Questions to Dispensationalists

Mark Karl­berg asks the fol­low­ing ques­tions to Dis­pen­sa­tion­al­ists in Covenant The­ol­ogy in Reformed Per­spec­tive (pg. 280).

Whereas tra­di­tional covenant the­ol­ogy regards the earthly promises asso­ci­ated with the Mosaic econ­omy to be sym­bolic and typ­i­cal (and thus ful­filled by Christ in two phases: first, in the new, semi-eschatological age of the Spirit, and sec­ond, in the New Heav­ens and the New Earth yet to come), dis­pen­sa­tion­al­ism goes beyond this posi­tion by retain­ing an addi­tional, lit­eral ful­fill­ment in Pales­tine dur­ing the mil­len­nium. The dis­pen­sa­tional inter­pre­ta­tion of the mil­len­nium raises the fol­low­ing impor­tant questions:

  1. Does not the glo­ri­ous age of the Church seem­ingly fade in com­par­i­son with the glory of the earthly, thousand-year, theo­cratic rule of Christ in Palestine?
  2. Is national Israel or the true, spir­i­tual Israel (the Church) the imme­di­ate object of God’s sav­ing activ­ity revealed in the incar­na­tion, life and death of Jesus Christ, in the Father’s rais­ing of his Son in the power of the Spirit, and in the sub­se­quent out­pour­ing of the Spirit upon the Church?
  3. Does not the idea of a dis­tinct (future) messianic-kingdom cli­max prior to the eter­nal state under­mine the suf­fi­ciency and final­ity of the rec­on­cil­ing work of Christ (Eph 2:11–22)?

Res­o­lu­tion of lin­ger­ing dif­fer­ences of inter­pre­ta­tion among evan­gel­i­cals depends, to a large extent, on a proper assess­ment of the nature and func­tion of OT typology.