Dispensational Theology is a popular Biblical view. It is the idea that the Old Testament was God’s plan A and that when Jesus was crucified he abolished this covenant in favor of a New Covenant (plan B) in the form of the not yet written New Testament.
Dispensational Theology allows Christians to get out of all the stoning people to death. One local Philadelphia street preacher put it to me this way, “I know that the Old Testament is really messed up and God was all angry and vengeful, but things are different now that Jesus paid for your sins.” The fact is that most Christians are vaguely aware that the Old Testament says a lot of horrible things and that it is definitely not a good guide for moral life, but with Dispensational Theology they can just pretend that God never said, ordered, advocated, or did those things and still call ourselves Christians.
Most modern Christians today don’t want to have to defend the morality of the Old Testament God. No rational person would. So the strategy of just crossing out the Old Testament is actually a pretty good one. Christians however still need the Old Testament for only a few reasons. At first they needed it to give there religion more weight. Attaching themselves to the older Jewish tradition helped them to establish their “street cred” so to speak. Now Christianity is a two-thousand year old religion it has its own credibility. Unfortunately, the deed is done and Christianity can’t really come out and claim that they aren’t built of the Jewish religion after all. They have to keep up with their own rhetoric.
The Old Testament is also still needed to make it seem like Jesus was predicted by the Old Testament. It is part of the magic trick. Part of the magic of Jesus is that he was alleged to do certain things which the Old Testament predicted a messiah would do. Although in some cases the New Testament actually comes out and states that Jesus did something so that he could fulfill the prophecy.
However, Biblically speaking there is little basis for the “breaking from the old covenant in favor of a new covenant.” In fact, Matthew 5: 17-18 refutes such a break or deletion from and of the Old Testament. Here the red letters that some Christians are so keen on worshipping specifically forbid ignoring the rest of the Bible. Luke 16: 17 also makes such a break unbiblical. But then there are a few passages that contradict these passages because the inerrant Bible is so consistent. Ephesians 2: 14-15, Hebrews 8: 13, and Galatians 3: 24-25 all support the deletion of the Old Testament. Delete the Old Testament or not delete the Old Testament? Philadelphian Christian leader Tony Campolo suggests that real Christians ought to go with the red letters; in which case the Old Testament stays and God remains a tyrant.
Still, it is a good thing that so many Christians today feel that the character of their God is so flawed, that they can pick and choose the parts of the Bible they like and reject the parts that are just plain old, ridiculous, and/or immoral. Most rational people do that with lots of books all the time. But then again those books generally don’t claim to have been written (or divinely inspired) by the Creator of the Universe.
The authors of all other books are human and from planet Earth and so readers are expected to take into account when they were written, what their biases are, and what their point of view is. People generally agree with some of what an author has to say on some things and disagrees with an author on other things. But the Creator of the Universe is alleged to have written the Bible to be timeless; he has no biases, and has the ultimate point of view. So shouldn’t he be inerrant? Shouldn’t the Old Testament be just as valid today as it was two thousand years ago? Why would God change his mind about so many important issues like slavery, rape, or whether women are the property of men or not?
The character of Jesus certainly said some cool things in the New Testament so it is understandable why some Christians only want to accept those things as divine. For instance, there is that great story in John about those without sin throwing the first stone. That’s a good story… however, most textual analysis scholars are pretty sure that it never happened and that the story was added to the Bible hundreds of years later. And what about that part of the New Testament where the character of Jesus specifically states that he has not come to bring peace by has come to bring a sword? Or when he says that in order to follow him one must hate their entire family? Maybe Christians should write a Newer Testament that breaks that covenant in favor of a more tolerant and moral covenant that fits better with modern standards.
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Atheism 101 Articles:
Atheism 101: What is the difference between atheism and agnosticism?
Atheism 101: Is there moral grounding without God?
Atheism 101: What happens when we die?
Atheism 101: The Purpose of Life
Atheism 101: The Nature of Good and Evil
Atheism 101: The Problem of Evil
Atheism 101: Is the Bible the inspired word of God?
Atheism 101: The anti-intellectualism of religion
Atheism 101: Why has Christianity demonized nudity, sex and sexuality?
Atheism 101: How to respond to the lord, liar, lunatic argument?
Atheism 101: Does it take more faith to be an atheist?
Atheism 101: What came before the Universe?
