Progressive Dispensationalism

I think the primary difference between progressive dispensationalism and 'regular' dispensationalism is that 'regular' sees the church as an interruption, a parenthesis, in God's timeline with the Jews (and thus that the church exclusively is the bride of Christ), while progressive dispensationalism sees the church as fulfillment of *some* OT prophecies (ie. was not a parenthesis, but part of the plan) and that the bride is not limited to church-age saints.

This site should answer any questions you have about it.

 

Progressive Dispensationalism is a system which seeks to place the systematic theology of dispensationalism upon the foundation of Biblical Theology.

The word "progressive" in Progressive Dispensationalism is not a description of the people who hold the position (i.e they are progressively becoming covenenant theologians or they are progressively becoming liberal), but it is a description of the way PDs relate the different dispensations to one another. Rather than see dispensations as a period of time (i.e. Scofield) with strict points of beginning and ending, they see them as stewardships given by God which fold into (progress into) one another with aspects of one often transferring into the next. To compare PDs to other theological systems, covenant theologians see complete continuity from the Old Testament to the New; Classic Dispensationalists see complete discontinuity from the Old to the New (and even complete discontinuity from one dispensation to another), PDs see a mixture of continuity and discontinuity from one dispensation to the next, and from the OT to the NT.

Here are some examples which highlight the mixture of continuity and discontinuity:

All the promises of God to Israel will be fulfilled for Israel

There is an "already-not-yet" aspect in this age of some of the spiritual promises to Israel. Some fulfillments have been inaugurated (i.e. The New Covenant) in this age, but not completly fulfilled.

The Kingdom of Christ is present in mystery form through the church today.

PDs practice a complementary hermeneutic in which they see progressive or double fulfillment in many Biblical prophecies.

[ January 19, 2003, 07:52 PM: Message edited by: swaimj ]

 

my, my, my. If the "Kingdom of Christ" (which appears once in the Bible--a synonym of Kingdom of HEAVEN, not Kingdom of God as they are different) is present, it is some kingdom...

-Papal persecution of MILLIONS of saved Christians
-revolutionary WARS (see France, Persia, US, Russia, etc.)
-'civil' WARS
-world WARS
-Etc.

This is nothing more than a worldy, "Let's make the earth a big group hug, one-world world community" philosophy of lost heretics. "All kingdom builders are BLOODY KILLERS."

 

Pure Words,
Check out Ephesians 5:5

It seems to me that this verse considers the kingdom of Christ and the kingdom of God to be the same thing.

 

Craig Blaising & Danny Akin are a couple of guys you can read if you want to know more about Progressive Dispy

 

Dr. Bob,

You may very well know Ed Glenny, who used to teach at Central. He's at Northwestern now, I believe.

He has done quite a bit of exegetical work on the subject, and had debated MBBC's Bible dept. chair on the topic at the Calvary BTS Leadership Conference 3 or 4 years ago. I was not there, but I was told his presentation was strong.

If you can get ahold of anything he's written, he might be a valuable source a bit closer to your associations.