Traditional Dispensationalism: Continuing the Conversation

Mark A. Snoeberger

Mark A. Snoeberger is Professor of Systematic Theology and Apologetics at Detroit Baptist Theological Seminary in Detroit, Michigan

Introduction

I want to begin by thanking the editors of Covenantal and Dispensational Theologies for their vision in conceiving this project, for the care with which the other contributors have made their arguments, and for the efforts of the editors of JBTS to keep the conversation going.[1] I’ve felt a bit bruised at points, but am grateful for a place at the table. I feel the weight of being something of a junior contributor here—the other contributors have published substantial defenses of their positions and I have not. I am in the company of scholars and I am humbled by that. I also want to offer an olive branch to any who found my tone snide or harsh—I’ll chalk up some of that to the difficulty of communicating tone in writing essays of this nature, but I also confess that I might have been more aggressive than was wont.

Unity of the Scriptures

As a traditional dispensationalist, I was encouraged by the fact that the editors cast this dialogue as one between alternative approaches to biblical theology and the unity of the Scriptures. It is often supposed that traditional dispensationalism simply denies the Bible’s unity, offering a jumble of curious thoughts about end times, divisions in the people of God, multiple ways of salvation, and changing moral standards. It was refreshing to see the editors acknowledge that the traditional dispensationalist is committed to the Bible’s unity, but according to a rubric other than a covenantal one.

But dispensationalism does more than replace the covenantal chapters of redemptive history with corresponding dispensational chapters of redemptive history. And this, I fear, is an observation not so carefully made in the book’s introduction. The third of Charles Ryrie’s sine qua non of dispensationalism is that subsuming all of God’s purposes under a redemptivemotif is too reductionist to account for the whole biblical storyline. It does not account for the vast throng of the unredeemed, the irredeemable (angels and such), the spheres of politics, science, industry, economics (etc.) that exist prior to any named covenants, nor for the continuing purpose for humanity after the story of redemption concludes. Rather than seeing the biblical storyline as a history of the redeeming work of God, Ryrie recognized the biblical storyline as being also, even principally a history of the rule of God. That’s what a “dispensation” is—an administration of God’s manifold government.

Dr. Horton has objected to my quest for a unifying motif for the Bible, a fact I find somewhat puzzling in that the Reformed seem to do the same thing, identifying the biblical storyline as a history of redemption organized around a covenantal motif. By viewing the biblical storyline as a history of divine rule organized around the motif of divine government, dispensationalists are not doing something different in principle, much less something avant garde. I’d like to think that dispensationalists are using a procedure not unlike that used by Reformed for centuries—we’ve simply identified different unifying/structural motifs. I feel confident that this identification constitutes a substantial part of our differences.

Getting into the weeds on this issue, the question of Noah’s Covenant remains of particular interest for further discussion. I have suggested that Noah’s Covenant features little or no redemptive advance (and Dr. Wellum objected). Ironically, much of my thought on the Noahic Covenant is not unique to dispensationalism—I lean heavily on Meredith Kline and especially Dave VanDrunen for my understanding, both of whom see Noah’s Covenant, especially as viewed narrowly in Genesis 9, as a civic covenant.[2] I warm especially to VanDrunen’s understanding that the Noahic Covenant formalizes God’s expectations for the civic sphere (which God introduced informally in Genesis 1–2), and that the Abrahamic Covenant formalizes God’s plans in the redemptive sphere (which God introduced in seed form in Genesis 3). I have been quite enthusiastic about this explanation ever since I read his treatment, and I find his treatment of two kingdoms to be largely compatible with the dispensational approach. But as a dispensationalist, I stress that Noah’s Covenant does more than establish a stable society so that redemptive history has a path forward; it establishes a framework for bringing glory to God independently of a redemptive concern through advances in all the spheres introduced in the Dominion Mandate—science, industry, politics, and so forth—not as the unique mission of God’s redeemed people, but as the collective mission of all God’s image-bearers, redeemed and unredeemed alike.[3]

