House Divided

The Break-Up of Dispensational Theology

A Review Article by Martin G. Selbrede
H
ouse Divided: The
Break-Up of Dispenm-
tional Theology by
Greg L. Bahnsen and Kenneth L.
Gentry, Jr. Published 1989 by the Insti-
tute for Christian Economics, Tyler,
Texas. 38 pg. Publisher's Foreword, 6 .
pg. Authors' Preface, 411 pg. including
appendices, annotated bibliography,
scripture & general indices. Reviewed
by Martin G. Selbrede, Thousand Oaks,
California.
This volume was occasioned
by the publication of Dominion Theo-
logy: Blessing or Curse by Wayne
House and Tommy Ice. The reader is
immediately immersed in one of Chris-
. tianity's uglier war zones - and is
nailed to the battlefield for 400+ pages.
The work is subdivided into
two main sections covering Ethics (by
Dr. Bahnsen) and Eschatology (by Dr.
Gentry), preceded by the apparently ob-
ligatory Exercise in Scorn (by Dr. Gary
North). The work concludes with con-
siderable additional material by Dr. Gen-
try on the question of scholarship lap-
ses on the part of Messrs. House and
Ice as well as Dr. Gentry's response to
Hal Lindsey's The Road to Holocaust
(Appendix B). A brief discussion on
Theological Schizophrenia by Gary
DeMar (Appendix A) examines the prac-
tical self-contradictions inherent in the
pronouncements of avowed anti-Recon-
structionists. We briefly examine Dr.
North's Foreword before engaging our
authors' argumentation.
Squeaky wheels get the
grease. Dr. North's long-term strategy
is to "flush out" his opponents (pp.
xxxii, xxxix, xlv) as Reconstruction's
self-appointed "hunting dog." Citing
Martin Luther (pg. xxxviii) as his osten-
sible mentor(!), he writes "offensively"
to provoke response. Dr. North doesn't
limit this strategy to dispensationalists
(e.g. his savage attack on dietary law
"to flush out" Dr. Rushdoony, etc.) For
quite different reasons, it may be said of
Dr. North what was once said of Dean
Burgan: "He was incapable of writing a
dull page."
1be lesson House Divided
seeks to instill in the reader is contained
on pages 2 & 380, where Proverbs
18:17 is quoted: "The first to plead his
case seems just, until another comes
and examines him." Biblical justice
......................
(not to mention Christian charity) de-
manded that this reviewer contact the
targets of House Divided, Dr. Wayne
House and Tommy Ice, and hear their
side of the question, which he did on
Oct. 23, 1989. The additional light shed
in these candid conversations proved
indispensable in fairly evaluating House
Divided.
Drs. Bahnsen and Gentry in-
troduce this book with an historical
aside regarding Dr. W ayneHouse's with-
drawal from a planned debate with Dr.
Bahnsen, scheduled May 13, 1989 (pg.
6-7). (Not mentioned is Dr. Bahnsen's
cancellation, for health reasons, of sev-
erallate-1988 debates with Dr. House,
even though he reportedly made public
appearances during the same period.)
True, Dr. House declined to permit
cross-examination in the 1989 debate.
This being the second debate he'd ever
done in his life, against a nationally
famous logician/debater, Dr. House
chose the path of discretion. Although
Dr. Bahnsen believed cross-examination
would have been "a true test of the two
conflicting theological positions" (pg.
7), Dr. House saw the format as merely
favoring the better debater (as in the
Scopes Trial). In the absence of a forum
in which. to answer the charges advanced
by House and Ice in Dominion Theo-
logy, the need to write House Divided
became manifest
And so House Divided was
born. This heavily-footnoted volume
(1,143 footnotes compared to 798 for
House/Ice and 181 for Lindsey's Road
to Holocaust) reads more like a detec-
tive novel than a theology book. We
reconstructionists like to believe that
our guys wear the white hats, and that
we practice what we preach; by and
large, Dr. Bahnsen and Dr. Gentry do
not disappoint in these respects. On
several occasions, human fallibility
squeezes through a crack in their other-
wise impeccable scholarship. Lindsey is
faulted for wrongly attributing the ink-
blot tests to Freud (pg. 370), but in
openly corrected Lindsey, House
Divided promptly misspells Rorschach
twice! While House Divided bemoans
the House/Ice practice of placing the
worst possible interpretation on a Re-
constructionist doctrine, House Divided
does this to Lindsey when citing the
one Greek error on page 53 of The Road
to Holocaust no less than three times
in three different contexts. Certainly,
there is an error in Lindsey, but House
Divided makes undue capital of it,
making Lindsey look Jess competent
than actually warranted.
