The dispensationalist and non-dispensationalist have different understandings of the word "reasonably".
The dispensationalist is willing to force a prophecy into a untenable interpretation based on their arbitrary "literal first" hermeneutics. This approach, they feel, is "reasonable". Others, for very good reason, disagree.
The non-dispensationalist is no less committed to the inerrancy and infallibility and "God breathed-ness" of the Scriptures. Nor are they anti-Semites because they come to a different conclusion from well-meaning but often confused dispensationalists.
It's just that we are not so quick to latch on to a theology that had its beginning in 1830 when John Darby visited the home of a young girl given to "dreams and visions".
Given it pedigree its understandable why dispensationalism has it greatest following among charismatics and pentecostals.
It's also interesting that for a group that claims to take "literalism" so seriously, and that the interpretations should be obvious to everyone if you just take things "literally", that they are forced to change interpretation of current events every 5 years or so.
For example it was the "literalist" interpretation of Matthew 24 regarding "this genration" and the "fig tree" that made folks believe Jesus was going to rapture His church by 1981 or 1988. Chuck Smith saw it clearly. "Generation" == 40 years. No doubt about it. So did Hal Lindsey and Edgar Whisenant. They were all applying a consistnt "literalist" interpretation to the text.
Now sudenly today Hal and Co. are not so sure that a generation is really 40 years. How can that be. Surely there must be a "literal" defintion of "generation" in the Bible.
And what about the "fig tree"? It always means Israel in the Bible doesn't it. Apostate Israel. Secular Israel. Modern Israel. It doesn't really matter. Just take it "literally". That the magic incantation.
And so it goes.
A second and even more fundamental problem with these definitions is the attempt to identify ‘literal’ with a grammatical-historical reading of the text, which in turn is identified with taking words in their normal or plain meaning. The problem with this approach is that it begs the question of what ‘literal’, ‘normal’, or ‘plain’ strictly mean. This can be illustrated by considering the meaning of the word ‘literal’.The ‘literal sense’ is a translation of the Latin sensus literalis which means ‘the sense of, according to the letter’. That is to say, texts are to be read as language and literature according to the rules that ordinarily and appropriately apply to their usage and forms. This means that if the text is poetry, it should be read, according to the letter, as poetry. If the text is historical narrative, recounting events that occurred in a particular time and place, it is to be read as historical narrative. If the text uses forms of speech —symbols, figures, metaphor, simile, comparison, hyperbole, etc. — it is to be read according to the letter, treating such forms in the appropriate manner. The basic idea is that when the biblical texts are read in terms of their literal meaning, they are to be read in accordance with all of the appropriate rules and norms.
For Dispensationalism to begin with a commitment to the ‘literal, plain or normal reading of a text’ entirely begs the question as to what that sense is. To say that the literal meaning of biblical prophecy and promises must always be the most plain, concrete and obvious meaning, is to prejudge the meaning of these texts before actually reading them ‘according to the letter’, that is, according to the rules that obtain for the kind of language being used.
It has been common since the time of the Protestant Reformation to speak of a grammatical-historical reading of the biblical texts. This is one that takes the words, phrases, syntax and context of the biblical texts seriously — hence, grammatical — and also takes the historical setting and timing of the texts into careful consideration — hence, historical.
This approach was set over against the common Medieval approach to the biblical texts that distinguished, in addition to the literal or historical meaning of a text, three further levels of meaning: the tropological (moral), the allegorical, and the anagogical (ultimate or eschatological) sense.8 Against this Medieval fourfold sense of the biblical texts, the Reformers spoke of the sensus literalis, the literal sense of the text. This means that a text is to be read according to the rules of language and grammar, and pertinent historical circumstances, in order to discover its literal (and only) meaning.
This demonstrates in principle the illegitimacy of Dispensationalism’s understanding of what is involved in a literal hermeneutic. But because this is such an important matter, we will illustrate it more concretely by way of three problem areas: first, the relation between Old Testament prophecy or promise and its New Testament fulfilment; second, the subject of biblical typology; and third, the oft-repeated claim that non-dispensationalists illegitimately spiritualize the biblical promises regarding the new earth. Each of these problem areas shows how unworkable and unhelpful it is to say that a literal reading looks for the plain or normal sense of the biblical texts.
a, b, c, d, or e?
It's just that we are not so quick to latch on to a theology that had its beginning in 1830 when John Darby visited the home of a young girl given to "dreams and visions".
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As has been demonstrated by our own beloved Alamo-Girl on more than one thread, the early church fathers believed, in key respects, as we dipsies do.
Therefore, the above, is at best, a gross distortion or very partial pseudo-'truth.'
I'm skeptical there's much of great value in the rest of the post so I think I'll stop there.