Geo-Political Israel vs. the Church: Contrasting Covenant Theology With Dispensationalism

[Arial]

CT and Dispensationalism are two different interpretive frameworks upon which Bible interpretation is built. These two frameworks determine how one interprets the whole of Scripture, and particularily how one interprets the OT. CT brings a unity of progression from creation to consummation within the whole (OT and NT); Dispensationalism creates a sharp divide between the two Testaments. We will look at how and why.

In classical dispensationalism the dispensations are distinct periods of time where God interacts with humanity in a particular way. These dispensations represents God's progressive revelation and testing of mankind throughout history.


The dispensations are as follows:
1. Innocence: creation to the Fall (Gen 1-3)
Human responsibility to obey God's command.
Failure and fall into sin.
Judgement and expulsion from Eden and a curse on creation.
2. Conscience: Fall to the flood (Gen 4-8)
Human responsibility to follow the inner moral compass and offer acceptable worship
Failure, increasing wickedness
Judgement: the flood
3. Human Government: post-flood to Babel (Gen 9-11)
Human responsibility: Govern righteously and scatter across the earth
Failure: Rebellion at Babel, attempt to build centralized tower
Judgment: Confusion of languages and scattering.
4. Promise (Patriarchal Rule) Abraham to Exodus (Gen 12-Exodus 19)
Human responsibility: Live by faith in God's promises
Failure: Slavery in Egypt due to reliance of Egypt and other compromises
Judgement: Egyptian bondage
5. Law: Sinai to the Cross (Exodus 20-John 19)
Human responsibility : Obey the Mosaic Law
Failure: Repeated national disobedience, idolatry
Judgment: Exile, destruction of the temple, and eventually, rejection of the Messiah
6. Grace (Church Age) Pentecost to the Rapture (Acts 2- the present)
Human responsibility: Salvation by grace through faith in Christ; live by the Spirit
Failure: Apostasy, lukewarmness, moral compromise (e.g., 2 Tim 3)
Judgment: Tribulation period
7. Kingdom (Millennial Reign) Second Coming to the end of the Millennium
Human responsibility : Obey Christ's reign
Failure: Rebellion by some at the end of the 1,000 years (Rev 20:7-10)
Judgment: Final defeat of Satan and Great White Throne Judgment
(The above information is from ChatGPT)

It is true that the above from Chat is not comprehensive, and may to some, not be totally accurate, but even so we can see that dispensations 6 and 7 have a premillennial Rapture a specific time period of tribulation as the judgement on Christ's church (and at the same time claims the church won't be here, having been raptured from the earth), and a literal thousand year reign of Christ on earth as his second coming, superimposed into its dispensational interpretive view. And it has geo/political Israel as the Kingdom of God during this thousand years.

Here are the contradictions to Scripture and to itself that produces.

It has the church age as the only age of grace when everything that God gives is grace. (And in my opinion, the covenant framework makes that same mistake, at least in the way they are wording things and making distinctions. More on that later).

A human responsibility is added to grace (Point 6).

It is the church that is said to be judged by the tribulation. (Christ says the gates of hell will not prevail against the church.)
It claims a pre-trib rapture of the church before the Tribulation.

It has Christ returning to reign for a thousand years in Jerusalem.
Who are these people he is ruling over? Those who survived God's judgement of the tribulation? The Jews who converted during it?

It has Jesus as a king ruling over people who rebel against his reign. (Rev 20)
A second judgement and the final defeat of Satan which he was apparently not able to do simply by appearing.


It is possible that ChatGPT has misrepresented some of the dispensations in its brevity (and corrections are welcome and we can deal with them here. There are variations in how dispensations are described.) But one thing is clear. The Kingdom of God has been divided into two kingdoms. If the Church is the Kingdom of God, and Israel on earth during this 1000 years is the kingdom, his kingdom is divided until such time as the church is returned.

According to the Chat depiction of the seventh dispensation, where are those raptured saints during that thousand years and when do they return?

I will address the Covenant view in Part 2 and put the pieces together. I would like to make a point here as to the direction I intend this thread to go. It is in the Apologetics forum for a reason. Even though it naturally touches of end times eschatology, it is posted in Aploogetics to encourage thoughtful discussion on these theological frameworks rather than to rehash common debate over Revelation's details.

