The History of Dispensationalism in America

The History of Dispensationalism in America:
"If we apply the pragmatic test and ask the question, 'Does it work?' The answer is, 'yes.'
Fundamentalism
If we apply the same test and ask the same question to:
Jehovah's Witnesses, the answer would be yes.
The Mormons, the answer would be yes, it works.
The Roman Catholic Church-yes, it works.
The Charismatic movement-yes, it works.

They all have many converts and followers. They build schools, churches and have missionaries and great accomplishments-but, there is another, more important question that needs to be asked. Is it true, is it Biblical? This question will bring a different answer.

The issue before us is not a few minor differences or disagreements between those who hold basically the same position. It is not just a difference in eschatology. It is the whole system of theology that touches every major doctrine of Christianity. What is at stake is the saving gospel of Jesus Christ and the sinner's assurance that he is living according to God's plan for history.

There are many being rescued from the errors of Dispensationalism and I pray that God will use these studies to awaken many more to ask the right question.

In our next study we will return to the Lordship controversy.

Recommended Books on Dispensationalism

Wrongly Dividing The Word of Truth, by John Gerstner (Wolgemuth & Hyatt)"

--- http://www.founders.org/
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It is my conviction that many who are presently disposed toward Dispensationalism would not be victims of the system if they were better acquainted and informed about the system and its history-its theological roots and the doctrinal errors it has spawned.

Dispensationalism has its roots in the Plymouth Brethren movement which began in the United Kingdom. Writers do not all agree as to the time and place of the Brethren's origin. The first "breaking of bread service" that I can find a record of was in 1827 in Dublin. The preponderance of the information would show that John Nelson Darby was in a real sense a key person and early teacher of the Brethren movement. Other names are very early identified with the movement; such as A.N. Groves; B.W. Newton; W.H. Dorman; E. Cronin; and J.G. Bullett. All of these men were early leaders in places like Dublin, Plymouth and Bristol. It would be generally agreed that John Nelson Darby was the energizing and guiding spirit in its beginning. These men had many differences and divisions among themselves in the early days and ever after. This is not a critique of the Plymouth Brethren movement in the U.K. I mention it to show approximately when and where the Dispensational roots first appeared in history.

There are some Dispensationalists who do not agree with this assessment of their historical beginning. Their arguments, however, will not survive historical examination. Dispensationalism is a development of the Plymouth Brethren movement.

Dispensationalism is a theological system which developed from a twisted, theological interpretation of Scripture that dates from the late nineteenth century. Before that time it was not know as a theological system. The first record of Dispensationalism in the USA is 1864-65, when J.N. Darby twice visited the country. Through these two visits the 16th and Walnut Avenue Presbyterian Church in St. Louis (then pastored by Dr. James H. Brooks) became the principal center of Dispensationalism in America. How could it be!?! This is like trying to mix oil with water! A Presbyterian Church promoting Dispensationalism? Dr. Brooks became Darby's most prominent supporter and has been call the father of Dispensationalism in the U.S.

Dr. Brooks, the most influential exponent of Dispensationalism, propagated it by his own Bible studies with young men. His best known student was C.I. Scofield. Dr. Brooks also published many books and pamphlets (this should teach us the power of literature) as well as editing a magazine called The Truth. The chronology follows this order: Darby to Scofield; Scofield to Chafer; Chafer to Dallas Theological Seminary.

Before proceeding from Dr. Brooks it may be wise and helpful to call attention to conditions in the mainline denominations in the U.S. during this time. In the early twentieth century liberalism was beginning to rear its ugly head in these denominations. The sad condition of the churches had a profound effect of the success and inroads of Dispensationalism.

I will not mention the history in each denomination, but rather, use the Presbyterian Church which was more influenced by Dispensationalism than any other denomination.

Princeton Seminary, which was once the great stronghold of Biblical Christianity, was one of the first places where liberalism was exposed. One of the first open signs of this liberalism appeared in 1914 when J. Ross Stevenson became president of the Seminary. Dr. Stevenson was more interested in ecumenical goals than in the theology of the Westminster Standards.

