Progressive Dispensationalism, Kingdom Theology, and Historic Premillennialism (Part 1)

Darrell Bock 

Welcome to The Table Podcast, where we discuss issues of God and culture to show the relevance of theology to everyday life. I’m Darrell Bock, one of the hosts of the show, and my guest today is Craig Blaising, longtime partner in crime. 

Craig Blaising 

Good to be back. 

Darrell Bock 

It’s good to be with you. Our relationship goes back years, actually. When Craig was here as a ThM student, and I was here as a ThM student, separated by two years. We never knew each other, but it took a swim across the Atlantic Ocean to Aberdeen, Scotland, and to the little village of 800 people of Torphins, where we ran into each other. And he was working in theology, and I was working in New Testament, and we’ve been interacting with each other ever since. Craig, glad to have you on The Table. 

Craig Blaising 

Thank you, Darrell. It’s good to be here with you. 

Darrell Bock 

Our topic today is progressive dispensationalism and its relationship to historic premillennialism because the two have often been associated with one another, and we want to walk through both the nature of progressive dispensationalism, the nature of historic premillennialism, as well as the differences between them, because there’s a lot of confusion out there. So let’s start with historic premillennialism. What is historic premillennialism? 

Craig Blaising 

Well, the term was popularized by George Eldon Ladd, writing in the 1950s. Ladd wrote one book in particular called The Blessed Hope in which he wanted to set forth a post-tribulational premillennialism. At that time, dispensational premillennialism was very popular. In fact, people identified premillennialism with dispensationalism. They didn’t see any difference. You know, it was the same thing. And so he began writing. He was professor at Fuller Seminary and began writing defending a premillennialism that was not dispensational or pretribulational, and so he put forth that term historic premillennialism to distinguish what he was saying, and he defended that title by saying that this was the view, his view was the view of the early church in the first couple of centuries. Early Christian writers, most of them, expressed a chiliastic or premillennial view of the coming of Christ, and so he argued that his view was that view—that it wasn’t dispensationalism back there. And then he also argued that when dispensationalism became popular in the United States in the 19th century, that not all of the premillennialists at that time were in agreement, and so he was arguing for a non-dispensational premillennialism. The problem, however, which was not apparent until people began to study the issue, is that his view is not exactly the view of the early church. Early Christian premillennialism was not the kind of premillennialism that any of the proponents in the 19th century advocated, except for the fact that it was premillennial, so there was always some kind of premillennialism. And also he argued that pretribulationism was an invention by John Darby, and that this dispensational view is what informed pretribulationism. There has been some work done that shows that actually the consideration of a distinction between the rapture and the appearing of Christ was already being discussed in British circles in the 17th and 18th centuries; they weren’t all what dispensationalism is, but it does show that there was a lot of discussion on it before dispensational premillennialism came into formation. So anyway, that’s where the term comes from. 

Darrell Bock 

So is it non-historic premillennialism? Is that what we’re talking about?  

Craig Blaising 

Well, I think what we need to say is that all these premillennialisms are historic. They all happened in history. Okay. But there’s more distinction than what Ladd proposed. But his view became very popular, and many people refer to it today as the optional premillennialism to dispensational premillennialism. 

Darrell Bock 

What’s the relationship between historic premillennialism and covenant theology? Is that a connection that should be made? 

Craig Blaising 

Well, it can be. There are covenant theologians that are premillennial, but Ladd actually, when he was writing in the ‘50s and then in the ‘60s—he wrote on into the ‘70s—but in those early writings, he said that he was not covenantal. He wasn’t a covenantal theologian, and so what he was proposing was a view of premillennialism that did not depend on a theological construct of the covenant of grace, or covenant of works, and that sort of thing. 

Darrell Bock 

So he was a New Testament professor. I’ll just point that out, and he had a little edge against theology.  

Craig Blaising 

New Testament professors are often looking for a system.  

Darrell Bock 

Yes, we are. We don’t go to the theologians to find it often. That’s the problem. But it could be a problem. Yeah. Okay. So that’s historic premillennialism. Now let’s come to progressive dispensationalism. I think the best way to do this is to talk about progressive and then dispensationalism and then differentiate it from the other forms of dispensationalism that came before it. So— 

Craig Blaising 

Right. Well, dispensationalism. You know, there’s been various ways of describing it, defining it, and there’s so many features because traditional or classic dispensationalism offered an interpretation on a number of passages of Scripture that people become familiar with. Probably the best way to understand it, it was a way of reading the storyline of the Bible, which was a succession of dispensations. That’s one hurdle that people have to overcome when they’re trying to understand dispensation.  

Darrell Bock 

So let me Just stop you there because the dispensation is not necessarily a word that people are extremely familiar with. Exactly. So it comes from a Latin term dispensatio, which means an arrangement or an administration. It’s an administrative period, and dispensationalism is the study of the administrative periods across the Bible. That’s the most simple, probably definition we can get. The Greek term is oikonomia. It means the same thing. It’s just the Greek word instead of the Latin, and the term comes from the Latin term for dispensation. So, a dispensation is basically an administrative arrangement. How God manages the movement of salvation across the Scripture, right? 