 

[Arial]

Part 2: Covenant Theology Compared to Dispensationalism

Covenant theology begins with the eternal Covenant of Redemption (pactum salutis). This covenant is not stated explicitly in scripture but is derived from deductive reasoning through scriptures such as (John 6:37-39; John 17:4-6,24; Eph 1:3-5,9-11; 2 Tim 1:9; Titus 1:1-2; Heb 10:5-7; Heb 13:20).

It is an inter-trinitarian covenant before our world was created, to redeem a people who would fall into the hands of the kingdom of darkness, its ultimate goal being to destroy sin and death and evil. The Father sends the Son to redeem, the Son comes and does the work of redemption, the Holy Spirit applies that work to an individual, indwells and seals and works in them for sanctification.


That makes the entire Bible from the fall one story. The story of redemption as it plays out historically. Who will do this redeeming work and what he will do is announced in Gen 3:15. He will crush the serpents head. And that puts Christ as the primary character in this story, and the center of everything else that follows. The entire Bible is the Covenant of Redemption in all its parts. It never leaves a single page, no matter how deeply in the shadows it may be. It is the foundation of every other covenant God makes with man and creation. It comes out of the shadows in a lowly manger in Bethlehem as a baby. "Unto us a King is born!"

A covenant between God and mankind, or between God and his creation, is a relationship he establishes with his creatures and the world he made. It does not have to be labeled a covenant in order to be a covenant relationship. There was a covenantal relationship at creation, with all of creation. God creates. God sustains. God puts everything in its place, serving his purpose, and he provides. The relationship between God and Adam and Eve, used covenant language. "I will if you do." And consequences given for Adam and Eve if they violate the covenant stipulations. Which they did. They broke the covenant.

So, it is logical that God is dealing with and relating to humanity through covenants and not dispensations. Covenant theology does not see the Bible as a series of different ways in which God interacts with mankind; each one directed at human responsibility, failure, and judgement, as Dispensationalism does.

It sees the Bible, where it concerns mankind, as God forming a relationship with mankind, that he might be made known to us in the only way we can know him. By his own self revelation. Both his judgment and his mercy are shown through the covenant relationship. The covenant is the relationship. It is personal, not just an impersonal interaction.

So what about the Sinai Covenant? This is the place where Dispensationalism disconnects from Gen 3:15, and even more important, from the eternal Covenant of Redemption. The covenant with Abraham and his descendants, through Isaac and Jacob, is not a separate covenant from the Covenant of Redemption, but a critical part of it. It is the first long shadow of God taking a people for himself through a covenant relationship. Not just a few here and there, but the CR grows into a nation. But we read in scripture that not all Israel is Israel. Everyone in Israel was in that covenant relationship, but that was not the relationship that redeemed a people from the kingdom of darkness for God. That was a teaching covenant, where the eternal covenant rested while that Seed that would crush the serpents head passed from father to son, and time and the covenant with it moved steadily forward to the cold night when that Seed came to dwell among us, the very Son of God. It is not geo/political Israel that is at the center and ultimate purpose of the Sinai Covenant, it is Christ. It is not promises to geo/political Israel that are being fulfilled in history, but the promises made to Christ and through him. Israel stands, not as a geo/political power in history and according to Dispensationalism, in the future, but it stands as typifying the people of God who he brings into covenant relationship with himself. In Christ.

When we interpret Scripture through the frame work (that which holds a building up and shapes it), when covenant relationship becomes the bones of all doctrine and Interpretation, even end times eschatology holds fast and true. It remains Christ centered from beginning to end. It is build on the Rock and not the shifting sands of impersonal interaction by God in handing out responsibility, awaiting the failure, then exacting judgement, until finally he brings it all to a close. A reactive God. Covenant opens our eyes to the glory of his grace and mercy.

 

[EarlyActs]

Mostly good Arial, thanks.

Is the transfer of David's promises to Christ (Acts 13's quote of Is __) an important piece of the continuity of the covenant?

