The Church Is Not Another Ethnic or Anthropological Category in Progressive Dispensationalism

There is a passage in Blaising and Bock's Progressive Dispensationalism that has long unsettled traditional dispensationalists:

“

One of the striking differences between progressive and earlier dispensationalists is that progressives do not view the church as an anthropological category in the same class as terms like Israel, Gentile Nations, Jews, and Gentile peoples. The church is neither a separate race of humanity (in contrast to Jews and Gentiles) nor a competing nation (alongside Israel and Gentile nations)... The church is precisely redeemed humanity itself (both Jews and Gentiles) as it exists in this dispensation prior to the coming of Christ. (pp. 49–50)

To a traditional dispensationalist this is a difficult view to grasp. Charles Ryrie reacted with audible bewilderment in his classic Dispensationalism:

“

Progressive dispensationalists seem to be blurring this distinction by saying that the concept is not in the same class as what is conveyed by the concepts of Gentiles, Israel, and Jews. What this means is not completely clear. (See the more complete discussion in chapter 9.) However, it does seem to imply that the classic Israel/church distinction is less clear.

For Ryrie, the progressive proposal seems to "blur" the very distinction between Israel and the Church that earlier dispensationalists had labored to defend. To say that the Church is "not in the same class" as Gentiles, Israel, and Jews sounds, to his ears, like the dissolution of a sine qua non.

But the obscurity Ryrie senses is not in the progressive thesis. It lies in an unspoken assumption that quietly governs his reading.

The Hidden Premise

Ryrie's critique presupposes that, in order to maintain a robust distinction between Israel and the Church, the two must be comparable entities — members of one and the same class. Israel, the Gentiles, and the Church would then all have to stand in a single line of classification, the Church functioning as a third anthropological category alongside the other two. For the Israel–Church distinction to do the dogmatic work Ryrie wants it to do, the Church must, on this logic, be one more anthropological category within the same class. Only then, he assumes, can the lines between them be drawn cleanly and guarded from confusion.

For Ryrie, moreover, the Church must be understood as a heavenly people — a third people within the same anthropological class, distinguished as heavenly rather than earthly. This is the distinction many describe as transcendental: an earthly people (Israel) and a heavenly people (the Church). Yet on this view both remain peoples of one and the same anthropological class.

This is the assumption progressive dispensationalism quietly breaks — and it is precisely this break that disorients Ryrie.

Not a Third Member of the Same Class

The progressive claim is not that the Church is a third member of the same class — one more people lined up beside Jew and Gentile. It is the deeper claim that the Church belongs to another class altogether. The Israel–Church distinction is therefore not erased but reframed: it is preserved precisely because the two are not rival members of the same class.

The Church is a reality that runs transversally across the corporate boundaries of the various people groups — Israel and the several Gentile nations. The Church is trans-anthropological, trans-ethnic, trans-national, and trans-territorial: it cuts across every such category rather than taking its place as one more of them. These various people groups are being united to Christ — and thereby to one another — by the Holy Spirit. The covenantal dimension of this co-participation is explored in detail in Gentiles and Co-Participation in the Covenants of Promise.

The Church does not compete with Israel or with any people-group reality, because the Church is an overlapping reality, not a competing one. It is a category distinct in kind from both Israel and the Gentiles — neither anthropological nor ethnic in nature. It is, fundamentally, a redemptive and soteriological category, which is precisely why it can encompass two ethnically distinct peoples — Jewish and Gentile believers — united in Christ without either losing its ethnic identity or its eschatological particularity.

In this way, the program for the Church is a layered program, varying according to the anthropological category of each participant. Jewish members retain their Jewish program, while Gentile members continue along their own eschatological trajectory — the Gentile program for the nations (Gen. 12:3).

Were the Church a third anthropological category of the same class as Israel and the Gentiles, awkward consequences would follow at once. Entry into the Church would, in some real sense, require exit from one's prior category. To become a member of the Church would be to stop being a Jew or to stop being a Gentile. But this is not Paul's logic. In Ephesians 2–3, Christ tears down the dividing wall between Jew and Gentile "to create in himself one new man" (καινὸς ἄνθρωπος) — not a third ethnicity placed alongside the two, but the reconciliation of the two in a new creation. Paul's equation is not:

• Jews + Gentiles = a third anthropological people.