Craig Blaising 

Right. Well, there were different administrative arrangements. You think about Israel and the Mosaic Law, and you come to the Church, and this was what most people focused on—that change of order in God’s relationship to human beings. 

Darrell Bock 

So everyone’s a dispensationalist to some degree, right? Because they all recognize the difference between Israel in the Old Testament and the way the Church functions as the—how can I say this—the receptor of revelation and the bearer of revelation today. 

Craig Blaising 

Well, in fact, almost everybody used the word up until the time that the term dispensationalism was coined. Most people, you know, whatever their theological perspective was, talked about the different dispensations in Scripture. I mean, even in the early church, they did that. But when dispensationalism was coined, it was referring to a distinctive way of viewing the dispensations, which only dispensationalism viewed that way, and that was the way in which Israel—the order, the arrangement of God’s dealing with Israel in the Old Testament—and the Church were distinguished. And so traditional, classic dispensationalism—you’re reading the storyline of the Bible and you’re going through these dispensations, but when you hit the Church, you hit a parenthesis. Now that was new. That order, that dispensation, was utterly unrelated to what was going on in the Old Testament, what was going on with Israel. 

Darrell Bock 

So we have the stories of Scripture as opposed to the story of Scripture. 

Craig Blaising 

Exactly. We have two stories going on here, and one of them is contained within a parenthesis within the larger storyline, which has to do with Israel. It breaks off. Parenthesis: the Church as a story and program comes into existence. Parenthesis closes, and then it resumes with God’s working with it. 

Darrell Bock 

And the Church becomes a heavenly people, and Israel is the story of what goes on on earth. And never shall the twain meet. 

Craig Blaising 

Well, yes. So here was another aspect that goes through the history of Christian thought, and that is the heavenly-earthly distinction. You know, how does that affect the reading of the Bible? So dispensationalists incorporated that, so that the Church reflects a heavenly program and they’re a heavenly people to a heavenly destiny, and Israel is God’s earthly program for an earthly people with an earthly destiny. 

Darrell Bock 

So that’s classical dispensationalism. I often say, you know, the dispensations are known for the way it breaks up these dispensations. The traditional number is seven, but there are really three that matter that are the most discussed—what used to be called law, grace, and millennium. I say, but that’s mixing apples and oranges. We really should talk about the structures. So that’s Israel, Church, and Millennium. That’s actually a better way to talk about epochal structure. Kingdom ends up overlapping. The kingdom program is what overlaps how we are moving in the story, right? And— 

Craig Blaising 

Well, this is where progressive dispensationalism makes a contribution. Okay, the older, the classic dispensationalism did not do that. The kingdom was utterly future. It was utterly earthly, and it was specifically millennial— 

Darrell Bock 

And utterly tied to Israel, right? 

Craig Blaising 

Yeah, right. 

Darrell Bock 

Yeah. Okay. So before we get to progressive, let’s talk about revised dispensationalism. Why that name? And then we probably need to discuss the term traditional dispensationalism because traditional dispensationalists use it with regard to both classical and revised. 

Craig Blaising 

Right. 

Darrell Bock 

And it actually is a rhetorical move. Yeah. So let’s talk about all that together. 

Craig Blaising 

Well, yeah. So when we wrote the book, Progressive Dispensationalism, I introduced these categories: classical, revised, and progressive, in order to distinguish the differences between the different dispensationalists, how they were looking at the story of the Bible and various other interpretations. So the easiest way to understand it is to think of the Scofield Bible. So, 1917 Scofield Bible, okay. Actually, 1909, and then 1917, and then you have 1967. You have the revised Scofield Bible, the new Scofield Bible. Okay, so you can think of classical in terms of the Scofield Bible, the original, and you can think of revised in terms of the new Scofield.  

Darrell Bock 

So What was the revision, and why is the existence of revised dispensationalism so hidden? I’ll say it that way. 

Craig Blaising 

Well, in the book that we edited in ‘92, it has an introduction that tries to explain this. Why is this so hard to get one’s mind around? And the reason had to do with the fact that we were in a polemical situation. Dispensationalists were in a polemical situation, with amillennialists primarily, and at that time in the ‘30s and ‘40s and so on, and then coming into the ‘60s and the ‘70s, that polemical situation still existed, and nobody really wanted to talk about development and change. So actually, there was a lot of thinking and rethinking on particular interpretations that dispensationalists had developed. I think the primary thing in the revision we attempted to point out was that classical dispensationalism extended the parallel, the heavenly-earthly dualism, on into eternity. So the Church as a heavenly people, and all heavenly people, which is more than the Church—it’s the Old Testament dead and so on—that when they’re raised, they’re all heavenly, and they were viewed as populating the heavens for eternity. And then Israel and Gentiles that come to faith during the tribulation would then fulfill God’s purposes for the earth and do that forever. There is problems, however, in maintaining this dualism, and so the revised dispensationalists changed that. So the destiny is the same: it’s all in heaven for Israel and the Church, or it’s all on the earth for Israel and the Church. And there were changes in the way the relationship of the Old Testament was seen to the New Testament. There was a lot of trouble in trying to deal with the New Covenant, for example, because the New Testament makes reference to the New Covenant, and so they toyed for a while with two New Covenants, one different for the Church and one different for Israel. That was breaking down, and so there is some connection being seen between the Church and Old Testament prophecy— 

Darrell Bock 

And they were wrestling with how to articulate that. 

