Exegesis vs. Eisegesis: The Presumption of Moderns
By Charles Church
How we interpret the bible always has been, and always will be, an eminent concern to the people of God. It was the extreme kindness and infinite favor of God to bequeath to the church His infallible word in the scriptures, and this gracious gift is never more valued than when we assume a posture of entire submission to it’s revelation and mandates, thus leaving both eyes open to read and rightly divide what it’s truly saying, having denounced and put away all enmity to its mortifying influence, and humbling revelation of human character. But where unmortified character of any sort is in the ascendancy in any man before his bible, or God forbid, be his profession of faith altogether illusory, all that remains yet wrong with his disposition will find friction rather than assent to the revelation of the scriptures, and here is precisely the cause of why people cannot seem to rightly divide the word of truth given us in the bible. As William Sprague noted, the most common cause of men adopting false opinions from their examination of scripture is from a false disposition in searching it there, being all too ready to enthrone their carnal inclinations upon the wreckage of inspired perspecutity, or from an unmortified worship of their own popularity, unwilling to own what is abhorrent to the age, where scripture advocates it. “If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself.” (Jn.7:17) “Heresy” is styled “a work of the flesh” in (Gal.5:19-20). Men are never more blinded to their bible than when they are blinded to themselves.
This want of mortification can take many forms. It can take the form of imbalanced views of sanctification, either in degree of importance or of it’s matter of obligation at all, or in the form of ignoring, disregarding, and jettisoning teachings and moral implications that the bible does warrant, under the intoxicating influence of a ubiquitous antichrist culture, always rabidly engaged to shame anyone that dares be unashamed of the bible, the church itself having become little different in many respects, thinking to win the world over by being won over by them.
Such unhallowed principles become a source of pollution to the people of God, when either false teachers, or misguided saints, cannot seem to allow themselves to understand the implications of the bible, and in many cases it’s plain commands, either extrapolating injudiciously, or else arrogantly negating duty as though embraced without warrant. To indulge a brief moment of tedious lexical definitions, we might use the current definitions of “exegesis” and eisegesis. Exegesis is the interpretation of a literary text, transparently and “disinterestedly” expounding upon it’s intrinsic grammatical meaning, as a means of making it correctly understood, and then adhered to. Eisegesis is the interpretation of a literary text, but reading into the text preconceived conclusions colored by the interpreter’s predilection, or undue influence of culture, and representing this personal invention of meaning as the true intent of the text and of its author.
So, these terms, “exegesis” and “eisegesis” are the current paradigm we find in use to reflect upon one’s manner of interpretation in this respect. But the practical reality is, these terms have become pretty degenerated. If we agree with someone, it will appear plain to us that they’ve reached their conclusions by a careful and candid exegesis of the texts of scripture. If we disagree, it will seem evident that they’ve colored the meaning with their own personal inclinations, and will be viewed accordingly as reading their own beliefs into the text. In a certain measure this is to be expected, in as much as a previous careful study of a passage will provide us with what we naturally consider an informed, carefully weighed, and judicious view.
However, when multitudes have neither given themselves to careful study, and have for their guide naught but the popular waves of public sympathy, and a church fundamentally in slavery to degenerate antichrist public opinion, this is more often than not, but a pure assumption on their part, and at that point their views of interpretation are in fact themselves a form of eisegesis, being arrived at, not by a careful and submissive deliberation of revelation, but by pure presumption mined from nothing but prevailing church opinions, and the consultation of their own popularity. Further, many with a strident profession of faith are yet in their sins, and their “careful study” of the scriptures amounts to little more than a search for affirmation of their personal lordship over their lives, and those who truly are regenerate but backslidden in heart, can often times be little better.
While much might be said about this point in general, yet it seems to me to be a notable and accurate observation that the claims of someone engaging in interpretive eisegesis are typically made against those challenging the current accepted moral standards of the church when trying to get them to reconsider and return to a stricter standard. The notion that an ascendant consensus couldn’t be wrong, seems to be accepted as directly inspired of God. If you’re saying “lying is sin”, then everyone says “amen”. If you say, “Putting your child in a school where they are taught faggotry, transvestitism, evolution, egalitarianism, etc. cannot possibly be a lawful practice according to the bible”, then everyone grabs their eisegesis epithet and starts bashing, despite the most obvious biblical obligation to the contrary: “And, ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.” Eph.6:4
People don’t seem to be much able to consider that they, or their entire church for that matter, could be entirely wrong about something of extreme importance and consequence, if so be they have popularity and custom on their side, and if anyone dare forward a view that is challenging or anomalous to the ascendant view, its advocates are summarily dismissed with little or no due consideration of any biblical substantiation proffered, and will be assured that they are merely reading into the text, as this “brush off” will save them the hard work of humble consideration, and afford them the immunity from it they are seeking. In effect, then, they are themselves practicing the very thing they are condemning. If the conclusion doesn’t “fit” the received narrative, it need not be regarded. It’s as though popularity is the gold standard by which to discern if someone is an exegete, or an eisegete.
