PART II

HISTORY OF BIBLICAL INTERPRETATION

2. Jewish Interpretation in the Apostolic Age

SIEGFRIED H. HORN

SDA Theological Seminary

Andrews University

All people who believe that the Bible is God’s Word and a norm according to which they
must regulate their lives are forced to interpret its teachings, precepts, and laws. We need
interpretation because the books of the Bible were written many centuries ago by and for
people who lived in cultural and environmental situations and spoke languages di erent
from ours. Although the Jews of the apostolic age lived much closer in time to the writers of
the OT than we do, their circumstances di ered su iciently from those existing several
centuries earlier that they needed to interpret the OT precepts and teachings in a manner
relevant to their time and situation. This was not done uniformly by all classes of Jews
because of the variety of their educational and cultural backgrounds, surroundings, and
outlooks. Jews living in the Hellenistic world outside Palestine interpreted the Scriptures
di erently from the way those who lived in their homeland did; and Jews who belonged to
strict sects such as the Pharisees or Essenes regarded their Scriptures di erently from the
way their more liberal compatriots regarded them, of whom the Sadducees are good
examples.

The Sources

We are well acquainted with the methods of interpretation as practised by orthodox Jews,
mainly the Pharisees. Their written interpretation of the Pentateuch has survived in the
Talmud. Some parts of the Talmud can be traced back to the 2d century B.C. They were
handed down orally and augmented from generation to generation as the needs arose until
the end of the 2d century A.D., when Johanan Ha-Nasi wrote them down. This monumental
work, consisting of sixty-three tracts, became known as the Mishnah, or Second Law. In the
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course of time the Mishnah itself became the subject of a written interpretation, the Gemara,
and these two works combined are generally known as the Talmud. The Talmud, next to the
OT, has formed the authoritative rule of life for all orthodox Jews to the present day. On the
other hand, any works of an interpretative nature produced by liberal-minded Jews of
apostolic times, such as the Sadducees, are lost. The destruction of the Jerusalem Temple
and the cessation of priestly functions caused the Sadducees, who were largely Temple
personnel, to lose their influence, identity, even their existence, and whatever literary works
they may have produced.

Of the religious works of Jews living in the diaspora, the works of Philo of Alexandria (c.
20 B.C.–A.D. 50) have survived as examples of their interpretation of Scripture. They give us
an excellent insight into the methods of biblical interpretation employed by Jews who lived
far from their homeland. These writings show how strongly their interpretation of Scripture
was influenced by the allegorizational and philosophical methods employed in the
Hellenistic world.

Thanks to the discovery of the Dead Sea scrolls at Qumran, we have some religious
works, including commentaries of biblical books, from the Essenes of Christ’s day. The
Qumran scrolls are the remains of the literature of a strict monastic Jewish sect that used
the Scriptures as a basis of and justification for its existence and its teachings, rules, and
expectations.

Interpretation of Scripture by Orthodox Jews

During the age when the NT came into being the Jewish tradition, concerned chiefly with
exegesis of the Scriptures, flourished in an oral manner. It used the biblical text to find
inspiration and direction for daily applications. The Jewish rabbis distinguished between
peshaṭ, the “clear” (literally, naked or undressed), unambiguous meaning of a Bible passage,
which needed no interpretation, and the derûsh, the “searched” meaning of a scriptural
passage. From this word was obtained the noun midrash, “exegesis.” The exegesis dealing
with historical or dogmatic subjects was called haggadic Midrash—haggadah meaning
“expression”—indicating that this sort of exegesis made a biblical passage more
understandable. Here theological and inspirational thoughts are of primary importance, and
they are often conveyed by the use of imaginative stories and legends. On the other hand,
exegesis dealing with legal matters was called halakic Midrash, since halakah has the
meaning “advance.” Thus the halakic Midrash provides advanced, or up-to-date, legal
information based on the biblical laws.

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 Before looking further into Jewish interpretation it should be pointed out that a certain
amount of scriptural information does not need any learned interpretation and can be
applied as given. This fact was recognized by the rabbis and was stressed in their writings
(Chullin 6a). On the other hand, there were many situations in life that were not covered by
clear biblical statements. Hence rules of interpretation were needed to find scriptural
guidance for all kinds of situations in life as well as support for popular ideas and teachings.

In many cases interpretative conclusions were drawn from texts that went far beyond the
actual scriptural statements. An example is Gn 26:5, which simply states that Abraham
“obeyed my [God’s] voice, and kept my charge, my commandments, my statutes, and my
laws.” The o icial Jewish interpretation of this passage was that Abraham had known and
kept the law of God in its totality as the Jews knew it in the days of Christ. This meant that he
was acquainted with all regulations regarding ceremonies of cult, sacrifices, washings, and
civil and moral issues, whether or not they were contained in the Decalogue, in the other
laws of Moses, or even in the oral law, which the NT calls “Tradition” (Qiddushim IV. 14).

In some cases an allegorizing interpretation was given to scriptural passages if they

contained expressions that were considered to be either o ensive or trivial. The Mosaic law,
for example, permitted an o icer to excuse a man from serving in the armed forces if he was
“fearful and fainthearted” (Dt 20:8), so that he would not undermine the martial spirit of his
comrades. The Jewish political and religious leaders of the Maccabean and later ages
evidently found this regulation unacceptable, and thus interpreted it to apply only to men
who feared death because of certain grave sins they had committed and for which they had
not yet found forgiveness (Soṭa VIII.5).

Sometimes a play on words was applied to texts, resulting in a more colorful meaning
than was obvious in the original. In this way the passage of 1 Sa 2:2, “[there is no] rock like
our God,” was interpreted to mean that there was no “fashioner” (or “creator”) like the God
of the Jews, for the Hebrew word ṣur, “rock,” sounded similar to the word ṣayyar, which has
the meaning “fashioner,” etc. (Mêkhilta on Ex 15:11).

How far from literal interpretation the Jews went in their search for proof texts to support
certain beliefs shows in their use of Amos 9:6, where the statement is made that God “builds
his upper chambers in the heavens, and founds his vault upon the earth” (RSV). Because it
was held that God’s presence is always accompanied by His Shekinah, a Jewish term
meaning “divine glory,” the Shekinah was said to be present wherever three men sit together
studying the Torah. The number three in this interpretation is obtained from the number of
consonants that make up the Hebrew word earth, “’ereṣ” (Aboth III.2).

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 The later Jewish writings attributed to Hillel, the great sage and Pharisee of Christ’s time
(died ca. A.D. 9), outlined seven hermeneutic rules, which will be explained by examples so
that one can see how the Scriptures were understood and taught by orthodox Jews in the
apostolic and succeeding ages. Later, in the early second century A.D., Rabbi Ishmael ben
Elisha increased Hillel’s seven rules to 13. They were applied by orthodox Jews throughout
their later history. Although it is not absolutely certain that all seven rules of interpretation
attributed to Hillel were actually promulgated by that famous rabbi and thus applied in the
time of Christ’s ministry, some of them can be traced to that time. We will list them here with
some examples of application to show the reasoning of Jewish religious thinking in Christ’s
time.

1. Inference From Lighter to Heavier Meaning (gal waḥomer) This means that any rule
applicable to an item of inferior quality must be applied much more strictly to a superior
item. To give an example: Because the weekly Sabbath was considered to be more important
than other festival days, a restriction made with regard to an annual festival was considered
to be much more applicable to the Sabbath (Baba Kamma II.5).

This rule was even further extended, as the following example shows: Ex 23:19 forbids
boiling a kid in its mother’s milk. But this prohibition was enlarged to apply to the boiling of
any kind of meat in any kind of milk, and finally came to mean that the combined use of any
meat and milk products during any meal was counter to the law (Chullin 115b). This
regulation is the well-known basis for one of the kosher laws of orthodox Jews.

2. Analogy of Expressions (gezîrah shawah) This expression was used to indicate that a
certain ambiguous passage of Scripture can be explained by another passage in which the
same expression occurs in a clearly understood way. Lev 16:29, for example, requiring that
Jews “a lict [‘anah] your souls” on the Day of Atonement, does not define the nature of their
a liction. However, in Dt 8:3 the verb ‘anah (“to su er, a lict”) is used in connection with
hunger, for which reason the rabbis interpreted Lev 16:29 to mean that the Jews had to
abstain from food on the Day of Atonement.

Another somewhat ambiguous passage is Ex 21:2, where the expression ‘ebed ‘ibri can
be rendered “Hebrew slave” (RSV), meaning either that the slave was a Hebrew or “the slave
of a Hebrew man,” not indicating the nationality of the slave. On the other hand, the parallel
passage of Dt 15:12 is clear in this respect by calling the slave your Hebrew brother. Hence,
the first-mentioned translation of Ex 21:2, “Hebrew slave,” must be applied, according to the
rabbis.

3. Application by Analogy With One Provision (binyan ’ab maktôb ’eḥad) According to this
rule, texts were applied to cases that were not expressly mentioned in the texts, although

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they dealt with situations of a similar nature. The result was that in some cases where this
interpretation was applied the text was used as basis for reasoning not mentioned in the text.
For example, in Dt 19, among other things, regulations are given with regard to a man who
accidentally killed his fellow worker in a forest while both were engaged in cutting down
trees. The killer was consequently allowed to flee to a City of Refuge, where he could not be
apprehended by the avenger of the dead man, if it was proven that he had not intentionally
killed his friend.

The rabbis explained that this judgment can be similarly applied to any accidental death
resulting when two men were building a wall or doing other work in a public place (as the
forest mentioned in the text was public domain). This, then, means also by analogy,
according to the rabbis, that an accidental death occurring on the killer’s private property is
not punishable, because the dead person presumably had no business being on that
property when his accidental death occurred (Maccoth II.3).

4. Application by Analogy With Two Provisions (binyan ’ab mishnê ketûbîm) This rule of
exegesis is closely related to the previous rule except that the analogy is strengthened by
some kind of near repetition. Ex 21:26, 27, for example, provides that a servant would gain
his freedom if his master had destroyed one of his eyes or one of his teeth. In this case two
provisions are made—one concerning the eye and another concerning the tooth. Although
they are di erent in use, both eye and tooth are essential parts of the body that cannot be
replaced if destroyed. The rule therefore was extended to all other parts of the body, thus
explaining the force of the text as saying that if a man mutilates or destroys any member of
his servant’s body he must set him free as a consequence of that brutal treatment
(Kiddushim 24a).

5. The E ect of General and Particular Terms (kalal wepeṛeṭ) This rule was actually used
in two di erent ways, depending on whether a general term was followed by a specific
designation, or whether a specific designation was followed by a general term. Two
examples will make clear how the rabbis applied this rule.

(a) Dt 22:11 (RSV) decrees that mingled stu , namely wool and linen, should not be worn
together. The general term “mingled stu ” was followed by the specific explanatory
statement “wool and linen.” This statement meant that it was this particular combination
that was prohibited. The explanatory statement therefore was considered to restrict the
general term “mingled stu ” to only this specific mixture, and that any other combinations
of fabric would be permissible (Khilayim X.1).

(b) On the other hand, when specific terms were followed by a general term, the opposite
rule of interpretation had to be given. An example is Ex 22:9, which states that if a man lends

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another man an ox, ass, sheep, garment, or any other thing, and the loaned thing is lost,
double restitution must be made. Here the generalizing term “any manner of lost thing”
shows that ox, ass, sheep, and garment are to be taken only as examples and that therefore
any borrowed thing, living or dead, if lost, must be refunded in double value (Mêkhilta on Ex
22:9).

6. Analogy Made From Another Passage (kayôṣe’ bô mimeqôm ’aḥar) This rule was similar
to that of No. 2, already explained, as the following example will illustrate. The law provided
that the Jews had to keep the Passover “at its appointed time” (Num 9:2, RSV). Hillel was
asked whether this meant that the Passover lamb had to be killed even on a Sabbath if the
14th of Nisan, the Passover eve, fell on a Sabbath day. He replied that the law expressly
decreed that the “daily” sacrifices had to be o ered also on the Sabbath (Num 28:10).
Consequently, the expression “at its appointed time” means, by analogy, that the Passover
lamb had to be slain on the 14th of Nisan, whether that day fell on a Sabbath day or on any
other day of the week.

7. The Explanation Obtained From the Context (tabar hilmad me’anînô) This rule decreed
that a passage should not be interpreted as an isolated statement, but only in the light of its
context. For example, the statement of Ex 16:29, “let no man go out of his place on the
seventh day,” taken out of its context could be interpreted to mean that no man was allowed
to leave his home for any reason whatsoever on the Sabbath. However, a reading of the
preceding and following passages clearly shows that this prohibition applied to those
gathering manna in the wilderness, saying that the Israelites should not go out on the
Sabbath day to look for manna, which they would not find anyway on that day (Erubin 51a).

Philo’s Interpretation of the Scriptures

The Jewish rabbis in Palestine actively resisted the philosophical and cultural influences
of the Hellenistic world and did everything in their power to shield their people from these
influences. But the diaspora Jews, especially those living in cities that were centers of
intellectual Hellenistic life, such as Alexandria, were strongly influenced by Greek
philosophy, especially Stoicism and allegory. This is already noticeable in the Greek
translation of the Bible, the Septuagint, produced in the third and second centuries B.C.,
which carefully tried to change gross anthropomorphic or anthropopathic statements about
Cod into a language more acceptable to intellectuals influenced by Greek reasoning and
thinking. For example, the statement made by God according to Gn 6:7, “It repenteth me that
I have made them,” is translated in the Septuagint, “I am angry that I have made them.”
According to the Greek thinking, gods could not be visualized as regretting their acts but
could be angry about their products.
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 The Greek philosophers used allegory to justify deeper and hidden meanings in the rather
blunt and often bawdy stories about their gods that revealed human character traits,
weaknesses, and passions. In some apocryphal and pseudepigraphic Jewish works these
allegorizing methods of the Greeks are applied—mostly, however, in a rather timid and
careful way—so that orthodox Jews would not be o ended.

However, Philo of Alexandria, a prolific Jewish writer and exegete, used allegory with great
force. Many of his commentaries on biblical books have survived, and they provide a clear
picture of his methods of interpretation in which allegory played a major role. The title of his
commentary on the Pentateuch, “Allegorical Exposition of the Holy Book of the Law,” speaks
for itself. Here Philo explains that the trees of knowledge and life in paradise had not really
existed but were rather symbols, just as the serpent who seduced Eve to sin was actually a
symbol of lust (Leg. alleg. III.21). Philo stated that whenever a text presented di iculties,
made no sense, contained contradictions, or was unworthy of Scripture, the literal meaning
should be given up in favor of an allegorical interpretation. He called this type of
interpretation the “laws of allegory” (On Abraham, 68). Philo also rejected any idea of
visualizing God in human form because doing so would lead to the conclusion that God was
also subject to human passions—a monstrous idea (On the Sacrifices of Abel and Cain, 95).

The result of this sort of interpretation was that very little of the biblical stories was
retained as fact in Philo’s commentaries. Everything was spiritualized and allegorized in a
philosophical language appealing to the educated intellectuals of the Hellenistic world.
Philo more than any other non-Christian writer influenced the Greek-speaking church
fathers for centuries. It took the church a long time to rid itself of the allegorical interpretation
of Scripture inherited from Philo.

The Qumran Sectarian Interpretation of Scripture

Through the discoveries of the Qumran scrolls and the excavation of the remains of the
community center at Khirbet Qumran we have gained a rather good insight of a strict
monastic Jewish sect of Christ’s time. It is now almost universally admitted that this sect
was the Essenes, described or referred to by Josephus, Philo, Strabo, and other ancient
writers. We learn that these people were avid students of the Bible, of which many copies
have come to light—although most of them in fragments—in the caves around Qumran.
Furthermore, a large number of extrabiblical books, mostly religious in nature, were found in
the Qumran area. Several of these are commentaries on biblical books, mainly on those of a
prophetic nature. Among them the commentary on Habakkuk from Cave 1 is the best
preserved, but also fragmentary copies of commentaries on Isaiah, Hosea, Micah, Nahum,
Zephaniah, and the Psalms from Caves 1 and 4 have thus far been published.
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 These commentaries clearly reveal that the Essenes were an eschatological sect,
convinced they were living in the last days of this world’s history, with the expected
Messianic age just around the corner. All predictive prophecies were applied to situations of
their time, some referring to the general political conditions, others to the history of the sect.