Craig Blaising 

Exactly, and so that begins to break down the parenthesis because the parenthesis was really emphasized. It has nothing to do with Old TestamentSo let me— 

Darrell Bock 

Mystery meant mystery, and totally previously unrevealed. 

Craig Blaising 

Exactly—mystery out of Ephesians 3, the mystery regarding this dispensation. So they began to break that down because the Bible required it, and so progressive dispensationalism is the continued development of that. Looking at the way in which the New Testament relates to the Old Testament as the broader topic, and then specifically the way what the New Testament says about the Church relates to the promises, the plan of God revealed in the Old Testament, and all of that is moving to a uniform biblical storyline. And instead of a parenthesis or a dual storyline, it’s a uniform storyline in which the Church—yes, it’s a new arrangement in the canonical narrative, but it’s a development in light of God fulfilling one plan that He revealed early in the Old Testament covenant promises.  

Darrell Bock 

So let me fill in this way. So the progressive idea is the idea that through the progress of revelation, there is one plan unfolding as we move along, and as a new dispensation comes, it’s not totally unconnected to what’s come before, nor is it totally unconnected to what’s coming later. 

Craig Blaising 

Right. 

Darrell Bock 

And of course, the dispensationalism part of it is that we’ve still got administrative arrangements, and we still have some kind of a distinction between the Church and Israel that’s maintaining itself as that story’s unfolding. 

Craig Blaising 

Right. So a lot of what we were writing on progressive dispensationalism pointed out that the definition which Charles Ryrie made famous, that what makes a dispensationalist is that one carries on a distinction between Israel and the Church, but he didn’t say what the distinction was. And what I pointed out in a number of writings was that there was a difference between the way his generation, which I referred to as revised dispensationalism, saw that distinction as opposed to Chafer and going all the way back to Scofield and Darby.  

Darrell Bock 

So that was part of the revision. 

Craig Blaising 

That was part of the revision was the way in which the distinction was articulated. Progressive dispensationalism also sees a distinction, and that’s why it’s a form of dispensationalism. However, the distinction that it sees is not the same as either classical or revised dispensationalism. In fact, what the distinction has to do with is understanding the definition of the Church, and that’s what’s different from previous forms of dispensationalism, and also different from supersessionism. But before we pursue that, I think you raise the question, Darrell, about traditional dispensationalism and where that topic comes in, and that was introduced as far as I could tell in ‘93 or ‘94, when a book came out responding to the publications we had made on progressive dispensationalism, and said no. What we want to affirm is a traditional dispensationalism. But that label, while it sought to distinguish itself from progressive dispensationalism, hid the fact that there were differences between classical and revised dispensationalists. Actually, what traditional dispensationalism is, is revised dispensationalism with another label, because it’s certainly not classical. I had a plane ride one time with a person whose name I think anybody listening to this would recognize, and he said, “You know, I identify as a classical dispensationalist.” I said, “Oh, great.” I said, “Do you maintain the eternal distinction between the heavenly and earthly peoples?” He said, “No, I don’t hold to that.” Well, that’s what made classical dispensationalism! I mean, the writings of Chafer make this so clear that this is it: it’s an eternal distinction between heavenly and earthly programs, peoples, and plans of God. But he didn’t hold to that. So what he really was, was a revised dispensationalist.  

Darrell Bock 

Who thought he was Classical. 

Craig Blaising 

Yeah, yeah. But it’s just a blurring of terms, and this is where traditional then comes in as the term of choice to distinguish from progressive dispensationalism. 

Darrell Bock 

Well, it’s also to suggest that progressive dispensationalism is not traditional dispensationalism. It’s not the old historic dispensationalism.  

Craig Blaising 

Well it hides the fact that there’s changes going on. Right, and even Scofield and Chafer differed from Darby, you know, and Scofield differed from Chafer on some things. But it masks those distinctions, and in order to really understand it historically, you need to see those distinctions that developed in the tradition. 