In the General Assembly in 1923 the brewing storm came to a head. After this meeting a group of spiritual and theological giants followed J. Gresham Machen to found a new seminary. On September 25, 1929 Westminster Seminary, [Dr Tim Keller =RPC, NYC] with fifty students and a choice faculty, was opened. There has never been a faculty like it since.

The faculty consisted of articulate, Reformed theologians and they were fighting for the fundamentals of the faith; namely, the inspiration of the Scriptures; the virgin birth of Christ; the bodily resurrection of Christ; the miracle of Christ; and the substitutionary atonement. Their fight was against liberalism, and this same battle was being fought in most, if not all, the mainline denominations. Those who rejected liberalism and held to the five fundamentals just mentioned were labeled "Fundamentalists." This fundamentalism must not be confused with the present day Dispensational fundamentalism.

Let me explain precisely what I mean. The five fundamentals mentioned are beliefs which are essential to historic Christianity. In this sense, every true Christian who holds these truths is a fundamentalist. The present day Dispensational fundamentalists, though they hold to the five essential truths, often attack many other important fundamental of the faith which Reformed people have always cherished and have shed their blood to maintain.

Scofield Dispensationalism brought a new kind of fundamentalism into many churches. This new dispensationalism in its unscriptural, unreformed, and uncalvinistic teaching came on the religious scene to fill a vacuum-a vacuum which existed because of liberalism. The churches had drifted away from the doctrinal roots expressed in the old confessions and creeds. Many of the best schools and seminaries had been taken over by liberals and modernists-beginning in the colleges and seminaries and spreading to the pulpits and the pews. Bible-believing Christians turned to those churches where the bible was believed and taught.

This vacuum which Liberalism created in the churches provided a prime opportunity for the establishment and spread of the new Dispensational teaching.

This resulted in the independent church movement, the independent Bible conference movement and the Bible school movement. Those who participated in them were almost all carrying Scofield Bibles and their leaders were predominantly Dispensational in their views.

The major training center for evangelical and Bible-believing churches became Dallas Theological Seminary, founded in 1924. Dr. Lewis Sperry Chafer was the first president. Keep in mind these were days when the crucial battle between modernism and historic Christianity was in progress.

In that desperate hour [deluded and abjectly stupid] sincere, Bible-believing people turned to Dallas Seminary, the mecca of Dispensationalism, for teaching on God's Word.

Many Dispensational Bible schools and colleges were born during this period, and they all were brought forth unreformed.

The late Robert King Churchill, a respected Presbyterian minister, wrote a little paperback entitled, Lest We Forget. It consists of his reflections on his fifty year history in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. Mr. Churchill confirms what I have said about Dispensationalism getting into the Presbyterian Church. He tells of his personal experience in two specific churches: First Presbyterian Church of Tacoma, Washington, where he was converted, baptized and called to the ministry, and another located in Seattle, Washington. He tells how, in these two great churches, the notes in the Scofield Reference Bible became more and more prominent in the preaching. Churchill said, "These notes and the interpretation of Scripture upon which they were based, were contrary to our Presbyterian and Reformed heritage."

He tells of Dr. Lewis Sperry Chafer delivering a series of lectures on the subject of "Grace" (the same material now appears in Chafer's book by the same title). Hear Mr. Churchill's own words:

But Chafer's treatment of the subject of grace never arrives at the right view of the law of God. According to Dr. Chafer, the law was a condition of salvation placed upon the people of God in the Old Testament during a special and limited time period-the Dispensation of Law. This condition, Chafer contended, no longer has application to the New Testament believer since we relate to God under a new dispensation, the Dispensation of Grace. Since, as he put it, "we are no longer under law, but under grace," Chafer argued that there is no necessary relationship between law and grace. Here is law without grace, and grace without law. Always and in every sense, law and grace are opposed to each other. [brown = below emesis]

This teaching appears to be scriptural, but in reality it was the ancient error of Antinomianism (anti-law) which denies that the [Torah] law has application to the Christian. Chafer defended this view by means of a radical reinterpretation of the Scriptures (p. 31).

Dispensationalism is also a frontal attack on Covenantal Theology and the doctrine of the unity of the covenant of grace, which have been held since the time of the Reformation.