Also ironic is that House
Divided, in an effort to illustrate the
fallacy of the Guilt By Association
tactic used by House/Ice, must resort to
the same tactic in order to caricature it
(this in sections entitled A Taste of
Their Own Medicine, pp. 54-58 and
326-340). The irony proceeds from Dr.
Bahnsen's observation (pg. 58) that
Guilt By Association "accounts for just
under ten percent of the entire effort put
into their book. And it is all for noth-
ing." To expose this fallacy required
House Divided to devote more than 6%
of its content adducing additional "guil-
ty" associations, following the lead (pg.
The Counsel of Chalcedon December, 1989 page 5
54) of Matthew 7:2, " ... and with the
measure you mete it out, it shall be
meted out to you." Whereas House/Ice
may have deserved tit for tat, the argu-
mentation is forced to follow decidedly
unedifying lines (pg. 57 in particular),
although the resultant monstrosities are
"not at all seriously meant" (ibid.).
The bulk of House Divided
undertakes to dismantle gross errors in
the House/Ice opus. I admit sadness at
the passing of one House/Ice myth: that
Dr. Bahnsen "read some ofRushdoony's
works as a boy" (pg. 83, note 72). The
underlying premise (that reading Rush-
doony at a young age turns boys into
Bahnsens) had primed me for acquiring
additional copies of Institutes for my
three boys pronto. But few of the
House/Ice errors are quite so benign:
characteristic of House and Ice is the
following fancy footwork exposed by
Dr. Gentry as regards David Chilton's
hypothesis that premillennialism ori-
ginated with Cerinthus the heretic.
House and Ice " state that the 'charge can-
not in any way be supported,' that it is
'pure fabrication' from Chilton, that
'there are no records from church h i s ~
tory' supportive of it, and that there is
no 'historian outside of his own camp'
who agrees with it. In all humility we
must_ respond that this is nothing less
than blatant, intentional falsehood, for
in the same paragraph as Chilton's state-
ment quoted by House and Ice, Chilton
provides source documentation from
h ~ h father Eusebius to substantiate
his claim!" (House Divided, pg. 315).
But look again: remember
Prov. 18:17? An examination of
Dominion Theology, pp. 197-199,
proves that the authors did interact ex-
tensively with Chilton and his citation
of Eusebius and Irenaeus! They didn't
misrepresent Chilton at all, neither did
they ignore his documentation. More-
over, House Divided cites Eusebius'
Ecclesiastical History 3:28:1-2 at
length on pg. 315: "But Cerinthus also,
by means of revelations which he pre-
tends were written by a great apostle,
brings before us marvelous things .. "
The unwary reader may miss the fact
that this quote asserts that the book of
R,evelation is a forgery written by Cerin-
thus. Not only is premillennialism
under attack in this quote, St. John's
Apocalypse is, too! There goes baby
with the bath water!
We feel Dr. Gentry's exas-
peration when he observes that "the
distortions rampant in the Reconstruc-
tion debate are terribly frustrating" (see
pg. xlvii-lii), but it is apparent that
distortion isn't petpetrated only by "the
other side." Whereas House Divided
identifies many argumentation errors in
House and Ice, it falls into a few ditches
as well. On page 270, Dr. Gentry an-
swers "The Charge of Arbitrary Exe-
gesis," whereby House and Ice seek
justification for Reconstructionists allo-
cating Matt. 24:1-34 to the destruction
of Jerusalem and verses 35ff. to the
Second Coming. Dr. Gentry gives Jor-
dan's reason for so dividing Matt. 24
(note 62): "partly, because two com-
pletely different Greek words are used!"
