Long post alert! Sorry, and honestly I did edit this thing. Please bear with me.
AV, I appreciate your essay on dispensation. It certainly cleared up the confusion I had regarding your view on Hebrews. Stranger, I also so appreciate your post regarding the dangers of “-istâ€Â. Your expression, “emphasis distortion†is something that I think should be taught in every seminary of every denomination out there. It is one of the more serious problems that I see in the Church today.
In regards to Dispensationalism: Calvinists are rabidly against Dispensationalism, and so I started off as learning only the negatives about it. When I began to move away from Calvinism and study again many doctrines that they both preached and preached against, I took another look at Dispensationalism. Since then, I’ve asked many questions and have studied many passages to see if it stands up to Scriptural scrutiny. I don’t believe it does.
In an honest and non-emotional comparison, one would have to admit that the teachings of Darby in regards to Dispensationalism and Joseph Smith Jr. present us with the same problem. Both schools of thought require that we must ignore almost two Millenniums of Biblical teaching and look at the scriptures through the lens of a certain man. While there were a few scholars who did divide Biblical history into certain ages, no one taught Dispensationalism, as we know it until Darby. Scofield, Chafer, Ironside and Ryrie can all trace their Dispensationalist views from what they learned from Darby.
One of the pillars of Dispensationalism is the division of Israel and the Church. The clearest passage of Scripture that explains the relationship between Israel, the Church and Christ is Romans 11:17-26. The idea that there are two separate peoples of God falls apart right here in this passage. Let us look carefully at verse 17:
And if some of the branches be broken off, and thou, being a wild olive, wert grafted in among them and with them partakest of the root and fatness of the olive tree
At issue here is the fact that there is but one tree and many branches. Only some branches were broken off, and others were grafted in to the same tree. This imagery of one tree and, not two branches, but many branches is the correct imagery of what happened between Israel and God. There is but one tree. Of the many branches, some are Jews, some are Gentiles, and all make up the Body of Christ. All those saved by grace through faith, whether Jew or Gentile alike, make up the one Body.
Looking at the context of this particular verse, we find within this same chapter at Romans 11:24 that the Gentiles were the wild olives that were grafted into the cultivated tree. We are not separate from the tree and that tree is called Israel’s own. We can look within the context of the full letter to the Romans in verse 3:29 in which Paul asks the question if God is the God of Jews or of Gentiles and assures us that He is the God of all. This was right after Paul told us that there was ‘no distinction’ of ‘all who believe’ in verse 22. We can also see that Paul is clear that Israel, the chosen nation, is not those who are by blood descended from Abraham, for They which are the children of the flesh, these are not the children of God: but the children of the promise are counted for the seed. Romans 9:8
We can look in the greater context of the New Testament and see that in Galatians, Paul yet again explores the relationship between the Jews and Gentiles and tells us that there is no Jew or Greek, for ‘you are all one in Christ Jesus and if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise.’ Galatians 3:28-29 There is Colossians 3:9-11 which exhorts us “Do not lie to one another, since you laid aside the old self with its evil practices, and have put on the new self who is being renewed to a true knowledge according to the image of the One who created him, -a renewal in which there is no distinction between Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and freeman, but Christ is all, and in all.
I listed some texts for study in the debate regarding OSAS, several came out with this idea that many texts on the list were for the Jews (them) not for the Body of Christ (us).
Look carefully at Ephesians 3:6 and this idea that there is a divide between the Jews and the Body falls apart. “To be specific, that the Gentiles are fellow heirs and of the same body, and partakers of His promise in Christ by the gospel.â€Â
I ask all of you who think there is a divide between the Jews and the Christians, when Paul said, “fellow heirs†tell me: Fellow heirs with whom? And when he says, “And of the same body†tell me: Of the same body with whom?
With the Jews who believe of course. Just that some Jews rejected their Messiah and were then cut off from their tree, and Gentiles were grafted in, did not divide the body of Christ at all. We know this to be true for Paul assures us in Ephesians 4:4-6: “There is one body and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of your calling; One Lord, one faith, one baptism, One God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all.â€Â
Therefore, when Paul states in Romans 11:26, “And so all Israel shall be saved: as it is written, There shall come out of Zion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacobâ€Â, he is not speaking of some kind of future event in which the nation of Israel will suddenly turn from Judaism and accept Jesus as the national Messiah. He is speaking contemporaneously, and is speaking as to the manner in which Israel will be saved, not as a nation, but as a body of believers in Christ.
To divide up the Scriptures into some kind of ‘us’ and ‘them’ and filtering entire books that were clearly written to believers because you think it is for ‘them’ is, my friends, any thing but ‘rightly dividing’ God’s Word. Which brings up another huge problem I have with Dispensationalism; the fact that it hinges itself upon basically one verse that has nothing to do with any kind of divisions within Scripture or the Body.
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