Understanding Dispensationalists

I spent the last week on vacation catching up on some reading for Sunday School, etc. I read a few essays out of the book Continuity and Discontinuity, found here; this is a collection of essays in a point-counterpoint format between Covenant theologians and dispensationalists.

I have never seriously paid much attention to what the Dispensationalists have to say--at least, the scholarly dispensationalists. We are all familiar with the popular dispensationalists (who hasn't heard of the "Left Behind" series?) even if we don't know them by name. It seems that they, by winning the hearts of most publishers of popular Christian books, have won the day when it comes to the average Christian's understanding of the Scriptures, the OT in particular. By God's grace, I was brought up in my faith in the richness of Covenant Theology, and always had a healthy skepticism for their elaborate end-times schemes, their supposedly "literal" interpretation of Biblical prophesy, and their circle-the-wagons mentality towards Christian living. However, many modern American evangelicals take what they say for granted. I'm hoping to uncover some of the fallacies of their thinking in some upcoming Sunday School lessons, which is the reason I was reading some of their stuff this week.

Two things struck me as I read. The first is the fact that there is really a wide swath of common ground between the two points of view. I had always understood dispensationalists to claim that there were different means of salvation for different "dispensations" of God's dealing with mankind. While this idea was set forth in the original Scofield Reference Bible, it has since been refuted by more recent dispensational scholarship (as set forth, I understand, in the New Scofield Reference Bible). Apparently, there is much common ground, at least on the scholarly level.

The second thing that struck me was how hyper-individualized the dispensationalists are--and this, I suspect, is the source of their difficulties with covenant theology in the areas in which they do disagree. They spend a great deal of time trying to figure out exactly what it was that an OT believer actually had faith in. How, they ask, can a Covenant theologian really believe that Abraham had faith in Jesus of Nazareth? How could he have applied the "Four Spiritual Laws" to Joseph? How could someone like Rahab have been a "Christian"? What I think they are missing is an understanding of God's covenant faithfulness to his people, not simply to individuals. God's purpose in redemption is to save a people unto Himself, not just to be the Lord and Savior of individual lives. Taking that into account, we can look at a believer like Abraham, about whom we are told he "believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness", and understand better the substance of his faith. Paul tells us in Galatians 3 that the gospel was preached to Abraham--and that gospel was "in you all nations shall be blessed." Abraham believed this, and it was credited to him as righteousness. He didn't have to follow some four spiritual laws to become connected with Yahweh; he simply believed what Yahweh told him. We, as Christians in the post-advent period of history, are in a same (but more glorious) position; we have the (now more gloriously-revealed) promises of God to be our God and take us for His people: we, too, must believe. The faith that is exercised in this belief is better understood by us as being in Christ--faith in his life, death, and resurrection that justify us before our Father and unite us to His glorified Son. But, in the bare bones reality of the situation, we have the same faith as Abraham. There is no difference. Dispensationalists want toot nit-pick particulars of a faith we cannot possibly be asked to understand, at least in the terms that they want to present it. Covenant theology teaches that God has always chosen his people and utilized the exercise of their faith/belief in attaching them to Himself. There is no discontinuity here at all.