I have become much more of a historian than a theologian, and regarding what the NT was actually about, I highly encourage saturation in its history. My motto is now 'do history first, then theology.' Three passages especially become much more historical: Gal 3 (about voiding and canceling), Rom 10 about a righteousness of its own making, and Eph 3 about the membership of Gentiles in Israel and its promises in the Gospel (and so not through the Law).

The warning in Acts 3 about the 'humiliating disinheriting' is nearly the last public warning to Israel that it needed to be missionaries of the Gospel, not to charge into defense of its borders and places. And the warning came true.

 

[Josheb]

Two very good opening posts. @EarlyActs also alludes to an important distinction between Dispensational Premillennialism (DP) and Covenant Theology (CT): discontinuity versus continuity. Dispensational Premillennialism not only holds to distinct dispensations, it asserts the dispensations are (largely) discontinuous. The dispensations (and therefore the Bible) are not related to one another, nor are they dependent upon one another. They are not progressive the way CT holds scripture to be. There may be some degree of overlap between one dispensation and another, but not one to all others, or all to all others. CT takes the exact opposite and holds to the exact opposite position. I am also very pleased to read an open acknowledgment of CT's inferential nature because often times neither the DPist nor the CTist even knows or thinks about their respective theology being built on inference. One of the other chief distinctions is that a person can actually open their Bible and point to scripture itself marking itself by its covenants and referring to covenant "X" or "Y" in continuous, inherently related/dependent manner when that is not possible with dispensation. These are the foundation for what, in the end, results in a different Christology, as well as different soteriologies, ecclesiologies, and eschatologies.

One more important point. Some may consider this hair splitting, but I think it is important. There isn't actually anything that is just dispensationalism. The theology is Dispensational Premillennialism. That's a mouthful and a teeny-weeny bit laborious to type every time one wants to mention the theology, but the fact is Dispensationalism is inescapably premillennial. There is no non-premillennial form of Dispensationalism and its form of premillennialism is radically different than what has historically been taught. One could consider the discussion of Dispensational Premillennialism using the abbreviated label simply a matter of convenience, but I hold it to be disingenuous. Lots of teachers teach Dispensationalism as if the parsing of scripture according to dispensations is an ordinary practice when that is not the case. They also teach the use of dispensations as if it has nothing specifically to do with end times when the larger truth, the fact of the theology is that from its inception it has always been a theology much, much different than historical Historical Premillennialism, and DPists do not generally teach the whole truth. Books on the history of Dispensational Premillennialism (and perhaps @EarlyActs can attest to this) typically discuss the purported history of dispensationalism when, again, the fact is there is no such thing as dispensationalism apart from the premillennial modern futurism. They are not telling the whole truth. The early apologetics and systematic theologies of DPism will openly acknowledge DP moves the priority of classic Christian doctrines around; ecclesiology and eschatology are elevated to positions of emphasis or priority unknown prior to the 19th century when Christology and soteriology were (and continue to be) preeminent. Open acknowledgment is now not as common. Not teaching this fact, not knowing it, not realizing it, obscures the differences in Christology and soteriology and, therefore, the very serious and irreconcilable differences between DP and CT.


The Christ in whom we have placed our faith matters. The way we think the world ends has a great deal of influence on how we live today.

 

[Arial]

It has the church age as the only age of grace when everything that God gives is grace. (And in my opinion, the covenant framework makes that same mistake, at least in the way they are wording things and making distinctions. More on that later).

I said I was going to touch on this later and then didn't. I intended to do so in Part 2, but will do it now.

What I am about to say concerns my objection to the terms "church age" and "age of grace" and why I think it distracts unintentionally from the flow of the Covenant of Redemption, inserting an idea of dispensations. That distraction, however, can, and I believe in many cases does, throw interpretation of particularly OT prophecy, the book of Revelation, and the covenant promises made to Israel, into confusion. It has a mark of division between the two testaments (an age) instead of continuation. We often tend, then, to let the OT interpret the NT (which is what Dispensationalism does) and that is backwards. Much of redemption in Christ remained a mystery in the OT, and the mysteries can only be solved with the coming of Messiah, his life, teaching, death, resurrection and ascension. And/or we can temporally at least, forget we are interpreting through the long game, when so many OT passages so clearly pertain to Israel. We forget how to interpret those passages with Christ at the center, the Covenant of Redemption at the center, instead of Israel as a people and nation. Those passages become confusing to us, even substantiate the Dispensational view, because that is what that interpretive method does. That is how it interprets those passages. I will be the first to admit, that it is something I encounter within myself. It is not an easy thing to overcome.

