Dispensationalism, and the Two Meanings of "Literal"

A "literal interpretation" of biblical texts is widely recognized as one of the essential marks of dispensational theology. But what does it mean to "take a text literally"? In the conversations between dispensationalists and various other groups, two definitions tend to emerge. When both definitions are in play simultaneously, confusion is inevitable. Let's take a quick look at the two:

1. "Literal" = the opposite of "figurative." I think everyone agrees that genres like poetry and apocalyptic literature often use imagery. Many people understand that imagery to be figurative, or "non-literal."

2. "Literal" = what the author intended to communicate. In other words, to take a text "literally" is to interpret it in the way that the author intended for it to be understood. As an example, no one (ok well let's hope no one . . .) thinks that when Jesus said "I am the door," he meant he was a piece of wood that swings on hinges to control access to an entry to an enclosure. But there is a point of analogical correspondence between a physical door and who Jesus is/what he does.

Both of these uses of the term "literal" are valid. It's a natural property of human language for words to carry different usages in different contexts. That's called a "semantic range [of meaning]." The problem is that some people use one meaning of "literal" as a stick to beat people who use the other meaning. Worse yet, some people who wield that stick also use the meaning that they beat others for using.

Let me put it a different way. Everybody agrees that the Bible contains figurative language—imagery. Some people think that "figurative" language should be interpreted "literally"—in the way the author intended that language to be understood. They're using the second definition appropriately. Other people argue that "figurative" language is inherently "non-literal." They're using the first definition appropriately.

But both groups recognize that the Bible contains imagery—words and combinations of words that describe things that are only metaphorically related to the normal usage of those words. Those words and combinations of words paint pictures or show points of comparison that make the author's point in the way that he (under inspiration) concluded was most effective.

A particular group of people (many dispensationalists) maintain that they are the only true "literal interpreters." They decide what portions of the Bible are figurative, and then stipulate that the definition of a "literalist" is someone who agrees with their conclusions. Someone who sees more biblical imagery than they do "isn't taking the Bible literally." They often interchange definitions of "literal" on the fly in an argument to support their conclusions.

The argument over who takes the Bible literally and who doesn't is NOT a question of whether the Bible contains figurative language. Everyone agrees that it does. The argument is also NOT over whether we should interpret the text in the way that the *author intended. Most everyone, at least among biblical inerrantists, would agree on this point as well. Rather, the argument is essentially a debate over which parts of the Bible consist of imagery and which parts do not. This is a valid and reasonable argument, but too often it has been distorted into deceitful propaganda designed to portray certain positions as compromising with theological liberalism.



*There is a relevant and worthwhile discussion over whether the meaning intended by the human author is always precisely equivalent to the meaning intended by the Divine Author, but for purposes of this discussion I'm assuming that the Divine Author is the primary and ultimate author.

1611 + 400!

Time to get this party started.

Without a Hint of Irony

J. I. Packer and the Evangelical Future, Timothy George's compilation of the talks at a 2006 conference, isn't particularly absorbing. A few chapters are intriguing, Carl Trueman's in particular. It's actually unclear to me why Dever's criticisms provoke more defensiveness in Packer's concluding chapter (Dever = "Sheriff of Nottingham"), when Trueman probes more bluntly. Maybe you had to be there. But that's another matter.

What made me chuckle was Chuck Colson's assessment of the rising threat of postmodernism. Colson, many will recall, was one of the driving forces behind Evangelicals and Catholics Together (ECT). ECT created quite a stir back in the 90s, and that stir still reverberates from time to time. Summary: Groups of evangelicals and Roman Catholics signed a document that both could affirm, and a portion of that document was a statement on justification. Numerous critiques, supported by corroborating evidence, argued that the two groups didn't really reach agreement on justification. Rather, they forged careful wording that both groups could infuse with their own divergent definitions.

With that story as a backdrop, it's extraordinary to read Colson's warnings against postmodern epistemology, written without a hint of irony. Though he describes in the passage below those who deny the possibility of knowing truth, his words apply equally to those who craft ambiguity:

[W]e are living in this great age of relativism where my truth is my truth and your truth is your truth, and we can have it any way we fashion it. (132-133)

And later:

If we do not take truth seriously, we will not take God seriously. The crisis we face in this country, unless we find a way to winsomely engage the postmodern culture, is that people will not take our God seriously. They may like having our God as an experience. They may want something from it. But they are not going to take it seriously. The problem, however, is not just in our culture today. The problem is also in our church, where we have stopped taking truth seriously. (134)

That's breathtakingly ironic, but incontrovertibly true.

