Oswald T. Allis was a professor at Princeton Theological Seminary and then Westminster Theological Seminary. Allis provides a blistering critique of Classical Dispensational theology that is unequaled though published over 75 years ago.
He takes them to task on many of the points we have made in our essays. The most blistering attack is on the dispensational view that the Gospels and the teaching of Yeshua are still part of the dispensation of law raised to its height but not directly relevant to Christians under the Covenant of Grace. On this view, Christians are responsible to obey the teaching of the epistles of the New Testament and not literally obeying the impossible injunctions of the Sermon on the Mount which is the Law raised to its height of impossible perfection. It reveals our need for the way of grace. Allis seems almost incensed that the sublime teaching of Yeshua is not directly for the Church though dispensationalism did say that it was applicable in some ways when seen through the lens of the epistles.
Then Allis takes dispensationalism to task for rejecting the promises of God in the Old Testament as applicable to Christians. In this, we do come to the mixed-bag aspect of Allis and Classical Reformed theology. Yes, many promises to Israel are applicable to Christians. We can list so many. “You will seek me and find me when you search for me with all your heart.” God promises that when we go through the waters, He will be with us. We all know that Christians quote many Old Testament promises and claim them for themselves. Are they right to do so? For Allis, the answer is yes, because these promises given to Israel are for the Israel of God, the Church, in the New Covenant. This includes for Allis the dry bones passage for the revival of the Church. (Ezek. 37) For myself, these promises were given to Israel and the prophecies of Israel’s ultimate salvation and redemption are primarily for Israel, but the underlying principles are clear. They have an underlying and secondary and important application to all believers. However, as Messianic Jews, we would have interpreters always acknowledge the primary application to Israel.
This brings us to the Achilles’ heel of Allis’s theology. It is the failure to first interpret texts according to the original intent of the author in context. He spiritualizes and applies texts to the Church without the qualification. Dispensationalists point out the subjective nature of these interpretations, which are the classical approaches of much of Reformed theology and indeed the Church Fathers and classical Catholic and Orthodox Christian interpretation. Indeed, Classical Reformed theology is replacement theology. The Church is the new and true Israel, and ethnic Israel is no longer God’s elect people. When we read the promises to Israel as yet unfulfilled, we are told to read the Church into these passages.
When Dispensationalists point this out and then claim to be the proponents of a more objective and defensible literal (natural) interpretive approach, they win many over to their side. It is as though you are either Classical Reformed like Allis or Classical Dispensational. However, as we have shown, Dispensationalism has its own Bible-stretching interpretations. We are not locked into just two choices. There are natural interpreters such as Dr. Walter Kaiser and the late J.Barton Payne of Wheaton and many more who transcend these two approaches and provide a more adequate theology. We do not have a fool’s choice of either Reformed or Dispensational theologies. Unless we point this out, Classical Reformed theology empowers Dispensationalists. However, let us promote the third way.