Thoughtful and accessible. An up-to-date, comprehensive overview of the most important issues in dispensationalism, underpinned with accurate scholarship and summarized with clarity.

The first book of its kind, Progressive Dispensationalism presents a comprehensive and collaborative look at the arguments against, and the errors within, the progressive dispensationalist movement. The authors begin with a history of dispensationalism and then provide detailed examinations of sixteen key issues, including the hermeneutics of progressive dispensationalism; the relationship between covenants and dispensations; the Abrahamic, Land, Davidic, and New Covenants; cessationism; and the dangers of progressive dispensationalism to premillennial theology. Written by pastors, professors, and Ph.D.s from across the country, Progressive Dispensationalism will serve as a valuable resource for Bible students, scholars, and theologians navigating these complex issues.

Building on the foundation of Kingdom through Covenant (Crossway, 2012), Stephen J. Wellum and Brent E. Parker have assembled a team of scholars who offer a fresh perspective regarding the interrelationship between the biblical covenants. Each chapter seeks to demonstrate how the covenants serve as the backbone to the grand narrative of Scripture. For example, New Testament scholar Thomas Schreiner writes on the Sabbath command from the Old Testament and thinks through its applications to new covenant believers. Christopher Cowan wrestles with the warning passages of Scripture, texts which are often viewed by covenant theologians as evidence for a "mixed" view of the church. Jason DeRouchie provides a biblical theology of “seed” and demonstrates that the covenantal view is incorrect in some of its conclusions. Jason Meyer thinks through the role of law in both the old and new covenants. John Meade unpacks circumcision in the OT and how it is applied in the NT, providing further warrant to reject covenant theology's link of circumcision with (infant) baptism. Oren Martin tackles the issue of Israel and land over against a dispensational reading, and Richard Lucas offers an exegetical analysis of Romans 9-11, arguing that it does not require a dispensational understanding. From issues of ecclesiology to the warning passages in Hebrews, this book carefully navigates a mediating path between the dominant theological systems of covenant theology and dispensationalism to offer the reader a better way to understand God’s one plan of redemption.

Debate abounds on the future of Israel and Israel's relation to the church, not only between dispensationalists and non-dispensationalists, but among dispensationalists themselves. In the past that debate has sometimes been acrimonious, and proponents of the differing viewpoints have found little common ground. In recent years, however, views have been modified and developed so that the dialogue is increasingly by cooperation and a mutual exploration of diverse ideas. The Case for Progressive Dispensationalism is intended to enlighten the debate in that same irenic spirit. The book is solidly dispensational in perspective in affirming that the Old Testament prophecies are completely fulfilled in the future, that the nation of Israel has a prophetic future, and that Israel is not the church. Dr. Saucy departs from classic dispensationalism, however, in showing that (1) the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy begins in the present church age, and (2) the church is not a parenthesis in God's program but represents a continuity with the Old Testament messianic program. This modified dispensationalism seeks to satisfy many of the objections of non-dispensational approaches to eschatology while retaining the crucial elements of biblical interpretation that characterize dispensational thought.

Dispensationalism continues to provoke heated debate within the Christian world. Highly acclaimed theologian, Dr. Charles C. Ryrie, addresses this crucial issue from the perspective of classic dispensationalism. He confronts the views of covenant theology, historical premillennialism, ultradispensationalism, and, in this revised edition, the increasingly popular progressive dispensationalism. In his best-selling book, Dispensationalism Today, written more than thirty years ago, Dr. Ryrie made this complex subject more understandable for thousands worldwide. This revised and expanded version of that book will prove to be an invaluable reference tool for your library.

The relationship between Israel and the church is a crucial reference point in theology, especially in distinguishing between dispensational and nondispensational schools of thought. The writers of this book view Israel and the church as distinct theological institutions within the historical progress of divine revelation. But they are also related as successive phases of a redemptive program that is historically progressive and eschatologically converging. The goal of the book is a convergence of ideas among evangelical scholars in recognizing both continuity and discontinuity in the Israel-church relationship. - Back cover.

Since its inception in the early nineteenth century, the basic tenet of dispensationalism (a school of Protestant theology which holds that God deals with humankind in different ways in different periods of time called dispensations) has been that the church and Israel are two sharply distinct peoples of God. The distinction is theological in nature; specifically, anthropological (pertaining to humanity), soteriological (pertaining to salvation), and eschatological (pertaining to last things). The tenet of theological distinctiveness has always been the cornerstone for the dispensationalist's belief in the pretribulation rapture of the church: the belief that at the first stage of Christ's two-stage second advent he will endue all who comprise the true church with a resurrected body like his own, and transport; i.e., rapture, all to heaven before the seven year period of turmoil known as the Tribulation begins on earth. The rapture marks the end of one dispensation when God focused his attention primarily on the church, and the start of another when God will focus his attention primarily on Israel. Today, almost two centuries later, progressive dispensationalists have rejected the view of a sharp theological distinction. From their study of Scripture they observe a soft non-theological distinction. They describe the church and Israel as different redemptive dimensions of the same humanity that share in a holistic and unified eternal salvation. An already and not yet eschatological framework is the cornerstone of their system. This thesis will argue that progressive dispensationalism cannot integrate the pretribulation rapture doctrine into its reconstructed dispensational system on any basis of theological distinctiveness between the church and Israel. This will be accomplished by first setting forth the theological systems of the three major forms of dispensationalism that have existed during its history, namely, classical, revised, and progressive dispensationalism, and second, by showing that each of three kinds of theological distinctiveness, namely, anthropological, soteriological, and eschatological distinctiveness, are present in the classical and revised systems and therefore these systems can support the rapture's integration, but are not present in the progressive system and therefore this system cannot support the rapture's integration. The thesis closes with an explanation as to why progressive dispensationalism is more compatible with amillennialism than with premillennialism.