The commentaries usually quote a brief passage of one to three verses of the biblical
text, called the dabar, “word,” which is followed by the phrase “Its pesher is” (pesher
meaning “interpretation”). For this reason some scholars have suggested that the term
Midrash pesher should be used for this sort of eschatological Jewish interpretation; although
the majority of scholars simply call it Pesher. Even though it is di icult to recognize any
hermeneutical rules in the interpretation of Scripture in the Qumran literature, some
scholars have attempted to list recognizable rules of interpretation used by the Essenes.

The following examples are typical of interpretations used by the Essenes: the
“righteous” of Hab 1:4 is the “Teacher of Righteousness,” the founder of the sect, whose
name is nowhere recorded in Qumran literature. His authoritative teachings are reflected in
all the nonbiblical writings found at Qumran. He was persecuted, perhaps even killed, by the
“Wicked Priest” or “Man of Lies”—probably one person. This explanation is also recognized
in the sect’s interpretation of Hab 1:4, which says that “the wicked surround the righteous”
(RSV). The Chaldeans of Hab 1:6 are the Romans, who appear under the name Kittim in the
sect’s literature. The lion and his whelps of Nah 2:12 are interpreted to be a Demetrius and
an Antiochus of the Seleucid rulers who lived in the Maccabean period, as well as their
successors down to the appearance of the rulers of the Kittim (the Romans).

On the other hand, some interpretations of the Qumran sectarians have been helpful
toward a better understanding of certain biblical passages, although the total theological
harvest in this respect has been rather meager. One beautiful expansion of a scriptural
passage is the Aaronitic blessing of Num 6:24–26, used by the Essenes in their meetings, as
recorded in their Manual of Discipline. In the following translation the Essene additions are
in italic:

May he bless you with every good,

and keep you from all evil,

and may he shine [into] your heart with wisdom of life,

and be gracious to you with eternal knowledge,

and may he lift up his merciful face upon you,

for eternal peace (Manual of Discipline, II. 2–4).

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 Conclusion

A study of the voluminous ancient Jewish religious literature shows that, just like modern
Christians, the Jews of the apostolic age wrestled with problems of interpreting their sacred
writings. This was not done in a uniform way, as the foregoing pages and examples show.
From these examples one can clearly see that some of the hermeneutic principles employed
by the Jewish teachers of the apostolic age were sound and valid. They can still be applied
to enhance our correct understanding of the Scriptures and to make their teachings relevant
for the situation in the twentieth century. On the other hand, the Jewish writings also reveal
that the rabbis frequently employed farfetched interpretations and made the Scriptures say
things they hardly implied, much less said, in order to make them practical to first-century
Judaism.

Thus the orthodox Pharisees manipulated the texts in order to obtain a scriptural basis
for their teachings dealing with every detail of daily life and thought. The Jews in the
Hellenistic world, on the other hand, allegorized the Bible to make it palatable to the Greek
mind, whereas the eschatologically oriented monastic Essenes read into the texts things
they desired to find there. To one trained to apply sound principles of scriptural
hermeneutics, the resultant interpretations often seem absurd. Whether they originate with
the ancient orthodox rabbis of Palestine, the intellectual Hellenists of Alexandria, or the
monks of Qumran, many of these interpretations cannot be accepted by modern students
of the Bible.

It is in the light of these frequent ancient Jewish misinterpretations of the Bible that we
can understand that Jesus said to the Pharisees, “For the sake of your tradition, you have
made void the word of God” (Mt 15:6, RSV), and to the Sadducees, “You are wrong, because
you know neither the scriptures nor the power of God” (Mt 22:29, RSV).

READING LIST

Brownlee, William H. The Meaning of the Qumran Scrolls for the Bible. New York: Oxford
University Press, 1964. Chap. 4: “The Meaning for Old Testament Interpretation,” pp. 62–
109.

König, Eduard. Hermeneutik des Alten Testaments. Bonn: A. Marcus & E. Webers Verlag,
1916. Chap. 4: “Geschichte der Auslegung bei den Juden,” pp. 6–16.

Mielziner, M. Introduction to the Talmud. New York: Bloch Publishing Co., 1925. Part II: “Legal
Hermeneutics of the Talmud,” pp. 117–187.

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Siegfried, Carl. Philo von Alexandria als ausleger des Alten Testaments. Amsterdam: Philo
Press, 1970 (reprint of the 1875 edition).

Sowers, Sidney G. The Hermeneutics of Philo and Hebrews. Richmond, Va.: John Knox Press,
1965.

Barn in Grenada, West Indies, Dr. Walter B. Douglas is

an assistant professor of church history at the Seventh-
day Adventist Theological Seminary where he has been
teaching since 1969. His doctoral studies completed at
McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, in 1972,
centered on 17th century Puritanism. The research for
his dissertation involved a new approach to the
interpretation of the history of the English Church from
1660 onward.
[For biographical sketch of Dr. Kenneth A. Strand, please see p. 88.]

3. Interpretation of the Bible in the Early and

Medieval Church
KENNETH A. STRAND and WALTER B. DOUGLAS

SDA Theological Seminary

Andrews University

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 Biblical interpretation among the early church fathers tended to follow the lines indicated
in the NT use of the OT and to utilize some of the contemporary Jewish rabbinic modes of
dealing with the Bible text. Certain of these church fathers leaned toward the Philonic
allegorization mentioned in the immediately preceding chapter. During the Middle Ages
there was a heightening of the tendency to allegorize. However, there was also somewhat of
a return toward literal interpretation, which kind of interpretation finally found a more
complete revival in the work of the major Protestant Reformers.

In this short chapter it is impossible to give more than the briefest survey of Scripture
interpretation during the early-church and medieval periods. Therefore, rather than trying to
be comprehensive we simply will look at a few individuals or groups as representing some of
the prominent tendencies.

Early-Church Use of Scripture for Purposes of Exemplification

A good deal of scriptural quotation or allusion to Scripture in the early-church period—

particularly in letters, sermons, and treatises intended for Christan readers—utilizes the
Scripture texts or passages as illustrations of what Christians should be or do in the
particular circumstances before them. This use of Scripture is evident, for example, in
epistolary materials from some of the earliest fathers, such as Clement of Rome.

Clement wrote to the Corinthian church possibly as early as A.D. 95 exhorting it to unity
in view of its schismatic tendencies. In his letter he uses OT Scripture freely to illustrate such
matters as the evil of jealousy; the value of repentance; and the need for humility, unity,
orderliness, and respect for regularly constituted authority. As an example of humility he
refers to David and quotes the first seventeen verses of Ps 51, and as an illustration of how
sedition regarding the priestly o ice was averted in ancient Israel he calls attention to the
experience recorded in Numbers 17 about Aaron’s rod that budded. He alludes to NT writings
as authoritative too, even though at this early time the NT canon had not yet been declared.
There are a number of reflections from various of the Gospels and epistles, and special
mention is made of “the epistle of the blessed Apostle Paul,” in which “under the inspiration
of the Spirit, he wrote to you concerning himself, and Cephas, and Apollos, because even
then parties had been formed among you.” (For the above illustrations see chaps. 18, 43, and
47 of Clement’s epistle. Most translations herein are from Ante-Nicene and Nicene-Post-
Nicene Fathers.)

Clement represents the way in which the earliest Christian writers used Scripture for
hortatory purposes, namely, to draw illustrations for application to the practical matters at

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hand. Not only in letters but also frequently in homilies and in doctrinal, disciplinary, and
polemical treatises a like use of Scripture occurs.

Use of Pagan Sources in Apologies and in Other Early Christian Literature

A type of early-church literature that sometimes may be puzzling because of its

references to pagan writers is the apologetical works of the 2d and 3d centuries. Among the
more important of various apologists are Justin Martyr, whose extant writings are dated to
about the middle of the 2d century; and Tertullian of Carthage, who wrote his famous
Apology about A.D. 197. Indeed, Tertullian was a prolific writer, producing a number of
polemical, doctrinal, and practical treatises as well.

Tertullian’s Apology illustrates the manner in which Christian apologists endeavored to

defend Christianity against its heathen persecutors by repudiating false charges, asserting
the superiority of Christian literature over pagan literature, and explaining Christian belief
and practice to those not familiar with the true nature of Christianity. Frequently non-
Christian writings are mentioned for no other reason than to prove them inferior to the sacred
Scriptures of the Christians.

There are examples of the use of such writings to explicate Christian doctrine. Tertullian
when explaining Christ’s spiritual nature refers (chap. 21) to the Stoic philosopher Zeno’s
teaching about the logos and also to Cleanthes’ ascription of Creation to an all-pervasive
spiritual essence. Such use of pagan sources represents communicative concern rather
than adoption of Greek thought. Indeed, Tertullian utilizes concepts from Greek
philosophical thought, too, in such a polemical work as Against Praxeas, again from the
standpoint of their being a communicative vehicle.

It should be noted that inasmuch as apologists were addressing pagans they naturally
incorporated language and concepts familiar to the intended readers. This represents a
hermeneutical consideration of first rank akin to that faced by modern-day missionaries who
carry the message of the Bible to peoples whose backgrounds are quite alien to the Christian
tradition.

For present-day missionaries, terminological problems may be severe; for how can one
make meaningful the term “Lamb of God” to people who have never seen sheep and lambs,
or “whiter than snow” to persons who have never seen snow?

The communication problem of the early apologists was not entirely dissimilar. Although
it is true that some of these writers had absorbed certain Greek notions (including
immortality of the soul), most frequently their mode of expression was simply the result of

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an honest e ort to put the Bible message and an explanation of Christian practice into terms
heathen addressees could understand.

Tertullian’s Use of a Christian Extrabiblical Source

Tertullian in some of his writings illustrates an interesting use of a Christian extrabiblical

source. This church father first became converted to the Catholic mainstream branch of
Christianity late in the 2d century, but during the first decade of the 3d century moved his
allegiance to a stricter wing, called Montanism. This wing was considered by many as some
sort of o shoot of the universal church. The group originated about the middle of the 2d
century in Phrygia in Asia Minor, where the “prophet” Montanus and the “prophetesses”
Priscilla and Maximilla had had visions they considered to be manifestations of the era of the
Holy Spirit (their own time) in contrast to earlier periods of supposed lesser light—the era of
the Father (the OT period), and the era of the Son (the NT period). Tertullian as a Montanist
accepts the new revelations (or new prophecy, as he calls it) as authoritative. In his treatise
On the Veiling of Virgins he utilizes it as a solid basis for belief in addition to Scripture.

Indeed, the Montanist revelations also had their e ect on his understanding of the
biblical text itself, as may be noted in regard to his interpretation of the descent of the holy
city New Jerusalem (in Against Marcion, Book III, chap. 25). Among the Montanist
“revelations” was one claiming that the New Jerusalem would very soon descend in Phrygia.
Although Tertullian shifts the scene of its descent to Palestine, he places that descent at the
beginning of the millennium instead of at the end of the 1,000 years, as would be indicated
by a literal understanding of the 20th and 21st chapters of Revelation. The influence of the
Montanist extrabiblical source in modifying the interpretation of the biblical text is evident
here.

The Use of Allegorization in the Early Church

Generally, the various early church fathers had at least a tendency toward allegorization
of Bible references. One may take as an example Irenaeus, a disciple of Polycarp, who in turn
was a disciple of the apostle John. In his famous Against Heresies, written about A.D. 185,
he referred (Book V, chap. 8, sec. 4) to the OT description of clean and unclean animals as
figuratively delineating classes of mankind: Those animals that “have a double hoof and
ruminate [chew the cud]” are clean. They represent the true Christians, “who make their way
by faith steadily towards the Father and the Son” as “denoted by the steadiness of those
which divide the hoof,” and who meditate “day and night upon the words of God” as indicated
by chewing the cud. The “unclean” fall into three classes: (1) the Gentiles, who “neither
divide the hoof nor ruminate” (“those persons who have neither faith in God, nor do meditate
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on His words”); (2) the Jews, “represented by the animals that chew the cud but lack the
double hoof”; and (3) heretics, indicated by the animals that have split hooves but do not
chew the cud.

A more pervasive form of allegorization than that of Irenaeus had appeared in the Epistle
of Barnabas (written as early as about A.D. 130, probably from Alexandria). This Barnabas,
now generally recognized by scholars as not the companion of the apostle Paul, seems to
have endeavored to heighten a tendency toward allegorization, noticeable in Gal 4:22–31,
where the apostle uses Sarah and Hagar and Isaac and Ishmael as representatives of old-
covenant and new-covenant concepts. This sort of illustration (it is referred to as “allegory”
in Gal 4:24) does not deny the reality of the original experiences to which reference is made
but, rather, draws a relevant Christian lesson from them.

Barnabas’ departure from Paul’s methodology in this respect is twofold: (1) Barnabas
allegorizes profusely; and (2) his kind of allegorization is such as often to deny or at least
minimize the original intent of the OT Scriptures. We may notice his reference (chap. 10 of
his book) to what he calls three doctrines in Moses’ mind when Moses spoke of unclean
animals: (1) The prohibition of swine’s flesh means that God’s children should refrain from
the company of “men who resemble swine” (who in time of pleasure forget their Lord, but in
time of want acknowledge Him); (2) the mention of certain birds of prey signifies the need to
avoid association with persons who “know not how to procure food for themselves by labour
and sweat, but seize on that of others”; (3) the command not to eat “the lamprey, or the
polypus, or the cuttlefish” means that one should not join himself “or be like to such men as
are ungodly to the end, and are condemned to death,” just as those fishes “make their abode
in the mud which lies at the bottom” of the sea.

Barnabas thinks that although the Israelite people in general understood Moses’
statements as referring only to literal meats, David in the first Psalm grasped the real
meaning of the “three doctrines”: “ ‘Blessed is the man who hath not walked in the counsel
of the ungodly,’ even as the fishes [referred to] go in darkness to the depths [of the sea]; ‘and
hath not stood in the way of sinners,’ even as those who profess to fear the Lord, but go astray
like swine; ‘and hath not sat in the seat of scorners,’ even as those birds that lie in wait for
prey.”

It would appear that Barnabas had a high regard for Scripture in view of the extent to
which he uses it throughout his epistle. However, the way he treats the OT in an e ort to give
it Christian meaning leaves little doubt that he is on a dangerous hermeneutical track. With
his kind of exegesis and interpretation each exegete or interpreter can become virtually a law
to himself.

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 Origen’s Threefold Interpretation

The Epistle of Barnabas is the earliest extant Christian witness for a tendency particularly
prevalent in Alexandria that crops up again in the writings of later church fathers from there,
such as Clement of Alexandria and Origen in the late 2d century and first part of the 3d
century.

The latter, who for some years succeeded Clement as head of the catechetical school in
that city, can be considered to represent the pinnacle of allegorical-type interpretation in the
early church. This church father concluded that Scripture has a threefold meaning
comparable to body, soul, and spirit in the human being. Imbued with Platonic or Neo-
Platonic concepts, he viewed matter negatively.

Likewise, for his Scripture interpretation he placed the least significance on the
corporeal (“literal” or “material”) meaning, attributing increasing value to the “soulish”
(“psychical”) and especially “spiritual” meanings. He did not reject the idea that the literal,
or corporeal, is present in much of Scripture and that it has a certain degree of value, but he
concluded that the “spiritual” significance is the most important and that Scripture
sometimes includes “material” or “literal” falsehood in an e ort to provide “spiritual” truth.

In Book IV, chapter 1, of his On First Principles, where he treats the subject in detail, he
says, for example, that “the principal aim being to announce the ‘spiritual’ connection in
those things that are done, and that ought to be done, where the Word found that things done
according to the history could be adapted to these mystical senses, He made use of them.”
On the other hand, where “in the narrative of the development of super-sensual things, there
did not follow the performance of those certain events,” the Scriptures incorporated in the
account “some event that did not take place; sometimes what could not have happened;
sometimes what could, but did not.”

As an illustration of Origen’s “spiritual” interpretation, one may note his reference (in
Series of Commentaries on Matthew, chapter 50) to the “second advent” of the Word as a
“daily” experience in “the prophetic clouds”—in “the writings of the prophets and apostles,”
which reveal Christ.

Origen obviously represents a heightened and more sophisticated form of the tendencies
already apparent in Barnabas. Origen, moreover, incorporates Greek concepts into his
theology as an integral part of that theology rather than as simply the sort of communicative
tools noticeable in the writings of other Christian apologists. He thinks, for example, of
universal salvation and a form of metempsychosis (transmigration of souls) akin to Platonic
philosophy. He also holds Greek notions regarding the relationship of form and matter.

