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Dispensational Modernism
B. M. Pietsch
Oxford University Press (2015). 274 pp.
Is it possible that historians of the twentieth century have gotten dispensationalists wrong? Many have cast dispensationalism as an anti-intellectual movement preoccupied with premillennial expectations—a depiction of “wacky, anti-modern fringe American Protestant fundamentalism” (p. 1). B. M. Pietsch in Dispensational Modernism pushes back against these interpretations by presenting dispensational thought as an attempt to navigate a world re-shaped by scientific modernism. Pietsch’s account of dispensational history emphasizes the interpretive techniques of this movement and the purpose behind these techniques.
Pietsch locates dispensationalism in an era of cultural development where people became obsessed with precise measurements, fixed pricing, and tracking time—all results of the quantitative nature of science. Cooking became governed by precise measurements of ingredients with the publication of Fannie Farmer’s cookbook. Department stores, themselves a recent phenomenon, fixed prices and affixed price tags to products for the first time. Factories employed the clock and other measurements to optimize workers and create efficiency. Meanwhile, while the fruits of science and evolution shaped the broader culture, higher criticism employed the scientific method to challenge the authority of the Bible. Likewise, scholars at Princeton embraced common sense realism as a scientific adaptation to understand Scripture and doctrine in this new age. Dispensationalists, caught up in these times, adopted principles of science and engineering to Scripture interpretation and became engrossed with numerology, precisely timing biblical events, charting out these events, and collecting large numbers of authoritative texts to support a doctrinal view (oft-called proof-texting). Dispensationalists organized all this data to present a reliable account of God’s instrument of revelation, the Holy Bible. They brought all these techniques to bear on Scripture and developed a complex yet coherent biblical theology that demonstrated the literary unity of biblical prophecy. This then became a new methodology of Scripture interpretation, which employed engineering and scientific techniques that were taxonomic in nature. In other words, it gave an ordered and well-organized account for biblical revelation.
Of course, for this new system to flourish, it had to be respectable. To gain public confidence, conferences were held to draw pastors and middleclass families for holiday to Niagara and other locations. There these people learned how to properly interpret the Bible for themselves and accrue personal confidence at Bible interpretation. Popular and reputable pastoral figures like D. L. Moody, A. T. Pierson, and G. Campbell Morgan taught people these techniques. Early leaders of the dispensational movement legitimized their authoritative scriptural interpretation not just by the taxonomic power of Bible study, but also by making sure people knew that they had educational degrees from respectable institutions. If they didn’t, sometimes they started institutions that could then confer honorary doctoral degrees to one another. Such was the case for some leaders at Wheaton College, Dallas Seminary, and Moody Bible Institute. Likewise, if possible, dispensational leaders would collect respectable scholars to join the movement and participate in their conferences or publications, such as the Fundamentals. This too garnered respectability for the movement. The popular reception of the dispensational method across America testifies to the success by which this movement validated its credibility.
How people grew to understand time became another aid to the popular reception of dispensationalism. Many pastors and scholars increasingly embraced a geologic understanding of time and Darwinian evolution, both of which emphasized slow progress, which in turn undermined a postmillennial interpretation of Scripture. Meanwhile, events like the Civil War caused people to question the prospect of societal progress altogether, another nix against Postmillennial optimism. On the other hand, the violent disruption of the Civil War gave credence to the idea that time might have ruptures and disjunctions, which dispensationalists also observed from the literary narrative of Scripture. “Dispensationalists viewed time as linear, progressive, teleological, divinely ordered and dispensed, and defined by ruptures” (p. 136). Dispensationalists mapped time through their charts to create a “hermeneutic harmony.” How God’s rules for governing humanity evolved and progressed over time, actually mapped well with evolutionary thought. Additionally, measuring and charting out these ruptures fit very well with a culture obsessed with commodifying and measuring time.
In order for this system to flourish, it required an authoritative, well-researched study Bible with outstanding annotations in order to propagate this new knowledge to adherents, hence the Scofield Reference Bible, which is to this day Oxford University Press’s best-selling book. Filled with charts, careful interpretive notes, Scriptural proof-texts, and an orderly account of the dispensational method—the Scofield Reference Bible became a symbol of the scientific legitimacy, authority, and confidence that adherents might have in Scripture during a scientific and modern era.
Pietsch’s detached, outsider perspective of dispensationalism is a refreshing and remarkable revision to Sandeen, Marsden, and other historians of fundamentalism, premillennialism, and dispensationalism. Locating dispensationalism within a culture driven by science and letting this account for dispensationalism’s scientific impulse is a helpful corrective for those who are inclined to reduce dispensationalism to anti-intellectualism and apocalypticism. Pietsch’s understanding of dispensationalism should be unsurprising to anyone who has observed the movement up close. Dispensationalism frequently attracts adherents who work as software engineers, defense contract engineers, and others with vocational interests in the science industry. The taxonomic system of Scripture interpretation makes sense to mathematically and scientifically oriented people. Likewise, it should not be surprising that Dallas Seminary and Biola are surrounded by silicon and aeronautics.
What perhaps would be interesting to trace is the decline of the dispensational movement and how this movement has been seemingly supplanted by the momentum of the neo-Reformed movement during the later twentieth and early twenty-first century. The Reformed revival, accompanied by gospel-centered renewal, has all the same sociological markings that the dispensational movement had in the early twentieth century: large conferences like TGC and Desiring God, a study-Bible like the ESV and Gospel-Transformation Bible, and credible pastoral and theological leaders like John Piper, Timothy Keller, and Don Carson. What is it about this era that attracts people to a highly providentialist and Christocentric interpretation of Scripture? Though both dispensational and reformed systems of thought would acknowledge incompatibility in various areas of doctrine, it is very likely that both systems would credit their periods of dominance to the truthfulness of their claims. Yet, I wonder if the prosperity of these respective movements might also be credited to how both were culturally timely, and both employed similar sociological playbooks—namely conferences, a study Bible, and celebrity leadership. Perhaps the recent prosperity of Reformed renewal and the concomitant decline of dispensational thought is detected by visiting desiringgod.org and thegospelcoalition.org and then visiting the website of the most popular purveyor of dispensationalism (hint: none exist). And what might this mean for a movement that is ecclesiologically oriented?
Joey Cochran is a historical theologian specializing in Jonathan Edwards. He earned his PhD from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (TEDS). He serves as guest faculty at Wheaton College and TEDS. He is a member of the St. Augustine Fellowship of the Center for Pastor Theologians.