When I speak, then, of dispensations of the governing (not the redemptive) grace of God, what this means, and I stress this with great firmness, is that when the dispensationalist speaks of distinctions between Israel and the Church he is in no sense suggesting distinct ways of redemption. Every believer in every age is justified, apart from the Law, by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone.[4] What changes is not our means of salvation, but the relationship of believers in each age to their respective religious and socio-political communities. Israel was an ethnically homogenous, theocratic state of which one may be a citizen irrespective of spiritual status; the Christian Church is a redeemed community in an era where the State is administered severally. Saying this does not “wrongly divide the people of God”; it simply recognizes that Christ “has sheep in multiple sheep pens” (John 10:16).

The idea that God has two governments (civic and redemptive) variously related in the history of mankind has a storied pedigree: Boniface spoke of two swords, Aquinas of two laws, Luther of two kingdoms, and Calvin of two governments. There are wrinkles of difference between these, and I would not by any means suggest that any of these figures were proto-dispensational, but they did observe (before the rise of federal theology) that civic and redemptive responsibilities must be distinguished in mankind’s bid to glorify God. Reformed Baptists have long recognized this fact with their firm insistence on the separation of Church and state; additionally, they recognize, in degree much greater than the Reformed, differences in the spiritual status and entry rites of the Jewish and Christian communities, respectively. I appreciate this feature in 1689 Federalism[5] and also in progressive covenantalism, which has substantial Baptist representation. I do not agree, of course, with the specific means by which each group relates Israel with the Church, but I do appreciate their recognition that strict continuity is not possible.

Incidentally, it was the discontinuity of Israel and the Church with respect to culture/politics that led, more than any other factor, to the birth of dispensational theology:

A. John N. Darby, often regarded as the father of dispensationalism, was an Anglican missionary to Irish Catholic miners, and after some success in that role, was informed that his converts could not join the Church without an oath of fealty to the British Crown. Darby responded that such a measure would have been appropriate in the OT economy—there, to be rightly related to God, one needed to bless Israel, respect her law, and acknowledge her King; but in the Christian era, one performs civil obligations to Caesar quite apart from one’s ecclesiastical obligations (Matt 22:21). It was on this basis, then, that Darby sympathized with the political reservations of his converts and proposed the formation of an independent church of a purely spiritual character, that is, one that rejected, institutionally at least, any specific political or socio-cultural loyalties.

B. James Hall Brookes, the father of American dispensationalism, likewise came under great pressure, in the crucible of the Civil War, to declare his Presbyterian assembly in St. Louis to be either for the Union or for the Confederacy. Arguing as Darby had decades earlier, he and other likeminded churches formed an independent presbytery that recognized the pure spirituality of the church: unlike the Israelite assembly, the Christian Church could worship together without sharing political sympathies or socio-cultural norms.

This is the crucible in which dispensationalism was born. It is an unfortunate reality that in both contexts, populism won the day, and attention was drawn relentlessly to the disparate destinies of Israel and the Church, rendering dispensationalism excessively attentive, at times, to eschatology; but eschatological infatuation was neither the historical raison d’etre for the development of dispensational theology, nor must it be dispensationalism’s singular legacy.

Hermeneutics

The advantage of structuring the biblical storyline according to the relationship of the two governments of God as they are disparately related throughout history leads to several other features of the dispensational model that are routinely misunderstood:

A. By viewing the whole Mosaic Law as a political/administrative instrument for Israel uniquely, the dispensationalist is relieved of hermeneutical intrigue in explaining Paul’s shrugging attitude toward circumcision and Sabbaths and sacrifices. Specifically, the dispensationalist does not need to recast these Mosaic devices after the fact as types of greater realities, but can see them as they stand as ethnic/national symbols, civic holidays, labor arrangements, and features of their system of crime and punishment. Viewed as such, the dispensationalist can offer ready explanations for reinstating some of these elements (even certain of the sacrifices—Ezek 40–48) when the theocracy is restored during the Millennium.[6] The dispensationalist does not by this stance diminish the work of Christ, on the one hand, nor reject the principle of law on the other; rather, we uphold the manifold purposes of the Law, and with Paul affirm that (1) while no believer is ever free from God’s Law, (2) Christian believers are not under the Mosaic Law; rather, (3) they are under the Law of Christ (1 Cor 9:20ff).