House and Ice are chided for fully know-
ing Jordan's justification (ibid, text and
notes 62-65) by virtue of comprehen-
sive exposure to Reconstructionist argu-
ments.
To this, Tommy Ice replies
that adducing a shift in the Greek words
employed by Matthew is contravened
by the fact that parousia and erchomai
are used interchangeably prior to verse
34: thus, he was Wlder no serious obli-
gation to acknowledge Jordan's point!
In fact, pressing Jordan's argument
would entail abandoning the
Kik/Chilton hypothesis altogether.
(This reviewer has long maintained that
Luke 17:34-37 forbids subdividing
Matthew 24 at its 34th verse: the Oli-
vet Discourse apparently refers to an-
cient Jerusalem all the way up to Matt.
25:30, contra Kik et al. Matt. 25:3lff,
paralleling Rev. 20:1lff, describes His
Coming as synonymous with the end
of the world and final judgment.)
Occasionally, House Divided
lets House and Ice slip away unchal-
lenged. For example, in Dominion
Theology (pp. 225-226), it is argued
that Matt 13:41-43 describes the re-
moval of the unrighteous before the
[millennial] kingdom has begun. Com-
parison of verse 41 with 43 indicates
tbat whereas the former treats of the
kingdom of the Son, the latter deals
rather with the kingdom of the Father
(clearly the eternal state as evidenced by
I Cor. 15:24 & 28). While not every
House/Ice argument can be answered
(for lack of space), surely those taken
from the postmil stockpile of kingdom
parables were worthy of critical ex-
The Counsel of Chalcedon December, 1989 page 6
amination.
The reader will find House
Divided to be most edifying in its dis-
cussion of logic and argurilentation.
One quickly realizes that the case
erected against theortomy is often self-
contradictory (House and Ice are "doing
nothing but tripping over themselves"
- pg. 81). Example 1: House and Ice
regard the theonomic intent of bringing
the Old Testament into the 20th century
as being fraught with subjectivity and
inherent danger, but the same objection
can be made with respect to applying
the ancient culture of the New Testa-
ment to the 20th century (pg. 30, rt.
3). Example 2: House and Ice take
refuge in the Noahic Covenant as the
law binding the nations today, but "the.
Noahic revelation takes no account of
the difference between accidental and
premeditated homicide ... we would be
prevented from applying such a quali-
fication in our courts today" (pg. 129).
Dr. House, queried about this
weakness in the Noahic Covenant, inti-
mated that it embraced more than sim-
ply Genesis Chapter Nine: it reached
back to Eden, and evidently contained
the commandments, statutes and laws
referred to at Gen. 26:5 and elsewhere.
In other words, it is a caricature to paint
pre-Mosaic divine law as intrinsically
sketchy. While this hypothesis has dif-
ficulties of its own (how then do we
know the unrecorded content of the laws
given to Noah, for ex!llnple), it does
answer Dr. Bahnsen in the narrow con-
text of his criticism.
Elsewhere, "[o]ur imagina-
tive authors have Reconstructionism
simultaneol.lSly . diminishing and in-
creasing the antithesis between Chris-
tianity and the world ... " (see pg. 50-
52). This reviewer found the House/Ice
warning that pursuit of Biblical Law in
our culture could lead to cultural back-
lash (note 17 in House Divided, pg. 50,
citing pg. 388 [sic] in Dominion
Theology) to be a remarkable echo of
the Israeli leaders' complaint to Moses
upon being told they were now to make
bricks without straw: "We have lost our
savor in Pharaoh's sight!" When you
act like Moses, expect to get treated
like Moses.
Exegetically, Dr. Bahnsen's
discussion of Ethics foilows t h ~
contours of his earlier works on the
topic of theonomy. I have but the
minutest objection to his handling of
Matthew 5:17-20, regarding the final
clause of verse 18 (pg. 108-109, n. 16).
House/Ice treat till all be accomplished
as a "precising" clause to delimit the
more general till heaven and earth pass
away. Dr. Bahnsen regards till all be
accomplished as being far less specific
and precise than till heaven and earth
pass away, which it is, on his hypo-
thesis that the clauses represent a
double protasis. But this is precisely
the critique leveled by exegete H.A.W.