Atheism 101: How to respond to the ex-atheist
Comments
The God of the Old Testament was not a monster. i am a Christian and do not reject the OT teaching. God had extremely sensible reasons for setting the rule and guidelines He set. The reason God was so strict in the OT is because Israel was a new nation, a baby so to speak. When people would sin in this baby Nation, God needed firm rules set so that people would sin less. and when someone did sin, God would remove that person from that group so that sin would not spread more rapidly (a rotten apple will spoil a bunch). Secondly, God didnt need a plan B, like the things that happened were a surprise to Him. He made a way to redeem man Millions of years before He even created the earth. He knew man would rebel and that Jesus would have to die as a sacrifice for our sins. HE STILL CREATED US ANYWAY KNOWING HE WOULD DIE!!! that is love if i ever saw it. Christianity does not identify with jews anymore because Christ Changed the rules that the jews still follow from the OT. He added GRACE!
i have much more to say on this topic but i am only aloud so many characters, so feel free to email me at gillbot3000@yahoo.com if you would like to further discuss this and maybe i could help answer some of your questions because it seems to me that you may have some misconceptions about who God is and why He did what He did. Thanks
Larry, thank you for commenting. Even though I think your comments are completely illogical and poorly thought out (if thought out at all). I am well aware of the standard Christian response to this issue and you have not really added anything different from that. If God "knew" why would he do it? Why would God NEED to send his "son" to die? How does it even make sense for God to have a son? How does killing his son redeem wrongdoing? I can go on all day with these.
Also, if you think that the God of the Old Testament had, "extremely sensible reasons" for all the things he is alleged to have done and ordered to do, then God is not the only monster Larry. Rape, genocide, slavery, etc. You really think those things are extremely sensible? You best re-read your Bible, my friend.
Exodus 34:5-7 “6 And the LORD passed before him and proclaimed, “The LORD, the LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abounding in goodness and truth, 7 keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the children’s children to the third and the fourth generation.” The world is full of Sin (rape, murder, genocide, slavery ect.) because of MAN’S doing, not God’s. Man chose to sin, man chose to reject God and turn to his own way, yet God still loves us enough to die in our place. And not a gun shot to the head, quick and painless, Christ was whipped, scourged, tortured, and nailed to a cross while being spit upon and mocked. God did that for us when we deserved nothing but hell fire. This is the God I worship and saying that He was a monster is ridiculous.
Ephesians 2:8 “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, 9 not of works, lest anyone should boast.” Good works can’t save anyone, for no one is good enough to get to heaven on their own. Romans 3:23-24 “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus” That is the reason why sending Jesus to die for us would work-because He is the only one who can live a sinless life!
Secondly, it was a sensible thing for God to do what He did, for if it wasn’t, that would mean that my God is stupid and doesn’t know what He’s doing, which is in major contradiction to what the Bible says about Him. He has showed so much grace and compassion to so many people who deserve the complete opposite!
. 2 Corinthians 5:21 “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” He died and raised from the dead three days later, conquering death so that we may be alive in Him and spend eternity in heaven when we die. All one has to do is admit that he is a sinner, ask God to forgive him, and trust in Jesus’ death as complete payment for his sin and the only way to heaven.
Okay, let’s start from the beginning…
First of all, God made all of creation for His glory. After all, He is God and deserves so much more than we could ever offer. He knew that man would sin and rebel against Him and He knew that He would have to send His Son to die in our place so that our sins may be forgiven. The Bible teaches that Jesus is God, second in the Trinity (Father, Son, Holy Spirit). Only God in the flesh (Jesus) could come to earth and live a perfect and sinless life. Because He was without sin, He was able to take our place and provide a way for our sins to be paid for COMPLETELY.
As you read my response, please read it carefully and not think the whole time "how can i refute this???" but instead, think about it possibly being true. I am praying for you Mr. Rosch.
"Okay, let’s start from the beginning… First of all, God made all of creation for His glory. After all, He is God and deserves so much more than we could ever offer." He sounds like an egotistical a-hole already. You are not exactly making your case here.
"He knew that man would sin and rebel against Him and He knew that He would have to send His Son to die in our place so that our sins may be forgiven." so why not prevent it if he knew it would happen and has the power to prevent it?
How does vicarious redemption of sin make any sense to anyone outside the bronze-age? Let's release all the murderers, rapists, and child molesters from prison, if I promise to take their place. It will be my sacrifice, lol.
"it was a sensible thing for God to do what He did, for if it wasn’t, that would mean that my God is stupid and doesn’t know what He’s doing, which is in major contradiction to what the Bible says about Him." You said it, not me.
