Understanding Dispensationalists

I recently finished reading Understanding Dispensationalists by Vern Poythress. I do not think I have ever before read a book with only two words and yet thirty-one letters in the title. I was blessed to grow up in the arms of biblical covenant theology, and while identifying dispensational theology has been relatively easy, really understanding it has always been difficult for me. Two things cause me to recommend this brief book to those thinking about dispensationalism. First, it is winsomely written. It does not have the polemical overtones that some other books on this topic exude, such as John Gerstner's Wrongly Dividing the Word of Truth. That book helped me a great deal, but I am not sure I would want to give it to a dispensationalist. Second, Poythress attempts to get at the heart of the hermeneutical weaknesses in dispensational theology, rather than dabble with a myriad of prooftexts. A 140 page book on this topic will in no way be comprehensive. However, it will be helpful to people from a dispensational background who are rethinking the way they interpret God's word. It will also be helpful to the heirs of covenant theology who cannot understand why televangelists almost seem to focus on modern day Israel more than on Christ - and provide a framework through which to answer the dispensational line of thinking.

One final thought: I have run into a number of people who confuse dispensationalism with Arminianism. They can intersect, and often do. Many Christians who are dispensationalists are also Arminians, but dispensationalism and Arminianism are very different from one another. Dispensationalism has to do with the way Scripture is interpreted and usually separates ethnic Israel from the church and to varying degrees de-emphasizes the Old Testament. In contrast to dispensationalism stands covenant theology. Arminianism is a soteriology (doctrine of salvation) which places the emphasis on man's responsibilities in salvation, rather than being truly God-centered as is the biblical Calvinistic understanding.