How could Dispensationalism be welcomed and embraced in strong Presbyterian churches whose confession teaches Reformed, Calvinistic, Covenant Theology? Though there is not a simple answer one thing is certain: the churches which were infected with Dispensationalism were those which had ceased teaching in any vital way the doctrinal distinctives of their own confession.

All honest Dispensationalists would agree that the Dispensational system of theology has a different view of the grace of God, the law of God, the church of God, the interpretation of the Word of God and the salvation of God. That is, its teaching are different from tested, respected historic creeds and confessions.

Dispensationalism has a different [BASTARDIZED by freaking Zionist puppetmasters] view of living the Christian life-of sanctification and, more specifically, how justification and sanctification are inseparably joined together in the application of God's salvation.

This is a Southern Baptist journal, therefore, I must say something about Dispensationalism in Southern Baptist churches. Historically, the Southern Baptist churches were not Dispensational in theology. None of our leading seminaries or colleges ever taught Dispensationalism and to the present day they do not teach Dispensationalism.

I believe I am safe in saying that Dr. Wally Amos Criswell has been the most influential and articulate Southern Baptist Dispensationalists. Dr. Criswell is one of the great, esteemed and respected leaders of our denomination and every Southern Baptist is deeply indebted to him as a defender of the Bible and conservative Christianity. Where and how this great leader got his Dispensationalism I do not know. I do know that he did not get it at Baylor in his college days. He did not get it at Southern in his seminary days, and he did not get it from his great predecessor, George W. Truett, who pastored the First Baptist Church in Dallas, for 47 years before Dr. Criswell. George W. Truett was a postmillennialist.

There are other good men in the Southern Baptist Convention who have Dispensational views, but they did not get these views in our schools or seminaries. They did not get them from our Baptist fathers or from our Baptist historical roots.

We cannot overlook the accomplishments of Dispensationalism. It has given rise to [Fascist ZIONIST-funded] Bible colleges and independent churches all over the land. It has spawned [a damned Godzilla like Boosh &> 9-11 &> HOAXED wars in Iraq all to the honor of the MOST powerful nation on Earth: jollywood] numerous independent missions, independent preachers and missionaries.

'Language' 'Evolution' = Egghead Carnival @JASSS

Amy Perfors: Simulated Evolution of Language: "First, and most importantly, there is increasing indication that Chomsky's original ``poverty of the stimulus'' theory does not adequately describe the situation confronted by children learning language. For instance, he pointed to the absence of negative evidence as support for the idea that children had to have some innate grammar telling them what was not allowed. Yet, while overt correction does seem to be scarce, there is a consistent indication of parents implicitly ``correcting'' by correctly using a phrase immediately following an instance when the child misused it." (Demetras et. al. 1986; Marcus 1993, among others) More importantly, children often pick up on this and incorporate it into their grammar right away, indicating that they are extremely sensitive to such correction.

3.13

More strikingly, children are incredibly well attuned to the statistical properties of their parent's speech. (Saffran et. al. 1997; De Villiers 1985) ... Pinker (1994) These two facts combined together suggest that a domain- general strategy that makes few assumptions about the innate capacities of the brain ... [boring!]

3.14

Other evidence strongly indicates that children pay more attention to some words than others, learning these ``model words'' piece-by-piece rather than generalizing rules from few bits of data. (Tomasello 1992; Ninio 1999) ...

4.2

Any scientist hoping to explain language evolution finds herself needing to explain two main ``jumps'' in evolution: the first usage of words as symbols, and the first usage of what we might call grammar. For clarity, I will refer to these issues as the question of the ``Evolution of Communication'' and the ``Evolution of Syntax,'' respectively.

{absurd 4.3}

For each concern, scientists must determine what counts as good evidence and by what standard theories should be judged. The difficulty in doing this is twofold. For one thing, the evolution of language as we know it occurred only once in history; thus, it is impossible to either compare language evolution in humans to language evolution in others, or to determine what characteristics of our language are accidents of history and what are necessary parts of any communicative system. The other difficulty is related to the scarcity of evidence available regarding the one evolutionary path that did happen. ``Language'' doesn't fossilize, and since many interesting developments in the evolution of language occurred so long ago, direct evidence of those developments is outside of our grasp. As it is, scientists must draw huge inferences from the existence of few artifacts and occasional bones -- a process that is fraught with potential error.