The dispensationalist finds no urgency laid upon him to find strict continuity between the peoples, the laws, the customs, socio-political responsibilities, and other structures laced throughout the Scriptures. That is not to say that there are no unifying features, but the dispensationalist, if I may, is not obsessed with them. We delight in seeing nuance and diversity in the unfolding government of God. There is one way of salvation, but it is enjoyed by believers in a diversity of civic and cultic settings.

B. This brings us to a matter of great difference between the essays in terms of our hermeneutic. I do not find compelling Dr. Horton’s statement that Luke 24 gives license to NT interpreters to read the OT with an immediate view to Christ’s redemptive work. Jesus did iteratively walk through the OT to identify iteratively in “all the Scriptures” things concerning himself, but this is not the same as saying that he established a hermeneutical method (much less a homiletical one) that connects every OT text to Christ and the Christian Gospel. Of course, in that all truth is connected, this may occur in the most general of senses, but I believe much harm has been done to our churches by preachers finding artificial connections of OT texts to Christ when, in fact,the OT authors could never have made these connections. Much of Deuteronomic history stands, I would argue, as a story of God receiving glory in the political schemings and civil accomplishments of those who have by-and-large rejected the Gospel, Jew and Gentile alike. These stories all relate to God in Christ as the source of common grace and Lord of history, but this connection is often indirect and unstated. As a dispensationalist, I find myself equally concerned about the problem of finding Christ where he is not as I am about not finding him where he is.

C. More than one contributor expressed shock with my inattention to types, so I want to explain my understanding further. I tend to see the majority of hermeneutical connectors between the testaments in somewhat binary terms: those prospectively intended by the author and those retrospectively initiated by the interpreter. The former are prophetic; the latter a montage of analogies, implications, instances of corpus linguistics (the tendency of literate societies to use phrases and imagery from their respective bodies of literature in everyday conversation), etc. What dispensationalists have long treated with suspicion is any definition of types that sees them, to use Greg Beale’s words, as “restrospectively prospective.” I don’t want to be snide here, but this seems to suggest that certain OT statements were secretly prospective, and that no one recognized this until after the fact. This suggests, then, that there are hidden meanings in earlier literature that were not intended by the human author. I grant of course, that the Bible has two authors—human and divine; but as a firm believer in inspiration, I believe that this means that what stands written is not a mixture of two meanings (divine and human), but one shared meaning. So in answer to Dr. Horton, I do recognize the divine author; but if I may turn a phrase made popular by Fee and Stuart, the divine author can never mean what the human author never meant (or vice versa).[7]

Now this is not to say that God, as the orchestrator of all history, did not deliberately drop elements into the story line for use by later authors as ready points of analogy. If one wishes to call these types I am not distressed by this. But two things: (1) We really can’t identify as types anything other than what the Scriptures clearly identify as types (in other words, there is no license for typological interpretation) and (2) the later identification of types can never cancel out the original intention.

For instance, one might correctly recognize that God orchestrated elements of the bronze serpent story (Num 21:4–9) to supply a ready point of analogy upon which Jesus seizes in John 3. But to make that analogy part of the OT text’s meaning is, I believe, an error, and to make it the whole of its meaning is a grievous error. Paul confirms this in 1 Corinthians 10 when he reminds his readers that the continuing reason for this story (i.e., its principal intent and persistent application) is to provide “an example and warning for us, upon whom the end of the ages has come,” not to “grumble” or to “test God.” This rather mundane moral lesson, necessary to lasting civility in God’s civic order, has only oblique reference to Christ, but Paul informs us that this lesson has always supplied and continues to supply an appropriate homiletical “big idea” for the story. Making connections with Christ or the Christian Gospel in a sermon on this OT story is surely appropriate, but that it is necessary is not in evidence.