I suspect that "church age" and "age of grace" as expressions in even CT, is a result of the distinction made in types of covenants being expressed as "covenant of works" juxtaposed with "covenant of grace". I fully understand why they are called that, but they are presented as two separate covenants rather than as types of covenants. The ever flowing, underpinning, of the Covenant of Redemption gets lost. As does the fact that any covenant God makes with mankind is by grace. So we have in essence, once again by use of language if not in actuality, dispensations creeping in as ways in which God is interacting with mankind. All the covenants that appear in history become isolated covenants of either works or grace, instead of an integral part of, serving a particular purpose in the Covenant of Redemption.

Even the awareness of what redemption is gets somewhat disconnected from the Covenant within the Godhead. What is redemption but one person paying the price someone else owes and that they are utterly unable to pay themselves, in their place, in order to set them free from the bondage of the debt. But the Covenant of Redemption with the Godhead before creation, uses these fallen people for a greater purpose than just our salvation. We are his servants. (What an honor!) He gathers us together as one flock in Christ, taking us out of Adam, out of the kingdom of darkness, and then destroys that serpent, crushes his head, and restores the perfection of creation, the holiness and purity of his people, all Israel, only now they are not mortal as they were "in the beginning" and not perishable, as they were "in the beginning". By who, and through who and for who? Christ. Scripture is to be interpreted through the long game, the Covenant of Redemption. It's purpose and consummation. The Alpha and Omega. We have been given the whole picture.

 

[Josheb]

...........And/or we can temporally at least, forget we are interpreting through the long game, when so many OT passages so clearly pertain to Israel.

It is worth mentioning there are very few verses in the Bible that use the word, "Israel," specifically as a reference to geo-political nation-state Israel. Israel was first used in reference to one, single individual, not a group of people. When God began using the word to describe more than one person it was centuries before the geo-political nation-state Israel ever existed. The word "Israel" literally means "God perseveres" and if the Bible is (re-)read with that definition consciously in mind every time the word is mentioned then the Bible has an entirely different meaning than if the word is thought only to mean a specific geo-political nation-state.

1 Samuel 9:16
"About this time tomorrow I will send you a man from the land of Benjamin, and you shall anoint him to be prince over My people Israel; and he will deliver My people from the hand of the Philistines. For I have regarded My people, because their cry has come to Me."

1 Samuel 9:16 (with the Hebraic definition of the word applied)
"About this time tomorrow I will send you a man from the land of Benjamin, and you shall anoint him to be prince over My people in whom I persevere; and he will deliver My people from the hand of the Philistines. For I have regarded My people, because their cry has come to Me."

1 Samuel 9:16 (with the political definition applied)
"About this time tomorrow I will send you a man from the land of Benjamin, and you shall anoint him to be prince over My people the geo-political nation-state; and he will deliver My people from the hand of the Philistines. For I have regarded My people, because their cry has come to Me."

Big difference.

Romans 11:25-27 ESV
Lest you be wise in your own sight, I do not want you to be unaware of this mystery, brothers: a partial hardening has come upon Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. And in this way all Israel will be saved, as it is written, “The Deliverer will come from Zion, he will banish ungodliness from Jacob”; “and this will be my covenant with them when I take away their sins.”

Romans 11:25-27 (with the Hebraic definition of the word applied)
Lest you be wise in your own sight, I do not want you to be unaware of this mystery, brothers: a partial hardening has come upon Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. And in this way all in whom I persevere will be saved, as it is written, “The Deliverer will come from Zion, he will banish ungodliness from Jacob”; “and this will be my covenant with them when I take away their sins.”


Romans 11:25-27 (with the political definition applied)
Lest you be wise in your own sight, I do not want you to be unaware of this mystery, brothers: a partial hardening has come upon Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. And in this way all the geopolitical nation-state will be saved, as it is written, “The Deliverer will come from Zion, he will banish ungodliness from Jacob”; “and this will be my covenant with them when I take away their sins.”