4.9

What does this have to do with language? Quite simply, the lexicon reflects this hierarchical structuring. Every word in every language can not only be defined in terms of other words in the same language, but exists as part of a sort of ``universal filing system'' that allows for rapid retrieval of any concept. Bickerton suggests that this filing system, as it were, was achieved before the emergence of language (or at least before the emergence of language much beyond what we see in animals today). Thus, meaning was originally based on our functional interaction with other creatures; only as our general cognitive abilities grew strong enough did we gain the skills to arbitrarily associate symbols with those basic meanings. Eventually, of course, language was used to generate its own concepts (like unicorn), but initially, language merely labeled these protoconcepts that were already in our heads as part of our PRS.

4.13

The other reason for believing that full language did not exist until relatively recently is that there is little evidence in the fossil record prior to the beginning of the Upper Paleolithic (100,000 to 40,000 years ago) for the sorts of behavior presumably facilitated by full language. (Johanson & Edgar 1996; Lewin 1993) Although our ancestors before then had begun to make stone tools and conquer fire, there was little evidence of innovation, imagination, or abstract representation until that point. The Upper Paleolithic saw an explosion of styles and techniques of stone tool making, invention of other weapons such as the crossbow, bone tools, art, carving, evidence of burial, and regional styles suggesting cultural transmission. This sudden change is indicative of the emergence of full language in the Upper Paleolithic, preceded by something language-like but far less powerful (like protolanguage), as Bickerton suggests.

4.17

However, there is one glaring drawback to Bickerton's theory. The problem with an explanation relying on a sudden genetic mutation (or even a slightly more probable fortuitous recombination) is that on many levels it is no explanation at all. It takes an unsolved problem in linguistics (the emergence of syntax) and answers it by moving it to an unsolved problem in biology (the nature of the mutation). Still unknown is what precisely such a mutation entailed, how one fortuitous mutation could be responsible for such a complex phenomenon as syntax, and how such a mutation was initially adaptive given that other individuals, not having it, could not understand any grammaticalization that might occur.

The second criterion, demonstrating that there are no processes other than biological natural selection that can explain the complexity of natural language, entails more than may appear on first glance. Pinker and Bloom must first demonstrate that processes not relating to natural selection as well as processes related to non-biological natural selection are both inadequate to explain this complexity. And finally they must demonstrate that biological natural selection can explain it in a plausible way.

4.27 {FUD'fest 4.27 who 'pays' for this drivel?}

If the mind is indeed a multipurposive learning device then Pinker and Bloom suggest that it certainly must have been overadapted for its purpose before language emerged. They point out that our hominid ancestors faced other tasks like hunting, gathering, finding mates, avoiding predators, etc, that were far easier than language comprehension (with its reliance on memory, recursivity, and compositionality, among other things). It is unreasonable to assume that general intellectual capacity would evolve far beyond what was necessary before being coopted for language.

4.32

Another problem with the Pinker/Bloom analysis is that it relies on what Richard Dawkins terms the Argument from Personal Incredulity. [barfy gibberish]

4.34

One of the most plausible arguments to the viewpoint that language is the product of biologically-based natural selection is the idea that rather than the brain adapting over time, language itself adapted. (Deacon 1997) The basic idea is that language is a human artifact -- akin to Dawkin's ideational units or ``memes'' - that competes with fellow memes for host minds. Linguistic variants compete among each other for representation in people's minds. Those variants that are most easily learned by humans will be most successful, and will spread. Over time, linguistic universals will emerge -- but they will have emerged in response to the already-existing universal biases inherent in the structure of human intelligence. Thus, there is nothing language-specific in this learning bias; languages are learnable because they have evolved to be learnable, not because we evolved to learn them. In fact, Deacon proposes that languages have evolved to be easily learnable by a specific learning procedure that is initially constrained by working memory deficiencies and gradually overcomes them. (1997

8.16

John Batali (1994) did a similar simulation to Kirby and Hurford, except that his involved the initial settings of neural networks. He discovered that in order for the neural networks to correctly recognize context-free languages, they had to begin with properly initialized connection weights (which could be set by prior evolution). Yet this should not be taken as evidence supporting a rigidly nativist approach: all that seems to be required is a general-purpose learning mechanism. To understand how Batali arrives at this conclusion, we must first take a look at some of the details of his experiment.