D. This does not mean (and I labored to emphasize this in my essay) that a dispensationalist must discover among possible interpretations the simplest, most wooden interpretations of the Scriptures. This caricature persists, in part—and I admit this—from the choice of the term literalism to describe the dispensational hermeneutic. The term literal can suggest a suppression of rhetorical devices and figures of speech; but this is not what dispensationalists have generally intended by it. What we mean is that the OT author’s plain intention can never be usurped by new ones, much less be reduced to patterns of divine behavior.

So, for instance, if the OT author makes precise land promises or predicts the future construction and operation of a temple, with incredibly specific detail that has never, ever been fulfilled, those promises must be fulfilled with detail equally precise. I have no problem observing divine patterns of establishing “places” for his people to dwell, and patterns of “tabernacling” with his people. The patterns are real and observable, but we can’t use them to cancel the specifics of the OT accounts.

That is why I suggested as a replacement for the term literal a more accurate label—originalist—a label that did not exist before 1980 and thus does not appear in any early dispensationalist literature. By it I mean that the original public meaning—established by the original text and accepted by the original readers—must prevail: a text can never mean today what it did not mean when it was originally written and read. That’s the governing rubric for dispensationalists: we are not obsessed with finding the “most literal” or the “least figurative” reading; we are looking for original authorial intent, as captured in the words of the text. So to borrow an old rubric, “When the plain sense makes sense, we seek no other sense.”

Of course, there are times when the plain sense makes no sense, and so we do opt for another sense. This is not inconsistent with “literalism.” Two passages raised in the various responses are in order:

1. In Acts 15, James makes an appeal to the Amos 9 in the Jerusalem Counsel:

“After these things I will return and rebuild David’s fallen tent. Its ruins I will rebuild, and I will restore it, that the remnant of the Gentiles who bear my name may seek the Lord, and all the Gentiles who bear my name, says the Lord, who does these things’ that have been known for ages” (Acts 15:16-18).

Then he adds, crucially, “It is my judgment, therefore, that we should not make it difficult for Gentiles to turn to God” (Acts 15:19).

At first blush, it appears that James is plainly announcing the restoration of David’s tent and the commencement of Messiah’s reign. But the details do not fit this “plain sense.” Both James and Amos assert that the restoration of David’s tent will occur “after these things” (in context, after God regathers the Jewish people from all over the world, destroys all of their enemies, and purges by the sword every single unbelieving Israelite from her number). Only then will he restore the Davidide, establish Israel in her land, and provide a designated place of worship for an unprecedented number of Gentiles who have come to bear God’s name.

Is James saying that all of this occurred in the early chapters of Acts? Maybe, but this seems a bit of a stretch. Instead, it appears that he is drawing attention to the fact that the reestablishment of David’s tent, when it occurs, will be precipitated by a great many Gentile conversions. Based on this prophetic concern, “therefore, we should not make it difficult for Gentiles to turn to God.” This, I would suggest, is James’s primary point of emphasis.

2. Likewise, when Peter responds in Acts 2:16 to questions about the wonders of Pentecost by saying, “This is what was spoken by the prophet Joel,” the plainest meaning is that the events of Pentecost inaugurated the new covenant era described in Joel 2. But then one starts reading the details:

1. “In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh” (Acts 2:17). But that didn’t happen at Pentecost. The Spirit is poured out, true, but not on all flesh, as is promised through the Prophets as the indicator that the new covenant has commenced—everyone will convert: “You will turn to your neighbor and say ‘Know the Lord,’ but they will already all know me, from the greatest to the least” (Jer 31:31–34).[8]

2. Peter continues: “Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams. Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days, and they will prophesy” (Acts 2:17). The case might be made, based on one’s definition of prophecy, that a few men prophesied at Pentecost. But none of the other elements of this prophecy occurred.

