Thursday, October 19, 2006

Phil Johnson on PreTribbers and the Gospel

Phil Johnson's series on how he got drawn into the lordship debate is a fascinating narrative. Justin Taylor provides links to all eight parts of the series here.

He made a rather scathing comment in the final installment posted yesterday:
In short, it seems many leading dispensationalists are more concerned about the timing of the rapture than they are about the purity of the gospel message.
I'm a PreTribber myself, though I don't fit neatly into any of the stereotypical dispensationalist camps. Frankly, I couldn't possibly care less if that brings me scorn as an anti-intellectual. But I wholeheartedly, unequivocally agree with Johnson. This statement describes the vast majority of my experience with dispensationalism. It doesn't make dispensationalism wrong, but it speaks volumes about the dispensationalist movement.

3 comments:

Ben said...

Dave,

I completely agree with you that there is no necessary connection. But it also seems inescapable that pretribulationism is a far higher priority to many dispensationalists than repudiating the no-lordship position. And that's really all Johnson is saying. As he says, he's talking about "many leading dispensationalists," not suggesting that all fall into this category.

Ben said...

Dave,

As always, your historical perspective is invaluable. Although, I wonder if the perception of a connection does not make it even more prudent for dispensationalists to distance themselves from no-lordship proponents. That doesn't seem to have been the case, at least not in fundamentalist circles, or at the very least not until fairly recently.

By the way, how is MacArthur perpetuating this caricature. If anything, it seems that Johnson is the object of your complaint here. Or has MacArthur done this in the past? I guess that would surprise me, given his own rather strong dispensationalism. With Johnson's strong RB ties, I wouldn't be as surprised. But I'm merely speculating.

Anonymous said...

Those at the forefront of pretribulational theology in America are all guys out of touch with biblical salvation. I am a convinced pretribber. But I do get tired of the pretribbers out there turning biblical truth into sci-fi novels and video games.

Johnson's comment was dead on.