A Really Dull Post on Statements of Faith for the Other Polity Nerds

I think Baptists are losing sight of the purpose of a statement of faith (SoF).

You can do lots of things with a SoF. You can not have one. Some no-creed-but-the-Bible Baptists think this is the way to go. You can also have one and ignore it—or at least ignore any semblance of historic continuity in the meaning of words. That'd make you a theological liberal, or maybe a contemporary, a-theological quasi-evangelical, cultural Baptist. And I suspect there may be lots of highly conservative Baptist churches in those two categories that are careless or simply don't think much about ecclesiology.

Those categories don't particularly interest me. Not today, anyway. Two other categories do:

1. Some Baptists use SoFs as a standard for leadership and public teaching but not membership. This approach is also common among elder-rule Bible churches and MacArthur-circle churches.

2. Some Baptists use SoFs as a summary of the minimum all members must affirm in order for them to function together as a church. I say "some." I'm tempted to say "most" SoF-users, if we were to count Baptists throughout church history, but I'll leave that to the bona fide historians.

My argument is that the latter option best represents biblical congregationalism. Why? Because the NT teaches that the congregation is responsible for the discipline and doctrine of the church. Not everyone agrees:

A doctrinal statement is not a requirement for church membership or ministry. A person may join a church being untaught, and not knowing enough to agree or disagree. A person may join a church agreeing to disagree. In such cases, the church can rightly expect that the member will not attempt to divide the congregation over the issues.

Just one problem with that. Well, at least one problem. Who can join a church? Any professing believer? But a believer in what? The gospel? What's the gospel? Doesn't the gospel consist of things we believe—matters of faith? Can a convictional Presbyterian join a Baptist church? An open theist? An anti-inerrantist? Someone who believes Jesus was an ordinary man adopted by God and infused with the divine nature? Frankly, I suspect that all of these churches really do have a functional minimum common affirmation for membership, though they may not realize it. They just haven't faced a sticky situation yet.

Now, this approach might work in a baptistic, but minimally congregational elder-rule church, in which the congregation exercises no meaningful oversight in matters of doctrine. At least it might work for a while. But it's not at all difficult to see why an authentically Baptist, congregational church would be ill-suited to sustain its doctrine, regardless of what the present leadership is committed to teach. Church history is littered with examples of confessional churches and institutions that tragically abandoned their confessions. Are we to assume that a non-confessional church will be more stable?

A SoF in a Baptist church ought to be a minimum summary of what its members must commonly believe in order to function as a church. There's a worthwhile discussion over what needs to appear in that minimum summary. We should neither demand too much nor too little. But to diminish the significance of that SoF, whatever it does or does not include, is to undermine the very principles the SoF affirms.

Black Robed Lemmings

CT reports on the Washington, DC Beck-scapades and his evangelical courtesans. Beck says:

"We can disagree on politics," Beck said. "These men and women here don't agree on fundamentals. They don't agree on everything that every church teaches. What they do agree on is God is the answer."

Um, yeah, but what if false gods offer the wrong answers? It's just astonishingly ironic to me that people who claim to be horrified at our cultural moral relativism so naïvely embrace religious pluralism under the guise of changing culture.

Most Influential Books in My Life: #s 1-5

Here's the second installment on the books (other than Scripture) that have influenced me most—not necessarily my top recommendations, but in God's kind providence, the ones that shaped my understanding of the gospel, Scripture, and following Christ more than any others . . .

5. Gary Friesen, Decision Making and the Will of God. This is actually a minor oops on my part. Piper's The Pleasures of God should be slotted in at #5 ahead of Friesen, but no biggie. The original edition, which I read, had some flaws—mostly debatable overstatements, as I remember—but it exploded the functional mysticism I'd absorbed from various strains of teaching. Rather, not everything is black or white, right or wrong. Sometimes the process we use in making a decision is more important than the conclusion. The more my affections are fixed on Christ, the more my motivations and preferences will be conformed to his.

