mainelyned:
I was wondering about dispensationalism…what is it? Is it biblical? and does the Catholic Church approve of it? I have some protestant friends at work who brought it up and I am confused. I know it has something to do with the Rapture (protestants are big on this subject!). Any info would be helpful!
God bless…
A great place to start is the Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraphs 668 to 682, where the core, official teachings of the Church about general eschatology-the end of the world-can be found in the space of a few pages.
The Catholic Church, rejects the idea that Jesus failed two thousand years ago. She does not accept the belief that all of the Jews rejected the Messiah. We believe that the Church was a fulfillment and continuation of the work God started with the Jews in the Old Testament. We believe that Christ founded a new and everlasting covenant that both completed and included the Old Covenant.
The Catholic Church has always understood herself as being the New Israel (Gal. 6:16; Eph. 2:11-12), the new People of God (1 Pet. 2:9-10) and the recipients of the New Covenant given through Christ (Heb. 8:8-13). Even Martin Luther and John Calvin understood the Church to be the true heir of Israel. They also would have rejected dispensationalism, which only emerged as a method of biblical interpretation in the last two hundred years or so and has little to do with classical Protestant ideas about the end times.
Catholic doctrine also teaches that the Church is intimately related to the Kingdom of God. The Church is “ultimately one, holy, catholic, and apostolic in her deepest and ultimate identity, because it is in her that ‘the Kingdom of heaven,’ the ‘Reign of God,’ already exists and will be fulfilled at the end of time” (CCC 865). The Kingdom is not yet complete, but began with the Incarnation and will be fully realized at the end of time: “The kingdom of heaven was inaugurated on earth by Christ. ‘This kingdom shone out before men in the word, in the works and in the presence of Christ.’ The Church is the seed and beginning of this kingdom. Its keys are entrusted to Peter” (CCC 567). In its fullness, the Kingdom is not an earthly reign, but the final triumph of Christ over the power of sin and Satan, culminating in an eternity spent in communion with the Triune God. “The kingdom has come in the person of Christ and grows mysteriously in the hearts of those incorporated into him, until its full eschatological manifestation” (CCC 865).
Although the Church has never formally condemned the idea of a pretribulation Rapture, she tacitly rejects it based on her doctrine of the Church, which is completely at odds with dispensationalism. It has always been Catholic teaching that Jesus Christ will physically and visibly return to earth. As is said in the Creed each week at Eucharistic Liturgy, “He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end” (cf. CCC 681-682).
