Left Behind: Any Link With the Early Church
By Dwight Longenecker
I was brought
up in an independent fundamentalist church in Pennsylvania. The
good folks who founded the church had
broken away from the mainstream Protestant denominations in the early
sixties because of their increasingly liberal drift. There was a
lot going for this little church. It was young and enthusiastic.
The pastor had a bright young family and was zealous to see the church
grow. Before long they had outgrown their storefront rented premises,
bought some land and started to build.
Part of this
particular brand of American Christianity is that it had no denominational
affiliations. The founders
called it a “Bible” Church, and they claimed to look only to the
Bible for their beliefs and practices. Of course, this wasn’t strictly
true. They didn’t start from scratch with just their Bibles. They
were really part of a tradition. It was a hodge podge of traditions,
but it was a tradition nonetheless. Their view of salvation was essentially
Calvinist. Their ecclesiology was congregational tradition and their
sacramental theology was derived from the Baptist tradition. One
of the Bible Church traditions that most interests me now, was their
Dispensationalist system of Biblical interpretation.
Dispensationalism has its roots in the
teaching of an English Plymouth Brethren preacher called John Nelson
Darby (1800-1882) but it was made most famous by the American preacher,
C.I. Scofield (1843-1921) who incorporated the system as part of
a Bible translation in the Scofield Reference Bible. Dispensationalism
teaches that God dealt progressively with man in seven dispensations
in each of which man was set a specific test. This test continues
as an abiding truth for successive generations. So for example, the
life of Christ is included in the period of the law, while we are
now in the dispensation of the Church.
One of the
other aspects of Dispensationalism is a highly structured and rather
arcane system of interpreting prophecy
according to current events. The Books of Daniel and Revelation are
mined for literal references to events of our age in an attempt to
predict and anticipate the return of Christ, and the subsequent “tribulation” in
which those who don’t believe will be tested before the millennium
of Christ’s rule on earth. To take the temperature of how influential
and popular Dispensationalism has become, one only has to check the
phenomenal success of Tim LaHaye’s Left Behind series of novels
which are based on a Dispensationalist approach to Biblical prophecy.
Because God’s work with man is broken down
into separate “dispensations” certain parts of the Bible are less
relevant than others. So for example, because we are now in the “Church
Age” we don’t have to obey the law of Moses which was only good for
the “Law Age”. One of the weird results of Dispensationalist teaching
is that the life and teaching of Jesus are made irrelevant for modern
man. It works like this: Jesus’s life was part of the Dispensation
of Law. Now we’re in the Dispensation of the Church, so Jesus’ life
and teachings aren’t for us.
Thus the modern Dispensationalist Evangelical,
by following the Reformation doctrine of sola Scriptura has
ended up believing a system of Biblical interpretation which excludes
the life and teaching of Jesus from their religion. As Catholics
the Mass is central to our life and worship. As often as we do this
we proclaim his death until he comes again. (I Cor. 11:26.) As a
result Catholicism is, by comparison, totally Christ-centred. The
Dispensationalist Protestant, on the other hand, has a religion where
it’s okay not to preach from the gospels because that is “not for
this dispensation.”
Now that I
am a Catholic, I am not sure if the irony of this is sublime or
ridiculous. These are the folks
who blame Catholics for inventing later, un-Biblical, distorted and
man-made doctrines. But shouldn’t we turn over the tables here? Sola
Scriptura is itself, a later, un-Biblical, man-made doctrine.
The Bible nowhere teaches that the Bible is the only source for truth.
Jesus never wrote down his teachings and never commanded or prophesied
that a New Testament should be written. Nowhere in the record of
the early church do we find sola Scriptura being taught. Instead,
it is the teaching authority of the Church which is most emphasized.
This is not to denigrate the Sacred Scriptures, but simply to make
the point that sola Scriptura is a later, man-made doctrinal
invention.
If this is true of sola Scriptura then
it is doubly true of Dispensationalism. Here is a system of Biblical
interpretation, which in many Evangelical circles, has reached the
status of infallible dogma. Inasmuch as it marginalizes the life
and teaching of Jesus Christ it can be called heretical. It was never
heard of before the nineteenth century and was devised by one sectarian
teacher and promoted by another to its current popular status. Who
then is guilty of following later, man-made, spurious, invented doctrines?
The Anglican words condemning some Catholic beliefs should surely
apply to Dispensationalism: “it is a vain thing, fondly imagined.”
We can’t be too hasty in throwing out “new” doctrines
however. The faith does develop, and seemingly new understandings
are given by the Spirit. In his famous Essay on the Development
of Doctrine,[i] John Henry Newman confronts the idea that
Christianity grows and develops into a fuller understanding of the
truth. However, development is just that—development. The Church
grows into a fuller understanding gradually. Sola Scriptura and
Dispensationalism, on the other hand, are totally novel inventions
of single teachers who wished to impose their own ideas.