Darrell Bock 

Okay, now before we turn to the Church and what makes progressive dispensationalism unique—the Church—and then compare it to what’s going on in historic premillennialism, there’s one other... I want to go back to the parenthesis idea for a second. And say that the parenthesis idea for me is a term of perception as opposed to a substantive term. And here’s what I mean by that: in the Hebrew Scripture, in the Old Testament, the package of what was coming was always presented as a package. You were always getting the whole enchilada, I like to say—you know, you’re getting everything that was coming with redemption, including the establishment of shalom on the earth. When Jesus came, that got pulled apart into two clear comings: what He did in regard to the forgiveness of sins and the offer of the New Covenant in the first coming, and then what was going to be the offer of shalom and the removal of evil and the establishment of righteousness and the vindication of the saints yet to come. Well, what it looks like you get when you pull that apart is a gap, right? There’s a gap standing there, so it’s easy to say, perhaps with reference to a focus on Israel, there’s a parenthesis. But it’s not a real parenthesis because Isaiah 53 said His own were going to reject Him. It was in the program that this was going to happen and that we were going to get two phases. It just wasn’t identified as two clear, distinct phases. It was suggested, but not clearly laid out the way the New Testament shows it. That’s part of the progress of revelation, and so what looks to be a parenthesis actually is the reality of having this package deal pulled into two comings and coming in two steps, which introduces the idea of already/not yet. Some of it comes now, and some of it comes later, which then introduces the idea of the kingdom and the kingdom program and what that looks like, along with all the parables that come with it in Matthew 13. Okay, my New Testament stuff is spilling out rapidly here, and lo and behold, we’re now into the kingdom discussion and how the Church fits into the kingdom. And the kingdom involves both a period in which the Church is the prominent structure, and the millennium is the structure that is to come. And so, now— 

Craig Blaising 

Yeah, yeah. So this is where there’s a number of things that are coming in here to define this parenthesis, and a number of issues that those who were developing dispensationalism as a system were trying to speak to. And of course one of those was—and this goes all the way back to John Darby in the 1830s, where he was trying to explain why it is that the seventy sevens in Daniel 9—so those seventy sevens are marking time down from the decree of Artaxerxes—was it 445?—all the way down to the appearing of Jesus, and then you have the last seven of that seventy sevens, and that’s your tribulational pattern. 

Darrell Bock 

It’s isolated to itself. Everything else, the sixty-two plus the seven gets you to sixty-nine. You’ve got one. You do your math: sixty-nine minus seventy leaves one.  

Craig Blaising 

That pattern is sitting there, and the question is what to do with it. That question of what to do with that was driving prophecy, teaching, study, preaching, and so on through a couple of centuries. Actually, it was always an issue of discussion earlier in the history of the church. But what the gap was, was a gap—the gap between the 69th and the 70th week. And so that’s where Darby proposed the Church comes in as a parenthesis there in that gap. And so there’s so many things, Darrell, that are connected to this. The question is, what do you do with Israel? 

How do you interpret what’s going on with Israel? What is the Church, and what is going on with it, and how do these things relate to each other? And so he then proposed this idea that God has set Israel aside; He’s not going to deal with them until the Church program is over and the gap closes. 

Darrell Bock 

Which reminds me of several passages in the New Testament that are key for our overall conversation about the difference between dispensationalism and covenant theology and/or historic premillennialism in some cases, and that is the term “until.” Luke 13:34–35: “Your house is left to you desolate,” Jesus speaking to the nation of Israel because they’re rejecting Him as Messiah, “until you say, ‘Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!’” And I tell people, you don’t put an “until” on something unless there’s something related to the “until” that’s going to happen. Okay, so Israel is under what I call an exilic-like judgment. It’s a temporary judgment; it’s not a permanent judgment, until she recognizes that the Lord comes. Matthew 23:37–39 is basically the same passage, the same saying. You have a phrase in the Olivet Discourse that says Jerusalem is trampled down until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled, which tells you there’s a time of the Gentiles and then there’s another time. Well, what’s the contrast of Gentiles in Scripture? It’s Israel. And then you have Acts 3:21. This is Peter speaking, and Peter says heaven must receive the Messiah until the period of restoration of all things comes. And you can read about those times of refreshing in the Hebrew Scriptures. The prophets talk about them. You want to know what’s coming with what’s left with what Jesus is going to do as the Christ? Read your Hebrew Scriptures; read your Old Testament. They are telling you. And Israel’s in the middle of all that in that story. So sometimes a covenant theologian will say to me, “Well, I’m not a supersessionist. I’m not a replacement theologian. I’m a fulfillment theologian.” I go, “I can buy that. Jesus is the fulfillment of the promise. Everything rotates around Him. But it might matter what the Fulfiller actually has to say about these things, and it might matter what those who followed and walked and were taught by Him had to say about these things.” And that’s our “until” passages, which whenever I see covenant theologians write on this, they never mention those texts. 

Craig Blaising 

The point is that these texts are indicating that the narrative is moving toward a consummation which picks up the particular specific promises to Israel, and that’s what the “until” is indicating. That’s what Peter is saying in Acts 3, as you mentioned, that when He comes will be the time for the restoration of all the things spoken by the prophets. So there is a fulfillment of the particular promises to Israel, and that’s why supersessionism—whatever it’s called, whatever label is in vogue that tries to get Israel out of the story—that’s the point: the readings of Scripture which try to remove Israel from the story don’t succeed, because the Scripture is emphasizing a consummation that’s going to involve the particular fulfillment of the story.  