3. “I will show wonders in the heaven above and signs on the earth below, blood, fire, and billows of smoke. The sun will be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the coming of the great and glorious day of the Lord” (Acts 2:19-20). I concede that the “wonder” of tongues occurred at Pentecost. But the blood? The smoke? The obfuscation of sun and moon? These represent battle imagery emblematic of our Lord’s conquest of the nations and his rule of iron. This is a problem, I think, for all realized and inaugurated approaches to the new covenant and Kingdom. These things simply haven’t happened.

4. “And everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved” (Acts 2:21). Of course this is true at Pentecost, I concede, but this is scarcely something new. This promise has been true since the fall of Adam.

After reading those details (and details are important), the traditional dispensationalist looks at Peter’s statement, “This is that,” and acknowledges the plainest sense of those words, but also notes that the plain sense doesn’t make sense of the details. One possible solution is to think in terms of analogical fulfillment.[9] My solution to this thorny text is not the same as Dr. Bock’s of course, but I am happy to share agreement with him that a simple point-for-point fulfillment of Joel’s whole prophecy on the Day of Pentecost is not on the table.[10]

Covenants

That brings us to the question of the covenants, which the editors requested that we treat prominently in our essays. I mentioned earlier that, with the exception of the Noahic Covenant, all of the named covenants in the Scriptures belong uniquely to Israel. That is, I believe, what Paul says in Romans 9:3, where he carefully defines the named party in all the covenants as “his kinsmen according to the flesh.” As such, the covenants provide the structural organization for the Israelite chapter of the Bible’s storyline, but are not intended to provide, in the traditional dispensational understanding, a comprehensive structuring for the whole biblical storyline. We admit, of course, that there are implications of Israel’s covenants for the rest of the world, but all the covenant blessings that transcend Israel are mediated by Israel—and not merely by the “true Israelite” as an individual, but by the whole Israelite community.

Of particular interest here is the new covenant, on which topic dispensationalists have been less than unanimous. All dispensationalists (traditional and progressive alike) agree that the Christian Church cannot be the only recipient of NC promises, or even the principal recipient of those promises. The NC is detailed relentlessly in the OT as the property of the House of Judah and the House of Israel, which together constitute the historic 12 tribes of ethnic Israel. The predominantly Gentile Church cannot (to use a lightning-rod term) replace Israel so defined, because “Israel” and “Church” have fundamentally different meanings. The OT authors would never concede that they intended, by their relentless use of the ethnically-specific term “Israel” to mean the ethnically homogenous Christian Church. Nor, further, will the dispensationalist allow Israel to reduce in status to an “unbelieving shadow” of a new and better community.

The earliest dispensationalists (e.g., Darby) saw nothing of the new covenant in the Christian Church. In the early twentieth century there developed within dispensationalism a preference for the idea that there were two new covenants—one each for Israel and the Church, respectively (e.g., Chafer and Ryrie, though the latter inconsistently). The surge of influence on inaugurated eschatology in American evangelicalism after WW2 influenced dispensational eschatology as well. First to develop, even before WW2, was a mystery “form” of the kingdom in the Church; then, in the 1960s, the idea that the new covenant had been inaugurated at the death of Christ with limited benefits for the Church, but with the caveat that the new covenant could not be completely fulfilled until the eschatological restoration of Israel’s theocracy. The trajectory of this idea led ultimately, even directly, to the formal birth of progressive dispensationalism in the early 1990s. Since that development, traditional dispensationalists have remained of less than one mind on the matter of the new covenant,[11] though personal observation leads me to suggest that the approach that has seen greatest growth in the last thirty years is Darby’s view (i.e., that the Church has no formal relationship at all to the new covenant). For these (and I find myself in their number) the new covenant has yet to be inaugurated, since it must be enacted by (1) the formal swearing of an oath (so Jer 50:5; Hos 2:18–23; Zech 13:9) (2) by the named parties without emendation (whether by replacement or by addition)—an event that has never occurred. As such, the new covenant awaits implementation as the principal administrative instrument for a future administration of God: the Millennial Kingdom.

