Is Reformed Eschatology Hard to Understand?
On a prior post, a commenter said that reformed people have done a terrible job of interpreting Revelation and the 70 weeks of Daniel and that no one can understand our positions. I started to reply in the comments but thought this warranted a post in and of itself.
Before getting into this let me say that I welcome dissent in the comments on this blog, so this response is not an attack on the commenter himself and I welcome him and anyone else to dissent with what I will write here. But I also want to give a personal perspective on the broader topic of reformed eschatology.
I am amil but won't be defending amillennialism here, I want to speak to the broader range of reformed eschatology. By that I mean that historically, the reformed camp has had room for a wide range of eschatological views. The dominant views have been amillennialism and postmillennialism, but historical premillennialism hasn't been unheard of. Within the postmil and amil camps there has also been room for partial preterist views. In the last few years the full preterist view has arisen within some reformed circles, but this has been rejected by the vast majority of reformed folks and most of us don't recognize this as a valid eschatological view.
Though there are many differences among those in the reformed camp, one thing they all have in common is a rejection of the dispensational premillennial view, which is the most popular view today. I will add a caveat that I am aware that there is a good deal of movement within the dispensational camp with the rise of progressive dispensationalism, and I think the progressive dispensationalists and traditional reformed folks are finding more common ground these days. But it is also my understanding that, within the dispensational camp, the jury is still out on the progressive dispensationalists, i.e. progressive dispensationalism hasn't yet found widespread acceptance in the dispensational camp. Since I am not up to speed on that I would love it if any dispensationalists or progressive dispensationalists would comment on this or do their own post and leave a trackback.
But getting back on point, I contend that reformed eschatology if you are firmly grounded in a dispensational approach to eschatology. And I think it is fair to say that the dispensationalist would contend that dispensationalism is only difficult if you are firmly grounded in a reformed approach to eschatology. But, since this is my blog I'll argue for my positions and let others argue for theirs in the comments or on their own blogs.
I don't intend to exegete my eschatological views here, but I will tell of some of my experiences in the past when I have done so.
First I want to tell of how I became amil. I came to Christ when I was 16 years old and was involved in Southern Baptist churches for about 15 years that taught from a strict dispensational premillennial viewpoint. From time to time I was told that there other views out there but the only people who believed them were liberals (I'm not making that up, it is what was taught). In my mid twenties I went off to seminary to prepare for ministry. At this time I was still Southern Baptist and held firmly to the dispensational premil viewpoint. My first seminary stint lasted about a year and a half and it occurred to me at some point during that time that if I was going to be a minister someone would probably ask me a question about the end times, so I better be able to explain it to them.
Up until that time I had sat through many sermons on the end times and seen enough end times charts to last a lifetime. I never quite understood them, but because all conservative Christians believed this way I knew they were true and if I applied myself a little more the study of these matters I would understand them.
And so it happened at that time that I turned to John MacArthur. In the circles I ran in at the time John MacArthur was revered about as much as catholics revere the pope. It was not uncommon in those circles that, when a biblical or theological question came up, that someone would say "what does John MacArthur have to say about this?" And I loved John MacArthur (still do!!). He was then and is still today my favorite preacher and I think he is a model of what a preacher should be and do.
So, I somehow acquired a set of tapes he did on the end times. It was something like 20, maybe even 30 tapes, so this wasn't a quick run through, it was very thorough. I eagerly devoured those tapes over a period of a few weeks and paid close attention to them. Now, by this time I had been in seminary for a bit and had come to know that there were some other views out there and that there were even people who claimed to believe the bible who believed them. But I was still heavily predisposed in favor of the dispensational premil view, and especially so since my hero John MacArthur believed it.
After listening to the tapes I was pretty confused. I can't remember everything I thought, but I remember one thought very clearly. That thought was "I know this is true because John and every good Christian believes it, but I will never be able to convince anyone of this who doesn't believe it already." I thought to myself that if I became a minister I hoped I never came across someone who was a critic of this view because I won't be able to defend this.
Sometime after that I came across the book The Meaning of the Millennium. Although I wanted to believe it, my dispensational resolve had been weakened by listening to MacArthur so I was open to other viewpoints. Reading this book was tremendously educational for me. George Eldon Ladd argued the historic premil point of view, Lorraine Boettner argued the postmil view, Anthony Hoekema argued the amil view, and Herman A. Hoyt argued the dispensational premil view. Curiously, in the years since then I have heard proponents of three of the positions say that the proponents of their postions did poor jobs representing themselves in the books - i.e. postmils faulting Boettner, dispensationalists faulting Hoyt and amils faulting Hoekema. I think Ladd is the only one I haven't heard criticized from his own camp.