Meyer: the last clause would be "a
vague and lumbering addition" if co-
ordinate with the ftrst. Contextually and
logically, it is subordinate. Meyer and
Warfield, contra Dr. Bahnsen, regard the
emphatically repeated undistributed one
as providing the natural correlative of
all : ONE jot or ONE tittle shall not
pass till AU. be accomplished. (In
Theonomy Dr. Bahnsen critiques
Meyer's view as being tautological
while his own exegesis supposedly is
not: but the exact opposite can be ar-
gued.)
But differing with Dr. Bahn-
sen doesn't entail accepting the
House/Ice view, which is conditioned
by their notion that Matt. 5:17 deals
with prophetic matters rather than
ethical commandments. Dr. Bahnsen
deftly dismantled this argument. both in
Theonomy and here in House Divided
(pg. 105). If the tittles and jots thus
refer to God's commandments in their
exhaustive detail, what are we then to
make of Jesus' assertion that ONE jot
or ONE tittle of the law shall not pass
away till AIL be accomplished?
Simply put, the verse predicts that the
Law of God would one day be universal-
ly obeyed by all men on earth. This, of
course, presumes the conversion of the
world in its entirety (lest the greatest
commandment go unfulfilled or merely
feigned). The clause is, as Warfield
notes, an amazing prophecy asserting
that far from the being perpetually
violated, the Law of God would one day
be universally observed.
This steers us into the second
major section of House Divided concern-
ing "The Eschatological Question."
This section, written by Dr. Gentry,
dominates the book, and is an amazing
tour-de-force in postmillennial exposi-
tion (doubtless enlivened by the need to
interact with the hostile perspectives of
the dispensational critics being anal-
yzed). It could almost stand alone as a
volume in itself (and probably should
- it could be like a decaffeinated
version of Chilton's Paradise Restored,
i.e. without Interpretive MaxwellHouse-
ism). The sustained, positive exposi-
tion of Scripture from a postmillennial
perspective is clear, lucid, and compel-
lingly argued. We need more of this
kind of writing.
Dr. Gentry goes further, inter-
acting critically with House and Ice.
One exchange provoked by faulty injec-
tion of anomalous details (speaking
statues, 3.5 years, etc.) in Matthew 24
stands out on pg. 272: "We agree with
a statement [House/Ice] make else-
where: There should not be a conflict
between one's theology and the text.
resulting in a fancy reworking of the
text to fit the proposed theology.' In
response to this quotation, we offer a
(tongue-in-cheek) warning to the reader
of House and Ice: 'All therefore whatso-
ever they bid you observe, that observe
and do; but do not ye after their works:
for they say, and do not' (Matt. 23:3)."
As of this date (Oct. 24,
1989) Dr. House and Rev. Ice have not
seen House Divided. Their comments
recorded below are spontaneous and un-
conditioned by familiarity with Dr.
Bahnsen's and Dr. Gentry's critique.
Tommy Ice: "If we could
write the book again, we would change
it. We often overstated our case. For
example, I would now say that there is
some basis for a pre-70 A.D. composi-
tion date for Revelation, rather than no
basis. We also probably overstated the
case for the early Church's premillen-
nialism, and linked it too heavily with
futurism. We committed some obvious
factual errors, and wrongly linked on
Pat Robertson.'' I asked Rev. Ice about
the presence of errors in logic in
Dominion Theology. "There are probab-
ly hundreds of logical errors in the
book. Few can write as logically as
Bahnsen can. I was asked to write the
book by Multnomah Press. It wasn't
my idea to write the book.'' I asked
Rev. Ice about his habit of putting the
worst possible interpretation on his
opponent's position. "I learned it from
them [the Reconstructionists]. I had to
work hard not to be sarcastic like Gary
North - it's so easy to fall into [that
snare]." He shares with me his shock at
15 major factual errors in the first chap-
ter of Gary DeMar's The Debate over
Christian Reconstruction alone: "What
am I to think when I read things like
that?" Why the excessive references to
the Manifest Sons of God cult and its
affinity to certain Reconstruction dis-
tinctives? "The charismatics know the
Manifest Sons of God, even if Re-
fonned Christians don't. Charismatics
can easily fall prey to the cult [through
confusion between it and Christian Re-
construction]." What about dispensa-
tionalism's future? "By the year 2000,
Dallas Theological Seminary will no
longer be dispensational. [Professorial]
priorities are elsewhere than the defense
of systematic dispensationalism from
external criticism.''
