Dispensationalists and infallibility.

So here’s a weird little phenomenon I’ve discovered. I’ve actually seen it many, many times throughout my life, but didn’t recognize what was underneath it till recently.

I was talking to a fellow Christian a few weeks ago; we’ll call him Ayokunle. He’s dispensationalist, which means he believes God has saved people in many different ways throughout history. Darbyists believe God used six different ways, ’cause we’re in the sixth dispensation. But most of ’em figure there are at least two dispensations—one before Jesus, one after Jesus. Before Jesus atoned for our sins, they figure God saved people because they were good—if they followed the Law, God saved ’em, and if they didn’t, he didn’t.

Is this true? Not at all. God saves people by his grace, and he’s always saved people by his grace. Paul of Tarsus’s whole argument to the Galatians about why they needed to stop it with the legalism, was that God’s never saved anyone by good works. Abraham included! We’re right with God because we trust him, not because we followed commandments. Ga 2.16 If we ever could be saved that way, Jesus died for nothing. Ga 2.21

Anyway, my discussion with Ayokunle is because he loves to quote the old saying, “God works all things together for our good.” I’ve written on it elsewhere, and it doesn’t mean what he thinks it means. I told him so.

ME. “There’s an entire book of the bible which refutes you. Ecclesiastes.”

HE. “Hm?”

ME. “ ‘Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity.’ Ec 1.2 Vanities have no value. They mean nothing. They’re meaningless. But nothing God does is meaningless.”

HE. “Ecclesiastes?”

ME. “It’s a good read. Check it out.”

HE. “That is Old Testament.”

ME. “Correct.”

HE. “I am a New Testament Christian. Old Testament doesn’t apply.”

ME. “The bible doesn’t apply?”

HE. “New Testament does. Old Testament is of the old things which have passed away. ‘Behold, I make all things new.’ Rv 21.5 New Testament.”

ME. “So you don’t think the Old Testament should be in the bible.”

HE. “No; it should be in the bible. It has good stories. It tells us the history of the Jews. But it’s passed away. It’s dead.”

ME. “We’re not to trust it anymore for instructions on how to live our lives.”

HE. “Correct!”

ME. “But the 10 commandments are in there.”

HE. “Oh, the 10 commandments are in the New Testament too. We follow them. But the rest of the commandments are dead.”

ME. “So we can eat pork and shellfish.”

HE. “Yes!”

ME. “And have babies with our daughters.”

HE. “No! Why would you have babies with your daughters?”

ME. “I wouldn’t; that’s nasty. But it’s an Old Testament command to not have sex with your daughter. Lv 18.10 And you say that command is dead, so…”

HE. “No! No one should do that!”

ME. “Oh absolutely. But you said God no longer forbids it.”

HE. “Well there are natural laws.”

ME. “True. But people break those all the time, which is why God gives us biblical revelation. But you say it’s not biblical revelation anymore.”

He didn’t know how to answer that, so he quickly changed the subject. But it occurred to me afterward: In saying the Old Testament no longer counts, he also basically revealed he no longer considers it infallible.

In fact a lot of dispensationalists like Ayokunle explicitly teach the Old Testament failed: It didn’t successfully do the job of saving people! That’s why God had to replace its system of works-based salvation with grace. The Law no longer counts because it failed.

So when these folks claim they believe in biblical infallibility… well, it’s not consistent with everything they teach about the Old Testament. They might consider the New Testament infallible, but not the Old Testament. ’Cause it failed.

I pointed this out to a different dispensationalist I know, and after a bit of objecting, he finally said yeah, I got something there. If dispensationalists believe the Law failed to save, and needn’t be followed because it failed, then they can’t properly claim biblical infallibility. At least not for the whole bible. New Testament is fine.

Inerrancy, but fallibility.

Growing up, I went to a dispensationalist church, and that’s where I first learned about biblical inerrancy, the belief the bible has no errors. (Or no errors in the originals of the bible. Later copies plainly have errors. We learn about ’em in seminary.) Those dispies were really big on preaching biblical inerrancy, ’cause they didn’t want anyone to get the idea they don’t believe in bible! They do. They believe in it so hard.

I believe in it too, but the more I learned about bible, the more I realized I can’t believe in inerrancy. Not just because I know most of the errors: There’s really no way whatsoever to prove the authors of the bible didn’t make those errors. We’re just hoping they didn’t.

But… why? Do the errors make the rest of the bible invalid? Well, no. We’ve been using the bible just fine, for millennia now, despite those errors. They haven’t got in the way. (And not just because inerrantists make a lot of effort to pretend they’re not there!)

Really, there’s no reason at all to doubt the infallibility of the bible, simply because there are errors. The errors don’t interfere with the gospel. They don’t lead me, nor other Christians, to doubt what the scriptures say Jesus teaches. Nor doubt Jesus himself.

They definitely lead me to doubt inerrantists though: Have these people read their bibles? Have these people studied the bible’s history? Do they understand the mechanics of textual analysis and biblical exegesis? Or are they just claiming, “It has no errors!” as a quick ’n dirty way to look super pious?

’Cause like I said, I grew up in a dispensationalist church. Where people regularly claimed this verse or that was now void, ’cause we’re in a new dispensation. Regularly nullified the same bible they claimed to trust with all their hearts. Regularly claimed if you remove any verse out of the bible, you were in big big trouble with God, yet in practice they mentally crossed out a whole lot of verses. Whole books of ’em.

Anyway, like I said: Weird little phenomenon.