Naturally, this places me at odds with all three contributors, who adhere either to realized or, to a greater or lesser degree, to inaugurated understandings of the new covenant and kingdom that feature, at a minimum, the complementary inclusion of Church saints. I do, of course, need to answer some NT objections, but if I may reiterate the original emphasis in my essay, the burden of proof lies much more heavily upon those who, e.g., equate the provisions of Joel 2 with the events of Acts 2; equate the provisions of Amos 9 with the events of Acts 15; suppress the relentless emphasis on ethnic Israel in scores of OT prophecies and regard Gentile Christians gathered in Christian churches as “the” new covenant people of God, etc. But to specific objections.

1. I am prepared, with Paul in 1 Corinthians 3:6, to speak of the church anarthrously as “a” new covenant community, but the intent of this curiously anarthrous construction is not easily established. It may speak only to similarity and not to identity.

2. More difficult is the book of Hebrews, with its lengthy discussions of the new covenant. I find the traditional dispensational position poorly represented among the commentators, and I recognize this weakness; still, I’m of a mind that the assumption, made by most, that the author is speaking of a covenant now in effect, much less fully in effect,is not strong. He is speaking to Israelites (Hebrews) who are discouraged by the absence of new covenant blessings that they were expecting; but rather than viewing the new covenant as canceled or enacted without these blessings, I see the author as defending the original terms of the new covenant, just not their immediate realization.

3. Dr. Horton’s observation that the formula for the Lord’s Table introduced by our Lord is likewise difficult. I have oft repeated in answer to this question J. N. Darby’s observation that the blood of Christ is bigger than the covenant. That is, while it is necessary to the establishment of the new covenant (and thus an appropriate appeal during a Passover meal that Christ was suspending indefinitely, pending the arrival of the Kingdom), it also serves as an enacting rite for the Christian Church. But what I am unwilling to see Christ doing is (1) conflating these two functions or (2) annulling the need, anticipated in the OT on multiple occasions, for a mutual oath between the parties named in the covenant as the inaugurating instrument of the new covenant. Like Abraham’s covenant (though not, incidentally, David’s), sacrifice is part of the covenant inauguration proceedings and even a necessaryone (assuming, as I do, that the new covenant is a testamentary covenant), but sacrifice never stands as the whole or even the primary enacting instrument of any ANE covenant.[12]

By suggesting that the new covenant and the concomitant Messianic Kingdom are still future, I come to the final and most practical distinction that separates the four approaches under consideration in this project. We are still living in the long shadow of Carl Henry’s dilemma between the “kingdom-now” approach of postmillennial modernism (which in his day had lost sight of the essence of the Gospel), and the “kingdom-then” approach of the dispensationalism (which Henry believed had forfeited its apologetic platform for the Gospel.[13] Inaugurated eschatology was his happy balance, and it dominates (with some variation) the two interior positions in our debate. Unfortunately (and with apologies to Dr. Horton), Henry gave little attention to two-kingdoms amillennialism, which represents a form of realized eschatology, but one with a much more spiritual view of the Church than Henry would have approved.

This concern still rages. And the question reduces, in many ways, to whether Henry was right. Do any of the four approaches represented in this project sabotage the Gospel? Not necessarily, but each one sports specific vulnerabilities of which we need to be aware. Ironically, among the three other contributors, I find myself in closest proximity to Dr. Horton’s position in terms of the church’s mission, and while we get there by very different means, I’m happy to express broad agreement, practically speaking, with his book Where in the World Is the Church?[14] And that is because, as a proponent of the spirituality of the church, Dr. Horton better preserves the distinction, in the present age, between God’s two governments. As a Baptist dispensationalist, I resonate with this seminal concern, even though Dr. Horton and I remain apart on other matters.

At the end of the day, however, I am firmly convinced that all four participants in this debate are brothers in Christ, and I am grateful again that we can have this conversation not as enemies, but as fellow-believers.