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 Origen’s exegetical method and interpretational results were far from universally
accepted in the early church. Nevertheless, touches of his influence lingered on; and his
threefold interpretation was later expanded into a fourfold one that became standard during
the Middle Ages. This kind of interpretation, which will be treated in more detail later,
conceived of Scripture as embracing “literal,” “allegorical,” “tropological,” and “anagogical”
meanings. It was a method even Martin Luther used in his early theological lectures at the
University of Wittenberg, but from which the Reformer soon broke away in favor of a
grammatical-historical approach.

The Role of Augustine

The early-church father who undoubtedly had the greatest influence in molding both
doctrine and hermeneutic for the entire medieval period was Augustine of Hippo (d. A.D.
430). Although his system of allegorizing was not precisely like that of Origen, similarities
may be noted. Like Origen he imbibed Neo-Platonic concepts that led him toward his
allegorical interpretation and influenced some of his doctrinal positions.

Illustrations of the way in which he allegorized Scripture appear in Book XX of his City of
God, where he propounds the “amillennial” view, which became standard Christian
interpretation of Rev 20 for many centuries. In his opinion, the “thousand years” could be
understood in two ways: either “the sixth thousand of years” of earth’s history, or “the whole
duration of this world.” Thus, the “1000 years” of Rev 20 are considered as applying either to
a part or to the whole of this present earth’s history, not to a future millennial age.

Two illustrations of Augustine’s mode of interpreting some of the specifics of Rev 20 must
su ice here: The “bottomless pit” or “abyss” into which Satan was thrown represents “the
countless multitude of the wicked whose hearts are unfathomably deep in malignity against
the church of God; not that the devil was not there before, but he is said to be cast in thither,
because, when prevented from harming believers, he takes more complete possession of
the ungodly.” The “fire out of heaven” that devours the wicked, he says, “is well understood
of the firmness of the saints, wherewith they refuse to yield obedience to those who rage
against them”; by God’s grace “the saints become unconquerable, and so torment their
enemies.”

Augustine was not always consistent in his Scripture interpretation. He had once been a
premillenarian, but apparently his distaste for the grossly materialistic earthly millennium
propounded by the chiliasts (or premillenarians of his day) led him toward his amillennialist
position. Among various factors influencing his hermeneutic was his changing attitude in
view of what he deemed to be the needs of the times. One may note, for example, his early

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attitude of seeking to win Donatists to the orthodox church by “discussion, reasoning, and
persuasion,” in contrast to his later attitude of compelling them by force, for which (as noted
in his epistle 93) he thought he had Scriptural support in the words “compel them to come
in” (Lk 14:23).

Synopsis of Early-Church Developments

The patristic writers often used hermeneutical principles in which great dangers inhered,
but what has been said above should not be taken to mean that all treatment of Scripture
during the early-church period was basically unsound. As has already been noted, a good
deal of the use of Scripture by church fathers in addressing Christian readers was for the
purpose of providing practical example. Also, the apologetical works utilized the sound
principle of making the Bible message and Christian practice understandable to non-
Christians. Works of the kinds just mentioned, plus various polemical writings, frequently
reveal an extensive use of Bible texts accompanied by analysis and exegesis well thought
out and solid.

One may think, for example, of Irenaeus, to whom reference has already been made in
illustrating an allegorizing tendency quite generally prevalent among the church fathers. But
certainly he is to be remembered, too, in his significant role as a champion of the cause of
Christianity against various Gnostic heresies that were endeavoring to split the church apart.
In refuting the Gnostic claim that the Saviour, who descended from heaven, did not have a
real body, Irenaeus used such texts as Mt 1:18 and Jn 1:13, 14, plus several passages from
Paul’s epistles, to show that a “Divine Christ” was not a distinct entity from a “human Jesus,”
as Gnostics would claim; but rather that the “Son of God was born of a virgin, and that He
Himself was Christ the Saviour whom the prophets had foretold.”—Against Heresies, Book
III, chap. 16.

We may think also of Tertullian, who championed the cause of Christianity against
Gnostic heresies and against Marcion. Moreover, in his Against Praxeas he dealt with a
Monarchian view that had taken hold of part of the church itself; namely, that God the Father,
God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit represent simply one divine Person who manifested
Himself in di erent ways at di erent times. To this, Tertullian aptly responded with various
passages of Scripture, asking, for example, the question as to whether if this were really so,
to whom did Christ pray when He said, “Our Father which is in heaven”?

Finally, in closing this section, we may again mention Augustine, who although he
provided medieval interpreters with a hermeneutic of somewhat allegorical nature, also
gave a good deal of sound interpretation in various of his works. His treatment of the

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relationship of grace and law in his treatise On Spirit and Letter is beautiful, and was
influential on Martin Luther at a crucial point in the Reformer’s career. For purposes of
illustration we note one conclusion therein, relating to Rom 3:24. “It is not, therefore, by the
law nor is it by their own will,” that men are justified. Rather, justification comes freely by
God’s grace, “not that it is wrought without our will; but our will is by the law shown to be
weak, that grace may heal its infirmity; and that our healed will may fulfill the law, not by
compact under the law, nor yet in the absence of law” (chap. 15).

The Place of the Bible in the Middle Ages

The Bible was the most studied book in the Middle Ages, and Bible study represented the
highest branch of learning. Yet in the opinion of one scholar, there is not much in medieval
interpretation that is strikingly novel (see Farrar, History of Interpretation, p. 245).

So in approaching the subject of medieval exegesis it is our desire to highlight the salient
principles of interpretation employed by the medieval theologians in the exposition and
discovery of the message of the Word of God. Hopefully, these principles will provide a
fruitful basis for our understanding of the hermeneutics of this period.

Insofar as the interpretation of the Bible is concerned the medieval period can be
described as a period of transition from patristic emphasis on exegetical theology to the
divorce between biblical interpretation and theology, which becomes most noticeable in the
writings of Thomas Aquinas. As will be seen, Aquinas insisted on the literal interpretation as
having primary importance, upon which all other interpretations are based. Although the
men of the Middle Ages developed their own technical aids to study their auxiliary sciences
of textual criticism and biblical languages, the material of biblical study remained the same.
As Farrar remarked, “We find very little exegesis except the glimmerings and decays of
patristic expositions.” They give us volumes of dogma, morality, and system that profess to
be used in Scripture but for the most part have no real connection with the passages to which
they are attached (see Farrar, History of Interpretation, pp. 245 .). One might suggest that
the reason for this practice and its result is the interpreters’ assumption that revelation not
only is expressed in Scripture but also is hidden in it, and this assumption led them to
perceive a multiplicity of senses or meanings in Scripture.

The Allegorical Method of Interpretation

As already noted, during the later patristic period and in the Middle Ages a system of
allegorization was developed according to which four meanings were to be sought in every
text. Sometimes, indeed, there were as many as seven, but the more normal number of

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senses was four: the allegorical, which sets forth what should be believed; the literal, which
is the plain evident meaning; the tropological, which is the moral sense, telling men what to
do; and the anagogical, which centers in what Christians are to hope.

From the beginning of our period (ca. A.D. 600), allegory held a dominant place in the
minds of medieval theologians. Indeed, severe criticism of Catholic exegetes has arisen
because they made so much use of the allegorical interpretation. However, these exegetes
did not intend in any way to question or reject the historical foundations of Scripture. On the
contrary, their purpose was to find a symbolic value in history.

Claudius of Turin points approvingly to this practice. The Word of God, he declares, is
incarnate in Scripture, which like man has a body and a soul. The body is the wording of the
sacred text, the “letter,” the literal meaning; the soul is the spiritual sense. To explain the
literal sense is to expound litteraliter vel carnaliter; littera is almost interchangeable with
corpus.

Beryl Smalley in her book The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages observes that if in rare
moments of skepticism a medieval scholar questioned the truth of Scripture, he never
doubted that it had letter and spirit; he only feared that the spirit might be bad. Naturally,
then, he understood relationship between letter and spirit in the same way as he did the
relationship between body and soul.

What we now call exegesis based on the study of the text and of biblical history, in the
widest sense belongs to the literal exposition. The spiritual exposition generally consists of
pious meditations or religious teachings for which the text was used merely as a convenient
starting point. It is obvious that picking meanings out of the Bible like this, rather than on the
basis of context, can lead far astray. But the modus operandi of medieval interpretation of
Scripture is founded on the belief that all things created can find a basis in Scripture in the
sense of being sacred words or signs of divine things.

Thomas Aquinas expresses this view most clearly in his writings. “Physical creatures,” he
declares, “signify something sacred, namely the divine wisdom and goodness”; and “by
means of the likeness of the physical things in divine Scripture, scriptural things are
described for us.”—Summa Theologica, III, a60, art. 3, and 1.

According to this premise and other related ideas, all things are considered to have
sacramental significance that leads to God. This is, in fact, the secret of medieval
interpretation of the Bible. It is evident in Bonaventura’s view of the relationship between the
interpretation of the Bible and theology. For him theology has its foundation in Scripture,
which is divine revelation made evident through the Holy Spirit. Thus, the Bible contains the
words of eternal life, written not only that we may believe but also that we may possess
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eternal life. It is hardly surprising, then, that the medieval theologians and exegetes seemed
mainly interested in finding in the Word of God what they thought was spiritual nourishment
for the people. In fact, so firmly established was this approach to Scripture that it had a direct
and lasting influence on medieval eucharistic teaching.

Examples of Allegorization

The modern reader may be tempted to ask: Can it be true that the preachers and the
faithful were taught that the word mountain in Holy Scriptures is to be interpreted primarily
to mean “virgin,” or in the plural to stand for “angels,” “apostles,” “precepts,” or the
“Testaments”?

By looking at a few more examples of allegorizing we begin to realize the complexity of

the interpretation of Scripture in the medieval period. According to the allegorical sense, the
raising of Lazarus signifies a man in mortal sin who repents, confesses, and receives
absolution. This is quite a common interpretation. After the raising of Lazarus it was said to
the disciples, “Loose him.” This was taken to mean that God quickens a repenting sinner but
that he is never loosed except by the ministers of the church.

The use of allegory is also shown in the example of the word sea, which could be
understood in seven di erent ways. It could mean a gathering of water, Scripture, the present
age, the human heart, the active life, heathen, or baptism. The allegorical interpretation
survived largely in preaching. But for a rational, almost rationalistic, theological method,
such a subjective attitude toward Scripture could not prove satisfactory.

The Influence of the Universities and Religious Orders

It is of extreme importance to bear in mind that the movement for understanding and
interpreting the Bible derives from the universities and the new religious orders. According
to Miss Smalley, “If we are looking for a critical approach to interpretation in the 12th and
13th centuries, we must go to the new religious orders, Cistercians, Canons Regular, Friars
Preacher and Minor, all zealots for the faith and the papacy.”—Study of the Bible in the Middle
Ages, p. xx.

We must follow the centralization of studies at Paris, the development of classroom

equipment, the Gloss (standard commentary) and its uses, and the development of
academic functions supplementary to the lectures—the university sermon and the
disputation. These exercises determine the form and to an extent the content of medieval
exegesis.—Ibid., p. xv.

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 At the universities all interpretations were based on the multiple senses of Scripture. The
reason for this method seems to have been twofold. In the first place, for the leading
scholars and writers in the early Middle Ages (and for many writers even later) the problem
of the relation of revelation to reason posed particular hardship. The fact is that throughout
the patristic period theology had been largely a matter of exegesis. Theological systems were
attempts to interpret as broadly as possible the words of God in Scripture. But as Professor
Grant points out, natural theology was used as rarely as possible.—R. M. Grant, The Bible in
the Church, p. 102. In view of this fact, the one thing necessary was to discover what was
predicted and prefigured in Scripture as insights given by God for His people. Thus
Cassidorus a irms that the Psalms are full of the liberal arts.

The second reason relates to the influence of the Greek fathers and the “vitality of
Platonism,” which reached the medieval scholar largely through Augustine. These influences
determined the world view of the medieval thinkers; and it was ordinarily believed, as Miss
Smalley expresses it, that “Scripture, like the visible world, is a great mirror reflecting God,
and therefore all and every kind of truth.”—See R. M. Grant, The Bible in the Church, p. 102.

The question was always raised: What is God saying in His Word? Did He intend to
conceal His meaning or did He intend to express it? The Aristotelian exposition of nature,
which was gaining currency among the newer theologians, did not take seriously the idea of
symbolism. And in view of this, one begins to see emerging a new emphasis on
interpretation, namely, the literal.

Some Medieval Interpreters of Scripture

Enough has been said to indicate the variety of interpretation in the Middle Ages. We
must now look briefly at some of the more important figures concerned with the
interpretation of the Bible. From the galaxy of well-known expositors we may choose the
following as among the more important: Bernard of Clairvaux, Hugo of St. Victor, Andrew of
St. Victor, Langton, and Aquinas.

Bernard (ca. 1091–1153) was famous not only for his preaching but also for his
interpreting. Among his extensive written works are 86 sermons on the Song of Songs.
Bernard utilizes a traditional threefold sense—historical, moral or figurative, and mystical—
and interprets the Song of Songs as an allegory of the relation between Christ and the soul
of the individual Christian. His way of studying and interpreting Scripture seemed more
congenial to life within the cloister than to the world outside. He engaged in fanciful and
exaggerated interpretation, but his overriding concern was always to be practical. Bernard’s
aim was to encourage morality and deepen the spirituality of the faithful.

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 A notable example of his interpretation is reflected in his treatment of Song of Songs [Link]
“Thy love is better than wine.” Here the maid addresses her beloved. According to Bernard,
these words refer to Christ, and they mean his patience and clemency. The following verse
states, “Therefore do the virgins love thee.” Bernard interprets the word virgins as “angels,”
and then he proceeds to discuss the nine orders of angels.

Hugo of St. Victor (1097?–1141) was one of the most learned interpreters of Scripture.
Although his tendency was in the direction of the Alexandrian threefold principle, he
distinguished himself for his emphasis on the literal sense. However, for him the literal sense
was more than the bare word; it was indeed the meaning of the word, despite the fact that
the meaning could be figurative. It is asserted that although Hugo lived more than a hundred
years before Aquinas, he seems to have grasped the Thomist principle that the clue to
prophecy and metaphor is the writer’s intention; the literal sense includes everything the
sacred writer meant to say.

A remarkable advance was made in biblical interpretation by Andrew of St. Victor, a

student of Hugo’s who flourished in the second half of the 12th century. He learned from his
master the ability and the importance of utilizing all available knowledge in interpretation.
His methodological principle was to treat selected portions of the Bible, to aim at removing
hindrances to a literal interpretation, and to leave aside both the spiritual and the theological
aspects.

When Andrew dealt with controversial passages he made use of a twofold exegetical
method. One was based on the Vulgate with a Christian explanation; the other was based on
the Hebrew text with a Jewish explanation. This methodology is illustrated in his treatment
of Is 7:14–16: “Behold, a virgin shall conceive,” etc. Here Andrew accepts the Jewish
interpretation because it is the literal one, and he seems to doubt the adequacy of the
Christian interpretation. Andrew was criticized for finding too-easy agreement with Jewish
exegetes. Nevertheless, one of the valuable results of his work is the interest he aroused in
the original sources.

Stephen Langton (1150–1228), Archbishop of Canterbury, was another significant

interpreter of the Bible. Quite apart from his reputation as an interpreter, he is credited with
introducing the present system of chapter division. Langton displayed a practical bent in his
work on the Bible. He aimed at ensuring a sound text. His energies were spent in attempting
to clarify the distinction between literal and spiritual interpretations. Consistent with the
prevailing concept of his time was his belief that the spiritual interpretation was superior to
the literal. But even during his lifetime a change was already noticeable in the conception of
the spiritual meaning. In the 12th century the spiritual interpretation exerted a greater
influence on preaching. It became a means for instructing the ordinary simple Christian in a
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concrete and pictorial form. Instead of explicating the Bible text in terms of abstract virtues
and vices as these struggle within the human soul, interpretation came to deal with “the
behaviour of groups, of types, and religious and social abuses.”—Smalley, Study of the Bible
in the Middle Ages, p. 245.

Langton, who was at the center of ecclesiastical and political a airs, took an active part
in this change in interpretation. For him the one test in interpretation was simply conformity
with the Christian faith. If the interpretation was in accordance with the faith, it could be
accepted. To be sure, Langton found greater freedom in spiritual meaning, as distinct from
literal. Nevertheless, the spiritual sense had to be based on what is signified by the Word.

