Journal: Detroit Baptist Seminary Journal
Volume: DBSJ 27:1 (NA 2022)
Article: Refining Dispensational Discourse: Reconsidering Four Common Expressions
Author: Mark A. Snoeberger

DBSJ 27 (2022) p. 15

Refining Dispensational Discourse: Reconsidering Four Common Expressions

Mark A. Snoeberger1

Fifteen years ago, my late mentor Rolland McCune passed me a baton, namely, his class on dispensational theology. Dr. McCune routinely taught that dispensationalism was still a good century away from status as a settled system, and encouraged us “young bucks,” as he called us, to be a part of the ongoing development. It is with this encouragement that I write this article.

My goal is not to move the dispensational system substantially away from what it historically has been. This occurred, I believe, in the development of progressive dispensationalism in the 1990s. I say this not to open up a skirmish line with those who embrace that approach, but simply to assure my present readers that I have not abandoned, in my suggestions below, what Charles Ryrie has labeled normative dispensationalism, or what has become known more broadly as traditional dispensationalism.2 I do believe, however, that traditional dispensationalism can finesse some of its stock expressions so that the approach is more carefully expressed and more accurately understood—by its proponents and its detractors alike. That is the goal of the present article.

Revisiting The Definition…Again

Much ink has been spilt attempting to define the concept of a dispensation. Two definitions, arguably, have proven the most resilient in the history of dispensationalism. The first was offered by C. I. Scofield and stood as the reigning definition from the release of his “old” study Bible (1909, rev. 1917) until the release of the “new” study Bible bearing his name (1967): “A dispensation is a period of time during which man is tested in respect of obedience to some specific revelation of the will of God.”3 The second, which emerged the winner from the glut of

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definitions proposed in the 1960s and 1970s belongs to Charles Ryrie: “A dispensation is a distinguishable economy in the outworking of God’s program.”4

Ryrie’s definition improves on Scofield’s in observing that the operative idea is not time, but what was occurring within time—a series of economies. The term economy is a fine word in its own right, and etymologically connected to the Greek οἰκονομία (a connection that in retrospect is probably not that important); however, it is in two ways deficient. Firstly, the English term economy has evolved into a primarily f...