Larry, I sent you an e-mail that was more in depth. Why don't we have the conversation there since you made the invitation.
Oh, one more thing. I should add that I didn't read your comments and think "how can i refute this???" The fact is that none of your arguments are new. I have already refuted your arguments either on Examiner in the Atheist 101 series or on my daily blog (see the sidebar). I'm just hitting the key points in summery version now. Please give me something new to refute. I love a new argument that might require me to think about something I haven't already thought about a million times.
Thanks for your willingness to reply, and i will try to give you something you never heard and to be more clear and hopefully affective enough to help you understand a little more about who God is. and i did not get your email, try again. gillbot3000@yahoo.com
I e-mailed you twice already Larry. If you still haven't gotten it, why don't you e-mail me and I'll reply. Address in the sidebar --->
I'd like to take a shot at responding to your article, Staks. I've only recently started studying religion so I'm still quite fuzzy on it all, but I'll try to be as coherent as possible:
I find an existential point of view helping in thinking about the Bible. Instead of seeing the Old Testament as literal truth (which a lot of it is clearly not), I prefer to see it as a work of literature that tells us, often in moving terms, the story of the Jewish nation's struggle to discover the truth about their identity, religion and the world in general. We see how they struggle with the same existential issues we struggle with today and try to come up with the best answers possible under their circumstances. ...contd above
.....Sometimes those answers are highly immoral and self-centred (for example, they often respond to their own fear of dying by concluding that God will protect them by smiting down their enemies) but the point is that they are searching for those answers; they are engaging with the reality of their own existence and trying to find some meaning and security in it all. ....contd above
....Every now and again, among all the self-centredness, they seem to get it right. Something happens and they draw from that event a deep realisation of what life is really about. One example I can think of (my Bible knowledge actually sucks so can't think of many, lol) is the story of David and Goliath, where a little kid defeats a giant through sheer guts and skill. Another is the story of Sampson, where a strong, successful man loses everything and is forced to stop relying on himself and start relying on God instead (you can interpret the term 'God' in many ways here; it doesn't necessarily have to refer to some divine being). These stories have parallels in our life today: the underdog gets to the top despite all the odds being set against him; a succesful guy loses everything and comes out of the crisis with a clearer view of who is and what is truly important to him. .....
.....The way I understand it (and I'm a bit skeptical about this myself), the point of leaving all the junk in there with the good stuff is that it tells the story of how the Jews struggled with religion. And in Christianity this is all one big lead-up to the grand finale, where Jesus comes along and brings an entire new revelation into the picture. It's like a movie: to appreciate the ending you've got to watch the whole thing; you can't ignore all the bits where bad things happen. In other words, think about the Old Testament as a story of human beings' struggles with life, universe and everything - not as a historical document and most certainly not as a guide for how to live our lives.
Gosh, hope some of that made sense. Your comments will be greatly appreciated.
Lizelle, thank you for your thoughtful comments. Obviously the Old Testament is fiction. While I think there is certainly literary value to many of the Old Testament stories, I don't think one needs to believe they are true to get any sort of wisdom from them. Star Wars is fiction and yet it is a compelling story with lots of wisdom. Still, the characters are fictional. Just like God.
Don't get me wrong, I agree with you that there is certainly literary merit to the Bible. But let's not pretend that the character of God is real and let's not pretend he is a good guy.
The New Testament is just as fictional as the Old, and the Character of Jesus also is not real nor is he a good guy. I can understand how one could claim Jesus as an every-man in that he says and does both good things and bad, but don't wash over the bad thing.
Like with all great literature, take wisdom where you can, but don't mistake fiction for fact. God is just a character.
Hi Staks, I partly agree with you and I partly don't. While it is true that the character of God as portrayed in much of the Bible isn't real, he nevertheless points to something that is. From the earliest times people perceived something about reality that made them shiver and gave them this aha! sense of, "Gosh, there is something much bigger than me at work here." It's a sense of numinous awe, and it doesn't have to be supernatural. It's what we all sometimes experience when we're up in the mountains and look at the majesty around us, or when we're caught in a blizzard and have to face the elements of nature head-on. The writers of the Bible, just like many people before and after them, perceived this amazing process of life and energy pouring out into the world and got this sense that there is something about that process that deserves to be honoured and revered. They then decided to call it "God" and started to celebrate it by means of religion. .....
