FORUM: Eschatology

Concerning "Last Things," the Baptist Faith and Message says, "God, in His own time and in His own way, will bring the world to its appropriate end. Jesus Christ will return personally and visibly ---the dead will be raised; and Christ will judge all men in righteousness."  It doesn't go into details, for Southern Baptists have formed no consensus on these matters. Still, the Scripture is rich in teaching on these matters, and these passages have generated a lot of study and preaching. We gathered three scholars to discuss the issues --Paige Patterson, president of Southeastern Seminary [now president of Southwestern Seminary], David Dockery, Dean of Theology at Southern Seminary [now president of Union University], and Millard Erickson, Research Professor of Theology at Southwestern. [Now at Western Seminary in Portland]; Patterson, with a Ph.D. from New Orleans Seminary, has served as pastor in Texas, Louisiana, and Arkansas. Before coming to Southwestern, he was president of Southeastern Seminary and Criswell College. He is currently writing the volume on Revelation for The New American Commentary (Broadman & Holman) - Dockery earned the doctorate at UT-Arlington, and served as a pastor in New York. While a professor of theology and New Testament at Criswell College, he edited the Criswell Theological Review. Before going to his present position at Southern, he was general editor of Broadman Press, where he was also editor of The New American Commentary. After completing the PD. at Northern Baptist Seminary, Erickson earned the Ph.D. at Northwestern University. He was pastor of churches in Illinois and Minnesota, and has since held 43 interim pastorates. Before coming to Southwestern, he was Dean of Bethel Seminary. Among his 15 books are Christian Theology and Contemporary Eschatalogical Alternatives. SBC LIFE:   Let's set the historical context in the Southern Baptist Convention.

Dockery:   Nineteenth century Southern Baptist theology was predominantly postmillennial. This position was held by the founders of Southern Seminary and Southwestern Seminary.  This postmillennialism was the type held by the Puritans and Jonathan Edwards. They were looking for God s kingdom to come. 

A thoroughgoing postmillenialism undergirds the WMU theme song, "We've a Story to Tell to the Nations" In that hymn we sing, "Christ's great kingdom shall come on earth, a kingdom of love and light." 

Postmillenialism was the dominant position until World War I. After that, W.T. Conner and E.Y. Mullins were amillennialists, and that became the Southern Baptist position in Southern Baptist academia during the twentieth century. 

J.R. Graves was the first premillennialist I know of in Southern Baptist life. Dr. Patterson may know of someone else, but Dr. Graves was the first dispensationalist for sure in Southern Baptist life. I don't think that there are more than a handful of dispensationalists on the six seminary faculties even now. 

Patterson:   The two World Wars dealt a staggering blow to optimistic humanism, and that in turn had an effect upon postmillenialism in Southern Baptist life. While postinillennialism has experienced a recent resurgence with certain Presbyterians in the Reconstructionist movement, it has not come back to Southern Baptist life.

Ray Summers did much to popularize amillennialism with his book Worthy is the Lamb. More than half of it is an introduction to apocalyptic literature and hermeneutical methods. A little less than half of it is actually an interpretation of Revelation, but it became extraordinarily popular and remains so today. You walk into a pastor's library, and the chances are the book will be on the shelf.

SBC LIFE:   And Hobbs joined with him in The Cosmic Drama.

Dockery:   Hobbs was, based on his testimony, a "premillennialist without a program" and later became amillennialist. 

Patterson:   Truett was heavily influenced by Carroll, and if he had much of an eschatological view, it was probably closer to postinillennialism. After Truett's death, First Baptist Church, Dallas, called Dr. Criswell, who was a premillennialist. When they wrote the statement of faith for the church, Dr. Criswell wrote it preinillennially. One of the deacons stood up and protested the adoption of the statement, saying that George W. Truett could not sign it. Upon this, Dr. Criswell rose and said, 'That, brother, is absolutely correct. When Dr. Truert, the far-famed pastor of this illustrious congregation was here, he could not have signed this. But he can now."

Dockery:   Although amillennialism has ken dominant in the colleges and seminaries, premillnialism has gained ascendancy in the pulpits. R. G. Lee and W.A. CrisweIl were the two dominant premillennial pulpits. They have shaped the denomination so that I would say that the majority of Southern Baptist pulpits today are premillennial. 

SBC LIFE:   Do you think that most Southern Baptist ministers have a firmly settled opinion on the qttestion? 

Patterson:   My guess would he that when the fe. majority of Southern Baptists hear the mention of millennialism or eschatology their first question is, "Well, does the person get well?" The vast majority of to Southern Baptists really don't have much of a clue about what is being discussed. 

Almost to an individual, they would believe strongly in the fact of a visible, literal return of Christ to the earth. As far as a programmatic aspect is concerned, most would not know. My guess is that among the pastors, you probably have a sizable number of them who don't know a lot more about it. 