In reading this book I was actually thrilled with Ladd, Hoekema and Boettner. You have to understand the context of why I was so thrilled. Remember, I was young and had always been taught that only liberals rejected the dispensational view. Yet, Ladd, Boettner, and Hoekema, were obviously believers in the Bible, and they offered thorough Biblical exegesis of their positions.
I came away from this book liking Boettner's presentation, but feeling that I just couldn't buy into postmillennialism. I felt like I could accept either Ladd's historic premillennialism or Hoekema's amillennialism. There was no way I could accept Hoyt's dispensationalism, though to be fair to my dispensationalist friends, I am aware that there are a fair number of dispensationalists who probably couldn't buy into it either.
In reading this I got a better understanding of the prophetic/apocalyptic genre and how to understand and interpret the figurative elements of Scripture.
At this time I was still a good five to seven years away from embracing reformed theology as a whole and only later found out that Ladd, Boettner, and Hoekema fit within the reformed tradition. At this point I just came to know that there were different ways of looking at eschatology than the one I had been taught.
But this reformed eschatology that I was learning had a couple of things going for it that were very persuasive. First of all, it was based on the most basic and solid principle of hermeneutics and that is that Scripture interprets Scripture.
One of the key elements of the principle that Scripture interprets Scripture is that the clear interprets the unclear. For most of my Christian life I had been trying to read and understand Revelation and Daniel's 70 weeks in a standalone fashion. I think it was Hoekema who said that one of the keys to his position was that he interpreted the book of Revelation in light of the rest of Scripture, not the other way around.
In other words, the book of Revelation is somewhat unclear, but throughout the Scripture there are many clear eschatological statements. Rather than interpreting those clear passage in light of the unclear passages in Revelation, do it vice versa.
This really sank in and over time as I learned more it moved me more and more into an amil position, though I still have a great respect for the postmil and historic premil positions.
In the intervening years I have studied and taught on this matter many times. If you read The End Times Made Simple by Sam Waldron or The Returning King by Vern Poythress I think you will see that reformed eschatology is actually very simple and easy to understand. Granted, the reformed position may be completely wrong, but I gotta tell you that I have never seen simpler presentations of eschatology than them.
In my opinion, and I'll try to be temperate and non-inflammatory in saying this, there is a difference between being hard to understand and hard to accept. I have found that these things are just hard to accept for people who have been ingrained in decades of teaching on dispensationalism.
A typical scenario for me is this, at least in the church. I teach my position and someone or a bunch of someones tell me I'm a loon. After a few attempts to convince me I remain obstinate and obstreperous. At that point they say that what you believe about the details of the end times is unimportant, as long as you believe that Jesus is coming back. To some degree I accept this, I am not dogmatic at all about these matters, except when it comes to full preterism and flaming dispensationalism. Though I'm arguing with dispensationalism here I get along with dispensationalists and recognize them as brothers and recognize that most of them have done far more for Jesus than I will ever do. But it is also curious to me that it seems very important to lots of people what I believe about the end times when they engage me in the argument. It only becomes unimportant once they can no longer convince me or answer my contentions.
I have found two major stumbling blocks for people who have been heavily grounded in dispensationalism. The biggest stumbling block is their understanding of "literal" interpretation. The idea of "literal" interpretation arose from the reformation, with its emphasis on sensus literalis, which is to say that:
But many people take a very straightjacketed approach to literalism which is closer to a sensus woodennes.
In one class I taught on eschatology my nemesis was a lady who was probably in her 60's or 70's who thought I was all wet and who questioned if I believed the bible. At one point in the class I think we were talking about the locusts in Revelation and I was going through several potential understandings of the text. We were about 10 or more weeks into the class and she had long since become exasperated with the drivel and error I had been trying to pass off as biblical teaching and on this day she had another meltdown and asked me why I just didn't take it literally, I suppose meaning that these were going to be literal locusts.
I too was exasperated with her and said that I didn't believe these were locusts for the same reason she didn't believe we were justified by works, though the bible clearly teaches this. She gave me a dumbfounded look, as I am sure you are doing now, but I repeated to her that the bible very clearly and literally teaches that we are justified by works. The rest of the class was also getting a little worried, this being a presbyterian church and all. I then quoted James 2:24 to her:
You see that a person is justified by what he does and not by faith alone.
So I asked her if she believed that a person is not justified by faith alone. She didn't. I asked her why? She fumbled around for a moment and I answered the question for her. The reason she doesn't believe that we are justified by works and not by faith alone is that there are many other Scriptures that factor into her understanding of justification and that influence her understanding of this particular text. She would not allow this text to stand on its own, but took the rest of the Scriptures into account when interpreting this text.
Similarly, the reformed do not let the book of Revelation and the 70 weeks stand on their own, we interpret them in light of the rest of Scripture. And, we interpret them according to their genre, usage, forms, etc..
