Tagged in: hermeneutics

Dispensationalism and Covenant Theology, Eschatology 1 Comment

Eschatological presuppositions and literal interpretation

“The word ‘literally’ is one of the most misused and abused words in the contemporary English language.”[1] –Craig Carter, professor of theology at Tyndale University College and Seminary

Currently in its 55th year of publication, the Creation Research Society Quarterly journal is the longest running periodical amongst the creationist technical literature. I am certainly in no position to question the scientific research or calculations found in many of the papers in CRSQ, most of which are well over my head. Nevertheless, all Christians are under the obligation to evaluate every proposition and point of doctrine (cosmological models not excepted) according to the Bible and determine whether or not the relevant Scripture references have been properly exegeted. Continue reading…

Social Justice / Social Gospel 1 Comment

‘The Great Silencer’: A method to the madness

For most of my Christian life, I was committed to a system of biblical interpretation known as Dispensationalism. Key tenets of that system include a premillennial eschatology, a pretribulational rapture of the saints, a future and physical restoration of ethnic Israel as God’s chosen people, and a commitment to a (generally) wooden-literal hermeneutic.[1] As I eventually started having doubts about the integrity of Dispensationalism’s “unified interpretive scheme”[2] and was concerned that perhaps Dispensationalists were unwittingly imposing a grand scenario on the Bible justified only by the use of a faulty hermeneutic, I nevertheless found it difficult to escape the futurists’ fold out of fear that I would be branded an “anti-Semite”. Continue reading…