Darrell Bock 

So a fourth text that comes into this mix, of course, is Romans 9–11, which talks about: well, if God can take unnatural branches and connect them to the promise, and connect them to the tree, He can certainly take natural branches and do the same. And in this way, all Israel will be saved. In a section that’s talking about Paul’s grief about the lack of response of the mass of Israel, so we’re still talking about how the mass of Israel is responding in Romans 9–11 with Israel still in the equation. 

Craig Blaising 

Yes. Let me come back to the issue of the gap here and what the earlier dispensationalists were trying to say. They were trying to distinguish the Church from Israel: the Church has not replaced Israel; Israel has a future. Unfortunately, the way they did it was to talk about God’s dealing with Israel as being on hold, on pause. What I think they were really meaning is the fulfillment of the promises of blessing that were in those covenant promises. But what they said is that He’s no longer dealing with them, and He’s dealing with the Church, so they’re set aside. I think what we have to say is that God is not; God is still dealing with Israel.  

Darrell Bock 

You have a remnant. 

Craig Blaising 

Yeah, you have a remnant, and you also have—even when they were out of the land. I mean, Darby is writing in the 1830s, so Zionism begins as a movement at the end of the 19th century.  

Darrell Bock 

So Israel isn’t even in the Middle East. 

Craig Blaising 

It’s not. Well, it’s scattered in a lot of places in the Middle East, but it’s not in the land. I mean, there are Jews living in the land, but not many. There’s a smaller group.  

Darrell Bock 

They’re certainly not in control of the land.  

Craig Blaising 

The whole thing about coming into a national political reality, so it wasn’t seen at that time. So anyway, their proposal was this idea of the Church, you know, interrupting God’s dealing with Israel, and that’s what progressive dispensationalism calls into question, and it all hinges around the definition of the Church. 

Darrell Bock 

Okay, so we’ve finally gotten to that point. Let’s talk about the definition of the Church. What made progressive dispensationalism’s view of the Church important, and why is it a contribution to evangelical theology? 

Craig Blaising 

Well, the mistake that was made by all sides was seeing the Church as a people group like peoples. So what do I mean by that? It’s a missiological term. We talk about people groups. What are we talking about? We’re talking about tribes, ethnic collectives, nations, collective sociality that belongs to humanity. So, human beings have collective identities as well as individual, personal identities. And so we see this very easily with Israel: Israel is a people, all right, and through their history, they have often had national status as well, and they’ve existed as a people outside of their national status in exile and so on. But people groups—this defines humanity around the globe. So there are tribes, there are nations, there are peoples living among peoples and so on. The Church was seen that way. And so a lot of the discussion—do you hold to one people of God or two peoples of God? And that was: one people of God, that was Israel, they were the people of God; two peoples of God, Israel and the Church. The problem is that the Church is not in the New Testament a people group. When you look very carefully at what the New Testament is saying, it’s talking about a communion created in Christ and by Christ, by the Holy Spirit, that links persons, individuals to Him directly and to one another, apart from their personal identities and their collective identities. So the New Testament is not about Israel and the Church—it’s Israel and Gentiles. The issue is God is creating a communion by the Spirit between Jews and all kinds of Gentiles, and that is not eliminating the people distinction of Israel— 

Darrell Bock 

It’s transnational. 

Craig Blaising 

It’s a union that moves transnationally, and that is the union of a multinational kingdom. There has to be something that unifies it. In this case, you’ve got multiple peoples. You’ve got Israel; their particular promises require their presence in the kingdom of Messiah. But you’ve got Gentiles—going all the way back to the covenant promises, they were always seen to be there. 

Darrell Bock 

Genesis 12:3: I’m going to bless the world through the seed. 

Craig Blaising 

Exactly. So you’ve got Israel and you’ve got Gentile peoples and nations. That’s the Messianic kingdom. The thing that unifies it is this work of Christ by the Holy Spirit, connecting all of the persons and all of those collectives to Himself and to one another by the Spirit, traversing not only their personal identities but their collective identities, whether it’s national or ethnic or whatever it is. 

Darrell Bock 

So it’s an all-pervasive change that comes to a person’s identity that—I’ve got to say—sublimates their personal identity, their national identity, their ethnic identity, and the identity that counts is they’re a citizen of heaven and they’re connected to Christ. 

Craig Blaising 

Well, you think of sin, for example. How has sin affected the human race? Sin is not the property of a certain people. Okay, sin affects all of humanity. All of the human beings that make up the peoples of the world have the problem of sin. The redemption of Christ addresses itself to that common level of all humanity, and so what you’ve got in the body of Christ is people who are redeemed personally, no matter what their collective identities are, and that puts them in a relationship to one another that removes the hostility. It’s meant to remove the hostility that’s caused by sin. This is Ephesians 2. 

Darrell Bock 

It is that we have a ministry of reconciliation. That reconciliation is not just between the individual and God. It actually is in the business of taking estranged peoples and making them family. 

