A. W. Pink's Critical Assessment of Dispensationalism

[ReformedSpaniard]

Thoughts on this book by Pink?

 

[Pilgrim]

A lot of it is in reaction to the extremes of the classic Scofield/Chafer type of dispensationalism, which WAS dispensationalism in the 30s or 40s when he wrote those articles. I'm not saying it isn't worthwhile to read it today, but a lot of the stuff that he focuses on (at least to my recollection) isn't going to really register with most dispensationalists today. Many will say "That's not what I believe!" I'm referring to the teaching that many OT passages as well as some in the gospels cannot be applied to the church age believer at all, and that certain promises that were made to Israel cannot be appropriated by the believer. At least some copies of this work are entitled "Application of the Scriptures: A Study of Dispensationalism" which, I think suggests what his issue was.

You can read it on Monergism or Chapel Library. I think I have an old copy from Chapel Library somewhere. Monergism notes that it is dated. I think it is even a little more dated than they suggest. Pink read a lot of Plymouth Brethren writers in his early years, and some of his early expositions like Genesis and Exodus are influenced by that. Someone who has read a lot of Ryrie or Walvoord is going to have some differences with Darby, Scofield, etc in that they are not as extreme in asserting that some things cannot be applied at all in this age.

I think Grover Gunn or Vern Poythress or something else more recent would be better if you are looking at something that delves into the rapture, premil, Israel, etc. As with most of Pink's works, it originated as a series of magazine articles and doesn't cite sources the way that a more scholarly book will.

I'm assuming you haven't read it yet. But perhaps you have and you want to discuss something in it?

 

[Pilgrim]

I'll add that the work of Pink's on dispensationalism that I'm familiar with is the one published by Chapel Library, which in PDF form is 28 pages and is basically a pamphlet. This is the same material in the MOBI file at Monergism. Monergism also links a PDF from another site where Pink addresses dispensationalism. That PDF is 75 pages long. If the material isn't entirely different, the larger file includes much more material and does appear to go into more detail about ecclesiology and eschatology. The text is somewhat modernized, so if some of the material is the same, that could be why I'm failing to find any of the wording from the shorter file when I try to search the larger one. Regardless, both sources state that the articles were published in 1952. So they can be found in Studies in the Scriptures. I didn't realize that he wrote them so late in life. He had abandoned dispensationalism in the 1930s. Much of his output afterwards was increasingly incompatible with dispensationalism. But he didn't address the subject directly until later. Pink's insistence on personal holiness was no more welcome in fundamentalist circles in his day than "Sovereignty" was.

One problem with Pink's works is that often publishers only published parts of articles instead of the whole. Several of them are chopped up in Baker's "Practical Christianity," for example, where some of them like "Saving Faith" were part of much longer series. Perhaps that's what happened here.

 

[arapahoepark]

If we are soliciting better reads for refuting dispensationalism...basically any non-dispensational commentary on Daniel, especially early church fathers or Reformation commentaries (and/or EJ Young). That's what got me out of it, "oh that's Christ? Makes sense perfect sense!"

 

[GulfCoast Presbyterian]

I have found "Biblical Eschatology" by Jonathan Menn to be very beneficial (although quite dry).