....While there is some value in personifying this entity we call God, going as far as calling him a character or a guy is going a little too far. I read somewhere that God is beyond the subject-object dichotomy, but have to confess that I don't have a clue what that means or whether it even makes any sense. The point is that God is something numinous, something mystical, and yet something more natural than anything else. Thinking of God as supernatural in the way the word is commonly understood is totally missing the point. God is what we perceive when we perceive life at its deepest. Paul Tillich puts it better than I can: "The name of this infinite and inexhaustible depth and ground of all being is God. That depth is what the word God means. And if that word has not much meaning for you, translate it, and speak of the depths of your life, of the source of your being, of your ultimate concern, of what you take seriously without any reservation."....
...(Just posted the full paragraph on my blog, geniesetfree.blogspot.com/. I have a hunch you may find it a little offensive, but hey, that's what makes debating so much fun.)
Now, of course the Biblical writers often missed the mark when they spoke about God in their writings. Of course they distorted the idea of God for their own purposes, and claimed that this God was theirs alone and that he hated everybody they happened to hate. Of course they started attributing all sorts of supernatural characteristics to God. And of course they were spectacularly wrong. Being wrong is something humans are amazingly good at.
But heck, at least they tried, which is a lot more than you can say of us today, with our superficial consumerism, our widespread disregard for the planet we live on and our lack of connection with life itself. The Biblical writers may have been wrong, but we haven't even understood the question. ...
...Instead, we've been focusing on petty little debates such as whether Noah's ark ever existed...I mean, come ON. That's not what it's about.
Now, the question of whether God is a good guy/force/entity/whatever... I fervently wish that I could be sure he/she/it is, but I'm not. Then again, he can't be all bad, otherwise there wouldn't be ANY good in the world, which is obviously not the case (unless you're severely depressed or are facing really lousy circumstances, in which case it does seem like that). I was going to say that taking God out of the picture would solve our problem, but then deleted it, lol, because it won't solve anything: we'll then just be faced with the question of whether the universe is good or bad. Perhaps, then, God/the universe/whatever first cause you prefer is indifferent to concepts like good and bad; perhaps reality is completely neutral and evil is simply a product of the mind, an attribute we give to things that hinder our chances of survival?...
... I don't know...do you have any thoughts on this?
As for Jesus, I don't know either. I'm very fuzzy on him, but studying some Christology at the moment so hopefully it will become clearer. There does seem to be consensus among scholars that a man by the name of Jesus did exist (even the Jewish philosopher Josephus wrote about him), but the rest is all very controversial. Existential theologian Rudolf Bultmann is highly skeptical about the Gospels and claims that the only thing we can know for sure about Jesus is that he existed. But then he follows by saying that that is the only historical fact that is necessary for Christain faith. I'm not so sure about that...surely you'd want to know a little more about the person on whom you base your faith? ...
...But then again, maybe not...sometimes, when thinking about him, I slip effortlessly into a certain mood and whatever he did or didn't do starts to seem irrelevent; I come 0face to face (in an existential sense, not a literal sense) with the Christ of faith and the historical figure called Jesus at the same time, and the experience blows me away. At times like those I start to understand a little bit of where the Jesus-fanatics are coming from and I start to consider that I just might be a Christian. It happens rarely, but it nevertheless makes me think. Of course such religious experiences are due to chemical reactions in our brains, but should we therefore conclude that they don't matter? Not sure.
I'm planning to write an article on Jesus in the near future once my thoughts on this are clearer...I can email it to you if you'd like.
...
...That's it, then, a whole lot of thoughts that have taken over your entire comments section. I have quite a lot to say about all this, I guess. If you can find holes in my arguments please let me know - that way I can do some more thinking and hopefully my arguments will be more solid next time.
Cheers
Lizelle
Lizelle, you have put a lot of the table so to speak. I do think much of your thinking really can be answered with an old Buddhist saying, "The only zen you find at the top of a mountain is the zen you take with you." In your case, replace zen with god. You seem to "know" as much about god as the people who wrote the Bible claim to "know." I have to ask, how do you "know" so much about this thing called god and why is it that so many other people know it wrong and I don't seem to know it at all? Could you present your evidence? Can it be peer reviewed? Can we test your knowledge?
You stated, "I was going to say that taking God out of the picture would solve our problem, but then deleted it, lol, because it won't solve anything: we'll then just be faced with the question of whether the universe is good or bad. Perhaps, then, God/the universe/whatever first cause you prefer is indifferent to concepts like good and bad; perhaps reality is completely neutral and evil is simply a product of the mind, an attribute we give to things that hinder our chances of survival?"