Craig Blaising 

Yes. So you can have any of our local churches... The whole question is, well, where do you go from this conception of the body of Christ to a local church, for example? Well, in our local churches, I think we see this: you can have a person from another country, from another ethnicity, from another tribe, whatever, and they’re a believer in Jesus. They come into the fellowship, and let’s say this particular local church is mostly within a particular community and tribe or ethnicity or whatever, and somebody from another tribal identity or ethnic identity comes into that group, and they’re welcomed as a brother or sister in Christ. 

Darrell Bock 

I have a story to tell that’s like this. I remember traveling with my dad. My dad was not a believer, and we were on a plane. We were working our way to Bermuda, and we were going through the Bahamas to get there in a stop. We had a layover, and I left my luggage and a Bible sitting on top at the airline. Said, “Can you watch this spot?” because we had a long layover. And when we came back a little early, I engaged with the person working the airline who was Black, and she was a Bahamian. And when she found I was a believer, and we had a half an hour conversation, it was like I had known her all my life. My dad said to me when we got on the plane, that conversation was amazing; he couldn’t believe the amount of connection and sense of connection that we had with one another. And I had just met this person; I didn’t know her from Eve beforehand. And that connection is what you’re talking about: the fact that it can go in that kind of direction that fast. 

Craig Blaising 

Yes, and the point to be made here is that that reality, when it’s brought into glory, is the reality that unifies the everlasting kingdom. 

Darrell Bock 

Gets us to shalom. 

Craig Blaising 

It gets us to shalom. No kingdom has been stable—some have existed for decades or centuries or whatever, but they don’t remain that way because they break down, and the reason is because of sin. So, the kingdom of Christ, when it reaches its fulfillment, is everlastingly stable because of this change. But here’s the point: the collective identities are there, and remain. People assumed that because Ephesians 2 was talking about “one new man,” that it meant that those distinctions totally went away, that they’re gone. Of course, he also talks about male and female, and nobody argues those distinctions are going away. Somebody somewhere does, but anyway, generally not. But at any rate, the same New Testament that speaks of the oneness in Christ speaks of the future of Israel. That particular identity of the people of Israel is what is demanding that the promises be fulfilled at that level. It has to be fulfilled for them. And when you look at what the New Testament is saying about Gentiles, it fits with the Old Testament multi-collective vision of the kingdom. 

Darrell Bock 

Isaiah 19:23–25 leaps to mind, where you’ve got Egypt—not exactly a friend of Israel in the Old Testament—and Assyria, certainly not exactly a friend in the Old Testament. And there’s a highway that’s supposed to be built from Egypt to Assyria, apparently going through Jerusalem, and I call it the W1, the Worship One Highway. And everyone gathers to Jerusalem, and each group has a name that designates they are each part of the people of God, but they’re also distinguished at the same time. 

Craig Blaising 

Yes, they’re distinguished, and yet they’re given the label “my people.” You know, so it’s “my people Egypt and Assyria” and so on, and then you’ve got Zechariah 2: that many nations will join themselves to the Lord, and they will be My peoples. So the “my people” label in Scripture, when it’s given, is not given to a homogeneous group; it’s distributed to the different nations and peoples that will make up the kingdom of God. 

Darrell Bock 

So it’s not about a nationalism; it’s about the reconciliation. 

Craig Blaising 

It’s a reconciliation. I guess what we have to do is we have to think not only of nations, but a multinational kingdom collective in which the reconciliation is manifest. 

Darrell Bock 

Exactly. 

Craig Blaising 

That’s where they all live at peace 

Darrell Bock 

And celebrated. 

Craig Blaising 

And celebrated. 

Darrell Bock 

Yeah, because that’s the point. God has taken that which had been shattered and broken apart and brought it all back together, and He’s done it in Christ. 

Craig Blaising 

So what I want to say is that both traditional dispensational and supersessionist or replacement theologies both made the mistake of seeing the Church as a people group like peoples, so that once you become part of it, you lose the collective identity. So if a Jew becomes a believer in Jesus, they’re no longer Jewish, and they no longer have their identity with Israel, for both dispensationalists and for supersessionists, because the Church was a people. If you’re part of a people group, you’re not part of some other people group. 

Darrell Bock 

Yeah. 

Craig Blaising 

Okay. If you’re a Yoruba tribesman— 

Darrell Bock 

Yeah. 

Craig Blaising 

You’re not a Korean. 

Darrell Bock 

Yeah.  

Craig Blaising 

It’s not an issue of some conceptions of national citizenship. This has to do with people identity. But in the New Testament, when Paul in Acts, James and Paul, and then you go into the epistles, Paul sees an identity with the Jewish people, and that future Gentiles—you know, they are called “my people.” In Acts 15, James said: the question is, do the Gentiles have to become Jewish in order to be Christian? And the answer is no. The plan of God for the kingdom—this is what Amos saw in Amos 9, which was quoted by James—the plan of God was a multinational reality, and you can’t have that if the Gentiles have to all become Jewish. You can’t have that if the Jews have to become Gentiles. Okay, you keep collective distinctions there. 

