Why I am a dispensationalist with a small "d"

One of the disturbing things progressive dispensationalism seemed to be doing was making a mess of the clean lines of distinction that covenant theologians and dispensationalists had made in their sometimes noisy debates in the middle third of this century. The resultant muddle made people who desire clean categories uncomfortable. I was quite aware of this tension in 1987 since I had to wrestle through it hermeneutically in even considering the proposal. I think some of this reaction is perfectly understandable, given that theology is colored by the history of its battles, the temporal location of events, and the desire to know which side one is on. When progressives challenged the viability of the term "literal" in the recent debate and whether literalism really was an historical sine qua non of dispensationalism, all that did was confirm to many that our desire was to shed dispensationalism of its distinctive and thus in effect to join with or defect to the other side. 7

Unfortunately the claim of a connection missed the point. It made associations that on the surface were understandable but were both incorrect and gravely misleading. Theological assessment needs not only to consider what the conclusion is but how it was reached and what is being addressed. Craig Blaising has made three cogent points about "literal" interpretation.

1. The term is a poor one to use for a definition since one still has to define how one finds the "literal" in the text. Charles Ryrie also acknowledged this difficulty when he expressed preference for the term "normal" or "plain."9 This approach has been better known as historical-grammatical interpretation, a description that evangelicals have adopted and that Ryrie also accepted. lo This last concept is the best phrase for defining what interpretation should involve. The additional contention Blaising made was that all evangelicals are trying to do this, so that different conclusions are not the reflection of a different method but of a difference in integrating the texts.

2. A claim for consistent literal interpretation was not an historically clearly defined sine qua non for dispensationalism until the polemical debates of the middle of this century. Blaising's point about consistent literal interpretation was that this claim did not reflect the earliest dispensational writers, who clearly were comfortable with readings that were spiritualizations.ll They often engaged in typological readings of the text that were something less than what "literal" meant when it became a term of definition for Ryrie. Blaising's words summarize the historical situation well:

Consequently, Ryrie's remark [about consistently literal interpretation as a sine qua non], even though it failed as a description of dispensationalism's unchanging essence, nevertheless pointed a direction in which dispensational hermeneutics was to develop. The old principle of spiritualization has been left behind, and dispensationalists, first revised and then progressive, have pursued the goal of consistent historical-grammatical hermeneutics even as they developed it in meaning and method and in consultation with other evangelicals.l2