This question came up in the
discussion of E-Free denominational distinctives and I thought it deserved its own thread...
Why do some evangelical churches and denominations make a big deal about holding to premillennialism even though they're tolerant on issues like the proper recipients of baptism or on Calvinism/Arminianism? I could see it being tied to dispensationalism, but in many cases (like the E-Free statement) no other distinctives of dispensationalism are mentioned, only premillennialism. Why is pre-mil such a big deal to them?
Jack,
I recall reading not long ago that when the original doctrinal statement of the E-Free denomination was adopted, the general understanding was that the reference to premillennialism in that statement in fact referred to dispensationalism i.e. pre-trib. But because it was not made clear, there are a good number of historic premils in that denomination now, including some notable professors at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. Unfortunately, I don't recall where I read this or I would link to it. If memory serves, at least part of the basis of this claim may have been a survey of older E-Free ministers who would have been around at the early days of that denomination. You can read books from the mid 20th century that basically equated dispensationalism with premillennialism. My recollection is that Charles Feinberg basically does this in one of his books. I suspect this oversimplification and misrepresentation (even if unintentional) started to change with the resurgence of historic premil in the mid to late 50's.
In that context, their allowance for all evangelical views on the mode and subjects of baptism as well as the Calvinism/Arminian issue is more understandable. (I think their statement may teach eternal security but I'm not sure about that.) A few years ago there was a vote on whether or not to remove this insistence on premil from their statement but the vote was against changing it.
Interestingly, I think the roots of the E-Free church were actually former Scandinavian Lutherans who obviously left their confessions behind decades prior to the formation of this denomination in the mid 20th Century. I know that there were other groups of Lutherans who united with some of their German Reformed cousins, eventually moving left and ending up in the United Church of Christ.
Most of the early independent Bible church types had left liberalizing paedobaptist churches like the mainline Presbyterians and Congregationalists. Thus the latitude on baptism as well as the emphasis on elder led or elder rule polity. The fundamentals of the faith were seen as being more important than ecclesiology. Unfortunately and wrongly, the fundamentals were construed to include dispensationalism. Chafer himself saw his teaching condemned in 1944 by the PCUS but he remained a member in good standing until his death nearly a decade afterwards.
Those that stayed in denominations like the PCUSA often could have cared less about what the denomination was doing and largely focused on their own congregation. After all, the rapture was coming soon, right? No doubt some thought the great falling away was happening before their eyes. So why polish the brass...
In many independent churches around the mid 20th Century (and today in the case of congregations founded at that time), basically you ended up with the famous Five Fundamentals + pretrib + (maybe the Dallas seminary view of sanctification) + inerrancy, with inerrancy being a hot button especially after some self described evangelicals like the ones at Fuller seminary started taking liberal positons on scripture. The fact that those evangelicals who did move left were almost never dispensationalists only served to confirm the suspicion that anything other than pre-trib was a move toward liberalism.
Baptists tended to remain Baptist unless their churches went far left, which especially in the South tended to be rarer. And in the North you had the various conservative denominations that came out of the Northern convention like the Conservative Baptists, GARBC, etc. Baptists in the South in the early 20th Century tended to be more resistant to getting involved in the fundamentalist movement because it was interdenominational and thus was reckoned to be insufficiently Baptist. To a lesser extent, until recent decades, evangelicalism was seen as a Northern movement as well, and one that was too loose on many matters such as this, even if the Baptist who thought so was dispensational himself. You still have the latter idea today among many Southern Baptists (not to mention indy ones) even if they read evangelical books and view some of the leaders favorably in a general sense.
I do think it's fair to say that this cuts both ways. I've met a good many amils who would not serve alongside covenant premil brethren and would not be a member of a church where the pastor is historic premil if they could help it. And I'm sure that includes not a few on this board, in some cases driven by the belief that premil in any form is not compatible with the confessions. In independent churches, this is sometimes the case even when the statement of faith does not preclude premillennialism. I had one Calvinistic brother tell me a while back that a post-trib premil could have no part in the teaching ministry of his church, which was to be exclusively amil, presumably.
