Author: Scofield, C.I.
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Rick Shrader‘s Review:
I have read C.I. Scofield’s small book a number of times. My last review of the book was written in 2013, and that was an update of an earlier review. The reason for this brief update is due to the current writings, podcasts, and negative interviews pushing back against dispensationalism and its adjoining doctrines such as pretribulationalism and premillennialism. In this current climate, early advocates of dispensational thought are revisited. Among those are John Nelson Darby, C.I. Scofield, L.S. Chafer, and more recently, Charles Ryrie. Thanks to good men who are answering the criticisms, I have been rereding some of the historical material. Scofield’s Rightly Dividing the Word of Truth was published in 1888 and has gone through 11 editions by various publishers. The edition I have now was published in 2019 by Trumpet Press. I make this note because I am aware that small changes can be made through a series of publications.
My reason for this further comment is that, evidently, the words “Rightly Dividing” in the title have caused many to suppose the book is all about how the Bible is divided into seven dispensations. One rebuttal from years ago was titled, Wrongly Dividing the People of God, as if Scofield’s book was primarily about dispensational divisions. In fact, Scofield includes ten ways in which the Bible makes distinctions among (or “rightly divides”) certain subjects, and only one of those is about dispensations. The ten chapter titles are: The Jew, the Gentile, and the Church of God; The Seven Dispensations; The Two Advents; The Two Resurrections; The Five Judments; Law and Grace; The Believer’s Two Natures; The Believer’s Standing and State; Salvation and Rewards; Believers and Professors. Almost all believers, including Reformed, would agree with these divisions. Even non-dispensationalists recognize dispensations as well as covenants in the Bible. The fact is, this book remains a very good doctrinal study of well-established truths in God’s word.
Though C.I. Scofield is rightly known for his early contributions to dispensationalism, especially the Scofield Reference Bible, his book, Rightly Dividing the Word of Truth, has very little to do with dispensationalism. He certainly was an early dispensationalist but that was not his purpose in this book.