Which Matters More: Your Camp or Your Bible?
Christians naturally gather into camps. We learn from the teachers who helped us, we read what our friends read, and before long we feel loyal to a system the way a fan feels loyal to a team. That loyalty can be a gift. It can also become a blindfold.
Corinth had the same problem. Some said I am of Paul, and others I of Apollos (1 Corinthians 1:12). Paul did not answer by choosing the best camp. He asked, Is Christ divided? (1 Corinthians 1:13), and he reminded them that their teachers were only servants: I have planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase (1 Corinthians 3:6).
The habit of weighing every theological system by Scripture: accepting everything it says that lines up with the Word of God, and refusing whatever does not, no matter which camp we belong to.
This closing study turns that habit on dispensationalism itself. The series has taught dispensationalism as our view, because we believe it is the plainest reading of Scripture. Truth over tribe means we hold it with an open Bible: thankful for its strengths, honest about its weaknesses, and ready to let the text correct us.
If your system and your Bible ever disagreed, which one would you change?
The answer has to be the system. Prove all things; hold fast that which is good (1 Thessalonians 5:21). Testing comes before holding, and what we hold fast is what is good, not whatever happens to belong to our side.
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For Deeper Study
- Continuity and DiscontinuityAmazon John S. Feinberg, ed.Dispensational and covenant scholars write side by side (1988) on how the Testaments relate: a model of disagreeing carefully.
- There Really Is a Difference!Amazon Renald E. ShowersA clear, readable comparison of covenant and dispensational theology from a dispensational writer.
- Has the Church Replaced Israel?Amazon Michael J. VlachA readable evaluation (2010) of replacement theology through history, arguing that Israel's promises still stand.
- The Christ of the CovenantsAmazon O. Palmer RobertsonA respected presentation (1980) of covenant theology by a Presbyterian scholar, worth reading to hear the other view in its own words. Reformed, not dispensational.
- Foxe's Book of MartyrsAmazon John FoxeThe classic Protestant record of those who died for the faith, from the early church to the English Reformation.
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What Is Dispensationalism?
Dispensationalism is a way of reading the whole Bible that takes God's words in their plain sense, sees Him ordering His household through distinct stewardships, keeps His program for Israel distinct from His program for the church, and trusts Him to keep every promise as He gave it.
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