Of those who do have a persuasion, I imagine that dispensational premillennialisin would have a slight leg up at this point. On our seminary campuses, I would say that historical pre-millenniaIism would now be the stronger position. 

SBC LIFE:   Dr. Erickson, in your book, Contemporary Options in Eschatology, you discuss the notion that each era tackles a major issue. Early on, it was the nature of Christ. Later, the nature of scriptural authority. But now, eschatology is a major concern. 

Erickson:   James Orr thought this. As church history has unfolded, the Trinity and Christology came early in the discussion. But eschatology had never really been dealt with, so he thought this would be one of the new topics, along with the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. 

I think he was right, but not in quite the way he thought. He was probably working with a somewhat narrower conception of the millennium. The big discussions in eschatology in the 20th century havc been much broader. There's this "already-but-not-yet" theme fmm Oscar Cullmann and others, the idea that everything is eschatological, and the"theology of hope." So it's been a casting of all of theology in an eschatological vein. 

The discussion of the millennial views has been a smaller sphere, among conservatives primarily. And I don't see it as one of the major topics right now. There were places like Dallas Seminary where you could look at the doctoral dissertations, and they all had sornerhing to do with eschato!ogy, one way or the other. Virtually everything that John Walvoord wrote dealt with eschatology. I was there in early February for a lectureship, and I don't sense there is quite that preoccupation with cschatology now. They are reworking things. 

Dockery:   Dispensationalists are reworking that whole system. This progressive dispensationalism has changed everything. 

Erickson:   I think there was a time when a particular millennial view was the issue, but you get into that and find that it's really hermeneutics, the doctrine of the church and those broader things. 

Right now as I see it in evangelicalism, there is movement towards the middle. Dallas has come into the Association of Theological Schools, and some of the institutions that were farther left are moving back towards the middle. You have a small, but a very vociferous extreme right wing and then you have some progressive evangelicals who are carrying on the tradition of Fuller Seminary. But there is more of a clustering towards the middle, and you don't find as much difference on the ethos of these eschatolcgicaL camps as you used to, 

There was a very different feel in how one thought about the church, its mission and the future at a place like Dallas seminary than there was at Westminster Seminary. But I don't think there is that great a difference in feel now. 

I used to go to these evangelical deans meetings. There would be about a dozen of us. You had the feeling that there wasn't that much diffcrence in general between what went on at Covenant Seminary, Westminster, Denver Conservative Bapiist, and Dallas. I think that s happening in eschatology, too. Dispensationalism had a definite, almost a cultural quality to it, and that seems to be diminishing. 

Patterson:   In his book, Dispensationalism Today Charles Ryrie acknowledged the fact that dispensationalism had, like many theologies, some unproven assumptions, and some that actually were unworthy of careful exegesis. He began to call attention to those and indicate some movement on his own part.  And then, of course, Craig Blaising and Robert Saucy and others have picked this thing up and gone even fur ther, to a point that would probably make Dr. Ryrie uncomfortable. But, in any event, the movement back toward the middle really started with Ryrie s book. 

Dockery:   Today, you have classical dispensationalists, revised dispensationalists and now progressive dispensationalists. The last eight years, there has been a pre-meeting at the Ex angclical Theological Society to discuss premillennialism and progressive dispensationalism. This has resulted in the new book by Craig Blaising and Darrcll Bock entitled Progressive Dispsationalism. 

It used to be that people from faculties like Westminster Theological Seminary and Dallas Theological Seminary sat down together to discuss their numerous differences and would hardly find common ground. In these recent meetings, you had faculty representatives sit down, describe their eschatological systems and, at the end, say they could generally buy into what each other had said regarding the nature of the Kingdom of God. It was fascinating. 

Patterson:   I've been identified as a dispensationalist, although I don't care for the identification. I was always uncomfortable with aspects of classical dispensationalism, things like viewing the Sermon on the Mount as a kingdom-age ethic and, therefore, not applicable to the chutch today 

My position is that the old classical dispensationalism was very much right about the distinction that does need to be made between Israel and the Church. God has a plan for each On the other hand, I don't buy into the old dispensationalism that people were saved in the Old Testament in any other way than they are saved now one group saved by grace through faith in prospect of the cross and the other group saved by grace through faith in retrospect, looking back to the cross. So, I think there were some changes that needed to be made and yet, there are some aspects of so-called dispensationalism to which I still adhere. 

Erickson:   Even though you've probably gone through more tribulations personally than any of the rest of us here. 

Patterson:   Good point! 

SBC LIFE:   What about movement in your own thinking through the years? 

Dockery:   I began my eschatology as a dispensationalist. The first exposure I had to this system was that little Scofield book on the seven dispensarions. I had a Scofield Reference Bible and learned that system very well. 