Those being lax or representative of the “status quo”, always seem to assume to themselves the place of the true guardians of the pure word of God, and any advocacy of a more narrow way is certain to be deemed but jealousy for enforcing a personal legalistic, pharisaical, and aesthetic predilection. Plainly error could never become popular. All such dismissals will have credit, and pretty much, that’s all anyone really is concerned to attain. The majority can’t be wrong. Unless, of course, you’re tearing down biblical morals in 1960, instead of trying to rebuild them in 2022. If you’re tearing down what Christians have always thought, you’re prophetic. If you’re advocating repentance in a return to what Christians have always thought…. you’re a legalist. As though this were being prophetic: “And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved.” (Jn.3:20-21) So often the ostensible exegete is merely vying to escape the authority of scripture and to sanctify his worldliness rather than attempting to bring himself and the world under the authority of the Words of God.
So, lets look at this question in a more specific biblical instance. The individual we are considering has a standard mantra when it comes to this issue: Unless a given practice is explicitly forbidden by name in the bible, we are told, then it cannot be said to be unlawful, it’s prohibition, then, being a presumptuous moral imposition without divine authority, and any attempt to inhibit the church’s conscience in such a particular constitutes an attack upon it’s spiritual liberty. Here’s the big problem with that: The standard this objection assumes is itself contrary to both the bible, and for that reason, contrary as well to the confession of faith most modern “Reformed” assent to, their very own Westminster Confession of Faith.
First, the Westminster: “The whole counsel of God concerning all things necessary for his own glory, man’s salvation, faith and life, is either expressly set down in Scripture, or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from Scripture“. (WCF 1:6) This sentence constitutes a blank denial of the claim that a thing must be “named” to be unlawful, asserting that ascertaining moral duty from scripture by “good and necessary consequence” from what is written, would be a proper interpretive paradigm, and carry, then, the same authority as scripture.
I think no one I’ve read has stated the biblical case more succinctly than John Witherspoon in his treatise against the theater. He addresses this exact question with a rare brilliance. “It is also proper here to obviate a pretense”, he says, “in which the advocates of the stage greatly glory, that there is no express prohibition of it to be found in Scripture. I think a countryman of our own (Mr. Anderson) has given good reasons to believe that the apostle Paul, in his epistle to the Ephesians, chap. v. ver. 4 By “filthiness, foolish talking, and jesting,” intended to prohibit the plays that were then in use. He also thinks it probable that the word (strong’s #2970) used in more places than one, and translated “reveling,” points at the same thing. Whether his conjectures are just or not, it is very certain that these, and many other passages, forbid the abuses of the stage; and if these abuses be inseparable from it, as there is reason to believe, there is needed no other prohibition of them to every Christian. Nay, if they never had been separated from it till that time, it was sufficient, and it would be idle to expect that Scripture should determine this problematical point, Whether they would be so in any after age. To ask that there should be produced a prohibition of the stage, as the stage, universally, is to prescribe to the Holy Ghost, and to require that the Scripture should not only forbid sin, but every form in which the restless and changeable dispositions of men shall think fit to be guilty of it, and every name by which they shall think proper to call it.”[1] That is fundamentally an extrapolation of WCF 1:6.
[1]. Works, vol. 2, pg. 15-16. One might also look at Dabney’s Discussions, Vol.2, pgs. 569-572.
But let us examine a passage of scripture that contains just such a principle to judiciously exegete, being a passage that will prove a wrecking ball to the entire premise and foundation upon which the modern libertine has built his castle of lawlessness. This: Where does the law of God command a man not to look upon a woman to lust after her in his heart? Precisely nowhere. And so, accordingly, Jesus would never inhibit anyone’s liberty to do so. Right? Uh… not quite. Jesus powerfully rebuked the Pharisees for not so interpreting the law and applying it to life, and for being lawless imposters and hypocrites for that sake.
Modern Pharisees share in that rebuke as much as the more ancient, in as much as they hold to the exact same standard. No, now that unlawful gazing is enumerated, they will definitely avoid that. They’ll just continue on with the exact same immoral measure with everything else that isn’t named. So don’t miss the principle. They will, in fact, persist in the exact same error of heart that made former Pharisees imagine that such gazing were permitted. They will preach a fifty sermon series on the ten commandments, but then dredge up a half dozen or so marginalizing epithets for you if you dare to suggest that watching them on your television is sinful. Then you’re an arrant “legalist”, “Pharisee”, being “righteous overmuch” and “majoring on minors”, and etc. Why? Because the television they watch it on isn’t named in the bible. Only the actions are. That, my reader, is a rare piece of spiritual blindness.
