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Getting it in Gear with the Under Forty Crowd: Dispensationalism and the Road Ahead |
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Craig MacDonald writes about his personal experiences teaching Pauline Dispensationalism to young Christians.
A few weeks ago I asked my adult Sunday school class what I believe to be the most important question anyone will ponder: What is the minimum someone must believe to be saved? One’s answer to that question determines their eternal destiny. I’m often surprised how many people, who consider themselves mature Christians, struggle with their answers. A less weighty but still important question presents itself to grace believers.
What’s in a Name?
But before asking that question we need to come up with a better term to describe ourselves. Using “grace believers” suggests that other Christians don’t believe in grace. Regardless of a person’s denominational affiliation or theological system, one element essential in becoming a child of God is believing that salvation comes only through God’s grace. (See question #1 above.) Thus, some Christians understandably take offense at our use of the term grace believer because of what it wrongly implies about their theology. The term also doesn’t provide any helpful description of our convictions about understanding the Bible. With that in mind, What is the minimum someone must believe to be a Pauline dispensationalist?
The Answer Is…
The use of the term Pauline dispensationalist instead of grace believer may give away at least part of the answer, but let’s work through it anyway. First, a Pauline dispensationalist must believe that the Bible should be understood literally. This does not mean that the Bible doesn’t contain figures of speech, parables and symbolic visions. Interpreting the Bible literally means that it should be read “normally.” The original readers, when they read a passage, understood it in the normal sense. They knew immediately if a biblical expression was normally a figure of speech in their culture or meant exactly what it said. When Amos wrote “…you cows of Bashan…” (Amos 4:1), the women of Bashan knew full well he was referring to them. The original reader’s understanding should guide ours. Unless a word, phrase or passage clearly had a figurative meaning when the original readers read it, we should interpret it literally.
This leads us to the second essential element: A Pauline dispensationalist understands Israel and the Body of Christ to be separate and distinct. The term Israel, understood normally, refers to the descendants of Abraham through Jacob, the nation God chose as His special people above all other nations on earth (Ex. 19:5-6). God established a covenant relationship with the nation of Israel that included the Mosaic Law, the Promised Land, and a prophetic agenda that He promised He would bring to pass in the future. All of these blessings came to them because they were His chosen nation.
The Body of Christ, as the Apostle Paul says repeatedly, is made up of Jews and Gentiles without regard for their ethnicity. The Jew has no advantage at this time. Everyone who, by grace through faith, accepts Christ as their Savior now enjoys equal access and blessings. The Body of Christ also has an agenda for the future that is distinct from Israel’s.
Finally, a Pauline dispensationalist understands that the change, from God’s program centered on Israel as His special people to the current program in which there is no distinction between Jew and Gentile, began with the ministry of the Apostle Paul. This feature distinguishes Pauline Dispensationalism from other forms of Dispensationalism, most of which begin the Body of Christ program with the events at Jerusalem recorded in Acts 2. All dispensationalists interpret the Bible literally (normally) and understand the Body of Christ to be distinct from Israel. However, a Pauline dispensationalist sees the thoroughly Jewish character of the first eight chapters of Acts and the contrast with Paul’s ministry as recorded in the latter part of Acts. This also shows up clearly in all of Paul’s letters where he repeatedly stresses the uniqueness of the Body of Christ as compared to Israel, and that the revelation of this present program was first revealed to him.
Value Added
With these three elements – a literal interpretation of the Bible; a distinction between Israel and the Body of Christ; the beginning of the Body of Christ with the ministry of the Apostle Paul – we can answer the question, what is the minimum one must believe to be a Pauline dispensationalist? The great value of Pauline Dispensationalism is the way in which it opens up Scripture to the average Christian, clearing up seeming contradictions and making the Bible understandable. And this presents us with perhaps an unprecedented opportunity to share Pauline Dispensationalism with other believers.
Sixty-five years ago, when the GGF was in its infancy, the landscape of the Christian church in America looked very different. There was a much higher level of biblical literacy among Christians who attended church, and members of a denomination were much more likely to know the distinctive doctrines of their church. Covenant churches taught their people the allegorical method of interpretation, and the majority of dispensational churches emphasized Acts 2 as the beginning point of the Body of Christ. Accordingly, the founders of the GGF expended much of their effort defining the distinctives of our position, including the three elements mentioned above.
Changing Times
A recent study released by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life (http://religions.pewforum.org) contained some fascinating information. One of the most startling findings was that 44% of Americans are no longer affiliated with the faith of their youth. They have changed religions, changed denominations, joined or left religion for the first time in their lives. Also, while major Protestant denominations are losing members, nondenominational evangelical churches are growing.
These results suggest some very positive developments as we seek to teach others what we’ve called Pauline Dispensationalism. First, our nondenominational structure works to our advantage. The under-forty group is suspicious or at least hesitant regarding bureaucratic organizations with strong top-down structures. The independent autonomous church has strong appeal in this culture. And as young adults move away from denominational churches and toward independent evangelical churches they come without the indoctrination that characterized Christians of their parents’ and grandparents’ generations.
For these young and mobile Christians the literal interpretation of the Bible is, in fact, the most natural, normal way to understand Scripture. Because the allegory is now almost totally absent from our culture, they assume that when they read the Bible it means what it says, not that it carries some deeper, veiled meaning. Accordingly, they naturally accept that Israel and the Body of Christ are distinct. All that is left is to work through the general content of the Gospels and early Acts with them, and it quickly becomes clear that things changed dramatically with the ministry and writings of Paul.
I’m not sure we realize how easy it is, especially at this point in American church history, to show people the biblical truth we’ve called Pauline Dispensationalism. My own recent experiences make me extremely optimistic for the endeavor. The vast majority of believers under the age of forty don’t need to be convinced. Showing them the uniqueness of Paul’s ministry and writings can, with a little bit of preparation, be done easily. But if we continue to use an approach suited to the middle of the last century, in content or in tone, we will fail in our efforts and look like extremists in the process. Who are the real losers if we do that? These young Christians, who will never gain an understanding of the Bible that opens the Scriptures to them like nothing else will.
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