8.23

Yet, as Batali cautions us, we cannot conclude from this experiment that this is an instance of language-specific innateness. Since the individuals involved here are neural networks, it is unclear whether their initial settings are representative of language-specific learning mechanisms, or just general purpose ones. That is, any ``rules'' the network might possess are represented only implicitly in the weights of the network -- so it is very hard to conclude that these weights represent language-specific rules at all.

9.7

Briscoe's work incorporates a great deal of experimentation including issues such as how the population makeup (heterogeneity, migrations, etc) affect acquisition (1998, 1999a, 1999b), how creolization may be explained using a parameter-setting approach (1999b), how an LAD and language might coevolve rather than be treated as separable processes (1998, 1999a), and how constraints on learnability, expressibility, and interpretability drive language evolution (1998). These are all important and interesting problems, but many fall out of the bounds of what is directly relevant to what we are studying here.

10.17

Michael Oliphant (1996) asks the exact same question, but his agents are bit-strings using genetic algorithms that are made up of a two-bit transmission system and a two-bit reception system. The transmission system produces a one-bit symbol based upon a one-bit environmental state (so the system `01' might produce a 1 when in environmental state 0). Similarly, the reception system produces a one-bit response based upon the one-bit symbol sent by the speaker. As in Batali's work, the fitness function discriminates between transmission and reception systems: fitness is based upon only the receiver's average communicative success. In other words, if a speaker and listener communicate successfully, the receiver gets rewarded; otherwise, it gets punished. Nothing happens to the speaker either way. Again, this is done in order to simulate the perceived lack of reward for speaking in the real world.

10.20

The parallels between this situation and the Prisoner's Dilemma are striking, so Oliphant (1996) pursued the analogy further by simulating variants of the scenario that are analogous to strategies successful in promoting altruistic behavior in the typical Prisoner's Dilemma. In one such variant, individuals are given a three-round history allowing them to document the actions of themselves and their opponents so that they know who is trustworthy. They are also given a means by which to alter their behavior based on the past behavior of the opponent. The idea, of course, is that individuals who constantly renege by speaking a language that is not the common one will shortly find themselves being spoken to in an unpredictable language as well.

10.22

In addition to this explanation of altruism (which is strongly reminiscent of Axelrod's 1984 Tit-for-Tat approach), many theorists have suggested that altruism may evolve through some process of kin selection. In other words, an agent will tend to be ``nice'' to others -- even if there is potential harm to itself -- in proportion to the degree that those others are related. That way, even though it might die, its genetic material is more likely to survive than if it didn't. Oliphant applies this approach to explaining the emergence of communication systems, suggesting that it is in an individual's interests to communicate clearly with kin, and hence stable systems can evolve.

10.40

That said, the paradigm used by Werner and Dyer may be able to be elaborated to incorporate more complexity and require more of the agents in the scenario. For instance, the ``ears'' used by the males can be improved, allowing them to hear multiple females at once. This would require them to develop the ability to screen out which calls were most important (i.e. which females were closer). As more complexity is added to the scenario, more complex language-like behavior could potentially emerge.

10.50

When learning is enabled, fitness is dramatically increased. There are now 59.84 cooperations per breeding cycle, which is 857% above chance, increasing at 100 times the rate when communication was suppressed. We can see evidence of communicative activity when we examine the denotation matrix representing the collective communication acts of the entire population. By the end of the run, some symbols have come to denote a unique situation, and certain situations have symbols that typically denote them. The entropy of the denotation matrixes is much smaller when communication is enabled (H = 3.95) and when communication and learning are enabled (H = 3.47) than when neither is (H = 5.66 -- almost the maximum level of 6). In this way it is possible to tell that the strings emitted by the agents are in some way contentful.