Darrell Bock 

So this is a long way... We took a long way to get here, but it’s important. The application of this actually is that the Bible is able to recognize and cope with the diversity that exists in our creation in a way that is healthy, as opposed to the way diversity normally breaks down into tribalism and conflict. 

Craig Blaising 

Yes, it’s because when it breaks down into tribalism and conflict, that’s what Ephesians 2 is talking about: the hostility between those groups. And the work of Christ was to remove the hostility, the group hostilities—to remove the conflict. That’s the reconciliation that you’re talking about. So that’s the role and the work of the kingdom. 

Darrell Bock 

Okay, so we’re kind of running out of time. So let me come back to Ladd and Laddianism, because the common charge was that progressive dispensationalism is basically Laddianism, and it’s historic premillennialism in different clothing. So I need to say this because I’m the one who’s accused of being Laddian, and I actually hadn’t read Ladd when I did all my writing. I had read other people. I had read people like Erich Sauer. I had read people like Werner Kümmel. I had read New Testament studies about the way the kingdom was seen—already/not yet. But Ladd wasn’t one of them. The work that I did was done in handling Gospel texts and tracing this kingdom theme through the Bible, and talking about how it worked and how it connected to things that the Old Testament was saying, like in the Davidic covenant. Because one of the distinctions of progressive dispensationalism is it argues that all the covenants that were coming out of the Old Testament are promised—the Abrahamic, the Davidic, and the New—have some element of realization now, that none of them is deferred totally to the future. So the Davidic covenant offers a dynasty originally. We know it’s a dynasty; it’s not just about Jesus because there’s a discussion of “if my son, the king, sins, I’m going to discipline.” Well, we know that can’t be Jesus. So this is about a dynastic line that gets narrowed in Ezekiel when God is rebuking the leaders for not leading the people as they ought, and said, “I’m going to send a Davidite. He’s going to be a shepherd.” And then later on in chapter 36, He combines that with New Covenant hope by saying, “I’m going to wash you clean. I’m going to put My Spirit within you.” Jeremiah said, “I’m going to forgive your sins. I’m going to put My law in your heart.” It’s the same idea, just expressed differently. And the Davidic presence and the hope of the new life in the Spirit are dots that are put on the table. And then John the Baptist in the New Testament comes along and says, “You know how you connect those dots?” And this is Luke 3:16. I tell people Luke 3:16 is as important to the Bible as John 3:16 is. It says when they’re contemplating could John be the Christ, he’s saying no, it’s not me; I only baptize with water. There’s one coming to baptize with the Spirit and fire, which is saying the way you’ll know the new era has come, and the Messiah has come, and the Davidic promise with the new era has come, is when the Messiah of God brings the Spirit of God to the people of God. And that becomes Acts 2. And so that’s bringing together all these strands into the covenants: we’ve got the Abrahamic promise—the world is going to be blessed through the seed of Abraham; the seed of Abraham is going to narrow down to the Christ. We’ve got a Davidic dynasty that’s going to narrow down to a Shepherd who is a Davidite. The New Covenant is going to bring the forgiveness of sins and the establishment of the law in the heart through the Spirit indwelling us because we’ve been washed clean. All those strands come together, and it all happens in Christ, and He ties it together, and that becomes the core of kingdom theology. 

Craig Blaising 

Yes, so you see a unified narrative. So you’re coming from Old Testament promise to John the Baptist introducing Jesus, the ministry of Jesus. This is the issue of continuity versus discontinuity: this is a narrative continuity that’s happening with progress. It’s a progressing narrative in which the plan of God is being fulfilled in the stages that God is revealing.  

Darrell Bock 

And the three structures are: you have the hope of promise coming out of Israel; you have the Church in which Jesus has accomplished some of this by providing the provisions of the New Covenant and establishing the new life that comes through the Spirit that is the sign of the arrival of the new age; and then in the millennium you work your way towards a structure in which Jesus—although currently in the Church He’s around and present, but we don’t actually see Him—there’s going to come a time when we’re going to see Him. He’s going to rule from Jerusalem with Israel and the nations in the midst, completing the promises that are associated particularly with Israel in that mix. Shalom’s going to come, peace is going to be established, and so some of what we have related to the kingdom is now, and some of what we have related to the kingdom is not yet. The millennium is going to take care of the not-yet structure, and so we have three different structures because Christ is physically present. We’ll see Him. My remark is: no one will debate who the Pope is in the millennium! And so three very different structures, three different kinds of stewardship. That’s the dispensationalism, and the progress is the way in which that story comes together until finally we get to the removal of evil, the establishment of shalom, the establishment of righteousness, and the vindication of the saints. 

