Over the weekend I started reading the required reading for my next class. The book is called Dispensationalism and is written by Charles Ryrie. Before I started reading this book I knew that it was going to be a chore, seeing that I am not a dispensationalist. However I had no idea how difficult it was going to be to make it through this fairly short 213 page book. Every time I prepare to read I pray that I would not get frustrated with the bashing of other Christians systems of theology and that I would not slam the book closed through the arrogant uttering of the authors view of his system of theology and how all other pail in comparison to the grandeur that is dispensationalism. In the preface of the book Frank Gaebelein was polite enough to inform me that this is an apologetic for the system of dispensationalism, however through the first half of the book I have not seen nearly as much defense of the system as I have pure unwarranted praise of the system accompanied by more unnecessary bashing of covenant theology. I think that this book needs to be revised yet again and this time made to be more humble in its explanation of the views of the dispensationalist. I would not recommend this book to anybody. I know that there have to be other sources for the explanation of dispensationalism, and the fact that my school has this on our reading list and will eventually make me write a paper on this hunk of blended trees really makes me sad.
Yeah. It never really stops in that book. I decided to take the class as a pass/fail because the assignment involving the book would have been too long for me to write. Shock wanted us to write a paper about what we learned from the book, and what we agree/disagree with about the book. I could have either lied and done the minimum 12 page paper, or been honest. Then again, I didn’t have time to write a 50 page paper, so I decided to take the cheap way out and not write it.
I don’t know what I’m going to do.
Well, I tend to rant, which is one of the reasons my paper would have been so long. Also, Shockley would demand a lot more out of a anti-dispensationalism paper than Loken, so you should be okay.
I used to rail against dispensationalism. One day my friend asked me, “why aren’t you killing sheep and doves”? Then it hit me, God has dealt with mankind in different ways throughtout history. It’s the delineation of that process where the disagreements take place. I think the whole Scofield/Ryrie dispensations is arbitrary and man-made. But for a whole generation of Christians, those Scofield footnotes were inspired like Scripture. Theological education is a process of seperating the wheat from the chaff. Hold your nose, focus on the positives of the threshing.
I totally agree that traditional dispensationalists have some good insight into scripture. The problem I have is when an author takes the time to bash other forms of theology simply because they have an open forum. It just seems like there is a better way of getting the point across. (like in a girls bathroom) And I also thank you for the advise on sifting through the bs to find some truth. I have been slowly learning that discernment needs to be the student of scriptures sharpest tool.