Exposing the State of The Modern Church (2)

(continued)

But the number of non-Christian teachers in the Scriptures isn’t the writer of the article’s primary concern. The post turns, moving from this point about the percentage of those among Scripture teachers to a second train of thought, to the “liberals” within the Church. I generally take this term—liberal—within the theological community to mean anyone who does not read the Scriptures literally. Generally, “liberals” are dominist, though there are dominists who are not liberal, of course. The term is hard to pin down, though. Anyway, back to the author’s line of thinking.

…but a darker underbelly to the conference, never far from the surface, shows up often enough. It has to do with the posture of many liberal scholars toward evangelicals.
…
There is an assumption that students from an evangelical school—especially a dispensational school—only get a second-class education and are blissfully ignorant of the historical-critical issues of biblical scholarship. Many of the mainline liberal schools routinely reject applications to their doctoral programs from evangelical students who are more qualified than their liberal counterparts—solely because they’re evangelicals. -Parchment and Pen

Okay, among a group of “scholars” such as this, an expected outcome, I would think. But this becomes the focus of the post, and in a way I didn’t originally expect.

Yes, Dallas Seminary is a dispensational school. But it’s not your father’s dispensational school. Progressive dispensationalism, engineered by Darrell Bock, Craig Blaising, et alii, about twenty-five years ago has tied a dispensational hermeneutic to a more nuanced appreciation of the biblical covenants. Gone are the days of seeing two New Covenants, of distinguishing the “˜kingdom of God’ from the “˜kingdom of heaven’ in Matthew, and of seeing eschatology as not-yet but not already. The differences between other hermeneutical systems and the dispensationalism of today are not nearly as great as they used to be. But much of liberal scholarship has simply not kept up. There is widespread ignorance about what dispensationalists believe along with what seems to be an unwillingness to find out.Further, the great irony is that so many liberal scholars don’t even realize that Dallas Seminary not only has only one unit on dispensationalism, but it has never required its students to adhere to this system of interpretation. So much more could be said here; I would simply invite those who are interested in learning more to read Progressive Dispensationalism by Bock and Blaising.

Now we really get to the dark underbelly of the beast, as the author himself states. But I don’t think it’s quite the underbelly he intended to expose. Instead of considering the problem of non-Christians among Scripture professors, or whether or not the liberal teachers that so dominate this meeting are really staying true to the Scriptures, he’s upset that they don’t see Dallas Theological as an institution they can respect. He’s worried about the acceptance of Dallas Theological graduates among the credentialed, well known, and highly respected teachers among the attendees at the conference, even if they are not Christians and/or liberal theologians who don’t take what the Word of God says seriously.

Perhaps the most telling statement in the entire post is this: The differences between other hermeneutical systems and the dispensationalism of today are not nearly as great as they used to be. To prove his point, he states Dallas Theological now has only one unit on dispensational theology. “See there,” he seems to be saying, “we believe just the same things as you do, so why do you continue to shun us?”

Thus falls the modern church into the arms of a world that uses influence and stature as a carrot and stick to pull Christians, and Christian institutions, away from the Scriptures. The separation the writer pushes illustrates this point, making certain everyone knows he’s not one of those dispensationalists!

I suppose I shouldn’t be astounded. The church has always bent to the world, from the time of Constantine’s conversion (assuming we can really know the state of any man’s heart, especially at this distance in time and space), to the modern day, the church has always sought out a way to dig a reasonable set of beliefs out of the Scriptures, something more to the world’s liking, regardless of what the Scriptures actually teach.

The Church today has been given the greatest access to the greatest set of truths ever presented by God, and still we yearn for the world’s approval, applause, and recognition, rather than the truth. Every time this aspect of the church shows itself in plain view, I still find myself shocked, dismayed, and saddened at this sort of thinking.

Related posts:

1. Exposing the State of the Modern Church (1)
2. The State of the Church
3. The State of the Church