The Randy White Guide to Hermeneutics

Session 7 | The Schematic of Scripture, Part 1

The Lesson, In a Nutshell

What Is Theology?

• The word theology“the study of God." In its usage, theology is a collective of positions on Biblical issues. Every student of God's Word has a theology, whether well developed and refined or lose and ill-defined. It is natural for every adherent of Scripture to develop positions from the pages of Scripture.

• Most of the time these theological positions must be developed upon conclusions from numerous texts of Scripture rather than narrow sets of“chapter and verse." For this reason, theology will always be controversial, and theologians will always disagree. And the disagreements will almost always be grounded in hermeneutics. Those who interpret Scripture differently will come to different theological conclusions.

• One of the great dangers of theology is that we develop our conclusions based on what we have heard rather than what we have read in God's Word, using solid principles of hermeneutics. In fact, most students of the word should be very leery of so-called Systematic Theology textbooks. They are inevitably one-man's conclusions on the most important doctrines of the Christian faith, and they are often built on a flawed hermeneutic. Sadly, virtually none of them explain the hermeneutic that developed their theological conclusions. I would personally prefer to read historical theology, because it is honest in its assessment, that it is a book about the theological positions of men through time. With few exceptions, a systematic theology is one man's historical theology at a certain point in time.

• Every good student of God's Word can develop their own theology, and do it very well, without being influenced by the incorrect thinking of the past.

  
  

  The Schematic of Scripture

• A schematic is the roadmap or diagram that gives meaning to the working parts of the whole. In Biblical interpretation, it is important to develop a good understanding of the Bible's schematic in three areas.

  
  #### The Dispensational Schematic

• Without an understanding of dispensations, the Bible is an impossible maze of revelation. It would be filled with a myriad of contradictions, impossible demands, confusing regulations, and seemingly meaningless narrative.

• A dispensation is nothing more than an economy, administration, or stewardship. It has a clear beginning and ending and concerns the manner in which mankind is rightly related to God. A dispensation begins when God makes a revelation of new information that is so fundamental that the economy changes.

• With this simple understanding, it is easy to understand how important knowing the dispensational schematic is to a proper interpretation of Scripture. When a person does not recognize the various administrations in the Bible, he or she will misunderstand the obligations and blessings of that particular dispensation.

  
  The most popular dispensational schematic uses the titles Innocence, Conscience, Government, Promise, Law, Grace, and Kingdom, thus having seven distinct dispensations. In every dispensation there are truths that carry-over into others, but the obligations and blessings of each dispensation are limited to that dispensation alone.

• The single biggest dispensational error is the mixing of law and grace. This is done by those who recognize the need to separate dispensations and those who do not. There is a habit of placing those under the dispensation of grace into the Law, and the opposite error of reading the grace of this current dispensation into the dispensation of the Law. The greatest need for developing a dispensational schematic is to read the Scripture carefully looking for the new dispensation of Grace under which you and I live. When it is determined when this dispensation began, and with whom, then the error of mixing law with grace goes away virtually over night.

  
  #### The Historical Schematic
  The Historical Schematic involves knowing the cultural milieu surrounding a particular passage. There is no shortcut to knowing this schematic beyond memorization of historical facts and repetition of these facts. My personal outline of the historical schematic of the Old Testament like this:

• **Individual (Gen. 1-11) and Israel (Gen. 12 - Malachi).

• **Israel can be divided in two ways: Patriarchal (Gen. 12-50) and National (Exodus 1 -- Malachi)

• **Nationalism can be divided in three ways: The time of Theocracy (Gen. 12- Joshua), the time of Judges (Judges -- Ruth), the time of Kings (1 Samuel -- Malachi)

• **The time of Kings can be divided in two ways: United (Saul to Solomon) and Divided (Rehoboam and beyond).

  
  In the New Testament, my personal schematic looks like this:

• The presentation and rejection of the King (Gospels)

• The presentation and rejection of the Kingdom (Acts 1-9, chiefly, with a continued presentation and rejection through the book of Acts and thus in many Pauline epistles)

• The offer of Individual Salvation (Acts 13-Philemon, chiefly, though these passages may contain a Kingdom presentation also).

• The messages to the Hebrews (Hebrews -- Revelation).

The Minutia of Details