Covenant Theology Versus Dispensationalism

You my friend are in need full time employment, something to take up some of your excess free time.

 

Presuming that you're talking to me (I've been the largest poster of late) I am employed full time plus... I manage the grounds of Southern Seminary and we're cleaning shop, fixing snow equipment for the next go-round, and clipping back some fall annuals. I edit and format doctoral dissertations and I have printed somewhere in the neighborhood of 26,000 pages in the past 3 days -- of course, all those pages need to be edited to a high level before sending to the printer. Last night I had to do a drug/marriage intervention for a returning Marine who got his head messed up while on active duty in Iraq. He takes great pleasure in killing suff... I am a community group pastor for our church (hence the intervention episode) and we have a group of 20 that meet in our home every week, which requires preparation, teaching, etc., and I am one of the founders and administrators for the United Christian Off-Road Alliance -- a national off-road ministry (ucora.org). In my spare time, I read around 3 books a week...

Overall, I manage to get somewhere in the neighborhood of 4 hours sleep a night -- AND -- have time to go round and round with you. Just for fun. :thumbs:

 

Make it 5 hours sleep and write me off as unteachable. Just kidding. I don't have the time to address all of your points, not that I don't want to it's just I think if we were to be totally honest with ourselves, what we do here is talk at our fellow posters, not to them, I include myself in this criticism. I am a flawed individual.

I'm not (I think I have mentioned this before) in the full time ministry. I haven't been to seminary. I do have a fairly extensive personal theological library with about 1000 hard copy books. Sort of like a hobby, not that I don't have other things to take up my time. But defeating me in a debate of this type is like nothing really but I've read enough to recongnise the typical rebuts to most of the various theological positions.

To explain one thing, with respect to Dr. Riddlebarger, he gets all kind of kudos from the big names in the reformed movement, but having carefully read his book (3 times) and made notes and checked references, I have become very critical of his scholarship. He does not live up to his hype and I say this not because I disagree with his theology. To give one general example, he employes a tactic many critical of dispensationalism employ that is defining dispensationalism by what it's not and by using other covenant writers to make his point, not by using Ryrie or Chafer. I'm sure Dr. Riddlebarger is a great guy in person and a fine servant of the Lord, let me be clear about that.

I want to ask you about a book you might know about:

New Testament Theology: Magnifying God in Christ
By Thomas Schreiner

Do you have an opinion on this? I have a number of other books on Biblical Theology and was considering this one for my collection.

 

Yes. I make up words as I need them. It do get me in trouble with my wife, an English teacher. Rebellionous me.

 

I was having a bit of fun at your expense... :wavey:

We are all in this boat together, whether we like it, or agree with each other all the time or not, so it is best to keep a sense of humor. I just wish you could have seen me laughing while I wrote that utterly silly post above. If we were in person, I'd have punched you in the arm and said something along the lines of, "You left yourself wide open for that..."

Anyway, I think Schreiner's new theology is a magnus opus of biblical theology. I've read excerpts from it, and am very familiar with Dr. Schreiner's stance (I can go over to his office and talk with him any time I like). I've sat under his teaching directly and have profited from his books. FWIW, he has taken some heat from the "always saved" crowd for his biblical stance on perseverance. He is much more interested in being biblical than in promoting any particular theology, and he is a most brilliant scholar -- first class all the way, in humility, in honesty, in scholarship, and in ministry (he is not just a prof, but also a full time pastor!).

I intend to add it to my own reading list in the next several weeks.

 

Thanks for your insights on the book. I thought you probably knew him personally. I'm going to get a copy soon because I need one more thick theological book to get my bookshelves in eq.

Take care,
Tom

 

I wanted to say...

GREAT LINKS. Thanks. I have been reading them over the last few days. I never heard of the writers .....Vern S. Poythress, Greg L. Bahnsen and Kenneth Gentry before...but good stuff.

 

Merry Christmas

Right now I'm reading Three Views on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament. It's slow going due to my schedule but I have the week off and hope to make some progress. One of the contributors is Walter Kaiser Jr., who is a good writer (have several of his books) but I would like to know if you or anyone else has read his book The Promise-Plan of God: A Biblical Theology of the Old and New Testaments and is there an opinion?

 

Yes, there are indeed many misrepresentations made by all sides. Having been a member of different Dispensational churches and taught it for years, I was surprised to come to this board and be told by covenentalists what dispensationalism teaches.....things that I'd never heard. I've seen coventantalists on this board repeatedly accuse dispensationalists of teaching two salvations, when none of them teach it. Chafer specifically denies this.

I'm sure there is misrepresentations being made on all sides. I've always tried to hold to this: first be able to summarize the other's belief so that the other person would say 'that is an accurate description of my belief' then, and only then, have you earned the right to critique.

I've not always succeeded, but this has been my goal.

 

I have not read that book. Perhaps I should!

I respect Kaiser's scholarship.

As I recall, we contrasted Kaiser's views with an OT election center, and also against both covenantal and dispensational in the OT theology class I took. I'd have to look up my class notes to remember what we said.

 

There's no point to reading stuff like that article in the OP. It's horrible work.

The best basic primer on the subject I've ever read is Richard Belcher's little booklet "A comparison of dispensationalism and covenant theology". At first I thought it oversimplified the issue, but after a while I saw the wisdom of Belcher's method. It's really a good layman-level study, and very evenly toned even though Belcher does not hide his own convictions in his conclusions (which is where the writer's opinions belong).

I can't recommend it highly enough.


It may be available at http://www.richbarrypress.com/ .

I found it at Amazon

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00070WALA/?tag=baptis04-20