“Where”, it will be demanded, “do you see a commandment not to watch a television?”. Now, it’s quite a challenge to attempt to discern which is greater in such a case…. the intolerable hypocrisy, or the perspicuous wickedness, of a mind as thinks in such a manner, if thinking we may call it. As though the mind of God, from which the bible arises, were concerned about which vehicle you used to intoxicate your heart, and not the drug itself. Maybe…. just maybe…. it’s the loving sin that’s the problem. Not the method of feeding it to yourself. Maybe, just maybe, it’s the fact that someone is taking meth, not whether he takes it by shooting it, or by smoking it, or by ingesting it.
Of course there are always those folks where people truly are just being exacting and not acting with any biblical warrant in their advocacy of a strict standard, and sometimes they are as Pharisaical as these libertines are being. Such, however, are often simply godly believers with a tender, albeit, somewhat misdirected understanding and conscience. That, however, is deserving of love and patience, not ridicule and alienation. But the principle of the scriptures is that it is intended of God that the scriptures are ordained to rule in application and not just in a legalistic mental abstraction.
This principle is huge. Jesus Christ chided such persons as blind deceivers when they eschewed and contradicted the obvious intention of a simple passage that said, “Thou shalt not commit adultery”, and from that they were expected by Him to know to bring their eyes under obedience. But as they were in His day, so are they in our day. They despise the word, and it’s giver. These are not godly people. They hate and despise God, His law, and His people, and seek to slander them as fanatics.
Jesus counted His people obliged to discern and interpret the meaning of scripture, without trying to imprison it in the cage of their self-will, but to see and embrace it’s principle, and to sincerely seek to overcome their own evils and be conformed to that standard in truth through the power of the Holy Spirit. It’s manifest that the Lord intended that they thus interpret all such passages, and not just in His expectation from the seventh commandment, but with all commandments, and when people don’t, it’s more often than not, because they are false in their motives, and perverse in their cause, and perhaps more often than not, remain yet at enmity to the revelation of God, and they make their identity known by such enmity.
As I’ve often said in other places, if you took the bible in the legalistic way that these eisegetes do, you are really confessing the bizarre standard that the bible must provide an iteration of each and every instance of sin, each and every manner in which people may invent to be guilty of it, and this throughout the history of humanity, culture, language, and of the church. And you just proposed a bible that would be as tall as the twin towers used to be. But the bible was not written for people only thus restrained. It was written for men and women sincere in their intention to subject themselves to the word of God, and to confess it when they fail, and to keep seeking, and who therefore can interpret the plain meaning of a passage, and won’t seek to escape it’s application, because they want its application.
Now, we will be reminded here that it was the Pharisees who were the one’s who were the uber-strict fastidious exacting menaces, afflicting culture with a false authority and standards, and not the libertines being described above. But there’s a problem with that… yes, the Pharisees were very strict. They were also very loose. And this hypocrisy of acting godly while they indulged every evil was the hallmark for which they were chiefly known and exactly that for which they were indicted of the Lord. And it is the same with our modern Pharisees who see themselves as the true guardians of Christian liberty…. as they swallow the world with conscience and seek to insure that nothing threatens to expose their hypocrisy. If you look more carefully at Jesus’ reproofs of the Pharisees He faulted them at least as often for trying to get out of the law of God, as well as for adding ridiculous burdens to it. But they somehow got the reputation of simply being overly judgmental, rather than merely seeking to harness interpretive deception in aspiring to appear godly in the pursuit of public adulation while they have no genuine purpose to seek to overcome their sin.
Certainly not all those who have been duped by such avoidance of scripture are godless libertines, yet they will show this eventually by their embrace of the narrow way without which none find life. (Mat.7:17) But I’m keenly aware that theirs is not the attitude that rules the day, and in our time for any to advocate for a degree of strictness of life it will be seen as moral temerity, faithless moralism, starched phariseeism, hypocritical legalism, … really….. just any other sort of hateful ism, because people just flat want to live in sin with a public repute of enjoying God’s blessing, and to censure godliness as a pretentious and despicable pseudo-piety, and that pretty much sums up the standard. And then we wonder why our age is taken over of the wicked. It’s God’s righteous judgment upon a stubborn and rebellious people.
It was when God’s people truly repented of their own sin, acknowledging their walking contrary to Him, and of Him walking contrary to them, that he came and healed their land. (Lev.26:40, Neh.9, Ezr. 9) IIChron.7:14 is so well known it needs no recital. But I wonder if we’re capable of not just reciting it.
“Turn ye unto Him from whom the children of Israel have deeply revolted”. (Is.31:6)