4. John MacArthur, Study Bible. Though my first read was the NKJV, I'm linking to the brand spanking new ESV—available today, in fact, according to Amazon. Though "I don't agree with everything John MacArthur says," reading through every word of the notes along with the text was invaluable. It exposed me to a plausible interpretation of all sorts of difficult texts and a pretty comprehensive, coherent system of theology and biblical interpretation.

3. Doug Moo, The Epistle to the Romans. Could easily be #2 OR #1. The first time through, it taught me sanctification by grace through faith, not works or human effort. For me and, I think, others in the class, this was a radical shift that's difficult to overestimate. The second time through, it started me on a trajectory that rebuilt my hermeneutics, as I began to grasp how Paul read the OT.

2. D.A. Carson, Exegetical Fallacies. I hope Carson forever changed how I preach. I'm quite certain he forever changed how I listen to preaching. Would it be reasonable to suggest that no one should set foot into a pulpit without reading this? It's just far too easy and immeasurably too costly to mishandle the Word of God, not to dig into this simple gem. Thanks to Ed Williams' classroom presentation requirement and Nashotah House's extensive library of old periodicals, Samuel Sandmel's article on "Parallelomania" is forever burned into my brain.

1. A.W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God. It's interesting to me how both of my top 2 are such small books. And I still don't quite understand how Tozer made it so clear to me for the first time that the Christian life is about cultivating an internal affection for God, not working towards external reformation in order to earn his favor. I'm not sure I'll ever know whether he said something I'd never heard before, or whether the Spirit simply brought it to bear so that it seemed brand new. Other books changed the way I think and what I believe. This one changed my heart.

Irrefutable.

Anybody up for some bacon-wrapped shrimp?

"Christian" Doesn't Always Mean the Same Thing

One of the complaints with the Manhattan Declaration was that the use of the term "Christian" to refer indiscriminately to evangelical, Roman Catholic, and Orthodox groups compromised the gospel. Some argued that since these groups do not share the same gospel, using the term to apply to each group implies an indifference to gospel clarity.

It may be argued (as I have) that signing the MD was naïve, imprudent, unhelpful, and at best meaningless. It may also be argued that this usage of "Christian" creates a troublesome ambiguity. But this assertion, on the basis of its use of "Christian," that it actually compromises the gospel is simply unsustainable. "Christian" doesn't always mean the same thing. And it's not just me saying that. It's Kevin Bauder writing here:

[T]he term Christian is used in more than one sense. In the strict and proper sense, it applies only to those who affirm all the fundamentals of the Faith, including the imputation of Christ’s righteousness and justification through faith alone. In this sense, the Roman church of today is not a Christian church and most medieval Catholics were probably not Christian either. In a less technical sense, however, the word Christian can be used to distinguish those who affirm Trinitarian orthodoxy from infidels, pagans, and cultists. In that sense Catholicism can be called Christian, and that is the sense in which the Middle Ages were influenced by Christian categories.

The Northland Way of Discipleship

This is quite helpful, both in what it denies . . .

Discipling the heart is so much more demanding than disciplining actions. A rule book chock full of hundreds of prescriptive restrictions and patterns of conformity doesn’t get to an effective discipling of the heart very often. We can achieve outward conformity while never achieving inward transformation. Conversely, it’s even possible to do many good and wonderful things and still miss the mark. If good deeds are not done in love, they are worthless. Chapter 13 of First Corinthians warns us of this.

. . . and in what it affirms . . .

[W]e cannot rely on an artificial system that’s built simply on the accounting of "external wrongs" to discern the level of spiritual vitality. We have seen how easily these systems can be gamed and never get to the business of discipling the heart. Because of this, we ask our faculty, staff, administration, and student body to covenant together in immersive, life-touching-life discipleship. We intentionally get involved in the lives of our students so that real, Christ-modeled discipleship can occur. We humbly pray with full reliance on the Holy Spirit to accomplish the transformative work of Christlikeness within the heart of each and every student. And from this work, we pray that our students will become true followers of Christ who will deny themselves, take up their crosses, go to the far reaches of this world, and make disciples of others also.

Few institutions could have produced this document, and fewer still could actually implement it.

HT