CI Scofield, the Meaning of “Literal,” and the Birth of Hyper-Dispensationalism

After C.I. Scofield fought as a Confederate in the Civil War from 1861-62, he got married to a French Catholic and had three children. He entered law school and moved to Kansas in 1872. U.S. President Grant appointed him as the U. S. District Attorney of Kansas on June 9, 1873.

Things were going well for Cyrus. But, then, life got rough beginning with a court filing against him in 1873. Following his career resignation, his son died a year later. By 1879, he was drinking heavily while being charged with several court cases. It was during this time of depression that he came to Christ and started working for Dwight L. Moody’s campaign in St. Louis. Under Moody’s dispensationalist views, he served as the secretary of the YMCA.

Despite the fact he was doing full-time ministry, Scofield’s life continued to be marked with misfortune and instability. His wife filed for divorce in 1881 with charges,

…that Cyrus had absented himself, abandoned the family, and neglected his duties. Further, she charged that he had failed to contribute to the family’s economic well-being. Scofield denied each and every allegation.[1]

The divorce ended two years later in 1883, the same year Scofield was ordained into the Congregational church. By 1895, he was the pastor of Dwight Moody’s church in Massachusetts.

It is no surprise that Scofield became a dispensationalist. A crashed career, divorce, and the loss of a son would leave any man looking for escape. Escape, it appeared, was the core of Moody’s dispensationalist gospel:

‘I look upon this world as a wretched vessel,’ [Moody] said in his most famous remark. ‘God has given me a lifeboat and said to me, “Moody, save all you can.”’^[2]

For centuries, Christians had preached about the end times with a tone of God’s Kingdom will come to earth. But, now, with Dispensationalism, the hope of the gospel changed to God’s people will escape the earth. Instead of looking forward to God dwelling with His people on earth, Christians like Moody began to preach a message of escaping this world to be with God; it wasn’t long and this message of “escape” became synonymous with the biblical message of “salvation.”

Moody popularized Darby’s teaching through preaching tours in Britain and America. His story is about as depressing as Scofield’s story. Moody’s alcoholic father died when he was four years old, he visited the Civil War battlefront nine times, and his own church burned to the ground in 1871. Obviously, preaching a message of escape came natural to Moody. And he saw the world and church through both the lens of Darby’s theology and his own physical experience: the church is in ruins. Moody was committed to the dispensational teaching of the pre-tribulation rapture just as much as his pupil, Scofield. And, both looked forward to the day when God would pull Christians up to heaven and leave the world in the hands of unfortunate sinners.

By 1909, Scofield finished the gold standard for the dispensational pre-millennial system, The Scofield Reference Bible. It portrays the fruit of Darby’s thought and contains what we would expect to find in such a work: systematization, classification, and dubious rules for hermeneutics and Bible interpretation. You’ll find numerous distinctions in the Scofield Bible like:

1. The Jew, the Gentile, and the Church of God
2. The Seven Dispensations
3. The Two Advents
4. The Two Resurrections
5. Law and Grace

Despite the revisions and “improvements,” one thing hadn’t changed: it was still a system based on man-made rules of Bible interpretation. It still made a sharp distinction between Israel and the Church. And it still stressed a literalist hermeneutic. These presuppositions didn’t come without problems.

What’s “Literal”?

It’s very common to read or hear dispensationalists talk about a “literal interpretation” of the Bible. What they are essentially asserting is that a “literal interpretation” is really no different than the “right interpretation.” But, this isn’t always the case.

The word “literal” is quite slippery. Vern Poythress points out that there are four different ways that a “literal” interpretation of Scripture can be understood[3]:

1. It is the meaning that the native speakers are most likely to think of when they are asked about the word or teaching in isolation.
2. The meaning that is literal when possible (ignores other possibilities).
3. The meaning that expresses what the human authors express (grammatical-historical).
4. The meaning that the 21^st-century reader means it to be; as if it was written directly to one’s own time and culture.

Very few dispensationalists make any of these distinctions. So, when they claim to be interpreting the Bible “literally,” they can mean at least four different things. That leaves us asking, which one is correct, and why?

If we so much as try and answer that question, Dispensationalism begins to break down. Instead of appealing to some authoritative, self-governing rule of “literalness,” we actually have to engage in exegesis. We can’t just say “well my interpretation is literal, so it’s the best. Case closed.” We actually have to look at what the original author was trying to say, how he said it, and the original context he said it in.

