Rapture Fever

6 RAPTURE FEVER
the faculty still occasionally update books that they wrote in
their days of influence, but they no longer direct the seminary
Occasionally, one of them writes a non-scholarly paperback
book, but little comes out of Dallas Seminary that can be regarded
as both scholarly and dispensational. Thus, there is
virtually no intellectual leadership in dispensationalism. There
are only writers of sensational paperback prophecy books.
Dispensationalism’s academic leaders are now on the defensive
within the Christian community. (They have rarely been
involved in confrontations with the non-Christian community
except over the question of biological and geological evolution,
and then only after 1960.) This was not true in 1970 or earlier,
but it is true today. Because dispensationalism’s academic leaders are
on tb defensive, dispensationalism is now experiencing a paradigm
shift. Within a generation, this paradigm shift could easily complete
the demise of dispensationalism. Like Soviet Marxists, who
were supremely confident of victory over the capitalist West in
1970, so the dispensationalists in 1970 were supremely confident
in the failure of the gospel in the Church Age. They were
supremely confident that the Rapture would ratifj their prophecy
of Christianity’s inevitable historical defeat and therefore
the prudence, and perhaps moral obligation, of cultural retreat
by Christians. What happened to Soviet Marxism within a twenty-year
period, 1970-1990, could also happen to dispensationalism.
It depends on how rapidly the paradigm shift moves to
the people in the pews.
What Is a Paradigm Shift?
In his important book, The Structure of Scient@c Revolutwn.s
(1962): historian of science Thomas Kuhn argued that a paradigm
is an intellectual system which focuses an investigator’s
attention so that he can solve certain narrow problems. The
investigator asks only certain questions and applies a narrowly
6. University of Chicago Press. Revised edition, 1970.