Big difference.

We forget how to interpret those passages with Christ at the center, the Covenant of Redemption at the center, instead of Israel as a people and nation.

Amen

 

[Arial]

It is worth mentioning there are very few verses in the Bible that use the word, "Israel," specifically as a reference to geo-political nation-state Israel. Israel was first used in reference to one, single individual, not a group of people. When God began using the word to describe more than one person it was centuries before the geo-political nation-state Israel ever existed. The word "Israel" literally means "God perseveres" and if the Bible is (re-)read with that definition consciously in mind every time the word is mentioned then the Bible has an entirely different meaning than if the word is thought only to mean a specific geo-political nation-state.

Good point. Israel as a nation and people has been shoved down our throats as the "whole point" of, or at least separate point of and the main point of, the Bible, surpassing Christ---it actually becomes his main purpose and the church is secondary purpose----that it is very difficult to recognize the meaning of Israel, and certainly its purpose in the Covenant of Redemption. Dispensationalism ( and apologies, I am going to continue to use that term as an overarching way of identifying an interpretive system that divides history into dispensations identifies them as ways in which God interacts with mankind to test and judge humanity. It affects a millennial view because it skews interpretation from Gen 1 onward) I don't think, though I may be wrong, even recognizes the pactum salutis . Probably even denies that such a Covenant of Redemption exists.

 

[Josheb]

It affects a millennial view because it skews interpretation from Gen 1 onward) I don't think, though I may be wrong, even recognizes the pactum salutis . Probably even denies that such a Covenant of Redemption exists.

Classic Dispensational Premillennialism as taught by Darby, Chafer, Ryrie and a few others is also classically Reformed in its soteriology, or so they say.

Because of the (misguided) ecclesiology a misguided soteriology results. They defend salvation by grace through faith but in reality the logical necessity of Dispensational Premillennialism's two-peoples ecclesiology and their particular view of the millennium the results are a two-pronged salvation in which one prong is classic salvation by grace and the other is salvation by works. While they admirably defend salvation by grace, they rarely, if ever (I have yet to read any leader even mention the matter), confront, address, and repudiate the fact the eschatology has Jews (geopolitical, nation-state Jews) recapturing all of the promised land, building a temple, reconstituting the Levitical priesthood, and reinstituting animal sacrifices (all of which they may or may not acknowledge were done away with by Christ at Calvary). Logically speaking, that is salvation by works. Even if grace is thrown in there it is salvation by grace plus works and that is bad soteriology. As far as the pactum salutis goes, whether the overarching redemptive covenant is acknowledged or not (some do and some don't, but the former are usually old-school dispies) the Jew-have-to-do-a-bunch-of-stuff-before-being-brought-to-salvation teaching is a works-based salvation.

And that is why two of the six main problems I list pertaining to DPism are the compromised core doctrines and the dissociated living. No one - I do not care who they are - can logically claim salvation is by grace alone AND also simultaneously claim Jews have to work before God saves them.

The matter of the pactum salutis is made worse because of the growing influence of volitionalism in soteriology . More and more modern futurists are identifying with Traditionalism and Provisionism (often under the auspices of Arminianism) and holding views incompatible with the pactum salutis and claims thereof. Either the covenant theme gets denied or dissociation ensues. Not that I think our current star dispy is representative of all dispies, but we are witnessing these inconsistencies live in all the recent threads on DP millennialism. That CHART I often reference unequivocally shows no one but DP thinks modern Israel (the geopolitical nation-state) is relevant to Christian eschatology. That chart was penned by a Dispy! They know they teach something different from everyone else.

There is one point within DPism that may support your position irrefutably. It is the fact they tend to start their understanding of the covenant with Genesis 17. They often don't start with Gen. 15, or Gen 12 (when Abe was first called). Noah's covenant is in a different dispensation and dispensations are discontinuous so... even if the pactum salutis is acknowledged it is held in a much different frame of reference but in practice there's a huge disconnection and denial because the covenant relationship does not begin until Gen.17 AND the inherent Christological relationship of that covenant (and all others) is not taught. I've got a conversation going in another forum and no one outside of the Reformed pov even understands the phrase, or how the covenants are Christological . That's not limited to DPists, though. The point is that it is difficult to acknowledge a pactum salutis that begins with creation if the covenant doesn't start until late in Abraham's life.