My eschatology class in seminary was where I really started to think about these issues seriously. This class raised more questions than it's solved, particularly about the two peoples of God, Israel and the Church. 

In Ephesians 2 and Galatians 3, that distinction breaks down when Paul argues that the two are no longer two, but one the dividing wall has been done away with. In Galatians 3, he says that God's promises were not to seeds (plural) but to seed (singular), and that seed is Christ. Then all who are in Christ are children of Abraham (Galarians 3:29). 

While I recognise two aspects, that God was doing something different with Israel than He is now doing with the church is clear, but it's hard for me to think that there are two separate peoples of God. That is where I have had the biggest trouble with dispensationalism. I really think that the pretribulation rapture stands ot falls on that distinction, because it is the church that is taken out of the tribulation and Israel that stays in. So I have some difficulties with the dispensational system at that point. I'm still a thoroughgoing premillennialist but rather agnostic on the timing of the rapture in relation to the tribulation. 

Patterson:   I, too, have experienced major movement. The first book I ever read on eschatology (as a teenage boy) was The Life Beyond by Ray Summers. Shortly after, I read his Worthy is the Lamb. 

I was an ardent, thoroughgoing, committed amillennialist, not just apologetetically, but polemically. I thought premillennialism was absolutely the worst thing that could happen. 

I thought that for several years, and then I read the Bible. I say that humorously, but there is a sense in which I literally experienced a conversion of millennial views, based on reading the Scripture, it originally came to me, flow out of the New Testament, but out of the Old Testament. I grappled with the Old Testament prophecies, such as Ezekiel 40-48 and the Isaianic prophesies concerning the kingdom age. I came to the point where I had to say they were looking for a real kingdom age on earth, and that I could find nothing in the New Testarnent that negated that. 

I have a similar view to Dr. Dockery's here, in that I do not believe that the program of God with Israel, and the program of God with the church is a permanent division of programs. Not only are folks always saved exactly the same way, but I also believe that the distinction between Israel and the church will nor be an eternal heavenly distinction. At that point, I would part company with most classical dispensationalists, but I do still feel that there's overwhelming evidence that something is going on with the Jewish nation. 

SBC LIFE: Any New Testament passages that particularly struck any of you? Romans 11, for instance? 

Dockery:   Romans 11 is still a passage that you have to read as ethnic Israel. There is a future for ethnic Israel. I don't think you can read that passage as a promise about spiritual Israel, so that is the reason I wou1d say there are two aspects of the people of God. I have to make some kind of distinction. It is not the case that there has been just one covenant people from Abraham on, however--something new happened at Pentacost. 

SBC LIFE:   Dr. Erickson, you're an historical premillennialist. Has there been any movement in your own thinking, or were you raised that way 

Erickson:   Well, I guess no and no. I grew up in a church where the pastors never really preached that much on eschatology. To this day, I don't really know what those pastors really held in those areas. I suppose they were premillerinialists. Now we'd have some evangelists who'd come with their charts, but that s the only time I remember eschatological charts being displayed in our church. It just was riot a strong agenda item with those pastors. 

By the time I thought about what I was, I was reading people like George Ladd. During my college days, especially the Universitry of Minnesota, the issue for me was theism versus naturalism. It wasn't millennialism. There were much bigger issues. in seminary, when I started to deal with those issues, I concluded from Ladd's Crucial Questions About The Kingdom of God that indeed the premillennial position was the preferred one. 

I don't think I ve ever had really a dispensational phase. I think I had a phase where I was sort of amillennial, not in the sense of holding the amillennial view, but of not really having thought critically about it.  It wasn't a strong item in my preaching. 

I've bad a fair amount of exposure to dispensational people. You don't pastor as close to Moody Bible Institute as I did and not have a fair number of people who ve come through that program. So, in that first pastorate, I had to work out some of those things as well. But unlike two colleagues of mine, who incurred considerable wrath from the dispensationalists, I ve been non-dispensational, not anti-dispensational. And there's considerable difference, I think. I don't think, as one colleague seemed to feel, that dispensationalism was the worst heresy possible. 

Patterson:   Maybe we should say too for the benefit of the reader that classical dispensationalism had seven different dispensations, variously identified, depending (in who you were reading. These were periods of time where there was a marked difference in how God did business with humanity. For example, there was a strong differentiation between the age prior to the Fall, and the age immediately following the Fall. 

Someone's pointed out, I think truthfully, that every Christian is actually a dispensationalist because the word oikonomia is translated twice in the New Testament as dispensation. It simply means "law of the house," and it is true that everybody recognizes at least two dispensations. We all acknowledge an old covenant and a new covenant. 