Examples of this literalism in Scofield’s theology can be found in his following words:

Israel is earthly, the church heavenly. One is natural the other spiritual. What pertains to Israel is to be interpreted in literalistic fashion. But what pertains to the church need not be so interpreted.[4]

[Prophecy is] the ground of absolute literalness.[5]

Jerusalem is always Jerusalem, Israel always Israel, Zion always Zion…Prophecies may never be spiritualized, but are always literal.[6]

The important question everyone must ask when reading these quotes of Scofield – or any dispensationalist for the matter – is this: are these biblical rules or artificial rules? Do these assertions come from the internal structure of the Bible? Or does it come from Darby and Scofield’s external presuppositions?

And what about context? Does the authors’ original intent have any authority in an interpretation? What about the original hearers? Shouldn’t the exegesis of Scripture have first priority before making up rules about how to interpret entire chunks of the Bible?

Scofield is no fool. He knows the rules of his dispensational system can’t be followed consistently, which is why he himself breaks them in practice in his interpretation of Zech. 10:1, Hos. 6:3, Joel 2:23-32, and Zech. 12:10. As a case in point, Hosea 6:3 says, “So let us know…His going forth is as certain as the dawn; And He will come to us like the rain, Like the spring rain watering the earth.” Even though the author clearly identifies this prophecy (“he will come”) as symbolic (“Like the spring rain”), Scofield, if he was consistent with his Dispensationalism, must to say it’s all literal. He must say God will actually come in the literal form of rain. Why? Because he believes that “prophecies may never be spiritualized, but are always literal.”

Realizing the impossibility of his own dispensational hermeneutic, he says that these particular passages just so happen to have “both a physical and spiritual meaning.”[7] This seems a bit convenient; create a rule to make sense of Scripture and then break the rule when Scripture doesn’t make sense!

Dispensationalism is plagued with these kinds of hermeneutical inconsistencies. Another, more popular example is the “literal thousand year reign.” The only mention of such an event is in Revelation 20. The context, of course, is the problem. Revelation is undeniably the most symbolic book in Scripture.[8] Furthermore, a thousand years is always used figuratively and never “literally” in the Bible.[9] Why, then, do dispensationalists believe in a thousand year reign? The answer is simple: Darby and Scofield say so.

If they would have simply recognized that the best way of interpreting the Bible is (1) sound exegesis combined with (2) an internal structure of interpretation,[10] then our theology wouldn’t be so out of place. Indeed, how we do theology makes all the difference (see Theological Prolegomena).

Therefore, for someone to say “I’m literal in my interpretation” clarifies very little about the text. If I say “my stomach is growling at me,” does that mean my stomach is “literally” growling at me, or does it “literally” mean “I’m hungry”? Clearly, the meaning of a sentence or text does not depend exclusively on how “literal” we think it must be. But, to the dispensationalist, the author’s intent, original context, and the original languages are secondary issues when it comes to interpreting the Bible – especially in prophetic writings.

It takes a courageous (or foolish) evangelical commentator to question the principle of literal interpretation today, particularly since for most of evangelicalism ‘literal’ has become synonymous with ‘valid.’…I cannot resist questioning…whether all prophetic Scriptures should be interpreted literally…there is more to interpretation than discovering the meaning of words.[11]

It appears, then, that the foundational rules of Dispensational interpretation only apply when they fit the dispensational system. Indeed, they are highly implausible, if not simply impossible.

Conclusion

Dispensationalism is a thorough attempt at trying to understand the Bible. And due to its similarities and historical overlapping with God’s covenants (see Appendix A), the seven dispensations have been helpful to many students of Scripture.

But it is not a successful attempt. It combines aspects of covenant theology, but, due to its very nature, buries them with arbitrary rules that preclude the possibility of sound exegesis.

Scholars have recognized this; the classic dispensationalist system is fundamentally flawed. But one such group of theologians believe that the answer is not starting on a new foundation, but going further than Darby ever imagined.

Hyper-Dispensationalism was born.

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[1] Emma M. Weston. “Analyzing Scofield.” The Gospel Truth. Gospel Truth Ministries. April 9, 2007. <http://www.gospeltruth.net/scofield.htm >

[2] Marsden, Understanding Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism, 21.

[3] Poythress, Understanding Dispensationalists, 82-85.

[4] Scofield in Ibid., 24.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Ibid., Understanding Dispensationalists, 24-25.

[8] This is because of the frequency of explicit “like” and “as” words indicating metaphors, similes, and symbolisms in Revelation. The Greek word ὠς which means “as, like, about,” is mentioned 71 times in Revelation alone (at least once in each chapter except for 7 and 11) out of 504 instances, which is more than any other book in the New Testament.

[9] Psalm 90:4, Ecc. 6:6, II Pet. 3:8.

[10] Alternately stated, the best way of interpreting theology is beginning with exegetical theology and moving onto biblical theology, finally culminating in systematic theology (see Appendix A).

[11] Ibid., Backgrounds to Dispensationalism, 149.