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Re: What he said...
 
loquat1 Views: 475
Published: 7 y
 
This is a reply to # 2,387,308

Re: What he said...


Where did you and Loquat get this crazy idea?

You need to understand that there are several different flavours of chiliasm, aka premillennialism. Its most extreme form - Dispensationalism - is not only the most dominant in terms of influence and numbers, but also makes precisely this sharp distinction between Israel and the church that you fault me for critiquing. However, unlike trapper's preferred polemical tactic, this is no straw man that I have set up:

The doctrinal differences herein discussed are due to the fact that the two schools of interpretation stand on widely divergent premises. The Dispensationalist believes that throughout the ages, God is pursuing two distinct purposes: one related to the earth with earthly people and earthly objectives involved, while the other is related to heaven with heavenly people and heavenly objectives involved, which is Christianity.1

The heart of the Dispensational system is not seven dispensations, nor a pretribulation rapture of the Church. It is the notion that God has two peoples, Israel and the Church, and two programs - a theocratic program for Israel and a redemptive program for the Church. Israel is a national people with material blessings and an earthly destiny; the Church is a universal people with spiritual blessings and a heavenly destiny. The oft-used verse 'rightly dividing the word of truth', means to discern which of the Scriptures apply to Israel and those which apply to the Church. Judaism and Christianity: these are two biblical religions which must not be confounded or confused.2

The essence of Dispensationalism is not in the recognition of various distinctions in biblical history..... no, the sine qua non of Dispensationalism lies in the radical distinction between Israel and the Church - God has two peoples, and two distinct purposes for them.3 

Dispensationalism is a hermeneutical problem, and one of the earliest and most far-reaching hermeneutical struggles of the early church centred on the Marcionitic system. Marcion maintained that the God of the Old Testament was a different person from the God of the New. The one was the God of the Jews, while the New Testament was concerned with Jesus the Christian God. Logically, according to his principles, he excised from the canon of the N.T. the writings that he thought were 'Jewish' which included much of the gospels, leaving an expurgated version of Luke's Gospel. If the gnostic context of Marcion's system is replaced by the separatist background of the early nineteenth century his method sounds strangely familiar. In Darby's case, of course, Jewish writings were different from Marcion's selection: which perhaps shows how subjective the selection must be. This time they were not removed from the canon, but simply relegated, in effect, to the Old Testament. Is not this, practically, to divide the mind of God as well as the community of the redeemed children of God? This is not merely a theoretical question. We are well aware of the untold suffering and cruelty which has resulted from the rigid principles of separation enjoined on the most extreme exclusive brethren. One may point out to these people that this is surely contrary to the Lord's teaching in the Sermon on the Mount. The retort is that this teaching is irrelevant today. The God of the Jews is so utterly different from the Christian God that his basic laws of conduct are of no relevance to Christians. This would seem to be Marcionism with a vengeance, and one suspects that it is the logical consequence of a faulty hermeneutical method within dispensationalism itself.4 

REFS:
1. ‘Dispensationalism’ by Lewis Sperry Chafer, p.107
2. Christianity Today, Oct 12 1959, p.264. Book review by George Eldon Ladd
3. The Jnl of the Christian Brethren Research Fellowship, No.17, Jan. 1968, p.26, article by W Ward Gasque
4. The Jnl of the Christian Brethren Research Fellowship, No.17, Jan. 1968, p.25, article by T C F Stunt

I hope that's enough evidence for you to show that I have not invented this idea just so I can beat you around the ears with a stick. As for links to the same effect, there are millions of them. Well, at least thousands anyway. If you can't find any, I'll be more than happy to oblige.

 

 
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