10.52

Most interesting are the characteristics of the ``language'' that evolves. For the most part, there is an extensive reliance on the second (most recent) symbol of a pair -- not surprising, since that doesn't require the organism to remember the first. However, there are occasional forms where both symbols were used, though they are not prevalent. This seems to indicate that, while they aren't completely ineffective, the machines don't evolve to make full use of the communicative resources at their disposal by developing multiple-symbol ``syntax.'' MacLennan and Burghardt suggest that this indicates that this step is evolutionarily hard, especially since it doesn't seem to improve as the organisms are given more time to evolve -- rather, they plateau at a certain point and never improve after that. Nevertheless, even under circumstances where a multiple-symbol language would have resulted in improved communication, organisms were capable of developing something.

==============

BATALI, J. (1994) Innate Biases and Critical Periods: Combining Evolution and Learning in the Acquisition of Syntax. Artificial Life: Proceedings of the Fourth International Workshop on the Synthesis and Simulation of Living Organisms. eds. R. Brooks and P Maes. MIT Press: Cambridge, MA.

BATALI, J. (1995) Small signaling systems can evolve in the absence of benefit to the information sender. Draft.

BATALI, J. (1998) Computational simulations of the emergence of grammar. Approaches to the Evolution of Language: Social and Cognitive Bases. eds J. Hurford, M. Studdert-Kennedy, C. Knight. Cambridge University Press.

...

CHENEY, D and SEYFARTH, M. (1990) How monkeys see the world: inside the mind of another species. University of Chicago Press.

CHOMSKY, N. (1981a) Government and Binding. Foris, Dordrecht

FROMKIN, V; KRASHEN, S; CURTISS, S; RIGLER, D; RIGLER, M. (1974) The development of language in Genie: A case of language acquisition beyond the ``critical period.'' Brain and Language, 1:81-107.

STROMSWOLD, K. (1995) The cognitive and neural bases of language acquisition. The cognitive neurosciences, ed M. Gazzaniga.
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/5/2/4.html
ugh how painful... worthless trudge through troughs of funky baloney, FAR afield from my anticipated snack or meal...

Crooks'R"Us = M$FT by Scott McNealy

BW Online | November 19, 2001 | Online Extra: Q&A with Scott McNealy: "Q: But they announced their .Net service more than a year ago, and have been rolling out products ever since.
A: Tell me the last time you met anyone who has used a .Net Web service. I've never met anyone! The fact is we've been doing Web services for 20 years, when they were stuck in stand-alone PCs.... But I do grant that a monopolist with enough money can try to rewrite history.... We were outspent, but we'll always be outspent. It sounds like we were outspent in Washington, too.

Q: Do you regret any of the barbs you've hurled at Microsoft over the years?
A: I should make this off-the-record, but I do regret when I once said something regarding Gates about how 'my kid is smarter than your kid.'

Q: What about Balllmer and Butthead? Was that a mistake?
A: Oh no, I don't regret that one! That was funny.

Q: So let's say Sun executed so well that it created its own monopoly? How would you be different than Bill Gates?
A: That's the point. There's no way we could have a monopoly given the way we run our company. The minute we start doing really well, like we have in the last few years, they all come running back [to get in on the profits].... When you have open interfaces, people can always compete with you. It's a double-edged sword. It makes it easy for the customer to choose us -- and it makes it easy for the customer not to choose us.

Q: But isn't it good capitalistic behavior for Microsoft to take full advantage of its monopoly by using it to expand into other areas?
A: I suppose Microsoft is doing what it should be doing for its shareholders. It's like in hockey. If I come up and cross-check you, and the referee doesn't call anything, I'm going to come back and spear you right in the chest. And if the ref still doesn't do anything, I'm going to come back and take a 2x4 to the helmet of everyone on your team until there's nobody left. That's what's going on, and that's why the government has to enforce the laws.

Q: So under what circumstances would you do business with them?

"They don't even flirt with telling the truth anymore"

A: Listen, I have never turned down a meeting with Gates or Ballmer.... On many occasions, I've challenged them to get on stage one-on-one and have a reasonable debate, but they've always refused. And that's because they don't even flirt with telling the truth anymore. And if I were protecting a monopoly like they are, I wouldn't do it either. Because they know the real truth.