"A VOID PLACE"

DISPENSATIONALISM, BAPTISM AND INTERDENOMINATIONALISM

"And the king of Israel and Jehoshaphat king of Judah sat either of them on his throne, clothed in their robes, and they sat in a void place at the entering in of the gate of Samaria; and all the prophets prophesied before them." II Chronicles 18: 9

t's a curious fact that Baptists - who glory so greatly in a heritage distinct from Protestantism - have not only thoroughly imbibed, but have, broadly speaking, become staunch defenders of a Protestant hermeneutic. By this, of course, we refer to Dispensationalism. Dispensationalism must be defined as an originally Protestant system, because it is a simple fact that the first inventors and propegators of Dispensationalism were themselves not Baptists, but Protestants.

This is certainly true of Darby. Darby of course described himself as a man having strong Roman Catholic sympathies, even while he served as a curate in the Anglican Church, a man who "held apostolic succession fully, and the channels of grace to be there [the Roman Catholic Church] only.i In other words, even as a Protestant, he accepted the Roman Catholic view that outside of the pale of her religion, there is no grace, no salvation available. Even his Protestantism stood in doubt, as he gazed longingly at the Harlot of Babylon, the Roman Catholic Church. It is highly noteworthy that though he eventually united with the Plymouth Brethren, he "did not adopt the practice of believer's baptism as was by then the practice in Bristol," but instead "discouraged some young preachers from speaking on the subject, and to this day many of his followers (Exclusive Brethren) practice a modified form of infant baptism."ii

Scofield on the other hand was a Congregationalist. It goes therefore without saying that he was a pedobaptist. He practiced infant baptism, and his Dispensationalist hermeneutic never gave him any good reason not to.

All of this has real significance when we put it in its historical context. We are of course discussing matters that relate to the earliest days of Fundamentalism, that period of history when Fundamentalism existed in its most infantile form. Those were the days when church unity was the big emphases, and

Separatism was being downplayed as divisive, and hurtful to the overall cause of Christ. Those were the days of the Gospel Union Meetings, when Presbyterians like Billy Sunday and Baptists like J. Frank Norris had no great problems holding cooperative meetings together in the name of evangelism. So it was important that a hermeneutic be adopted that could unite, rather than divide.

And this of course was the great problem that Covenant Theology presented to interdenominational Fundamentalism. Protestant Covenant Theology, by treating the Abrahamic Covenant as essentially identical to the New Covenant, ultimately led to the practice of infant baptism. Baptist Covenant Theology on the other hand, which made a sharp distinction between the Abrahamic Covenant and the New Covenant, and, indeed, between the Abrahamic Covenant itself, and the promises contained within the Abrahamic Covenant, created a theological framework that could only result in the credobaptist insistence on baptism as being exclusively for believers. And these two understandings of Covenant Theology had never been reconciled. They had always resulted in conflict, and, in certain rare cases, such as that of Obadiah Holmes, in outright persecution. In other words, the debate over Covenant Theology presented a major obstacle to the effort to unite conservative Christians around a minimalist body of Fundamental doctrines.

And this is where Dispensationalism held such appeal. On the surface, by accentuating a strong distinction between the Abrahamic Covenant and the position of the New Testament Church, it seemed to echo the historic Baptist position. But by realigning the New Covenant to an exclusively Futurist position, Dispensationalism succeeded in creating a neutral ground, a theological void place that sidestepped the issue completely. It's instructive to note that the Dispensationalist view of the Covenants has no real implications for the Church today in terms of baptism and who baptism should be applied to. In stark contrast to Covenant Theology, Dispensationalism offered theological neutrality, a void place, where Baptists and Protestants could unite together under a single banner.

This is accomplished by omitting the Church from any unique Covenant relationship with God whatsoever. Even a cursory review of Clarence Larkin's chapter on the Covenants in his Dispensational Truth reveals that the Church is excluded from every single Covenant in the Word of God, except for the Adamic Covenant and the Noahic Covenant, which encompass all of humanity. According to Dispensationalism, the first seven Covenants - except the universal Adamic and Noahic Covenants - are historic, having no unique promises for the Church, and most of them being "exclusively for the Nation of Israel". In contrast, the last Covenant, the Covenant of Christ's blood, the New Covenant is strictly future, and is not yet in effect at this time, nor will it go into effect until after the Church has been raptured out of this world. Only when Christ has returned to establish his Millennial Kingdom will the New Covenant go into effect, and even then, it will apply only to the ethnic house of Israel. As Larkin put it, "It has nothing to do with the Church and does not belong to this Dispensation".iii In other words, Dispensationalism is a theology in which the Church has no unique Covenant relationship with God, and

indeed, is virtually excluded from every single Covenant in the Word of God except the Adamic Covenant and the Noahic Covenant, which even lost people are in!iv

It is by this subtle and devious method of excluding the Church from any unique Covenant relationship with God that Dispensationalism avoids the ultimate question resulting from Covenant Theology: Who is the proper recipient of baptism? In this void place, the absence of any unique Covenant relationship with God, the Dispensationalist may ignore completely the implications of the sign of circumcision and dismiss it as entirely irrelevant to a Church without a Covenant. And since, in this scheme of things, baptism has no covenantal significance whatsoever to the Church, it loses any real meaning beyond that of the barest symbolic token of personal obedience, going no further than to imply personal faith in a prophetic resurrection in a mere pantomime, being utterly stripped of its fuller nature as the outward expression of confirmation of a binding pact between God and man, which pact God has solemnly obligated and engaged himself to fulfill, and which is accepted and entered into by faith on man's part. From this Dispensationalist perspective, baptism becomes drastically less significant in its meaning and implications than it was historically understood to be by our Baptist forefathers, and can be minimized as a doctrine of lesser consequence for the supposedly greater purpose of Christian unity.

Perhaps some off you reading this still doubt that Dispensationalism ultimately lies at the heart of interdenominationalism. My challenge to you is this: go back and study the lives and doctrine of Darby and Scofield, as well as the historic context of their rise to prominence and influence. Then consider the wholesale abandonment of denominational identification and the epidemic rise of interdenominational and nondenominational community churches that we face today. Ask yourself this: Is it less of a problem today than it was before the rise of Dispensationalism, before the publication of the Scofield Reference Bible and before the establishment of Dallas Theological Seminary? I think that an honest consideration of these questions will confirm the truth: Dispensationalism is the root of the modern interdenominational movement. The proof of the pudding is in the eating. The facts speak for themselves. Dispensationalism is a nondenominational hermenuetic.

http://www.johndarby.org/beginning/index.html (accessed 23 June 2013). http://www.victorianweb.org/religion/plymouth.html (accessed 23 June 2013). iii http://www.raptureforums.com/ClarenceLarkin/chap26.cfm (accessed 23 June 2013). iv Genesis 9: 9 - 16 KJV.
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