But my point is that one of the big stumbling blocks is a misunderstanding of what constitutes the sensus literalis.
A second reason that I have frequently seen for not accepting the reformed view of eschatology is that it contradicts the teaching of many well respected and beloved teachers. In that same class I was teaching another lady hung with the class for several weeks and finally dropped out. When I asked her why she said she couldn't answer my arguments, but she had been taught differently by a beloved pastor her whole life and couldn't bring herself to think that he was wrong.
Similarly, think of the icons of evangelicalism today. The dispensational premillennial camp is represented by people like Billy Graham, John MacArthur, Chuck Swindoll, David Jeremiah, John Walvoord, Charles Ryrie and pretty much every radio preacher you can name. On top of that, thousands upon thousands of churches across our land are led by godly and beloved pastors who are dispensational premillennial. It just doesn't seem right that so many beloved and godly people could be wrong about this.
I think that, for many, the reformed view of eschatology is hard to understand emotionally as much as intellectually.
At the same time, some of the older dispensationalists spoke of their opponents in less than helpful ways. I am happy to say that this doesn't seem to be the case these days. Although I will still hear laymen accuse you of not believing the bible if you don't hold to dispensationalism, I don't think dispensational pastors and scholars do this so much.
But I do remember reading one of those Christianity Today forums or roundtables or something like that several years ago where they brought in several folks from differing perspectives to discuss eschatology. One of John Walvoord's famous quotes from that discussion was along the lines of "the trouble with amillennialists is that you can never know what they believe about the bible."
In the context of the day, it was during the heat of the inerrancy debates, and so to question someone's view of the bible was a very serious matter. It raised the ugly spectre of the "L" word - liberalism. It was a perjorative comment that clearly put the onus on amillennialists to prove that they weren't liberals.
In fairness to Walvoord, he may have been partially right in the sense that it may be that many classic liberals were amillennialists. But it painted with too broad a brush. And unfortunately this kind of mentality has filtered down. On more than one ocassion I and others who hold to non-dispensational views have been debating a point of eschatology when our opponent changes the argument to a discussion of our views on Scripture. This is similar to what the lady in my class did when I discussed various interpretations of the locusts - she questioned my commitment to Scripture.
I do think this has filtered down in evangelicalism so that, for many, there is an assumption that if you aren't dispensational, you might not believe the bible is the Word of God.
At the least there is a mentality that, if you don't believe in dispensationalism you are compromising. Witness Tim LaHaye's disappointment in and chastisement of his publisher for publishing Hank Hanegraaff and Sigmund Brouwer's The Last Disciple. LaHaye has called this book "nonsense." It is apparent that there is no room for dialogue on eschatological views in LaHaye's world, if you aren't dispensational, then you believe in nonsense.
There is another reason that some won't accept reformed eschatology and that is because they have studied and found it wanting. Maybe it is confusing in the sense that they are convinced we in the reformed camp have misinterpreted things. I respect that and I know there are several of my fellow bloggers whom I love and respect who would take this view, just as there are many in the church at large whom I love and respect and who take this view. Like I said before, John MacArthur is still my favorite preacher and he's a dispensationalist. And I understand that though I am fully persuaded on these matters there are others who are far more studied than I am who aren't.
I also want to say that I'm not under the illusion that I have said anything definitive here. I am sharing my experiences and observations. In my experience, many who reject reformed eschatology do it for reasons that have nothing to do with thorough exegesis of all the relevant passages.
What I am hoping to do in this post is to say that I have heard good reasons for rejecting reformed eschatology and bad reasons. Bad reasons for rejecting reformed eschatology are saying that we have done a terrible job exegeting the passages or are not understandable. If you don't have the time to wade through some of the ponderous commentaries let me invite you to check out Steve Gregg's parallel commentary called "Revelation: Four Views." In it you will see thoughtful exegesis of the book of Revelation from several perspectives, including the dispensational. I think this book will give you a good feel for the nuances of interpretation and you will see that there are good exegetes in all camps who have come to differing conclusions. Thus, hopefully the word "terrible" won't be used as much to describe the exegesis of parties you disagree with.
And, as I mentioned before, I think if you read the books by Waldron and Poythress you will see that, far from being hard to understand, the reformed positions on eschatology are amazingly simple and easy to understand. I would also say that they are amazingly biblical, but I know I won't convince everyone of this.
And in conclusion, though you can see that I am amazingly opinionated in this matter I do offer this post in hopes of furthering dialogue. As one of my old profs once said and as I have repeated often, I disagree with the dispensationalists, but by and large they love Jesus more than I do and have accomplished more for Christ than I ever will. So though I am pigheaded about some of these matters I am a friendly and respectful pig when it comes to my brothers on the other side of the issue.
Recent Comments