We now come to the greatest of all the scholastic theologians of the Middle Ages,
Thomas Aquinas, who by his emphasis on rational philosophical arguments was foremost in
setting forth an early speculative form of “natural theology.” It is interesting to note that
Aquinas approached the interpretation of the Bible as a philosopher-theologian rather than
as a biblical scholar in the more specific sense, and there were several basic tensions in his
position. The meaning of Scripture was of tremendous significance to him, and yet he
engaged in philosophical reasoning and discussion perhaps more than any of his
contemporaries. Again, while he took the position of defending the primacy of revelation as
contained in Scripture, his use of Scripture, like his utilization of philosophy, was also for the
confirmation of ecclesiastical dogma.

It is of great importance, Thomas contended, to understand what the Bible says. To be

sure, Scripture uses metaphors, he knew, but these can be understood easily and naturally:
“It is natural to man to attain intellectual truths through sensible objects, because all our
knowledge originates through sense; hence in Holy Scripture spiritual truths are fittingly
taught under the likeness of material things.”—Summa Theologica, 1.1:9.

Aquinas defends the view that the literal sense of Scripture is the basis for the other
senses, which can be built upon it. He resists all who would argue that it is possible to have
several senses in Scripture. His thought on this idea proceeds along three main lines. The
first is the most serious. He observes that “many di erent senses in one text produce
confusion and deception and destroy all force of argument. Hence no argument, but only
fallacies, can be deduced from a multiplicity of propositions. But Holy Scripture ought to be
able to state the truth without any fallacy.” (Cf. Grant, The Bible in the Church, p. 106.)

His second objection merely points to the confusion and lack of system in the allegorical
method and raises questions about use of this method. The third objection focuses on the
fourfold division, and is severely critical. Aquinas maintains that the literal sense is
concerned with the meaning of words, which can be used both properly and figuratively. The

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literal sense is not the figure but the thing that is meant. Thus, the literal meaning of “the arm
of God” is not that God has an arm, but the meaning of the expression “operative power.”
Aquinas concludes with the succint remark that “nothing false can even underlie the literal
sense of Holy Scripture.”—Ibid., p. 107.

Thomas uses the story of the garden of Eden as an example of his literal interpretation of
Scripture. He says that “the things which are said of Paradise in Scripture are set forth by
means of an historical narrative. Now in everything which the Scripture thus sets forth the
truth (of the story) must be taken as a foundation and upon it spiritual expositions are to be
built.”—Cf. Grant, The Bible in the Church, p. 107. At the same time, Thomas by no means
stood clear of the allegorical method as did the Protestant Reformers later.

Consequences of the Medieval Developments

It is obvious that there was not very much noticeable change in interpretation in the
Middle Ages. Yet what there was is important. Largely due to Aquinas, a somewhat clearer
understanding developed as to what was meant by the literal interpretation. The
consequences of this particular medieval insistence on the literal interpretation of Scripture
were incalculable. In the first place, an immediate impetus was given to the study of Hebrew
and the production of literary and historical commentaries on the OT. More important was
the measure of rejection of the patristic theological method with the divorce of theology from
exegesis. The divorce was immediately followed, if not preceded, by the remarriage of
theology to philosophy.

But as Professor Grant has noted, there still remained children of the first marriage who
were not content with their new father. This becomes evident when one realizes the slow
development of Scholasticism. Another factor in this connection can be seen in the work
and influence of Nicholas of Lyra, who in his commentaries wrote about the spiritual as well
as the literal sense. He did so when the need for allegorization seemed absent. And the final
influence was the Reformation, which insisted that its concerns were directed toward a
return to the method of theology through exegesis.

Side by side with this emphasis on historical studies was the claim to objectivity. The
interpreter’s claim to direct inspiration by God in his exegesis became less and less credible.
The argument took the other direction; that is to say, all knowledge comes through the
senses, and scriptural interpretation requires no special inner grace. Indeed, in the medieval
claim to objectivity we discover the genesis of modern scientific and critical study of the
Bible.

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 Summary and Implications

We have seen that the early church illustrates practicality as an important criterion in use
of Scripture for Christians themselves; and that it reveals, too, an e ort to make the gospel
message understood and appreciated by non-Christian addressees through allusion to
concepts familiar to those addressees. Certainly, this attitude toward and treatment of
Scripture has relevance for today as well as in the past.

However, the patristic tendency to allegorize eventually led to widespread devaluation of

the literal significance of the text and became the bane of early-church hermeneutic. It was
an ill heritage passed on to the Middle Ages, and was heightened by the medieval church.
Certain medieval theologians saw the danger inherent in allegorization and raised their
voices against it. In spite of this and in spite of the fact that the Protestant Reformation in
particular brought a wide-scale return to emphasis on the literal significance of the
Scriptural text as a base for drawing spiritual lessons, we can recognize that in our own day
there has been a reversion to emphasis on meaning sometimes without adherence to
adequate literary and historical foundations for projecting that meaning. In this respect
some of the hermeneutic of today bears a strange resemblance to the hermeneutic
embodied in Origen’s “threefold interpretation” and in the “fourfold interpretation,” which
was so popular during the Middle Ages. And, of course, the dangers inherent in the procedure
exist today as much as they did in those earlier times. Indeed, the vagaries of the allegorical
method as illustrated in the early-church and medieval-church periods serve as a stern
warning against any hermeneutic that would destroy the historical foundations of Scripture
or subordinate them to a cult of meaning per se.

On the other hand, the correctives brought by the literal and objective approach to
Scripture led to a more consistent and stable mode of Scripture interpretation, as we have
seen. Even here, however, a caution must be lifted against the sort of methodology that in
the hands of certain critical scholars has virtually destroyed present-day relevance of the
Bible message by overemphasizing purely historical and linguistic concerns as ends in
themselves. The spiritual message of Scripture must not be lost sight of. The important thing
is to base that spiritual message on solid historical and linguistic foundations rather than on
mere speculation—a need made abundantly clear by developments in the early and
medieval periods of church history.

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Provost of the La Sierra campus of Loma Linda
University at Riverside, California, and dean of the
university’s college of arts and sciences, Dr. V. Norskov
Olsen joined the faculty as professor of church history
in 1968. He was a pastor and evangelist for ten years
prior to his academic assignments and served equal
terms as academic dean and president of Newbold
College in England over a 12-year period. He received
the Ph.D. degree from the University of London and the
[Link]. degree from the University of Basel. For the latter
his dissertation was entitled: “The New Testament
Logia on Divorce, A Study of Their Interpretation From
Erasmus to Milton.”

4. Hermeneutical Principles and Biblical

Authority in Reformation and Postreformation
Eras
V. NORSKOV OLSEN

La Sierra Campus

Loma Linda University

Formative Decades

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 When Martin Luther at the trial in Worms, 1521, made his points of defense irrevocable
by the words “Here I stand! I can do no other!” his decision became, as Lord Acton wrote,
“the most pregnant and momentous fact in our history.” Even though the Reformation has
been viewed—and with good reasons—from the particulars of political, social, rationalistic,
liberal, and economical forces at work, it was essentially religious in character. Within the
sphere of religion the primary issue was religious authority and how to articulate the true
meaning of Scriptures. The Reformation began with a reappraisal of the principles of biblical
interpretation and grew into a revolt against current hermeneutics and the creation of new
exegetical tools by which true biblical theology and NT Christianity could be restored. In the
light of the history of the Christian Church and its theology, which is the story of how the
Scriptures were interpreted (a fact that is often overlooked and sadly neglected), the
Reformation became a real re-formation and re-orientation in the field of hermeneutics. The
crux of the religious issue at Worms was positively stated by Luther when he claimed: “I am
bound by Scriptures … and my conscience is captive to the Word of God.”

As in the first quarter of the 16th century and also in the 20th century, the role of biblical
authority and a reexamination of exegetical principles occupy the minds of Catholic and
Protestant theologians. It is our purpose in this chapter, first, to point out the factors that
created the platform on which Protestant authority could be built and to define the principles
of exegesis that emerged; next, to give a bird’s-eye view of the various phases through which
Protestantism passed in order to show how men reacted and related themselves to the
doctrine of biblical authority held by the early Protestant Reformers. Thus it is hoped to
create a theological vantage ground from which present-day hermeneutical issues can be
seen in a true historical perspective.

The Christian Humanists

Since the 14th century the Italian humanists had been at work recovering the culture of
ancient Greece and Rome. The awakening of an interest in classical literature gave birth to
new intellectual inquiries and revived interest in the study of Latin, Greek, and Hebrew
languages. In the first quarter of the 16th century the Christian humanists availed
themselves of the linguistic advances in grammar and syntax and made them useful in the
study of the Bible. Thus prior to the Reformation we find a biblical humanism that became a
preparatio evangelia. The Christian humanists in their historical and philological approach
sought to ascertain what a given text actually meant in the context of Christ’s teaching and
primitive Christianity. The chief early representative of Christian humanism was John Colet
(1466–1519). After having imbibed the spirit of the new learning in Italy he returned to
England, 1496–1497, and began to give his famous lectures, first on the epistle to the

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Romans, and then on 1 Corinthians. His objective was to bring out the practical meaning the
apostle Paul sought to convey to his readers; therefore, he illustrated his sermon with
comments on the life of the apostles and references to the historical conditions in which the
epistles were written. He delivered his sermons in English and rejected the allegorical and
mystical exegesis of the scholastic theologians.

In 1498 Erasmus (1467–1536) arrived in England and attended Colet’s lectures, and
encouraged by them, he took up biblical studies, the fruitage of which is seen in his Greek
NT (1516); his Annotations; and his Paraphrases of the Gospels. Erasmus’ NT became the
basic tool for Luther during the polemic and formative years of the Reformation. After the
Diet of Worms Luther withdrew to Wartburg Castle, and by the help of the Greek NT he
translated the NT into German within eleven weeks. Later the OT was translated into German
from Hebrew. A better understanding of the OT had been made possible by a profound study
of the Hebrew language by Johann Reuchlin, an uncle of Philip Melanchthon. It seemed that
medieval scholasticism was being supplanted by a new hermeneutic more akin to that of
the first expositors of the NT.

Because the Christian humanists relied on the Hebrew and Greek texts, they denied the
canonical value of the OT Apocrypha. The Apocrypha was first included in the Septuagint, a
Greek translation of the OT. Indirectly they repudiated the ecclesiastical tradition. In their
historico-grammatical method of interpretation the humanists renounced the fourfold
exegetical system of medieval scholasticism and replaced it with the literal principle of
interpretation, which concentrated on finding the literal meaning of a passage. In doing this,
they dethroned the significance of the Vulgate, the Latin vocabulary of which was the vehicle
for a medieval theology and the organ for ecclesiastical authority and tradition.

At the Council of Trent, which met in twenty-five sessions from 1545 to 1563, the
Counter-Reformation creedalized its denials of the tenets of the Protestant Reformation. The
fourth session (April 8, 1546) decreed concerning the Bible. The canonical Scriptures,
including the OT Apocrypha, and the ecclesiastical tradition were to be received and
venerated “with an equal a ection of piety and reverence,” they said. It was also declared
that the Latin Vulgate edition, “which, by the lengthened usage of so many ages has been
approved of in the Church, be, in public lectures, disputations, sermons, and expositions,
held as authentic; and that no one is to dare, or presume to reject it under any pretext
whatever.” The same was restated more than three centuries later at the Vatican Council of
1870, where the question of ecclesiastical tradition was further reinforced by the dogma of
Papal infallibility and absolutism.

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 Roman Catholicism tried to undo the influence of the Christian humanists, who sought
to go back beyond Thomist-Aristotelian Christianity by replacing scholastic theology with
biblical theology.

Biblical Authority and Individualism

The significance of biblical authority and its impact on Christian thought ever since can
be fully appreciated only in the light of some basic philosophical concepts that dominated
medieval theological thinking.

In Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) medieval scholasticism attained its clearest expression,

and Aquinas became the foremost typical exponent of the Roman Catholic mind. His
Summa Theologia is the standard of Catholic orthodoxy and the basis of theological
instruction. On the other hand, the Reformers spoke of Aquinas as the fountain of all heresy
and error. Aquinas represented the scholastic philosophy termed realism. For the purpose
of our study all that is necessary to state is that medieval realism maintains the powers of
being that transcend the individual, as in all totalitarian systems. Aquinas was an
Aristotelian, and with Aristotle he believed that the best government of a multitude is that
ruled by one. In the religious life it means that the church comes before the individual, as in
Roman Catholicism where the episcopalian concept of Cyprian that “the bishop is in the
church and the church in the bishop” attains its summit in the pope. Consequently, the pope
has absolute temporal and spiritual jurisdiction, and Boniface VIII (1294–1305) could say,
“All law is locked within my breast,” and in Unam Sanctam declare “that submission on the
part of every man to the bishop of Rome is altogether necessary for his salvation.”

The 14th century reacted strongly to realism and the Unam Sanctam. It is in this reaction
that we find not only the theological roots of biblical authority but also the beginnings of the
democratic principles of the right of the individual. Notice that the theological and
philosophical principle undergirding the Reformers’ concept of authority ties together
democracy and Protestantism, whereas Aquinas binds together totalitarianism,
collectivism, and Roman Catholicism in the rule by one.

William of Ockham (1300–1349), who owed his reputation to his theological and political
theories and his definition of the Bible as the final authority, became a distant voice of the
Reformation. Ockham countered medieval scholastic theology as it was represented by
Thomas Aquinas. He represented what we call nominalism and fiercely attacked realism.
For nominalism only the individual object exists, and contrary to realism it emphasizes the
value of the individual. This is the basis for true democracy and Christian individualism as
found in Protestantism. It is essential for the doctrine of biblical authority and true

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individualism. As a nominalist, Ockham finds the source of power in the people. This idea
undermined papal authority and made the Scriptures the final source of authority.

It is characteristic of Ockham to appeal to the Bible constantly. No doctrine incapable of

being proved from Holy Scripture was to be acknowledged as catholic and necessary to
salvation; neither the church nor the pope could make new articles of faith. In this way he
contributed to the unsettlement of the medieval theory of the source of authority and
assailed the traditional doctrines of his time.

Luther’s reference to the Bible as the source of religious authority and the sacredness of
the conscience of the individual is reminiscent of Ockham, but this view was only to be
expected, for most of Luther’s university professors were Ockhamists and Luther himself
called Ockham “my dear Master.”

The late Cardinal Bea, who became the first director of the Secretariat for the Promotion
of the Unity of Christians during the Second Vatican Council, perceived the Protestant
concept under discussion and at the same time underscored the great di erence between
Protestantism and Catholicism on this point both in the past and in the present. Wrote Bea:

In days gone by, Protestantism, especially in its Lutheran form, had a distinctly
individualistic character.… He [man] was to live in God’s sight quite simply, reading
and interpreting the Bible under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, who enlightened him
and directed his life.… [Roman Catholicism] places them [the doctrines] in the great
current of tradition. Fundamentally it is the method of the Catholic Church, which is
anti-individualist.… The whole Reformation world rejected in principle any authority
in the Church which could oblige the consciences of the faithful to follow it. From this
stems a very practical obstacle to all e orts at unity.—The Unity of Christians, pp.
144, 176–177.

According to the Reformers each Christian has not only the privilege but also the duty to
examine and judge Christian beliefs and practises on the basis of the Bible. Wrote Luther:
“To ascertain and judge about doctrine pertains to all and every Christian; and in such a way
that let him be anathema who injures their right by a single hair.”—Farrar, History of
Interpretation, p. 331.

Biblical Authority in Faith and Reason

The element of rationalism was prevalent in early medieval scholasticism but was held
in check by Augustinian Neo-Platonic mysticism. For Anselm of Canterbury (1033–1109) the
teaching of the church laid down in the Bible and the creeds of the ancient church possessed

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full authority; however, he sought to establish a defense of Christian teaching on the sole
basis of human reason. It was Aquinas who made the medieval synthesis of reason and
revelation by teaching “that one could reason his way through natural theology (philosophy)
to revealed truth (faith).” It was the rationalism of Anselm and Aquinas that Ockham sought
to overthrow by holding that divine revelation rather than human reason is the source of
theology.

As a student in the school of Via Moderna (which was the name of Ockham’s school)
Luther in his training developed appreciation for biblical authority and deprecation of reason
in matters of faith. Being an Augustinian monk he was undergirded by an Augustinian
theology of God, sin, depravity, predestination, and grace. At Worms Luther not only said:
“Unless I am convinced by testimony from Scriptures” but also added “or evident reason.”
Here reason is not used in a Thomistic or later rationalist sense, but in the sense of clear
deductions from the Bible. Correct reason is bound by the Word and enlightened by faith and
the inner witness of the Holy Spirit.

