http://www.monergism.com/thethreshol...tionalism.html
It can be said that Dispensationalism defines God’s relationship with men in one of two ways due to ethnic identification. If a man is a Jew, God has a particular economy of redemption for that person, and if he is not, God has a different means to the redemption of that person. The use of the term redemption is broad, speaking to the design and implementation of salvation in its consummate usage from beginning to the conclusion of all things. This does not necessarily mean that God has a different soteriological design for Israel from the church, but rather that in the accomplishment of their salvation, God relates to Israel one way and to the church another way. Much has been made of the early charges against classic Dispensationalists; that they define two plans of salvation between God and men. Robert L. Saucy writes, “dispensationalists have more recently been careful to explain that the progression in the dispensations involves no change in the fundamental principle of salvation by grace.”2 This progress in dispensational theology is erasing the early acrimony aroused by overt statements of discontinuity in the plan of God.
Whatever form Dispensationalism takes, it is always distinguishable by this most fundamental presupposition, that it purports an abiding distinction between peoples based upon ethnicity. Historic or classic Dispensationalism held this tenet; neo or revised Dispensationalism affirmed this thought, and progressive Dispensationalism holds this presupposition. Dispensationalism is Dispensationalism because it is built upon this most fundamental presupposition that God relates to ethnic Israel one way and to all other men another.