I think you answered your own question here. We probably live in an indifferent universe and good and evil are human constructs (see my articles on those subjects at the bottom of this article in the Atheism 101 section or on the sidebar --->)
As for the historical Jesus, there is no evidence to support the assumption that such a man actually existed. Josephus never claimed to have met Jesus. In fact, Josephus was born decades after Jesus was alleged to have died. Anything he had to say on the subject was pure hearsay. In fact, no contemporary people have written about Jesus either is support of him or criticizing him. The Gabriel Scrolls show that a similar story to that of Jesus's was floating around a few years prior to the alleged birth of Jesus in the same region. There are no Roman records of such an execution, many of the key details of the Jesus story are in contradiction to each other and to history as we know it. So while many scholars believe Jesus was real, there is very little evidence to support such a conclusion. The fact is that Christianity dominates the world and most Biblical scholars who believe in Jesus are either Christian or worry about Christian opinions. This is changing however.
Lastly, I think we have strayed from the original topic quite a bit. Maybe we can get back to focusing on Dispensational Theology.
As a Christian, I agree with you completely: Dispensational Theology as herein defined is patently ridiculous. The problem so many people have is that they make the same mistake you have: they mix up “Plan A” and “Plan B.”
“Plan A,” to use your terminology, is the gospel as taught by Christ. God—Jehovah, Christ, etc.—taught this gospel over and over again, to and through prophets beginning with Adam. When the people rebelled, they lost that higher law (and, if they rebelled completely enough, any law at all). In short, since we are accountable for everything we learn, God is merciful enough to delay teaching His gospel to those who have no real chance of accepting it, just yet.
“Plan B,” again using your terminology, was the so-called “Law of Moses,” given after Israel rejected the higher law written on the first set of tablets Moses brought down from the mountain. This plan remained in effect for well over a millennium, an intentional type of the promised Savior. When that Savior finally arrived, He restored “Plan A” to the main body of Israel, just like the prophets of every dispensation before and since.
It’s not that we need to explain away what God did; it’s easy to misunderstand a person’s (or Person’s) actions when they’re taken out of context. It’s just that God has always given His children what they’re ready, willing, and able to accept—a concept that often gets obscured in our current, slightly corrupted version of the scriptures.
This article doesn't describe Dispensationalism very well and thus, the counter punch is not aimed well either. Dispensationalism isn't concerned with the "OT God" versus the "NT God." It is a system that was developed in response to the Enlightenment and subsequent criticisms of the Bible. Dispensationalism relies upon a literal reading of all of the Bible and delegates God's activity with man to 7 "ages" or Dispensations. In each Dispensation, God is said to have established a covenant with mankind to address the circumstances of that age.
The Dispensations are as follows:
"Grace" (Adam and Eve in innocence in the garden),
"Conscience" (Mankind from The Fall up until the Flood of Noah),
"Human Government" (following the Flood up to the Judgement at the Tower of Babel),
"Promise" (from Babel to the giving of the Law at Sinai - focusing particularly upon Abraham and his family),
"The Law" (from Sinai to the death of Jesus Christ)
"Grace" (from Pentecost until the Great Tribulation)
"Millennium" (the Personal 1,000 year reign of Jesus Christ following the Great Tribulation).
The problems with Dispensationalism are Legion. The literal reading of Genesis mangles both the earth's natural history and Genesis itself. Dispensationalism hadn't even begun to develop until the early to mid 1800s. The "Secret Rapture" doctrine was "revealed" to a woman in Scotland around 1820 and she "revealed" this idea to John Nelson Darby (Plymouth Brethren) soon thereafter. Until then, no one in all of Christian history had ever held to the idea of the "Secret Rapture."
Dispensationalism never really came into its own until the Niagara Bible Conferences of about 100 years ago. It was never presented as a "theology" until 1947 when Lewis S. Chafer published his systematic theology. Despite being such a novelty - or maybe because of it - Dispensationalism has spread throughout America and from there, to the world to become perhaps the leading "theological" system in evangelical Christianity. It is pretty much de rigueur among Pentecostals, Baptists, Charismatics and most other Evangelicals, though very few laypersons would ever think of coming right out and identifying themselves as "Dispensationalists." To them, it's just "Bible Prophecy" - as if there had never been any other means of interpreting the Bible for the past 2,000+ years.
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