The Personal Encounter With Sola Scriptura

Before the Reformers began to use the Bible in their task of calling the church to renewal
they themselves had been transformed by a personal encounter with the Bible. Zwingli
relates how he removed himself from the influence of theology and philosophy and under
the influence of the Spirit of God became sensitive to God’s Word. Luther sought the Bible
when he had “lost hope in himself” and continued to study the Bible until it became to him
the sole authority in soteriology.

The Reformers, as already noticed in the case of Luther, were among the best-educated
men of their age. They were steeped in ancient and medieval philosophy, thoroughly
acquainted with the church fathers, handled with ease all the knowledge and tools made
available by the renaissance and the humanists (and let us be thankful for that), but they did
not have peace with God. They were engaged in an inner soul struggle. The Bible gave the
answer to the quest of their souls. Through the medium of the sola scriptura (the Bible alone)
principle, divine grace was found, and thenceforward the Bible was central in the
Reformation. Thus the belief was firmly fixed that God in His present redemptive work meets
man in and through the Scriptures. It was as biblical theologians and preachers of the Word
that some Christians in the 16th century became reformers.

The Personal Encounter With Sola Fide and Sola Gratia

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 Luther’s acceptance of the literal, or historico-grammatical, principle of interpretation
(mentioned earlier in this chapter) instead of the fourfold one of medieval exegetes meant in
general that a given Bible passage had but one meaning. In his di iculties in understanding
the relationship between the justice and righteousness of God on the one hand and
justification on the other, Luther took the true (that is, the simple and literal) meaning of the
biblical phrase “The just shall live by faith” (Rom 1:17) as the imputation of the
“righteousness of God” by sheer grace through faith. This sola fide (by faith alone) and sola
gratia (by grace alone) principle became a hermeneutical tool by making the OT and the NT
a unified witness to Christ (Christuszeugnis) and a divine record of God’s redemptive acts in
history (salvation-history). Luther describes his inner struggle for clarification and for the
final victory by grace and faith alone in these words:

Night and day I pondered until I saw the connection between the justice of God
and the statement that “the just shall live by his faith.” Then I grasped that the justice
of God is that righteousness by which through grace and sheer mercy God justifies us
through faith. The reupon I felt myself to be reborn and to have gone through open
doors into paradise. The whole of Scripture took on a new meaning, and whereas
before the “justice of God” had filled me with hate, now it became to me inexpressibly
sweet in greater love. This passage of Paul became to me a gate to heaven.—Bainton,
Here I Stand, p. 65.

This newfound faith with its hermeneutical consequences made its protest against the
Catholic concept of salvation and works. The Council of Trent rea irmed Roman Catholic
belief. Canon XII of the sixth session (Jan. 13, 1547) reads: “If anyone saith, that justifying
faith is nothing else but confidence in the divine mercy which remits sins for Christ’s sake;
or, that this confidence alone is that whereby we are justified: let him be anathema.”—
Scha , Creeds of Christendom, vol. 2, p. 112.

In the Roman Catholic doctrine of justification the Reformers saw the heterogospel that
the apostle Paul wrote against in the epistle to the Galatians. Consequently, the
understanding of the right relationship between law and grace was a vital point in order to
comprehend and interpret the Scriptures correctly. In Reformation thought in general a
twofold use of the law was held (or a threefold use, depending on definition). The first
function of the law is civil, being a means by which society should be organized and
discipline exercised. The second function is spiritual, and it has two aspects. First, it is a
“mirror” or a “tutor” by which man sees his sins and is led to Christ as his refuge. Thus, the
law and the gospel are not contrary to each other. Second, the law is a standard for Christian
living. When dealing with biblical authority, Luther dethroned reason and favored faith, a
faith that had experienced the dynamics of sola gratia. We may therefore speak of the sola
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gratia-sola fide principle of interpretation. The significance of this principle then and now is
clearly defined by a present-day Catholic theologian:

… The Catholic does not say in the first instance, What does the Book say? Rather
he asks, What does the teaching Church say?… Over the Book stands the Church,
while according to the Reform conception, over the Church stands the Book.…—
Weigel, in Fremantle, The Papal Encyclicals, p. 11.

A new era in biblical interpretation and in theological development began with the
Reformers challenging the traditional theological positions in the light of a simple but
positive message of sola fide and sola gratia.

Sola Scriptura

Although the doctrines “by faith alone” and “by grace alone” constituted the material
principle of the Protestant Reformation, “the Bible alone” was its formal principle, and it
became a constitutive and corrective norm of Christian doctrines and practices. The
exegetical rules of the Reformers in stressing the literal meaning and the self-interpretation
of Scripture and their practical usage can be understood only in the light of that principle.

Sola Scriptura and the Holy Spirit The Reformers based the sola scriptura principle on a
twofold activity of the Holy Spirit. They maintained that the same Spirit that inspired the
prophets must penetrate the hearts of those who read the prophets.

The relationship between the sola scriptura concept and the Holy Spirit is similarly
expressed by Luther. Inasmuch as the church is the creation of the Bible and not vice versa,
the Spirit governs the church only through the Scripture. No new revelation is necessary, he
maintained, because the work of the apostles was adequate.

“The Holy Spirit speaks” is an often-repeated statement. The Bible is considered the
proclamation of the Holy Spirit, and the sole medium through which the Holy Spirit speaks.
The intrinsic validity of the Scriptures with all inherent truth is recognized and confirmed by
the inner witness of the Holy Spirit.

For the Reformers the Bible became the only reliable source of authority. The Catholics,
on the other hand, confirmed inherent truth by the authority of the church. The humanists
settled doctrinal questions by rational disputation. The Reformers did not repudiate use of
reason as such but did make it clear that its scope was limited. The Spirit cannot be
inconsistent with Himself, and He will never bring any doctrinal instruction not already found
in the Bible. This was the Reformers’ argument against both the radicals and the Catholics.
The inspired Bible and the testimony of the Holy Spirit became respectively the external and
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internal principles on which correct interpretation rested. It also made the Scriptures
su icient in themselves.

Sola Scriptura and the Creeds The early formative period of the Reformation began with
a personal “discovery” of the truth that man is “justified by faith alone.” It was followed by a
formulative period in which the Christian faith sought to be purged of heretical teaching. In
order to save the center of Christian theology, confessional statements of faith were drawn
up. It was, however, clearly understood that such statements should grow out of the
Scriptures and continually be under their tutorage. It was further recognized that there is
increased light as history moves on to consummation and that some facets of biblical truths
may suddenly take on new significance. Any creedal statement, therefore, was only a relative
authority, but the Scriptures were the absolute authority. The Bible was su icient in itself,
hence Scripture interprets Scripture, letting obscure passages be compared and collated
with less obscure passages. This common concept is well expressed in the First Basel
Confession of Faith (1534). It concludes with this sentence: “We submit this our Confession
to the judgment of the divine Scriptures, and hold ourselves ready, always thankfully to obey
God and his word if we should be corrected out of said holy Scriptures.”—Scha , The Creeds
of Christendom, vol. 1, p. 387. Accordingly, the Bible for the Reformers was an unregulated
regulator. The following early Adventist statements are in full accord with early Reformation
thought:

Christianity has a much broader meaning than many have hitherto given it. It is
not a creed. It is the word of Him who liveth and abideth forever. It is a living, animating
principle, that takes possession of mind, heart, motives, and the entire man.
Christianity—oh, that we might experience its operations! It is a vital, personal
experience, that elevates and ennobles the whole man.—Ellen G. White, Testimonies
to Ministers, pp. 421, 422.

The Bible, and the Bible alone, is to be our creed, the sole bond of union.—Ellen
G. White, Selected Messages, book 1, p. 416.

Sola Scriptura and the Canon The churches of the Reformation on the one hand limited
the sola scriptura to the canonized books of the Bible and on the other hand emphasized the
unity of the same. The Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England are representative when
they stare:

Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation: so that whatsoever is not
read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man, that it should be
believed as an article of the Faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation.—Scha ,
Creeds of Christendom, vol. 3, p. 489.
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 It is characteristic that Luther over and over refers to “all Scripture,” “all of Holy Writ,” and
“the entire Bible,” and appeals to “the constant and unanimous judgment of Scripture.”
Scripture is not against itself but “is in excellent agreement with itself and is uniformly
consistent everywhere.”

One additional point should be mentioned. Having accepted the canonical Scriptures as
authoritative, the Reformers always recognized that any theological conclusions should be
drawn from the Hebrew OT and the Greek NT, which generally were placed for reference at
the table when they had their disputations.

Sola Scriptura and Catholicity The relationship between sola scriptura and catholicity,
which we define as faithfulness to the early ancient church in life and doctrine, was twofold.
On the one hand the Reformers demonstrated that what they taught (based on sola scriptura
as a constitutive norm of doctrine) had been held by the ancient church. On the other hand
the Scriptures became also a corrective norm, because much in the traditions, the fathers
and the councils were not rooted in the “Bible alone.…”

The Reformers sought to maintain a vital sense of continuity with the past. The early
creeds were accepted by Luther not because they had been accepted by the fathers and the
church but because he found them in conformity to the Word of God. Late in 1517 he wrote
some explanations to his Ninety-Five Theses:

First, I testify that I desire to say or maintain absolutely nothing except, first of all,
what is in the Holy Scriptures and can be maintained from them; and then what is in
and from the writings of the church fathers and is accepted by the Roman Church and
preserved both in the canons and the papal decrees.—Luther’s Works, XXXI, 83.

Luther considered the Scriptures the touchstone, the yardstick, to be used for the
evaluation of the writings of the fathers and the decisions of the church.

Sola Scriptura and Preaching Before the Reformation a clergyman’s main performance
was at the altar, but after the Reformation it was in the pulpit. Accordingly, his name was
changed from priest to preacher, gospeler, minister of the gospel. The preaching of the Word
was the basic function of the ordained ministry, and it grew out of the doctrine of sola
scriptura. The Reformers were great preachers of the Word. Luther left behind him more than
2,000 printed sermons.

The Reformers’ preaching was never a movement from men, from situations, or from
problems to the text, but it always advanced from the text to men and problems. The
sermons were basically expository, and they were subject to Scripture throughout;
otherwise, the truths of the doctrine of sola scriptura could not be realized. The written word

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had to preserve the oral word—the proclamation—from error. Further, the Holy Spirit can
work with preaching only when both are united in the sola scriptura principle.

If the Reformation era teaches us anything, it is that Christian theology, in order to be true
to its task, must be biblical theology; likewise, Christian preaching must be biblical
preaching. True is the famous dictum of William Chillingworth: “The Bible, I say, the Bible
only, is the religion of Protestants.”

Summary of the Reformers’ Hermeneutical Principles

The Reformers’ unified doctrine of sola scriptura dictated the common principles of
hermeneutics, which may be listed as follows:

A passage should first be understood in its literal or obvious (simple) meaning.

The text should be studied in its context by means of the historicogrammatical method,
which takes into consideration the conditions of the times and the people to whom the
Scriptures were first written. The Hebrew and Greek texts of the OT and the NT should be
consulted.

Scripture is to be used to interpret Scripture, the canonical Scriptures being a self-

su icient authority in religious matters.

The Christocentric rule, which makes Christ the focal point in the Bible, is to be applied.

Understanding the correct relationship between law and gospel and the threefold usage
of the law is basic to the interpretation of the Scriptures.

The interpreter should be illuminated by the Holy Spirit and a personal sola fide and sola
gratia experience.

The significance of the Reformers’ contribution to the study of the Bible is epitomized by
F. W. Farrar. Speaking about Luther, he writes: “And he not only gave them the open Bible, but
taught them and all the world how best it might be interpreted.”—History of Interpretation,
p. 323.

Postreformation Developments

Since the formative decades Protestant theology has passed through many phases and
zigzag movements. It was God centered, man centered, and Christ centered. The feelings,
the power of reason, and the moral values were singularly important in di erent periods.
There were great contrasts, such as intellectualism in contrast to emotionalism,
transcendentalism versus immanence, the religion of divine sovereignty as against inward
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conscience. All together and each separately influenced in di erent ways during various
periods the Protestant concept of biblical interpretation and authority.

Protestant Orthodoxy

During the latter half of the 16th and the early decades of the 17th centuries
Protestantism entered a period of dogmatism, attempting to purge the Christian faith of all
errors. The doctrinal controversies among the Protestant bodies as well as their common
defense against Catholic beliefs, especially after they were defined at the Council of Trent,
accentuated the need for confessional statements of faith. Thus the basis was laid for
Protestant orthodoxy with its emphasis on correct doctrinal beliefs. In this necessary task
the authority of the Bible as the inerrant Word of God was taken seriously. However, there
developed within Protestantism a greater concern for the orthodoxy of the letter over against
the piety of the heart. People were asked to believe statements of faith, but the faith they
were meant to safeguard often took second place. The Bible was approached mainly as an
arsenal of proof texts for Christian doctrines, and a mechanical inspiration of the Bible was
endorsed. The Formula Consensus Helvetica (1675) even asserted that the vowel points in
the Hebrew text of the OT were as much inspired by God as the words of the Bible. This
dogmatic approach resulted in coining the term Protestant scholasticism. “Scholasticism …
essentially means an intellectual temper which may invade any subject in any age; in
religion, it is the spirit of law overbearing the spirit of the Gospel.”—Mackintosh, Types of
Modern Theology: Schleiermacher to Barth, p. 9.

Pietism

Protestant scholasticism had assumed a rational spirit and an argumentative nature,

resulting in religious formalism. Pietism, which had its beginning in Germany in the
seventeenth century, sought to renew a living faith from a rigid and legalistic orthodoxy. The
Pietists, generally, did not attack any of the doctrines of the Protestant system, but their
emphasis on the personal experience of conversion and practical works of piety was a kind
of protest of individualism against institutionalism and theological dogmatism. The
conversion experience took on a certain normative role with respect to basic religious
consciousness. Accordingly, all doctrines were not of the same value and importance to
them. Such Pietist leaders as P. J. Spener and A. H. Francke sought to reduce the traditional
doctrinal system to a few important doctrines, the measuring rod being their role in the act
of conversion and their influence on the practical religious life of the Christian.

A hierarchical arrangement of Christian doctrines was at variance with the fundamental

tenets of Protestant orthodoxy. Here a doctrine had to be accepted because it came from
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God. To consider some doctrines of less importance than others would therefore be to show
contempt for the Giver. The Pietists approached their study of the Bible from an ethical and
devotional point of view. Although this approach was necessary to counteract the negative
influence of Protestant orthodoxy, its emphasis held the dangers that (1) the doctrinal
structure of the Christian faith would be weakened, that (2) in the quest for a devotional
interpretation the historical and literal meaning of Scripture passages would be obscured by
typological and allegorical exegesis, and that (3) practical religious life rather than the Word
of God would become the authority.

One fruit of Pietism deserves notice in the valuable contribution made to the history of
exegesis by J. A. Bengel (1637–1752), who published a Greek NT in 1734 and was the first to
stress the genealogical method, namely, the classification of NT manuscripts into families
on the basis of evident kinship, thus introducing a new principle for the authority of a given
biblical passage. He also renounced the idea of mechanical inspiration, and as a true Pietist
he rejected the concept of the Bible as a collection of doctrinal truths. Accordingly, his
biblical studies were directed toward a continuous exegesis of the entire Bible, which for him
was a divine record of God’s acting in history for the purpose of man’s salvation rather than
an exposition of doctrines.

Theological Rationalism

The characteristic notes of modern thought had their beginning early in the 17th century.
They may be listed as (1) refusal to be bound by tradition in any form, (2) emphasis on reason,
and (3) acceptance of the method followed in natural science as the norm for all
investigation, including Christianity. In biblical studies it meant rejection of the authoritative
sola scriptura principle and a irmation of an individualistic spiritual independence
anchored in reason as the ultimate norm of religious truth. Philosophy was challenging the
claim of biblical authority in the name of reason through the writings of Rene Descartes
(1596–1650), Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679), Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677), and John Locke
(1632–1704).

In the thinking of Descartes the beginning of all knowledge was doubt. Consequently, he
raised doubt regarding the authority of Scripture. All concepts had to be proved with the
certainty of mathematical demonstration. In this philosophical framework Hobbes
suggested methods for critical study of the OT and challenged the Mosaic authorship of the
first five books of the Bible. Spinoza disputed the validity of the miracles recorded in the Bible
and claimed that the Scriptures should be treated as any other book. Locke asserted in his
Reasonableness of Christianity that the message of the Bible cannot be contrary to reason
but must be in accord with natural religion; accordingly, he had little regard for mystery. The
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Deists (a group of English intelligentsia who emerged during the latter part of the 16th and
the 17th centuries) made use of questions raised by natural science and the arguments of
the philosophers.