Craig Blaising 

Yeah. Ladd was important, writing in the ‘50s and the ‘60s, and engaging with a broader scholarship that you’re referring to, where you were doing your reading and so on. And he was engaging with that, and he was very helpful for evangelicals in putting forth the way in which the New Testament presents the kingdom. Jesus’s teaching, His preaching on the kingdom and the kingdom theme, is a continuous narrative thread, and this was threatening to dispensationalists who had the parenthesis. Remember, the parenthesis is that it has absolutely nothing to do with what was said in the Old Testament—nothing. Okay, so this was a challenge to that, and in his writings he would bring that up, and so he was important for a number of evangelicals engaging with that fact: the kingdom is part of the canonical narrative, and the way it moves through the New Testament, and it’s not a parenthesis. But progressive dispensationalism is not Ladd’s view. Ladd was a supersessionist. He saw the Church as the new Israel, the true Israel. He distinguished from Israel the Church; he still had a people-group-like view of the Church, and so the Church becomes the new people. However, he was sensitive to the dispensational emphasis on Romans 9–11, and so in some of his writings he tried to come back and bring literal Israel back into the picture. But then it becomes very incoherent in his writings because you have a spiritual Israel that just has spiritualized all the promises, but then somehow you get an Israel within that that manages to connect to those promises in a literal way after they’ve all been spiritualized. So it’s really kind of incoherent. So he was important for contributions that he made—the phrase “already/not yet”—but that was still heard by many people, and even in some of Ladd’s writings, as a hermeneutical issue of spiritualizing Old Testament promise and prophecy. Progressive dispensationalism doesn’t do that, and it’s not necessary to do that. Here’s where the definition of the Church is so important, because it maintains collective identities, and the kingdom maintains collective identities. Nothing is spiritualized. So when God says, for example, in Isaiah—you mentioned, I know we’re running close on time here—but when He calls a Gentile group “my people,” and He does this in Zechariah, does anybody raise the question, “Oh, what just happened to Israel? They’ve been spiritualized”? No, that doesn’t raise that question. It doesn’t come up in the text, because He puts that title that He gave to Israel on a Gentile people. That’s hand in hand with God’s fulfillment of His promises for Israel.  

Darrell Bock 

Because Gentile expansion does not mean Israelite exclusion. 

Craig Blaising 

Exactly. It doesn’t mean their exclusion or redefinition or resignification. None of that is happening. So progressive dispensationalism maintains—what dispensationalists like to say—a consistently literal interpretation of Scripture, where the term “literal” has grown in its sophistication, but it’s not allegorical. It’s not spiritualizing in order to do that. 

Darrell Bock 

So I’m reminded of a conversation I had with Daniel Fuller, who was Charles Fuller’s son. Of course, Ladd taught at Fuller Seminary; they were colleagues. And in this conversation, which I had in the ‘90s—and I was having it in the midst of visiting all these covenant-oriented seminaries; I think I visited virtually every one in the ‘90s at one point to explain progressive dispensationalism—to which I met with a very condescending response, which was, “Well, if you just keep going, eventually you’ll join us.” And I said, “No, you don’t understand our critique. You don’t understand that what we are saying about a role for Israel, the future of Israel, the preservation of Israel in the promise and form in which it was originally given to her is going to be maintained throughout Scripture.” And so I said to Daniel Fuller, “Our problem with Ladd is that he was vague with regard to how Israel fit into the promise in a way that reflects the Scripture, and we have a different way of articulating that that we think preserves that.” And his response to me was, “You’re right about his vagueness, and you’re right about the preservation of Israel in the program.” And so I’m here going, well, that’s interesting. Here’s a colleague of Ladd, a friend of Ladd, who sees the difference, understands the difference, can articulate the difference, and understands what it is that we’re doing. He was fascinated with progressive dispensationalism, and that’s why we were in the conversation. And so this is an offer: it’s an offer that’s being made to evangelicalism at large. Let’s close with this question, and that is: so when we articulate what the benefit is to evangelicalism of this theology, what would you say the benefit of this theology actually is? 

Craig Blaising 

The benefit of progressive dispensationalism, which is also referred to as kingdom theology: the benefit is a consistent understanding of the details of Scripture, the narrative of Scripture. It’s a holistic understanding of the narrative of Scripture that puts that together. It has ramifications for biblical interpretation. It has ramifications theologically because it’s a theology that focuses on the consummation in which all the plan is fulfilled. It has implications for the life of the Church.  

Darrell Bock 

And then the diversit is a part of the Church that is to be celebrated. 

Craig Blaising 

That’s right. 

Darrell Bock 

And the reconciliation that that represents. 

Craig Blaising 

That’s right. 

Darrell Bock 

And the full-orbed identification it allows a person to have who comes into that salvation, when they recognize: I’m connected to people next to me who aren’t like me, and yet God has made us one. 

Craig Blaising  

And we’re all headed for a plan, a fulfillment, a consummation, for an everlasting relationship with Christ and with one another, and we only begin to understand what that’s like.  

Darrell Bock 

Well, Craig, I want to thank you for helping us with this conversation and helping us sort out how dispensationalism—progressive dispensationalism in particular—differs from historic premillennialism. It’s been an important conversation. I really appreciate you taking the time to be with us. 

Craig Blaising 

Well, thank you, Darrell. It’s been great to be with you and to talk these things together, and appreciate it. Thanks. 

Darrell Bock 

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