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[1] Editor’s Note: This essay was originally delivered in a session dedicated to Covenantal and Dispensational Theologies as part of the 2022 annual meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society in Denver, CO. The session was a follow up discussion between the contributors to Covenantal and Dispensational Theologies: Four Views on the Continuity of Scripture, eds. Brent E. Parker and Richard J. Lucas (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2022). Due to health-related reasons Michael Horton was not able to participate, so the Covenant Theology view was represented by Richard Belcher in this session.

[2] Meredith G. Kline, Kingdom Prologue: Genesis Foundations for a Covenantal Worldview (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2006); David VanDrunen, Natural Law and the Two Kingdoms: A Study in the Development of Reformed Social Thought (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010).

[3] In this matter the dispensationalist and the 2K amillennialist, with his commitment to the spirituality of the church) become curious allies in demurring from postmillennialism (which likely deserved a place in our initial volume) and to a lesser degree historic premillennialism. Both of the latter approaches (and especially the former), operate from a vantage where the church has a prominent institutional role in influencing the civic sphere of the divine government.

[4] We might be more precise and say that the earliest OT saints believed in divine promises that would ultimately by fulfilled in Christ alone, but this is a caveat that all must make at some level—progressive revelation touches us all.

[5] Which, like postmillennialism, deserved a place in our original publication.

[6] On this point I am indebted especially to John Whitcomb’s work on millennial sacrifices, “Christ’s Atonement and Animal Sacrifices in Israel,” Grace Theological Journal 6 (Fall 1985): 201–17.

[7] I find most troubling Dr. Horton’s statement on p.185 of Covenantal and Dispensational Theologies that “whatever our interpretation of Genesis 12 and 15, it needs to be determined by the NT.” My immediate question is this: Does this mean that prior to the writing of the NT the meaning of Genesis 12/15 could not be determined? This approach seems to say too much.

[8] And if I may, respond specifically to Dr. Wellum, it seems to me that Jeremiah offers here more than a statement that new covenant communities are regenerate communities; he seems rather to be saying something on the order that every surviving member of the human race, in order to enter the Kingdom, will convert.

[9] Much as we do commonly, say, when we sing, “Here I raise mine Ebenezer,” or make a stock historical analogy like “He met his Waterloo.” 

[10] A third passage that might be addressed here was something of an aside, but a long one, so I find it needful to answer it. Dr. Horton’s complained that dispensationalists are not faithful to their hermeneutic when interpreting the use of “Gog and Magog” in Ezekiel. My opinion on the precise identity of Gog and Magog is not a strident one. It may reference a specific ethnic group or inhabitants of a geographic region, but it may also be a simple point on the compass (for a similar usage, note that Habakkuk, writing in proximity to Ezekiel, refences the “tents of Paran/Teman”—Edomite communities—to point southward the Sinai Peninsula and the Mountain of God. I’m inclined to think that this is a rhetorical method used by Hebrew writers of the day, and that the original authorial intent was demonstrably imprecise. Ezekiel was likely pointing in a generally northerly direction by his words, just as Habakkuk points generally to the south. This idea is confirmed, I believe, when the author of Revelation identifies Gog and Magog as one of the “four corners of the earth,” and I accept that. What is critical here, to me, is authorial intent and original public meaning.

[11] For a detailing of three separate traditional dispensational views of the new covenant, see Dispensational Understanding of the New Covenant: Three Views (Schaumburg, IL; Regular Baptist Press, 2012). In the interest of full disclosure, I embrace Roy Beacham’s approach (“The Church Has No Legal Relationship to or Participation in the New Covenant,” 107–44). I am keenly aware that in the response to follow I am speaking not for all traditional dispensationalists, but for a subset of that group only.

[12] Beacham, “No Legal Relationship to or Participation,” 120–27; for a fresh treatment of this issue see Anthony Iorillo, “The New Covenant and the Church,” (Th.M. thesis, Detroit Baptist Theological Seminary, 2023), 20–50.

[13] See chapter 4 in Carl F. H. Henry, The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1947).

[14] Michael S. Horton, Where in the World is the Church? A Christian View of Culture and Your Role in It (Chicago: Moody Press, 1995).