The aim of the Deists was to find a religion that all would want to recognize, a “natural”
religion, which might serve as a common denominator for a critical examination of
supernaturalism in any form. Significantly the subtitle of the Deistic Bible, by Matthew
Tindal, reads: “The Gospel a Republication of the Religion of Nature.” If Christianity teaches
more than is contained in natural religion, the additions belong to the realm of superstition
or to corruption of true religion. Perfect in itself, natural religion cannot be augmented by
revelation, making reason man’s ultimate guide and challenging the traditional view of the
authority of the Bible and the redemptive uniqueness of Christianity.

In Germany the counterpart of English Deism was found in the Enlightenment, as the
group named itself. After the period of Pietism during the 18th century this movement
shaped a new religious and philosophical atmosphere, in which the individual conscience
became the ultimate norm in deciding religious truth. All through the history of Christian
thought there has been the problem of right relationship between revelation and reason.
Emphasis in the one or the other direction has a bearing on the principles of exegesis.

In the historical development of Rationalism the accent was placed more and more on
reason, which gradually became the ultimate authority. In the first phase of Rationalism, the
Bible was to settle religious matters but reason was a very important guide. However, even
in this form it was easy to allow reason to create concepts that become a priori in one’s
exegetical endeavors. A rationalistic approach to Scripture was apparent in the 16th century
among the Socinians with their stress on the humanity of Christ and their denial of the
doctrine of the Trinity. The fall of man was replaced by a mere inclination to evil, and the
satisfaction theory of the atonement was considered absurd and immoral. In other words,
the basic soteriological and christological facts of Christianity, as in the time of the apostle
Paul, became a stumbling block for one’s reason. With its rationalizing impulses
Socinianism appeared as Unitarianism in England, where it was strengthened by the Deistic
movement. After the decline of the latter, Unitarianism lingered within many Protestant
churches in the English-speaking world and distorted the soteriological and christological
scriptural passages. During the early decades of its history, Seventh-day Adventism was not
exempted from this rationalistic influence, but was rescued to fidelity to scriptural authority
by the writings of Ellen G. White, especially those published during the last two decades of
the 19th century.

The real founder of theological Rationalism was Christian Wol (1679–1754). He did not
deny a Christian revelation but required it to be in accord with natural religion. A more
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extreme Rationalism was expressed by Hermann Reimarus (1694–1768), who denied special
revelation. The Deistic concepts are fully expressed by him, for he made natural religion the
only criterion for Christianity. Accordingly, he sought to undo historical Christianity and the
revelatory authority of the Bible. G. E. Lessing (1729–1781) in his book Education of the
Human Race submitted the theory that the Bible had been helpful in past stages of human
development, but mankind, which now found itself in its manhood, was to be guided by
reason. Judaism and early Christianity were consigned to an inferior and past period of
human development.

To the Rationalists Christ was no more than a moral teacher and an ethical example, as
His life and death were nothing else than historical events. Everything that was to develop
within liberal theology and destructive biblical criticism in the 19th century had been
initiated by Rationalism.

The Wesleyan Revival

In the life and preaching of John Wesley (1703–1791) Deism was e ectively contested.
The best of the German Pietist movement is seen in the Wesleyan revival, which met the
need of society and the church. The power of the gospel made itself evident in the lives of
men and women challenging the spiritually barren disputations of the Deists. The
enthronement of human reason and the belittlement of the divine authority of the Scriptures
were combated by a preaching anchored in the belief that God’s Word is absolute authority.
The veracity of the Bible was confirmed by the witness of the Holy Spirit.

Wesley was more orthodox in his view of the Bible than Spener and Francke and allowed
no separation between Scripture and Christ. No matter how much he emphasized the
conversion experience, the biblical note remained strong. He was not an innovator in the
history of exegesis, but he read the Bible as orthodox Christians generally did in the Church
of England.

The Wesleyan revival demonstrated anew that in man’s search for God the gospel “is the
saving power of God for everyone who has faith” (Rom 1:16, NEB), recognizing that “the world
failed to find him [God] by its wisdom,” but God “chose to save those who had faith by the
folly of the Gospel” (1 Cor 1:21, NEB). Here lies the highest proof for biblical authority. Wesley
revived the material and formal principles of true Protestant hermeneutics, namely, “by faith
alone,” and “the Bible alone.”

The Wesleyan emphasis on sanctification (which also characterized Calvinism and

Puritanism) plays an important role as a personal quality of the exegete. A progressive

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biblical understanding depends on the interpreter’s obedience to light already given. Christ
said, “If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine” (Jn 7:17, KJV).

Looking at the Wesleyan revival in historical perspective, it should be noticed that

whereas German Rationalism followed the age of Pietism, in England the situation was the
opposite. When the 19th century opened, the religious life in England was marked by a note
of spiritual fervor, which was not the case in Germany. The latter was in no small degree a
factor in making Germany the mainspring of liberal theology.

Nineteenth Century Liberal Protestantism

A twofold legacy was passed on to the 19th century, namely, Pietism and Rationalism.
Religiously they took new forms. The subjective side of Pietism was developed to the point
that a person’s existential experience within the framework of religious feelings and intuition
became the seat of religious authority as cold reason had been in Rationalism. Rationalism,
which had been occupied partly with criticism of the Bible, now concentrated its main e ort
on the same. With reason no longer the center for religious authority, any result higher
criticism might arrive at could not be embarrassing to or a disturbing influence on a person’s
religious experience. Thus basically the latter was made independent of historical research,
science, and philosophy but also of biblical authority as understood by orthodox
Protestantism. A new distinction was made between faith and knowledge.

Before the turn of the 19th century Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) criticized religion that
moved within the bounds of reason only, but it was Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834)
who, more than anyone else, changed the theological climate and became the founder of
modern liberal Protestantism. Having been educated in both pietistic and rationalistic
circles, he brought together the two tendencies, and under the influence of Kant he gave
theology a new base, as defined above.

Schleiermacher does not begin with God’s attributes as the great first cause but with the
feeling within people of absolute dependence on a power outside themselves. All advances
in religion are greater and greater manifestations of the human feelings (Gefühl) or the
consciousness of the immanent God. Therefore sin is not, as with the Reformers, a rebellion
against the divine will but a disturbance of the harmony between man’s natural powers,
which hinders the assertion within him of his relation to God.

A person’s God concept expresses his religion (and specifically his soteriology) more
clearly than anything else, and has a direct bearing on his view and interpretation of the
Bible. The Reformers believed in a transcendent God, who is absolute, personal, and holy,
the Creator and Sustainer of the universe and the Redeemer of mankind. This makes an
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objective God-to-man revelation necessary (as opposed to a man-originated subjective
concept of revelation). Transcendency and objective revelation are correlative ideas. In
Deism God was pushed far back into the universe, leaving this world and man to be ruled by
inherited laws and man’s reason. Here no revelation was needed; on the contrary, it would
destroy the God concept. The doctrine of the immanence of God taught by Schleiermacher
created a complete new orientation in Protestant thought, and pressed to its extreme led to
Pantheism, which also flourished in the 19th century.

The concept of an immanent God makes an objective revelation unnecessary. All

advances in religion as seen in the soul of the individual, in society, in history, and in nature
are in a true sense revelations. This God concept accounts for the outlook of liberal
theologians and the characteristics of liberal Protestantism as, for example, the humanity of
Christ, the dignity of man, and the optimism of social progress. The immanent God was at
work not only in man and society but also in nature, thus the evolutionary theory was in
accord with the new Protestantism. In the light of all this it is understandable that biblical
authority became subordinate to the “revelations” of the immanent God.

While Schleiermacher emphasized the Gefühl (human feelings) as the seat for our God
consciousness, Albert Ritschl (1822–1889) considered Christianity to be based on value
judgment; the ethical side, or moral value, of Christianity was stressed. Thus, not the feeling
or the intellect but the will was of paramount importance. Here moral consciousness is the
seat of authority. An important Ritschlian was the great church historian Adolf von Harnack
(1851–1930), who exercised great influence in liberalism. In the book What Is Christianity?
he urged a return to the religion of Jesus, not the religion about Jesus. That religion is very
single, and it is found in the synoptic Gospels after they have been purged of the
mythological framework of the first century, as, for example, apocalypticism, demons, and
miracles. In his monumental work History of Dogma he maintained that the religion of Jesus
had been obscured and distorted by hellenization (reflected in the Gospel of John and most
of the epistles), Christian dogmatism, and institutional Christianity, Harnack was in great
sympathy with Marcion, of the 2nd century. He reduced the biblical authority to the
personality of Christ and His simple teaching of the fatherhood of God and His kingdom, the
infinite value of the human soul, and the law of love and higher righteousness as exemplified
in the life of Jesus.

The magnitude of liberal Protestantism can best be perceived when seen in the light of
its rejection by Karl Barth (1886–1968). As Schleiermacher created a new epoch by stressing
the immanence of God, Karl Barth became the great theologian of the 20th century by
reestablishing God’s transcendency, and a “new realism” of the Bible followed. Barth was

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called neo-orthodox by liberal theologians; however, his biblical “realism” is not that of 16th-
century Protestantism.

In the present discussion of immanence versus transcendency it becomes crystal clear

that a true God concept is a basic premise for a sound understanding of biblical authority
and for correct hermeneutic. The issues presented and the picture drawn of Protestant
thought with special reference to biblical authority will be clarified further in the light of the
history of biblical studies during the last two centuries.

READING LIST

Barth, Karl. Protestant Thought: From Rousseau to Ritschl. New York: Harper & Brothers,
1959.

Dillenberger, John, and Welch, Claude. Protestant Christianity. New York: Charles Scribner’s
Sons, 1954.

Farrar, F. W. History of Interpretation. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Book House, 1961.

Greenslade, S. L., ed. The Cambridge History of the Bible. Cambridge: University Press,
1963.

Hordern, William. A Layman’s Guide to Protestant Theology. Rev. ed. London: Collier-
Macmillan, Ltd., 1969.

Mackintosh, Hugh Ross. Types of Modern Theology: Schleiermacher to Barth. New York:
Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1937.

Pelikan, Jaroslav. Luther’s Works, Companion Volume: Luther the Expositor. Saint Louis:
Concordia Publishing House, 1959.

Ramm, Bernard. The Pattern of Religious Authority. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Wm. B. Eerdmans
Pub. Co., 1968

———. Protestant Biblical Interpretation. Rev. ed. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Book House,
1956.

Wood, James D. The Interpretation of the Bible: A Historical Introduction. London: Gerald
Duckworth and Co., Ltd., 1958.

Wood, Skevington A. The Principles of Biblical Interpretation. Grand Rapids, Mich.:

Zondervan Pub. House, 1967.

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In 1971 Elder E. Edward Zinke became research
assistant and assistant secretary of the Biblical
Research Committee of the General Conference of
Seventh-day Adventists, Washington, D.C. During the
previous four years he both served as a pastor in the
Arkansas-Louisiana Conference and completed, in
1970, the Master of Divinity degree at the Seventh-day
Adventist Theological Seminary at Andrews University.
He was ordained in 1973 at Takoma Park, Maryland.

5. Postreformation Critical Biblical Studies

E. EDWARD ZINKE

Biblical Research Department

General Conference of SDA

Biblical studies in the past two centuries were concerned largely with determining the
method by which the Bible received its present content and form. This concern was
motivated and guided by philosophical presuppositions based largely on naturalism and
evolutionism.

This paper purposes to trace the hermeneutical principles developed by recent biblical
studies, noting particularly their presuppositions in the light of those outlined in chapter 1—
those touching on the transcendence of God, His activities in human history, and His
objective self-revelation in the Bible.

As we have already seen, diverse interpretations of the Bible are largely the result of the
philosophical presuppositions of the interpreter and his attitudes toward revelation—
inspiration and the resultant authority of Scripture. Because presuppositions of 19th century
liberalism continue to influence the methods used in contemporary biblical studies, it will
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be helpful to review briefly their presentation in the previous chapter, beginning with the
tracing of some of their main roots.

Major Roots of 19th Century Liberalism

Protestant liberalism developed in the 18th and 19th centuries, in part as a reaction
against the rigidity of Protestant orthodoxy with its narrow dictational concept of inspiration.
Liberalism then went to the other extreme by rejecting all concepts of an objective
revelation.

Protestant liberalism had its beginnings in several streams of thought. Among them was
rationalism, which attempted to reduce Christianity to a religion of reason rather than of
revelation. Another line of thought came from Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), who as a part of
the “enlightenment” reacted on the one hand against Protestant orthodoxy and on the other
against rationalism, placing his emphasis on the voice of conscience for the discovery of
truths that cannot be seen either from the viewpoint of “pure reason or from divine
revelation.” Religion for him was closely identified with morality.

Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834), probably the most influential theologian of

Protestant liberalism, sought the essence of religion in general and that of Christianity in
particular in experience. Religion for him was based on intuitive feeling rather than on
objective revelation or dogma. The subjective element became dominant.

Empiricism or historicism contributed to the methodology of biblical studies in

Protestant liberalism, the methods of strict historical observation. Another contribution was
philosophical idealism, which in G. W. F. Hegel (1770–1831) rea irmed that reality is
reasonable and described the process by which the immanent “absolute spirit” attained
self-awareness in mankind, namely, by way of an evolutionistic process in which pure reason
(thesis) is subjected negatively to actual experience (antithesis), which results in a new
reality (synthesis) as a result of the opposing elements (thesis and antithesis) acting on each
other in the flux of history.

Up to this time theology had dominated the scholarly scene even in secular studies. But
now such categories as reason and experience were dominating both secular studies and
theology.

Crucial Presuppositions of 19th Century Liberalism

As can be seen from this brief sketch of some historical roots of Protestant liberalism,
there are within that movement many diverse elements drawn from the thinking of di erent

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individuals and schools of thought. We shall attempt a characterization of their crucial
presuppositions.

The basic a priori tenet of liberalism was that the origin and development of the Bible was
the same as that of any other human document and thus it must be studied and interpreted
in accordance with the standards of scholarship in science, philosophy, and other
disciplines. The Bible, then, was to be interpreted in the same way as any other literature,
such as the Greek classics. In the place of the Bible, the liberal outlook preferred the
scientific method and the ethical standards of educated people as the standard for faith and
doctrine. For example, because Reformation understanding of the biblical concepts of sin
and salvation o ended the moral sensibilities of the liberals, these doctrines were rejected
by them. (Sinfulness often was regarded as a lack of knowledge or insight, and salvation as
simply the supplying of this lack of understanding.)

The concept of a transcendent deity was substituted, a priori, totally by a concept of

God’s immanence. The idea that God acts in any supernatural or miraculous way in the
history of mankind was rejected. If the miraculous in the classics must be rejected by
scientific judgment so it must be in the Scripture. In either case let it be treated as folklore or
mythology.

Religious liberalism likewise rejected the concepts of revelation-inspiration, which

asserted that God had revealed Himself objectively and normatively to man in Scripture.
Authority of individual thought or experience was substituted for authority of the Word of
God. Thought or experience was not evaluated by Scripture. Each had its own value as being
individual, a manifestation of the divine Spirit immanent in all things. Biblical writings had
value only as a record of remarkable manifestations of religious experience. In the end God
was dethroned and man became a law unto his own thinking or feeling self. Reason or
experience became autonomous and was placed above scriptural revelation. The doctrinal
content of the Bible was no longer binding for faith or practice.

Rejection of the revelatory aspects of the Bible caused not only denial of its normative
aspect but also disregard for its unity. This result e ected a method of study that tended to
fragment the Bible.

Protestant liberalism studied the religion of Israel and the form and content of the Bible
on the basis of the human-progress theory. As a result, the biblical sequence was rearranged
to present a neat evolution of religious thought. The substitution of the wholly immanent God
for the transcendent God, with its implications for revelation-inspiration and acceptance of
the principle of the progress of man, gave rise to the “history-of-religions” school. This
system of thought no longer recognized the historical uniqueness of Christianity but, rather,

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saw it as one religion among other religions. Whereas this school recognized Christianity as
the highest manifestation of religion, it also considered the possibility of its being
superseded. Religious truth, therefore, could best be studied comparatively by placing the
Bible alongside all other books of religion, poetry, history, and experiential or rational truth.

