we end up seeing is that with each of the covenants comes a responsibility between God and his people. And so dispensationalism sees that each of those covenants is still part of one story, but each of those covenants has a different way that God relates to those specific people or universal.

So you would say though that God actually interacts with different peoples, people groups, whoever it is, whichever covenantal group. So let's take a covenant between Abraham and, I don't know, pick the next covenant, David or Moses or Adam or whatever.

Let's take Abraham and Moses or we could go with back to Adam and Moses. Sure. So here'd be an example I would use. Okay. Let's take the Sabbath. And this is one that gets disputed within dispensational circles as well as new covenant theology.

Covenant theology too, yeah, yeah.

This is pretty disputed in lots of circles.

Yeah, they would—well, new covenant theology would say we have the law of Jesus, so they only look at things that were commanded in the New Testament. And so if we look at this, on the seventh day of creation, there was a command to keep a Sabbath that I would say is universal for all human beings because it was given to Adam.

Okay. And so therefore there is a Sabbath that every person is responsible to keep. Okay. Now, did Moses add to that? Yes. For the nation of Israel, he added a whole lot of new laws for the Sabbath that apply to the nation of Israel.

But we're not the nation of Israel, therefore I would say we're under that universal law that was always in play. So do I hold to a Sabbath? Yes, I believe we should have a day set aside for rest and for the worship of God.

But does it mean that we can't do work and we can't lift sticks? No. I think that was for the nation of Israel. So this is how it ends up playing out.

But why then are you separating Adam from the nation of Israel?

Well, I wouldn't see Adam as part of the nation of Israel. Right, right, right. Especially since there wasn't an Israel to be a nation at that point.

Well, okay. So would you consider yourself a part of the nation of Israel?

Well, you're probably asking the wrong person because I actually am a Levite.

Right, right, right. But how do you fit this in for yourself, right?

Yeah, so I am physically of the nation of Israel, but under the new covenant. Okay, right. So now here'd be a thing with that, right? The nation of Israel is commanded—a law for Moses was to keep the Passover forever, okay?

Okay. So Israel has to keep that. That's not part of some ceremonial or civil law. And I disagree with those distinctions, by the way. But that's the way—no, I believe—. No, don't worry. I get it. So, well, because it may be new for some folks.

So there's a—within Reformed theology, there's a tripart view of the law. You have civil, ceremonial, and moral. I've asked for years if someone could produce for me the 613 laws divided in that camp.

I would love to see someone take that on and divide those that way. Because sometimes things preach well, but they don't fit well in the Scripture. And I've never seen it. It may exist. But if it does, I'd love to see it.

But the issue being is I take it more that there's universal laws. There's laws for the nation of Israel. There's laws for the Church. Now, I think there's more than that. I think there were laws for Moses and Abraham.

And some of those don't—you know, wouldn't apply because those were covenants that were given to either specific—and most often comes up with Moses because I think that was given to a nation. And so we do have laws that were civil because they were for that nation on how to do things.

And you could argue— But it's not so clear to me, then, how are you distinguishing? And see, if you don't want to segregate it into these three categories, how are you distinguishing that which laws were given to a nation and that which are moral laws?

Yeah. Well, I do it through the covenants. So, what I'm distinguishing, and this is why I'm using the term universal nation of Israel laws and New Testament laws. And so what I see in those is the fact that there are some laws that even Gentiles are expected to follow.

For example, thou shalt not lie, thou shalt not kill. God will hold people accountable. And even the New Testament is clear. They're accountable even though they don't have the law, meaning the 613 commandments.

There were more than just 10. And the thing is, take for example, we talk about the Sabbath. So you have a Sabbath law. That Sabbath law is a moral law. Because you die if you break it.

It's not so obvious to me why you're making a distinction about the Sabbath law and you're making it... Why wasn't that just the covenant for Adam?

Well, see, I think that because it was rooted in creation, that covenant for Adam had an effect for all of humanity because we're all in Adam. And so the covenant to Adam was for all mankind, where what you see with that, which was given to Moses, was for that nation.

Now, is not the covenant of Adam a covenant of death, though, after the sin, after the fall? Yeah.

Well, but some was. I mean, some we see that part of the covenant that we see within creation is the Sabbath day, a day of rest. And it is kind of interesting that certain countries, Russia tried this.

Russia tried doing a 10-day workweek and found that people were not as productive and they went back to a seven-day.

Actually, I have heard of studies like that. Yeah, that people have tried other things to try and break the seven-day thing and it hasn't worked out.

Yeah. And I find it interesting that for evolutionists who argue that we evolved in all this, where do you get a seven-day workweek from? Every culture has a seven-day workweek. Why? You know, because it's part of the creation order.

And so as being part of creation order, I think there are things that are universal for all. And so I think that there's laws that we would see within the covenants that are given to a wider range and some that are given to a specific range.

So I would argue that those which are given to the nation of Israel were for the nation of Israel. So that's why I make that distinction.

But by what mechanism would you determine that? Harmonetics.

Right? No, but it's looking at the covenants, looking at things. So there's going to be things. Let's take, for example, one that's challenged a lot today, homosexuality. No, it's challenged today? I don't think it should be challenged.

It shouldn't be. I know, I know, I know. But what we have is we have people that are trying to say, oh, well, the new covenant is all about love. And so what they want to do is redefine the Old Testament.

Now, what they're doing is putting such a distinction between Israel and the church that they're saying, well, those laws don't apply to us at all. That was just for the nation. However, what was that law rooted in?

Creation. One man with one woman. And that is repeated multiple times through Scripture, both in Old and New Testament, that that is the reason why homosexuality is wrong. So it's rooted back to creation.

That makes it universal. So I wouldn't be opposed to looking at Old Testament passages for that or New Testament passages for that, because I see it rooted to the creation order.

Would you say, then, that the covenant that God makes with Adam, the creation covenant there is unique and distinct from the other covenants?

I would. I think I would. I might need to think about this more because I've never been asked that question. But my initial thought is that I think every covenant is unique.

But you're saying the creation covenant has like a unique, almost a unique sense in which it goes throughout, right? That it impacts all of us and even all of the all of the other covenants. They all have something that originates.