When I say I don't like being identified as a dispensationalist, it's because I don't see the seven, and never have seen the seven. Yet, I think that there are distinctions in the particulars of the program of God. It's always by grace through faith that were saved. 

SBC LIFE:   Corrie ten Boom once said she thought the whole discussion was pre-post-erous. She saw it as pointlessly divisive. Some joke that they are pan-millennialist, ("It'll all pan out") or pro-millennial ("I m for a thousand years peace anytime."). Is millennialism worth the effort? What's at stake here? Why should we care to become clear on this?  Dockery:   What's important is to recognize that God has a redemptive plan for His people that He is going to 'accomplish in history. It gives you a framework by which you can interpret life and history. It also gives you a hope for living, knowing that God is in control and is moving history along toward a providential destiny. Even if you don't have all the sequence worked out chronologically, you know that God is moving history along that way. I think premillennialism is important because it does say there is a sovereign God who is going to rule and reign in history. For me that is very important. 

Patterson:   I have a pragmatic answer. Often times eschatological concerns are promoted completely out of all area of reality. It becomes a consuming thing to so many people, when their focus needs to be on the Incarnation, the Atonement and the Resurrection of our Lord. But I do know this. Announce that you're going to preach a series of sermons on the Apocalypse or Daniel, announce that you will be speaking one night at a revival on the return of Christ, announce that you'll be preaching on heaven or hell, and I'll promise you that you ll have a crowd. That tells me that people are interested in this. They really do want to know about the future. Of course, that could be demonstrated by the faithfulness with which they read horoscopes, tarot cards and everything else in between. Given the interest that exists there, we cannot avoid discussing this, especially when so much of the Bible is in fact dealing with eschatological themes. 

It just seems to me that we'd better do our homework so we don't make the mistake that Christians have made in years gone by getting up and giving the year of His return, and this kind of foolishness. It winds up embarrassing the evangelical community and the church of God. So I say, "Do your homework, and do the best you can to interpret the Scriptures that are there. Use it as an opportunity to get the message of Christ to people who might not hear on other themes." 

SBC LIFE:   Dr. Chapman (president of the SBC Executive Committee) could say amen to that. He's very enthusiastic about the response to such preaching when he pastored Wichita Falls First. 

Erickson:   I do think that there are regional differences in interest. Cultural trends start on the two coasts. They move to the Midwest and then last to the South, So I tell my students they can see what's coming by looking at what's happening in Southern California. It'll he quite awhile, but it'll come. In other parts of the country, the interest in that kind of eschatology is diminishing, and will eventually do so in the South. The type of thing that you described does not necessarily draw a crowd in the (midwest) church where I'm a member. But it can be cast in terms of the issues that are being discussed today, such as futurism. 

A year ago, I was interim pastor in a church. I noticed in their monthly mail-out newsletter that now they have two classes, one taught by a 50 year old school teacher on the book of Revelation, and one taught by a 35 year old attorney on dealing with problems in contemporary living how to handle your teenagers and those things. I would bet that the enrollment of those two adult classes can be stratified by generation, so that this younger generation, at least in the North and in other parts of the country, is less interested in the book of Revelation than the older generation. 

Considerable interest is still there, though I would guess that maybe even in the South, the 20 and 30-something s may not be as interested as the 50 and 60 somethings. So we ll need to find a way to relate the teaching of eschatology to these somewhat more secular questions that people are asking about the future  'Where is the economy going to be? What s going to be the employment situation 10 - 15 years from now? Will my kind of work still be popular? 

SBC LIFE:   Perhaps, as with Dr. Erickson's boyhood church, we've not heard much about it in our churches, and the appetite is still keen. We ve often heard the whole discussion dismissed with the biblical phrase, "It's not for us to know the times and the seasons," yet it is fair to ask why God would put so much of it in the Bible if we we're to ignore it. He s not just playing with us. 

Patterson:   One of the reasons we have to preach it is to rescue it from the radicals. I feel that I can say that, because most of the people who get carried away with this thing tend to be dispensational premillennialists. 

Since that's what I'm popularly rumored to be, I just want to say that one of my agonies occurred a few years back (in 1988) when Whisenhunt published his little book that went all over the country, 88 Reasons Why Jesus is Coming Again in '88. There were at least 88 erroneous conclusions in that book. I wasn't that concerned about the publication of the book because that happens; there s something new almost every month coming our from people who seem to disregard the cleat statement of Scripture that nobody knows about this "It's not for you to know the kairos or the chronos, the times or the seasons which the Lord has put in His command." 

What concerned me was that I began to receive numerous calls from Southern Baptist pastors asking whether there was anything to this? At that point, I became very much concerned, and I recognized that we have so avoided the "difficult passages" of apocalyptic import, of eschatological significance, that our people are vulnerable to any kind of thing that comes along like that. We need to study and preach it, relating it to the Christ as much as possible.