Liberalism tended to disregard the historical events in which God acted on behalf of
mankind. The uniqueness of Christianity came to be seen in its profound understanding of
God; of man, in his relationship with other men; of the moral example of Jesus; and the e ect
of these concepts upon the progress of society, rather than in its portrayal of God’s activities
in history. The Bible was interpreted by a thoroughgoing historical-critical method, not so
much for the purpose of painting its historical backdrop as to explain the development of its
content and form without recognition of the guiding hand of God.

In liberalism the origin of Scripture was explained on the basis of the evolution of religion,
bu eted by such social conditions as created a climate favorable to the development of
specific theological concepts. The task of the interpreter, then, was not to study God’s
message to mankind but to understand the historical conditions that supposedly had
molded the Scriptures—the surrounding religion, culture, and political units—not with the
intent of clarifying the context in which God revealed Himself but to understand the process
by which religious concepts in the Hebrew culture and early Christian faith were borrowed,
restructured, brought together, and purified.

Liberalism’s method of studying Scripture in the 19th century was based on the
presuppositions and categories of contemporary philosophical movements. Unfortunately
this forcing of the Bible into various philosophical frameworks distorted its message and
reduced its declared power to transform human lives. There have been reactions to the
excesses of the liberal position, even from within liberalism itself. Stronger reactions have
come from the neoorthodox group, as represented by Karl Barth (1886–1968) (see the
previous chapter) and more so from evangelical and fundamentalist groups. Nevertheless,
the presuppositions and concepts concerning the nature of God, religion, and the Bible as
generally held by Protestant liberalism have had a major e ect on the fast-developing
method of that category of biblical studies known as biblical criticism.

Biblical Criticism

The method of biblical criticism is the application of modern literary and historical-
critical methods to the study of the Bible to establish, as far as possible, the manner and
date of its composition, including its sources, authorship, and literary development. One of

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the primary questions asked by biblical criticism is: By what process and at what time did
this passage or book receive its present content and form?

For the layman the term “biblical criticism” may give the connotation of depreciation of
the Word of God, but its specific intent is rather appreciation through a fuller understanding
of its literary history and message. At the same time, this appreciation is not concerned to
lead readers to conviction, faith, and action but simply to discriminatory understanding of
the people, culture, history, and religion from which the book arose. Thus the basic motives
of biblical criticism are similar to the motives of other disciplines; for example, music
criticism, which attempts to develop appreciation of a particular type or piece of music; and
historical criticism, which attempts to reconstruct a historical event.

Historically, biblical criticism has developed along several interrelated and

interdependent lines. Higher criticism attempts to deal with the literary history and meaning
of the text through such disciplines as literary criticism, form criticism, and tradition
criticism. Literary, or source, criticism attempts to discover the documents or sources
presumed to lie behind the present record. Form criticism attempts to discern the structure
and the life setting that required or produced a given kind of structure. Tradition criticism
considers both the history of the development of a passage and the final editorial work on it.

The questions asked by biblical criticism are: How are we to explain what is contained in
the final biblical record? What is the psychological framework in which this sort of writing
would be feasible? What are the anthropological and sociological forces that would lead to
the formation of a particular concept or to the use of a particular literary style? What are the
molding forces of the literary style? What is the matrix of political and historical forces which
would cause this or that interpretation to be placed on an event in history? Why does the
record have the theme it has? Is it advocating a political or a religious cause, or has it been
influenced by any combination of such forces? What part does this document play in the
history of man’s religion as he moves toward a more mature religion?

Developing Stages of Biblical Criticism 17th and 18th Centuries

The 17th and 18th centuries saw the formation of that aspect of biblical criticism known
as literary criticism. Men such as Hugo Grotius (1583–1645), Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679),
Benedict Spinoza (1632–1677), and Richard Simon (1638–1712) began to lay the groundwork
for a study of Scripture that analyzed and scrutinized the Bible just as one would study any
other literature. For example, the concept of Hobbes that the Bible is not itself the revelation
of God, but that it merely contains the record of men who received that revelation led to the
study of Scripture as a merely human book. Simon, arguing from the standpoint of the

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authority of church tradition, stated that the Christian faith could be sustained without the
Scriptural record. As the result of such thinking men began to doubt the Mosaic authorship
of the Pentateuch, seeing these books as rather the result of a long process of compilation
and redaction (the work of many editors).

Old Testament

Jean Astruc (1684–1766), a French physician, by pulling together the observations of

many before him provided the basis for the documentary theory of Pentateuchal
composition. Astruc (predecessor of source criticism) claimed that Moses in writing Genesis
drew on two major sources. To substantiate this claim he pointed to (1) the distribution of
the Hebrew names for deity, Elohim and Yahweh, (2) the repetition of similar stories, and (3)
what he considered to be chronological confusion in the book of Genesis.

The movement in OT studies toward the humanistic insight which claimed that the OT
should be subjected to the same principles of careful scrutiny as were applied to secular
writings was crystallized by J. G. Eichhorn (1752–1827), who brought together in his
Introduction to the Old Testament the results of OT criticism to that time. He rejected
concepts of divine inspiration and authority of the Scriptures on the basis that the OT
displayed more of the flavor of the Hebrew national literature than would be expected of a
divinely inspired book. He extended the source or literary critical concept of Astruc by
pointing out that underlying sources could also be discovered in other portions of Scripture
by giving close attention to diversities of literary style and by identification of words or
phrases characteristic of documents previously categorized.

New Testament

The influences of rationalism and deism were strongly felt during the formative period of
NT criticism. The antisupernaturalism of the 18th century dominated the scene to the extent
that even the miracles of Christ were considered to be superstitious wonder tales. Liberal
Protestant thought was developed largely in German universities, which being rather free
from church control became advocates of the “enlightenment.” At the same time pietism
was working within the German churches to break down orthodox dogmatism and to inject
religious life into formalized religion.

The works of H. S. Reimarus (1694–1768), published anonymously after his death,

brought rationalistic and deistic philosophy to bear heavily on the study of the NT. Reimarus
found faith and reason to be irreconcilable. For him the real Jesus of history was not the Jesus
described in the NT writings. The supernatural events in the life of Jesus and the portrayal of

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His divine nature were to be accounted for on the basis that the disciples falsified the story
rather than on the basis of actual historical fact. Although Reimarus’ extreme positions have
been accepted by only a few, nonetheless he enunciated what are still considered to be the
major problems in a reconstruction of the life of Jesus.

19th Century Biblical Criticism

The 19th century mood was dominated by the development of the natural sciences, the
latter half of the century by Darwin’s theory of evolution particularly. Man’s feeling that he
had become autonomous in his study of nature led him to a greater feeling of autonomy in
the realm of religion. As indicated earlier, the predominant philosopher was Hegel and the
most influential liberal theologian was Friedrich Schleiermacher.

Old Testament

As a result of the increasing influences of philosophic approaches to critical biblical

studies, there was by the middle of the 19th century general acceptance of the theory of a
second Isaiah and the dating of much of the biblical material late in the history of Israel. The
book of Daniel, for example, was now firmly assigned to the 2d century B.C. A number of
source hypotheses were introduced that built models of biblical interpretation dependent
on sources; compilers, and redactors (editors) acting over a long period of time as the basis
for the final stage in which the Bible now appears.

As a result of the work of Karl H. Graf (1815–1869), Abraham Kuenen (1828–1891), and
others a hypothesis emerged recognizing four sources in the Pentateuch with placement of
the priestly source after the Babylonian exile and reconstructing Israel’s history in
accordance with such a late dating. Julius Wellhausen (1844–1918) became the most noted
and brilliant exponent of this theory and the most influential in winning its acceptance.

Wellhausen, working on the foundation of literary criticism, added the dimension of a

historical criticism based on evolutionistic philosophy. The history of the religion of Israel
was seen in the light of the development of a natural religion rather than a revealed religion.
The influences at play were the evolution of man’s religion, modified and redefined in terms
of the Hegelian concept of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. Thus, the portions of the
Pentateuch that demonstrated supposedly more advanced religious characteristics had to
be dated at a later period of history. This dating resulted in the claim that the patriarchs, and
even Moses himself (if they even existed), were not monotheists, and that the documents
referring to monotheism early in the history of Israel were the result of theological and literary

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activity after the Exile. Even Israel’s contact with the Canaanite religions was seen as a factor
in Israel’s development of monotheism.

According to the Seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentary, vol. 5, pp. 151, 152, the Graf-
Wallhausen theory consists of the following scheme:

The Bible writer called Jahvist (J), a citizen of the southern kingdom of Judah, wrote
his source material, among which, for example, are the patriarchal stories from
Abraham to the Exodus, in the middle of the 9th century B.C. A century later the writer
called Elohist (E), living in the northern kingdom of Israel, wrote his account. These
two documents were cleverly combined into one book, JE, by a redactor or editor (R)
about 650 B.C. In 621 B.C. the book of Deuteronomy (D) was produced, although not
in the form we know it. This book was worked over by another redactor (R) about 550
B.C. Between the years 500 and 450 B.C. a priestly writer (P) wrote the legal and
religious parts of the Pentateuch, which were then incorporated into the other books
of a presumed Mosaic origin by another redactor (R), who did his final work of editing
about 400 B.C. or a little later. Since that time, according to the theory, the Pentateuch
has not experienced appreciable modification.

Wellhausen himself had little to add to the critical conclusions of his predecessors. Yet
his work as an able spokesman was a climax in the critical investigations of liberalism. He
had brought together a system that was both simple and “scientific,” and upon it many
scholars have built in applying those principles to every portion of the OT. Although there
have been reactions by evangelicals against this scheme, and even by liberals against its
excesses, the major results of Wellhausen’s studies are given abiding value by many.

A major presupposition of the literary critical method is well stated by J. Coert

Rylaarsdam, editor of the Fortress Press series on OT biblical criticism: “This movement
assumed that the production of Scripture was conditioned historically not only by the fact
that it had combined documents with a prior history of their own but also that wider
movements in human life had influenced their contents. Implicit questions about revelation
and inspiration of Scripture were made more pressing.”—Literary Criticism of the Old
Testament, p. iv. This major presupposition has been a standing one with the majority of
critical biblical scholars to the present time.

The following presuppositions, also found in other areas of critical biblical scholarship,
have crucial implications for conservative biblical studies: (1) A widespread skepticism
regarding the trustworthiness of the biblical accounts that narrate earlier,
noncontemporaneous events; (2) the tacit assumption that the culture and religion of
ancient peoples, including Israel, evolved gradually from early and primitive forms to later
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and developed ones, thus assuming unilinear evolution; and (3) an a priori rejection of all
miraculous or supernatural elements, which are explained away in natural ways, if at all
possible.

New Testament

During the 19th century, as in the case of the OT, NT studies were generally controlled by
antisupernaturalistic assumptions. An illustration of the mood of the time was liberalism’s
quest for “the historical Jesus.” It was felt that there was a radical di erence between the
Jesus described by the NT and the “real” Jesus of history. By a careful analysis of the Gospels
it was argued that the NT church’s fanciful claims regarding Jesus—for the purpose of
providing a rationale for her existence—could be laid aside so that the acutal facts of the life
and character of Jesus could be ascertained. Such reconstruction attempts were made by
D. F. Strauss (1808–1874), who reduced the historical Jesus to a mere Jewish wiseman, by F.
C. Baur (1792–1860), who saw the history of Christianity through the philosophical principle
of thesis, antithesis, synthesis (where the thesis was a primitive Jewish concept in which
Jesus was only a human teacher, the antithesis was the Pauline concept of the supernatural
Jesus, and the synthesis was the early church concept of the dual nature of Jesus), and in
the extreme by Bruno Bauer (1809–1882), who denied the historical existence of Jesus, and
Wilhelm Wrede (1859–1906), who stated that Jesus never thought of Himself as the Messiah
(a concept still widely accepted).

Those seeking the “historical Jesus” tried to explain on “scientific” grounds the events in
the life of Christ, or to picture Him as an individual who received a greater than usual, though
not unique, measure of spiritual power. The result was that the “historical Jesus” was little
more than the ideal man of 19th century liberalism.

Albert Schweitzer’s book Quest of the Historical Jesus, which came early in the 20th
century, marks the end of liberalism’s voluminous search. Schweitzer (1875–1965)
maintained that Jesus cannot be separated from the eschatological teachings attributed to
Him by the Gospels. Schweitzer, in fact, depicted Jesus as a radical eschatologist who went
so far as to precipitate His own death, thinking that it would bring about His own second
coming and the kingdom of God. Schweitzer’s extreme interpretation, known as “consistent
eschatology,” although modified, is still influential in critical NT studies.

20th Century Biblical Studies

Forces Preparing for Change

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 As biblical criticism entered the 20th century, there were forces preparing it for change.
One of these was inherent within literary criticism itself. The attempt to discover sources
behind the biblical material became such an obsession to some that they sought the
sources behind the sources behind the sources. Reactions to these excesses created a
climate in which literary criticism itself could be scrutinized.

Archaeology had produced new data on the historical and linguistic backgrounds of the
Bible. This new information at times called into question the results of previous literary
critical studies. Although many of its positions were thus modified, literary criticism in
general was by no means making a return to orthodoxy. Even though it was beginning to take
a more careful look at itself, biblical criticism was still operating on the basic presupposition
that the Bible must be interpreted and explained on the same bases as any other literature.

Literary criticism had also raised a number of questions for which it could not provide
acceptable answers. For example, although there was general agreement that the
Pentateuch was built from four sources, there was disagreement as to which portions
belonged to which sources. There were also questions as to whether these sources
themselves were based on other sources; and if so, whether the underlying sources could
be detected. There were questions about the role of the redactors in the final edition of the
Pentateuch and whether their role could be clearly determined.

Form Criticism of the Old Testament

Hermann Gunkel (1862–1932) thought that a new approach would be necessary to the
literary history of the OT. This new approach involved the study of comparative religions and
form criticism. Gunkel’s work rested on the presupposition that much of the OT literature
developed first of all in an oral form as folk literature—just as similar types of literature had
supposedly developed in other cultures. He was thus interested in trying to set up categories
of types or genres (the hymn, the blessing, the oath, the legend, or the lament) of biblical
literature in order to note the influences of other religions and cultures on them and to
discover the setting that produced a particular genre. (A modern example of a genre would
be the rather fixed format of a business letter.)

Gunkel was interested in conjectural study of the preliterary and oral stages behind the
final literary works that make up the OT. He also concentrated on the particular setting or Sitz
im Leben out of which a particular literary type or genre originated. (The Sitz im Leben is the
situation, such as the school, the cultic activities, the home, or the customs of royalty, which
produced and maintained respective literary types—this, more than the historical period.) In
doing so, Gunkel also compared the genres of Hebrew literature with the cultic and

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mythological motifs of the religions of Egypt and Mesopotamia in order to determine whether
and how Israel was indebted to and also reacted against these religions.

In addition to the form or structure and “setting in life” of each genre, Gunkel also sought
the special intention or function of each genre for the original author, community, and
collector or redactor, and the particular mood or tone appropriate to the genre as well as its
content, which he felt was similar through the genre. In establishing form criticism, Gunkel
opened up and outlined a discipline that has contributed to the development of both OT and
NT studies.

Among those who have followed Gunkel in OT form criticism is Sigmund Mowinckel
(1884–). Both Gunkel and Mowinckel made their primary contributions on the book of
Psalms. The emphasis of Mowinckel, however, di ered from that of Gunkel in that the latter
considered the Psalms to be essentially personal and private compositions. He was
therefore more interested in the thought of the author than in the cultic setting in which the
Psalm supposedly was used. Mowinckel, on the other hand, assumed that the Psalms were
written specifically for their role in ceremonial worship rather than as a means of expressing
the experience of an individual. He was more interested, therefore, in determining the setting
in which he thought a particular form was used and the role the form played in that setting.
Mowinckel has thus conjectured numerous stereotyped settings in the life of Israel, such as
a New Year festival or an enthronement festival.

An illustration of form criticism will be taken from G. E. Mendenhall’s study of the

covenant. Mendenhall (1916–) discovered a supposed parallel between the form of the
Hittite suzerainty treaty and the form of the Decalogue. This parallelism, for Mendenhall,
explained the unity “of such a diverse group as Israel.” Others have used this parallelism to
the extent that they have built a covenant theology based on the Hittite treaty form and life
setting rather than on the OT.

