Bill Smallman

The Progress of Biblical Doctrine Bill Smallman

God did not hand us The Holy Bible as an abstract encyclopedia. He revealed it in the flow of human history, phase by phase. God operated in successive modes of administration, or "dispensations." While Covenant Theology and Dispensationalism are parallel systems for the structure of biblical revelation, consistent hermeneutics and the recognized reality of the distinctiveness of the Church, and the Church Age, spell out a strong preference for the Dispensational approach. This book is designed to facilitate teaching Biblical Theology, the unfolding of God's self-revelation, at an accessible level for laypersons and students, not at grad school level where I first encountered it. We move through dispensations and covenants in chronological order in the framework of Bible history.