Fear not, O ye of faint heart. That title sounds more exhaustive than I mean to be here. I merely wish to bring up another side of this toast and ode to Dispensationalism. In continuing this discussion on premil eschatology (as specifically endorsed by Dispensationalists) I wanted to follow up on the Blind Sage's comments (which were totally sagacious, dude!).
As committed Sola Scripturians, we are to rely on Scripture for interpretation. This means at least one thing, and that is this: reading post-revelatory history into revelation is bad. When the Holy Spirit completed the canon with Revelation, He completed the canon. There was nothing more to say. The entirety of Scripture was complete, sufficient, and thorough. Whether or not Israel has lived as a people group since that time, as apposed to say the Hittites, is irrelevant. That isn't proof of their Scriptural significance. It can be reduced to the old problem of the horse squarely resting behind the cart. The horse is Scripture and our understanding of it. The cart is our method of interpretation. I mean to tread lightly here, for all who seek to interpret Scripture are susceptible to this problem. Nonetheless, we are required to read and understand Scripture, and the Spirit comes along side us and enables our minds and our hearts to soak in its truth. But we must not allow our method of interpretation to be the absolute authority. Obviously we have to start from somewhere, but our methods are the malleable part, not the intention of Scripture.
The Word of God comes to us in different clothes. In Genesis it comes dressed as a tidy, three-piece suit of historical, reliable narrative. The Psalms come to us flowing in gowns of rich imagery, painful emotions, and the raw, unashamed truth of life. The Prophets approach, warily but with perseverance, the essentials barely covered with unadulterated animal skin. We cannot deny the differences between these styles/genres. They are as different as David and John the Baptist.
Here we catch a glimpse at the Triune Beauty. Does God reveal Himself to us employing only one method of revelation? Not at all. We look at the mountains and see His majesty, we enjoy the privileges of marriage, and are witness to the community of love our God shares in Himself. We read the Word of God and the Spirit enlightens our hearts, minds, souls, and bodies. In other words, we do not look at a mountain, or marital bliss, and literally interpret creation with respect to God. We do not look at the ocean and see God face to face. We see Him, but through a deeper beauty. God has revealed Himself to us in all of life, but restrained, and through veils of sign and symbol. That's what language is after all, verbal and written signs, signifying something real, and weighty. Therefore we see God in all of creation, or Natural Revelation, but through metaphor, and not by explicit, undiminished, raw vision. And praise God for His kindness in this. The same is true with Special Revelation. God explains Himself, as far as He does (Deut 29:29), through different forms, enabling us to see different sides of His glory. The mountain does not mean the same thing as marital bliss. Nor do we interpret it in the same way. Thus Ezekiel's vision of God in His glory, reveals a different side of God than Paul's Epistle to Titus, and thus needs to be interpreted differently.
Here we see an aspect of the beauty of the Gospel. God in His wisdom, spoke to us in His Word. But He did not speak to just part of us, the historico-grammatical part up in our left brain. He also spoke to our emotions, our desires, our hopes, our spirits. Every aspect of our whole body is given a mode to understand God in. To limit the interpretation of Scripture to one mode, denies the trinitarian make up of our own body. It places undue emphasis on one way of understanding, leaving the other ways weak and starved. But God did not intend for this to be. His Gospel, which extends from Genesis 1 through to Revelation 22, is full of rich and varied texts, all of them interacting with all of us, heart, soul, mind, and body. Here we find a Triune God not interested in one aspect of His creation, such as their historical sensibilities, but a God who loves all of life, and gave all of life to His creation. Here we find a God who enriches His creatures with not just a rational brain, but with emotion and senses as well. Here we find not a dry and arrid text, full of strict and literal non-sequitors, but the tremendous and humbling complex beauty of the Gospel.
As committed Sola Scripturians, we are to rely on Scripture for interpretation. This means at least one thing, and that is this: reading post-revelatory history into revelation is bad. When the Holy Spirit completed the canon with Revelation, He completed the canon. There was nothing more to say. The entirety of Scripture was complete, sufficient, and thorough. Whether or not Israel has lived as a people group since that time, as apposed to say the Hittites, is irrelevant. That isn't proof of their Scriptural significance. It can be reduced to the old problem of the horse squarely resting behind the cart. The horse is Scripture and our understanding of it. The cart is our method of interpretation. I mean to tread lightly here, for all who seek to interpret Scripture are susceptible to this problem. Nonetheless, we are required to read and understand Scripture, and the Spirit comes along side us and enables our minds and our hearts to soak in its truth. But we must not allow our method of interpretation to be the absolute authority. Obviously we have to start from somewhere, but our methods are the malleable part, not the intention of Scripture.
The Word of God comes to us in different clothes. In Genesis it comes dressed as a tidy, three-piece suit of historical, reliable narrative. The Psalms come to us flowing in gowns of rich imagery, painful emotions, and the raw, unashamed truth of life. The Prophets approach, warily but with perseverance, the essentials barely covered with unadulterated animal skin. We cannot deny the differences between these styles/genres. They are as different as David and John the Baptist.
Here we catch a glimpse at the Triune Beauty. Does God reveal Himself to us employing only one method of revelation? Not at all. We look at the mountains and see His majesty, we enjoy the privileges of marriage, and are witness to the community of love our God shares in Himself. We read the Word of God and the Spirit enlightens our hearts, minds, souls, and bodies. In other words, we do not look at a mountain, or marital bliss, and literally interpret creation with respect to God. We do not look at the ocean and see God face to face. We see Him, but through a deeper beauty. God has revealed Himself to us in all of life, but restrained, and through veils of sign and symbol. That's what language is after all, verbal and written signs, signifying something real, and weighty. Therefore we see God in all of creation, or Natural Revelation, but through metaphor, and not by explicit, undiminished, raw vision. And praise God for His kindness in this. The same is true with Special Revelation. God explains Himself, as far as He does (Deut 29:29), through different forms, enabling us to see different sides of His glory. The mountain does not mean the same thing as marital bliss. Nor do we interpret it in the same way. Thus Ezekiel's vision of God in His glory, reveals a different side of God than Paul's Epistle to Titus, and thus needs to be interpreted differently.
Here we see an aspect of the beauty of the Gospel. God in His wisdom, spoke to us in His Word. But He did not speak to just part of us, the historico-grammatical part up in our left brain. He also spoke to our emotions, our desires, our hopes, our spirits. Every aspect of our whole body is given a mode to understand God in. To limit the interpretation of Scripture to one mode, denies the trinitarian make up of our own body. It places undue emphasis on one way of understanding, leaving the other ways weak and starved. But God did not intend for this to be. His Gospel, which extends from Genesis 1 through to Revelation 22, is full of rich and varied texts, all of them interacting with all of us, heart, soul, mind, and body. Here we find a Triune God not interested in one aspect of His creation, such as their historical sensibilities, but a God who loves all of life, and gave all of life to His creation. Here we find a God who enriches His creatures with not just a rational brain, but with emotion and senses as well. Here we find not a dry and arrid text, full of strict and literal non-sequitors, but the tremendous and humbling complex beauty of the Gospel.
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