Go Take a Hike

OK, I'm on vacation in Yellowstone, so this has nothing to do with theology. Unless it has to do with the perplexities of fallen anthropology. Yellowstone is an odd place. At all the spectacular sites, there are wall-to-wall people, mostly rude people. But if you wander 100 yards down a hiking trail, nearly all the people disappear as if by magic. The backcountry is spectacular, teeming with wildlife, and anyone who is willing to take a hike can find solitude, grandeur, and beauty that the vast majority here never find.

And so then I get back on the road that circles the park, and every few miles, the highway suddenly shuts down. Somebody saw a buffalo. Or a bear. Or a jackrabbit. Everyone stops in the middle of the road, jumps out of their cars, and starts snapping pictures, irrespective of the traffic jam or the danger (unbelievably, I watched a parent urge a six-year-old child to run toward a Grizzly Bear). It's almost impossible to get around the park because of these periodic traffic snarls.

And I can't help wanting to tell all these people, instead of blocking traffic, to go take a hike. Literally.

Dispensationalism Is Dead. Long Live Dispensationalism.

In the latest issue of the Grace Evangelical Society's Grace in Focus, Grant Hawley writes an article excoriating John MacArthur as a key contributor to the decline of dispensationalism. MacArthur, it seems, is "hostile to normative dispensationalism," has "repeatedly and directly condemned many of the fundamentals of normative dispensationalism," has led "attacks on normative dispensationalism," and has "adamantly rejected many aspects of dispensationalism."

Specifically, MacArthur has criticized certain dispensationalists who deny the necessity of repentance and the embrace of Christ's lordship for salvation, and, consequently, has eschewed Keswick-type expressions of sanctification. MacArthur's attack on these "free grace" tenets, Hawley affirms, is tantamount to an attack on "normative" dispensationalism.

MacArthur is correct that the "lordship debate has had a devastating effect on dispensationalism." And it is also true that so-called "lordship" advocates have sometimes led in the condemnation of dispensationalism. But it does not follow therefrom that lordship salvation is sinking the dispensational boat. If the dispensational boat is sinking, it is because some of the occupants of that boat adhere to what MacArthur has called a "mongrel species of dispensationalism that ought to die."

And so it seems that "normative" dispensationalism is dying. Long live dispensationalism.