 

[Arial]

The point is that it is difficult to acknowledge a pactum salutis that begins with creation if the covenant doesn't start until late in Abraham's life.

Just pointing out something here that is different from what I see as, and I think is the foundation of pactum salutis. It did not begin at creation. It actually had no beginning because it is within the eternal and there is no beginning within the eternal. It has a beginning of entering history. And it may just be that you unintentionally worded it the way you did. If not---well no big deal. The beginning of it entering history is at creation and its first announcement and when it became active (moving forward through history), is Gen 3:14-15. That is my view.

 

[Josheb]

Just pointing out something here that is different from what I see as, and I think is the foundation of pactum salutis. It did not begin at creation. It actually had no beginning because it is within the eternal and there is no beginning within the eternal. It has a beginning of entering history. And it may just be that you unintentionally worded it the way you did. If not---well no big deal. The beginning of it entering history is at creation and its first announcement and when it became active (moving forward through history), is Gen 3:14-15. That is my view.

Understood. I'd dive into that with you were it not digressive. The salient point is that the covenant of redemption is a single covenant, so it begs a pile of questions to say there are two different people with two different purposes with two different destinies (that are disconnected from each other), one here on earth and another in heaven. Logic dictates that amounts to two (salvific) covenants, not one.

For the sake of the thread, I'd be interested in reading about the CT version of what the DPs call dispensations (innocence, conscience, etc., especially the Christological aspects and especially the last four or five because this is where the most obvious discontinuity v continuity divides occur. The New Testament is repeatedly applying the OT to believers, just not as either the OT would normally read or as the Jews interpreted it. How can any Christian neglect (or ignore or deny) the typological and allegorical nature, and soteriological significance of Egypt and the slavery thereof?



Hebrews 3:16-19
For who provoked Him when they had heard? Indeed, did not all those who came out of Egypt led by Moses? And with whom was He angry for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies fell in the wilderness? And to whom did He swear that they would not enter His rest, but to those who were disobedient? So we see that they were not able to enter because of unbelief.

Jude 1:5
Now I desire to remind you, though you know all things once for all, that the Lord, after saving a people out of the land of Egypt, subsequently destroyed those who did not believe.

Romans 9:6-9
But it is not as though the word of God has failed. For they are not all Israel who are descended from Israel; nor are they all children because they are Abraham's descendants....................... it is not the children of the flesh who are children of God, but the children of the promise are regarded as descendants....


How can the covenant nature and continuity (of these "dispensations") be denied when scripture itself applies the OT to the saints?

 

[Arial]

For the sake of the thread, I'd be interested in reading about the CT version of what the DPs call dispensations (innocence, conscience, etc., especially the Christological aspects and especially the last four or five because this is where the most obvious discontinuity v continuity divides occur. The New Testament is repeatedly applying the OT to believers, just not as either the OT would normally read or as the Jews interpreted it. How can any Christian neglect (or ignore or deny) the typological and allegorical nature, and soteriological significance of Egypt and the slavery thereof?

I will look into it tomorrow and see what I find. If I can get a comparison or figure one out with what I do know already.

When I first came to Christ, and for the first we years I actually believed the dispensational pre-trib rapture and a chronological Revelation. I did not know it was dispensationalism and I did not know that their interpretations were based on dispensations. That part was never taught in the places where I was. I believed it because they make it sound true and nothing else was taught. And even after I learned what it was and moved on from and away from it, I did not look deeply into it. It has actually been on forums and having the need to look things up that I have learned much. And what strikes me the most is how badly it distorts everything by that one thing. Seeing salvation through the lens of dispensations. It chops the entire story of redemption up and loses sight of the Seed the minute it gets to Gen 3:16. It jumps ahead, as you said in another post, to Abraham and track redemption through Isaac and Jacob with narry a thought to Gen 3:15 or Christ, the Seed.

How can the covenant nature and continuity (of these "dispensations") be denied when scripture itself applies the OT to the saints?

Agreed and good point. All dispensationalist are able to see is that tiny plot of land. The cross and the NC are what goes into the shadows.