The case against Dispensationalism

Traditional Christians believe that Jesus Christ will return one day to judge the living and the dead. But what exactly will happen at the second advent of Jesus Christ, and when will that event take place? On that issue, opinion is sharply divided.

"The meaning of the millennium" presents four views on this issue, known as Historic Premillennialism, Dispensational Premillennialism, Postmillennialism and Amillennialism.

The premillennial position holds that Jesus Christ will set up an earthly kingdom at his second coming, a kingdom that will last for a thousand years. Historic Premillennialism believes that the millennium will be obviously Christian and that ethnic Israel won't play a special role. They base their case for a millennium on a single verse in the Book of Revelation. Dispensationalists, by contrast, believe that the millennium will have strong Jewish traits. They base their case on a literal interpretation of various Old Testament prophecies. Jews can only be saved by faith in Jesus Christ, but those who show such faith will be rewarded by Jesus setting up the millennium foreseen by the Old Testament prophets.

By contrast, Postmillennialists believe that the "millennium" is figurative and will be created by the Church through a gradual process of converting the nations to Christianity. Jesus will return only after this process is finished. Amillennialists also regard the "millennium" as symbolic, and often identify it with the Church or the Church age. In this scenario, the second advent of Jesus is immediately followed by the eternal state, without an intervening, literal millennium on Earth.

All four contributors to "The meaning of the millennium" are evangelicals or Reformed. The most readable is George Eldon Ladd, who offers a spirited defence of the Historic Premillennialist position. The Postmillennial contribution by Loraine Boettner is also quite interesting. The Amillennial and Dispensationalist texts are somewhat weaker, especially the latter. If you don't know what Dispensationalists teach, you won't be much wiser after reading this book!

But then, Dispensationalist Premillennialism hardly needs an introduction. It's the message peddled in Hal Lindsey's "Late Great Planet Earth" and the more recent "Left Behind" series, attributed to Tim LaHaye. Despite being weird and cultish, Dispensationalism is the most popular view of the end times among American fundamentalists, so popular that I was frankly surprised that other views even existed! The more absurd tenets of Dispensationalism aren't discussed in this volume, however. Instead, the other contributors concentrate on hermeneutics and the finer point of eschatology.

Dispensationalists claim to have a strictly "literal" interpretation of the Bible, and this is one of the major fault lines in this debate. The critics point out that Dispensationalists don't always interpret the Bible literally, that the New Testament itself doesn't always interpret the Old Testament literally, and that Old Testament prophecies applied by Christians to Jesus weren't always literally fulfilled. All this is quite true. Yet, it's somewhat ironic to hear conservative Christians explaining why you *can't* interpret the Bible absolutely literally. At least in Ladd's texts, there is also a tension between his rejection of a literal interpretation of the OT, and his view that the millennium in Revelation should be so interpreted.

Since both Dispensationalists and Historic Premillennialists are premillennial, one could assume that they should join forces against the postmillennial and amillennial positions. They don't. In fact, the Dispensationalist contributor accuses Ladd of adopting a hermeneutic more or less identical to that of amillennialism! This is certainly true, at least as far as the Old Testament goes. Another difference between the two premillennial camps is that the Dispensationalists believe that ethnic Israel still plays a special role in the divine plan, while Historic Premillennialists deny this, arguing instead that the Church has completely superseded Israel (a position sometimes polemically called "replacement theology"). Postmillennialists and amillennialists are also "replacement" theologians.

Since all four contributors are Protestants, they attempt to base their respective positions foursquarely on Scripture. It would have strengthened their case, had they pointed out that Dispensationalism probably didn't exist before the 19th century. It's a modern invention made at the margins of Christendom. The three other positions have deeper roots in Church tradition. Personally, I suspect that amillennialism was the original position of the earliest Christian believers. Ladd in a sense even admits this, writing that the millennial reign of Christ is a new revelation given to John at the end of the apostolic age and hence unknown before then (the millennium isn't mentioned in the gospels or Pauline epistles, for instance).

Be that as it may, I recommend "The meaning of the millennium" to all serious students of theology or comparative religion. It could also be of more general interest, since it shows that there are possible "Biblical" arguments against the strange notions of Lindsey, LaHaye and other purportedly super-literalist fundamentalists.