Dr. Wayne House: "There
was no conscious effort to distort
[Reconstructionist] teachings. The feed-
back we've gotten so far is that
Dominion Theology gave a non-bel-
ligerent. fair representation. I hate the
negative tone of the current debate, be-
cause I consider these guys my brothers
in Christ" Like Rev. Ice, Dr. House
didn't want to co-author Dominion
Theology: "I originally said no to
Multnomah Press because I didn't have
the time, but I finally felt that some-
body ought to respond to North's
tirades."
Reviewer's Note: The candor
and humility of Dr. House and Rev. Ice
in our conversations suggest that the
issues could have been worked through
in a Christ-honoring, rather than a con-
frontational, framework. I had planned
to submit an essay for this issue
entitled Workmen Ashamed critical of
House and Ice. I have decided to sub-
stitute The Rise of Promillennialism
concerning joint Christian action be-
tween brothers of disparate viewpoints.
Case in point: on the Bill Moyer's God
in Politics special on Christian Recon-
struction, the picketers on your TV
were not Reconstructionists: they were
Dr. House's students from class #407.
Likewise, Rev. Ice is presently away
from home serving as a Chaplain for
the National Guard. Despite the errors
these men may have penned against
Christian Reconstruction as identified
in Dr. Bahnsen and Dr. Gentry's House
Divided, it is equally clear that these
brothers evince a total commitment to
(Continued on page 24)
The Counsel of Chalcedon December, 1989 page 7
House Divided
Continued from page 7
their Christian responsibilities worthy
of emulation. Needless to say, God will
judge us for our deeds more so than for
our ideas.
Postscript: House Divided is
subtitled The Breakup of Dispensational
Theology. The premise may be true
now, but the tables were turned in the
early 20th century, when
nialists could, with complete justice,
have written Princeton . Divided: The
Breakup of Postmillennial Theology.
The title House Divided was originated
by ... .Dr. H. Wayne House himself! Dr.
North took dominion over the niiJile,
and given his penchant for '"weenie
roasts" at the "Bonfire Faculties"
(House Divided, pg. xl), probably ap-
pended the gleefully grim subtitle.
Gone are the days when Dionysius
could convert an entire regional church
away from premillennialism with only
three days of gentle, gracious, and per-
suasive discussion. 0
Promillennialism
Continued from page 16
gives an exeenent definition. of the pro-'
millennialist: any Christian who is'
"always abounding in the work of the
LOrd." He knows his promillennialism
isn't in vain, because Christ, as the one
who wields all power and authority,
would never command His people to
perform vanities and futilities. This
even extends to the command of 2 Cor.
10:5: the call to take every thOught
captive to the obedience of Christ. Ef-
forts here are not in vain either; our var-
ious views on prophecy have no bear-
ing on our Lord's earnest promise. If
these Incentives weren't eoough, Jesus
even added the promise that those who
are faithful in little things will be given
authority over greater things;.
. Promillennialism, then, is nothing
more than serious, full-orbed Christian-
ity at its best: men of God hard at work
for the Lord of the harvest. The funny
thing is, two promillennialists, one pre-
mil and one postmil, have more in com-
mon with each other than with those
who share their respective propbetic
viewpoints but lack their desire to labor
in the harvest. God doesn't just callous-
ly throw such "strange bedfellows" to-
gether to express His sense of humor.
Rather, He is glorified in this. The
between premils, amils, and
posunjls pale in comparison to the
between a :Ualotanda Tax Col-
lector in 1st-century Israel: yet Christ
The Counsel of Chalcedon DeCember, 1989 page 24
on-Prqfit Org .
. : U.s .. Postage
PAID
BULK RATE
Pennit No. t.553
made both Matthew and Simon
disciples. We would do well to take
example to heart, an!i to take up the
title, promillennialists, for ourselveS;
both with tongue-in-cheek: and sword-in-
hand. 0.