It is:

• Jews and Gentiles reconciled in Christ = a new humanity — a transversal, trans-anthropological reality.

The Church is "new" not because it is a new anthropological, ethnic, or national entity set beside Israel and the Gentiles, but because it is the first installment of the new creation in Christ, formed by reconciling the two.

Paul confirms this in the way he keeps speaking. Within the Church itself, he continues to call Jewish believers "Jews" and Gentile believers "Gentiles" (Romans 11; 1 Corinthians 7:18–20). The Jew remains a Jew; the Gentile remains a Gentile. Ethnic identity is neither erased nor absorbed into a higher ethnicity — because the Church is not an ethnicity at all.

What Kind of Category, Then?

If the Church is not an ethnic category, what is it? Naming the category is difficult, perhaps because it has no exact analogue in Israel's prior history. Still, I would venture the following. The Church is:

• Christological, because it exists in union with Christ the Messiah.
• Eschatological, because it is the first installment of the new creation.
• Pneumatological, because it is formed by the baptism of the Spirit into one body.
• Soteriological, because it gathers the redeemed in Christ.
• Covenantal, because it participates in the blessings of the new covenant.
• Multiethnic, because it includes Jew and Gentile without reducing itself to an ethnos.

The Church, in short, is not constituted by blood, land, circumcision, genealogy, or nationality. It is constituted by union with Christ through the Spirit. This is why the question of whether God has one people or two is ultimately the wrong frame — the Church is not an entry in the same ledger as Israel; it is a different kind of ledger altogether.

Why the Distinction Is Preserved

Once this is seen, the supposed danger evaporates. The Church does not absorb Israel, because the Church does not compete with Israel on the same plane. Israel is an ethno-national-covenantal reality, bearing historical, territorial, and eschatological promises as a people. The Church is a reality of another order, gathering — in this present age — believing Jews and believing Gentiles into one body without dissolving their ethnic identities.

There is therefore no substitution, no replacement, no rivalry — because there is no equivalence of class to begin with. A Jewish believer in Christ remains a Jew (the hope of Israel has not been annulled — Romans 11:1–2, 25–29) and is at the same time a full member of the body of Christ. The two affirmations do not collide, because they operate on different planes. The question of whether the Israelite remnant of the present dispensation retains its inheritance as Israel follows directly from this: membership in the Church does not cancel the Jewish member's Israelite identity or eschatological standing.

The Symmetry That Was Never Promised

When Ryrie writes, "What this means is not completely clear," the unclarity does not lie in the thesis. It lies in his own framework. Classical dispensationalism operates with an implicit expectation of symmetry — Israel and the Church as two "peoples" of the same class, standing in parallel, each defined by mirroring the other. Progressive dispensationalism shatters this symmetry, and the cost of that fracture is precisely the discomfort Ryrie registers.

But the cost is worth paying, because the asymmetry is not a flaw in the system; it is a feature of the text. Paul never gives us two parallel peoples. He gives us Israel according to the flesh, the Gentiles in their nations, and a new humanity reconciled in the Messiah — three realities, yes, but not three of a single kind.

Here, then, is the irony at the center of Ryrie's worry. He feared that progressive dispensationalism, by refusing to place the Church in the same class as Israel and the Gentiles, had dissolved the distinction between Israel and the Church. The truth runs the other way. Replacement requires rivalry; rivalry requires equivalence; equivalence requires a shared class. The Church shares none of these with Israel. The Church cannot replace Israel, because the Church is not even Israel's competitor. It does not stand on Israel's plane, contend for Israel's promises, or belong to Israel's class. Israel's election, calling, and covenants remain Israel's — irrevocable, untransferred, untouched. The Church is something else: the first form of redeemed humanity in the Messiah, gathering Jew and Gentile without flattening either. There is no rivalry, because there is no equivalence. There is no replacement, because there is no shared seat to take. That is not blurring. That is clarity.