Sozo
supplied a link in the comments section
a little bit ago with a pretty good chart showing the differences of Covenant
Theology, New Covenant Theology and Dispensationalism. The chart
doesn’t go into the differences in dispensationalism and even states as much
being very open to the fact that it is written from an NCT point of view. I do
have certain problems with the chart and the brother’s commentary.
Sadly, it’s something that I’ve often noticed—this
propensity to bash dispensationalists as being foolish and inconsistent. This
is extremely hurtful when considering that dispensationalists read the same
inspired Scriptures. To snap at each other, unleashing the tongue, is most
harmful.
Brother Doug makes it a
point to not mire himself in eschatology
and in so doing he proves how much wiser he is than myself. I’m not going to
answer every single point in the chart but I will address some things which
hearken to those rash generalizations and presumptions that are so often being
made by non-dispensationalists.
[DISP]
Stresses 'literal' interpretation of the Bible.
[CT] Accepts both literal and figurative (spiritual) interpretation of the
Bible.
[NCT] Same as CT.
This
is fundamentally correct. The chart does seem to imply that CT and NCT make
sense because they acknowledge literal and figurative interpretation. The
problem is that they make a point to show that figurative means spiritual. They
don’t mean the same thing.
Sure
dispensationalists stress literal reading of the text and literal
interpretation but that’s in the same sense that you would read any single
book. It doesn’t ignore the rules of language, or figurative writing, or
metaphorical expressions—not at all. It looks at the literal words and what
they mean and how they’re being used to draw the meaning of the passage.
Spiritualization is the process by which you take a literal event and make it
mean something spiritual, sacred or religious.
Now
someone may have a problem with this and say something absurd like “I have yet
to meet a dispensationalist who believes in a literal dragon ruling the world”.
Dispensationalists read with the grammatical usage used in the period the text
was written to establish the meaning of the passage. So when a
dispensationalist reads about this “dragon” he reads with the understanding
that this is what John historically saw in his vision. When John offers an
interpretation we understand the literal meaning of what he saw—he told us.
“Oh, the dragon is that old serpent, who is the Devil”. Most of the time when
there are really wild pictures like that in Scripture, there is an
interpretation nearby.
Why
use this method of interpretation? Paul tells us that the Word of God is
profitable (2 Ti 3:16)
and that starts to tell me that if it has that many uses—it has to be pretty
specific and clear cut. Every single word in there serves a purpose and is
tremendously important if one is going to see doctrine, correct others,
instruct each other and reprove some others.
Even
the language it was written would then play a role in interpreting the text. It
wasn’t written in Chinese or in German—but God chose Greek and Hebrew and
Aramaic to convey meaning to man. Since Scripture is of no man’s own source we should
then be more willing to see what God has stated when he moved men to write
(2Pet 1:20,
21).
That
being the case let’s drop the loaded word “literal”. Dispensationalists then 1)
Use the plain meaning of the word without spiritualizing it and 2) note that
the text will set up the basis for interpretation. (Ice, p 32)
-r-
Thomas
D. Ice “Dispensational Hermeneutics,” in Issues in Dispensationalism.
Willis and Master, eds, 1994
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Apologetics/Discussion 
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