In his essay Newman set out seven tests
to validate any development in doctrine. Both sola Scriptura and
Dispensationalism fail in all of them. The first test is “unity of
type”. In other words, the seemingly new doctrine must be similar
to that believed by the whole church from the beginning, even if
the similarity is like that of an oak tree to the acorn from which
it came. By studying both the ancient church and the “new” development
that similarity (or lack of it) can be determined. When we consider sola
Scriptura and Dispensationalism there are no antecedents. The
more one studies the ancient church the more one realises that these
two are not developments they are novelties. One was invented in
the sixteenth century, and the other in the nineteenth.
Newman’s second test is complex. He distinguishes
between the “principle” and the “doctrine” of a belief. The “principle” is
the abstract and general element of belief. The “doctrine” is specific
and relates to events. For example, the “principle” of revealed religion
is that it functions through the people of God. The “doctrine” of
Biblical interpretation is a specific expression of revealed religion
and it operates in a congruent way with the “principal” that God’s
revelation comes through his people. A true development keeps the
original principle and doctrine together. In a false development
one will develop separately and in contradiction to the other. So
in the cases of sola Scriptura and Dispensationalism,
the “doctrines” by their very nature are cut off from the “principle” of
Church authority with which they should be united. The first contradicts
the principle of revelation being linked with the people of God and
the other, by being one man’s sectarian invention, is by its development
alienated from the general principle of revelation.
The third test
is that doctrines develop by themselves through absorption and
interpenetration over a long
period of time. In other words, they evolve within the theological
and devotional life of the Church. They are not devotional novelties
or new theological theories. Dispensationalism and sola Scriptura are
both novelties. They are inventions of theological minds and the
offspring of political events. They are not the natural organic result
of the Church’s worshipping and thinking life over many years.
Newman’s fourth test is that development
is not a “logical operation.” The development must have an internal
logic, and must fit logically with the whole of Christian truth,
but it is not devised by logic. Newman is not saying that a truly
developed doctrine is absurd, he is saying that it is not something
which someone sat down to figure out through logical processes. It
is not the result of “conscious reasoning from premisses to conclusion.” Sola
Scriptura and Dispensationalism, on the other hand, are precisely
that. Sola Scriptura is the end of a logical search for a
Christian authority other than the Catholic Church, while Dispensationalism
is a clever invention of Darby and Scofield.
The fifth test
is that there should be hints and guesses of the developed doctrine
in the early stages of
the church. For example, the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception
was defined in the nineteenth century, but the idea that Mary was “all
holy” was evident from the second century. It presence in fragmentary
form validates its later and gradual development. There are no hints
or fragments of Sola Scriptura or Dispensationalism in the
early church. Instead they spring whole from the minds of their inventors.
Newman’s sixth test is that a true development
will be congruent with the historic faith. It does not contradict,
but illuminates the previous body of truth. In Newman’s words, it
is an addition which “illustrates not obscures corroborates, not
corrects, the body of thought from which it proceeds.” Once again,
according to this test sola Scriptura and Dispensationalism
fall. Both of these Protestant man-made doctrines contradict the
whole trend of one thousand and fifteen hundred years of Christian
thought. Sola Scriptura cuts across the ancient harmony of
Scripture and Church authority. Dispensationalism contradicts the
age-old belief of the Church that Jesus’ life and teachings are for
us here and now.
The final test
is that the developing doctrine needs to have “chronic vigor.” Newman
is not saying that we test the doctrine according to its popularity
or even its longevity. Instead,
he is saying that the idea is alive, dynamic and moving on. It is
getting bigger and better as our understanding of the truth grows.
By its nature sola Scriptura cannot develop. By the little
word “only” it limits itself and cannot develop. Likewise, Dispensationalism,
is, by its definition, a closing down and limitation of Biblical
interpretation. It is a system that can do nothing but pigeon hole
the Bible into different time periods and finish there. As a result
both of these invented beliefs are essentially dead. They have no
chronic vigor.
In our apologetics
work with Protestants we may often hear the charge that certain
Catholic doctrines like
the Immaculate Conception, Papal Infallibility, Transubstantiation
and the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary are “later, man-made
invented doctrines.” In each case, however, the Catholic doctrines
stand up to Newman’s stringent tests. Most of Newman’s tests are
simple enough to explain, but even if the tests themselves are too
complex to weave into general conversation, be aware of them. When
you are challenged about “later man-made invented doctrines”. Ask
your Protestant friend where he got sola Scriptura and Dispensationalism.
Because if any doctrines were latter day, human inventions, they
are.