What is of interest to us is that the basic presupposition of OT form criticism is that the
Bible must be studied on the same bases as any other literature since its origin is supposedly
the same as that of any other literature. Rylaarsdam has indicated that form criticism
presupposes that the people of Israel during their history contributed to the making of the
Bible by virtue of their having had a communal existence as Israelites. (See Literary Criticism,
p. vi.)

The method of form criticism as applied to the OT is not without crucial deficiencies.
Because oral units were assumed to be short, the criterion of brevity was developed. This led
to the assumption that the shortest accounts are necessarily the oldest and that they grew
by later accretions. Archaeological discoveries e ectively challenge this assumption. On

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account of the assumption of the growth from small to large complexes and narratives, it is
believed that objective elements of history cannot be found in the OT. Finally, the
assumption of form criticism that a particular genre is firmly linked to a particular institution
has led to gross misconceptions. A basic problem of form criticism is that it carries within
itself tendencies of evolution such as from small to large and from primitive to advanced.

Form Criticism of the New Testament

Form criticism of the NT was developed primarily by K. L. Schmidt (1891–1956), Martin

Dibelius (1883–1947), and Rudolf Bultmann (1884–), who built on the method of Gunkel in
OT studies. It is the form criticism of Bultmann that we shall notice here. His form criticism
of the Gospels attempts to trace the oral preliterary stage of the Gospels. Its approach is
based on several assumptions—the most fundamental being that the Gospels are built
basically on individual sayings and narratives. They were developed as oral folk literature
composed of many small units circulating e ortlessly as separate units for a period of time
before they were brought together in the sources used in the formation of the gospel. Added
to this basic presupposition is another—that the Sitz im Leben of the Gospels is the church
and not the life of Jesus; that is to say, the picture of Jesus presented in the Gospels is largely
the creation of the imaginative community of believers. The contents of the gospel then
reflect more the developing life and needs of the Christian community than the life of Jesus.
The concern of the early church, it was presupposed, was not literary or historical but
evangelistic. This interest in preaching cultivated and formed the traditions regarding the life
of Jesus.

On the basis of these presuppositions it was only natural that Bultmann should feel that
a genuine biography of Jesus was impossible. For him the community out of which the
Gospels (the only primary source for the life of Jesus) arose was not concerned to transmit
biographical information. It transmitted instead individual sayings and narratives that had
been formulated for the community’s own purposes.

The presuppositions of NT form criticism led to the position that the Gospels result from
an imaginative community, reflecting its own life-style and need. Not only does this method
counter the evangelical concept of revelation-inspiration but it also fails to take adequate
account of the presence of eyewitnesses in the early church. It is likewise not in harmony
with more recent understandings of the development of folk literature which indicate that
this type of literature cannot be accounted for on the basis of the creative imagination of a
community.

Tradition Criticism
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 Another recent development in biblical studies is that of tradition criticism, which
attempts to come to grips with the questions raised by source criticism and left unanswered
by form criticism. Thus it is a new attempt to tell the whole story about the origin and
development of the Bible.

Source criticism dealt primarily with the supposed literary sources. Form criticism dealt
with individual literary units and the setting of these units in the life of the people. Tradition
criticism presupposes and leans heavily on both source and form criticism as it makes a new
attempt to trace the development of the Bible from its conception through its oral and literary
history to its final form.

Tradition criticism is interested in the history that has been involved in the formation,
modification, and/or synthesis of the original oral and written sources that eventually were
brought together to form the Bible. And it is interested in knowing the unique motivation—
whether theological, political, or social—for the various stages of this history.

Old Testament Tradition Criticism

For the OT, Ivan Engnell (1906–1964) and Martin Noth (1902–1968) who amplified and
popularized the views of Albrecht Alt (1883–1956) are examples of pioneers in tradition
criticism. The work of Noth and Engnell illustrates some of the di erences in emphasis
within tradition criticism itself. Engnell, working from the perspective of the Scandinavian
“Uppsala School,” rejected the Wellhausen idea of anonymous redactors, explaining the
formation of biblical materials rather on the basis of circles and schools of tradition, working
both from oral and written materials. Noth, on the other hand, placed more emphasis on the
written material.

An illustration of Noth’s method can be drawn from a single facet of his attempts to show
how Israel’s complex traditions were made to serve the unification of the twelve tribes. For
him, the nation developed slowly by unifying unrelated small clans and tribes, brought
about, in part, by the development of a common store of traditions. The story of Jacob, for
example, is assumed to be derived from several strands of tradition representing ancestors
of di erent North Palestinian groups of people. Assuming unification, from a common
ancestry, to be a major goal, Noth sees it met by such a development of the tradition of the
journey of Jacob as to unite the several strands in one account. But the ancestral heroes of
the southern tribes were Abraham and Isaac. By the development of the tradition that Jacob
was in the line of descent of Abraham and Isaac it was possible for unity to exist among the
southern and northern tribes.

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 Again of interest to us is the fact that the basic presupposition of tradition criticism is that
the Bible must be treated on the same bases as any other literature, for the reason that its
development is the same. As Rylaarsdam again has indicated, tradition criticism is based on
the recognition that the very existence of the community gives shape to the tradition and
results in handing it on to one generation after another.

New Testament Redaction Criticism

The term “redaction criticism” is more generally used to describe the NT discipline
because it concentrates on the final edition, the time span for the development of the
tradition being much less in the NT than in the OT. NT redaction criticism has been interested
in the author’s theological motivation for the collection, arrangement, and modification of
traditional material in its final form. This interest in theological motivation is not, however,
an interest in the theology of a book or of the Bible. It is concerned more with the way in
which the theological emphasis of one author di ers from that of another. By a comparison
of the similarities and the di erences of the Gospels in their final form, in their use and
omission of sources and in their comments, it is felt that it is possible to identify the unique
theological motives that compelled the author to bring the material together in a particular
way.

NT redaction criticism has built largely on the work of Bultmann in that he was more
concerned for the motivational factors involved in the final form. NT redaction criticism
developed under the work of Günther Bornkamm (1905–), Hans Conzelmann (1915–), and
Willi Marxsen (1919–). The work of Conzelmann on the Gospel of Luke will illustrate briefly
the types of conclusions reached by redaction criticism. Conzelmann completely broke with
the view that Luke was the first church historian. By his analysis of the Gospel of Luke, noting
the sources in the Gospel, Conzelmann came to the conclusion that Luke was a self-
conscious theologian rather than a church historian because the details of his composition
could be shown to have been theologically motivated.

Recent Developments in Biblical Studies

As a result of recent archaeological discoveries and other correctives to the Wellhausen

theory, OT scholarship has moved away from the most extreme liberal views of the 19th
century. The trustworthiness of the biblical materials and the early date for the many
traditions recorded in that material are now more generally recognized. The uniqueness and
grandeur of Yahwism is generally respected, and it is recognized that this religion did not
develop along the lines of a neat evolutionary scheme. The 8th century prophets are no
longer considered the originators but rather the heirs of a monotheism that in some forms
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could have reached back to the times of the patriarchs. The discovery of the Dead Sea scrolls
has brought about more respect for the previously available OT texts. It also helped to
illuminate the history of the intertestamental period and provide background material out of
which the NT could be more fully understood.

NT studies have often tended to move away from extreme approaches. The Gospel of
John, for example, is more frequently placed in the first century A.D. and by some is
considered to be reasonably trustworthy historically, as also the book of Acts. The letters
traditionally attributed to Paul (with three or four exceptions) are becoming more widely
accepted as Pauline. Great strides have also been made in textual critical and linguistic
studies.

Biblical studies, and NT studies in particular, are still wrestling with the questions raised
by the hermeneutical approach of Bultmann. This approach is an apologetical approach that
attempts to demythologize the Bible in order to make its message acceptable to modern
man. To demythologize means to reinterpret mythological terms as those that are
existentially (using particularly the categories of the German existential philosopher Martin
Heidegger) relevant to man’s understanding of his own existence. In turn, for Bultmann
mythology is anything not acceptable to the modern scientific world view. Anything
bordering on the supernatural (such as miracles, divine intervention in human history,
angels, Satan, or heaven) is considered mythology. While stripping o the mythology
Bultmann desires to maintain the kerygma—the essential message—that which is
existentially relevant to man’s understanding of his existence.

Bultmann believes that it is possible and proper to demythologize the Bible because he
sees the Bible writers as portraying their understanding of their own existence rather than
recording an objective reality. (For a discussion of the propositional and objective aspects of
Scripture, over against concepts that consider it to be purely subjective, see chapter 1.)
Bultmann thus thought that it is possible to relate the functional aspects the myth had for
the author to contemporary man’s understanding of his existence.

Bultmann approaches biblical eschatology and Creation, for example, as myths. He sees
the concept of the end of the age through supernatural intervention (accompanied by a final
judgment that assigns destinies) as an absurd superstition to contemporary man. History,
contends Bultmann, will not come to an end through some supernatural means. If an end
should come, it will be by such a natural means as war or a change in the sun’s radiation
patterns. Yet the essential message of the eschatological “myths” is not unrelated to
contemporary man’s existence, for every man is destined to die. There is urgency, then, in
making decisions about one’s own personal existence in that every moment contains the
possibility of being the eschatological moment. Bultmann considers the “myth” of Creation
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not as a fanciful account of the world’s origin but as a description of the creaturely
dependent state of man.

Bultmann, in his approach to the Bible, has brought together systematically and
apologetically many of the more important recent trends in theological and philosophical
thought. Not only does Bultmann have roots in 19th century liberalism but also in dialectical
theology. He has capitalized on the form critical method and 20th century existentialist
thought, while remaining aware of contemporary philosophies of history. Not only did he
combine these theological interests but also he had the modern communicative interest of
attempting to speak to contemporary secularized man, whose living and thinking has been
conditioned by modern science.

The hermeneutical approach of Bultmann recognizes one aspect of the biblical picture,
and that is man in his relation with God; however, it denies God’s transcendence as well as
His ability to act in the events of history. Similarly, the biblical message, it should be noted,
not only speaks about man in his relation to God but also about God apart from man, and
about God’s divine acts in history. (The concept that the biblical record of God’s activities in
history—as for example in the Resurrection of Christ—must be taken seriously has recently
been championed by W. Pannenberg.) Many scholars of the Bultmann school, as well as
others, have stressed that Bultmann’s approach leads to a serious reduction of the Christian
message to a subjectively controlled bare minimum.

In recent years there has been reemphasis in both OT and NT studies on biblical theology.
Critical methods have a tendency to deal only with parts of Scripture or even with certain
phases of a specific Scripture, such as the linguistic phase or the historical phase. Thus
critical methodologies themselves do not deal with what might be considered the essence
of the biblical material. Biblical theology, on the other hand, is an attempt to understand the
biblical message as a whole. It has the potential of studying the biblical message from the
standpoint of the Bible itself rather than from that of some external philosophical model.
Thus it can move in the direction of a more constructive and useful approach to the
understanding of the message of the Bible. The usefulness of this approach in the future,
however, will depend on the willingness to lay aside those presuppositions that make the
Bible only a human book and to accept the Bible’s self-understanding, namely, that it is also
the Word of God.

Implications of Biblical Criticism for Adventist Biblical Studies

The more careful approach to the study of the Bible in this century should not be taken
as an uncritical return to Protestant orthodoxy or to concepts of revelation held by the

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Reformers. Although liberal critical studies have reexamined many former positions due to
the availability of new information and the application of new methodologies, they have not
abandoned the original presuppositions of liberalism. Critical biblical studies are not in
general moving in the direction of recognizing the Bible as the Word of God to mankind and
thus they do not give the impression of moving in the direction of attempting to bring about
a fuller understanding and acquaintance with the God of the universe.

Modern critical studies explain the content and form of biblical material on the basis of
the natural outworking of the forces of history, sociology, anthropology, psychology, politics,
and the laws of literature as seen through the eyes of naturalistic and evolutionistic
philosophies rather than as the outworking of God’s e orts to speak objectively to mankind.
The Bible is seen as a resultant of these forces among and within nations and societies rather
than as the record of the activity of God in history and the giving of an inspired message. It is
an individual or a community speaking to itself rather than God speaking to that individual or
community. It is dominated by a study of the religion, culture, and history of a people rather
than a study of God’s plan in history to reconcile mankind to Himself. It is the study of pieces
of Hebrew and early Christian literature rather than a unified body of revelation.

Rylaarsdam, writing within the general framework of biblical criticism, a irms that the
basic presupposition of modern criticism is that the Bible has developed historically
according to the same laws of history that have governed the development of other ancient
national traditions.

This, he insists, is what makes the criticism “modern.” It had to make its way cautiously
against the long-standing “traditions of dogma and confessional authority” that saw the
language of Scripture as the vehicle of the divine absolute. This modern criticism, by
contrast, saw the contents of the Bible as conditioned by the same human limitations and
situation as modified any other kinds of historical tradition. (See Literary Criticism, pp. viii
and ix.)

The presuppositions of modern biblical studies, then, are radically di erent from those
outlined in the first chapter of this symposium. The Bible, having been reduced to the level
of a mere human book, is no longer the normative, authoritative Word of God recording His
will and purpose for mankind. God’s transcendence and His acts in history are denied or
radically transformed on the assumption that these concepts conflict with the mood of
modern man and his evolutionistic scientific outlook. The Bible thus contains man’s
reflections about God rather than God’s message to man.

Due to space limitations it has not been the intention of this chapter to deal with every
major trend or development in the history of critical biblical studies. It has been our purpose

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primarily to trace some of these developments in order to show the basis on which these
critical studies are founded in order, again, that their value in conservative biblical studies
might be seen.

Although declaring so plainly that the underlying presuppositions of biblical criticism are
contrary to those on which the message of the Seventh-day Adventist Church is founded,
this writer recognizes that certain aspects of modern biblical studies have done much to
establish an accurate text of the Bible and to sharpen our understanding of the language of
the Bible. They have greatly illuminated the background and climate in which God revealed
Himself to His people. They have also at times provided new dimensions for interpreting the
biblical message. Although liberal criticism has contributed in its own way to an
understanding of the Bible, the question must be raised as to whether the presuppositions
can be separated from the method without destroying the latter. This issue must likewise be
considered whether one is formulating or applying a valid methodology in the study of
Scripture. It is undeniable that the developments outlined above depreciated the authority
and function of the Bible in Christianity. Over against these e ects, the binding function and
authoritative nature of the Bible must be reasserted, for the Bible is, after all, the Word of
God, the norm by which is revealed to man God’s character and will and His plan for
reconciling man to Himself.

READING LIST

Buttrick, George Arthur, ed. The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible. 4 vols. New York:
Abingdon Press, 1962.

Contains helpful articles surveying the thinking of those involved in critical

studies in many topic areas.

Guthrie, D. and Motyer, J. A., eds. The New Bible Commentary: Revised. Grand Rapids, Mich.:
Wm. B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 1970.

This one-volume commentary contains introductory materials that give a survey

and conservative critique of recent studies.

_____. New Testament Introduction. 3 vols. Chicago: Inter-Varsity Press, 1966.

These volumes, The Gospel and Acts, Hebrews to Revelation, and The Pauline
Epistles deal with the questions of introduction and methodology for the NT from a
conservative viewpoint.

Hahn, Herbert F. The Old Testament in Modern Research. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1966.

Journal of the Adventist Theological Society 3, no. 1 (1992).

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 A survey is given of the development of critical and other approaches to the study
of the OT.

Hasel, Gerhard F. Old Testament Theology: Basic Issues in the Current Debate. Grand
Rapids, Mich.: Wm. B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 1972.

Presents a discussion of methodology in OT theology with proposals for a

conservative approach.

Harrison, Roland Kenneth. Introduction to the Old Testament. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Wm. B.
Eerdmans Pub. Co., 1971.

The Introduction and method of study of the OT is considered in detail by a

conservative scholar.

Hyatt, J. Philip, ed. The Bible in Modern Scholarship. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1965.

Contains a symposium of papers on trends in biblical scholarship which were

presented at the 100th meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature.

Ladd, George Eldon. The New Testament and Criticism. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Wm. B.
Eerdmans Pub. Co., 1967.

An attempt to restructure in terms of conservative presuppositions current

methods in biblical study.

Neill, Stephen. The Interpretation of the New Testament 1861–1961. A Galaxy Book. New
York: Oxford University Press, 1966.

A survey of methodologies employed for the study of the NT.

Nichol, Francis D., ed., The Seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentary. 7 vols. Washington,
D.C.: Review and Herald Pub. Assoc., 1953–1957.

This commentary contains helpful surveys and critiques of critical biblical

studies.

Richardson, Alan, ed. A Dictionary of Christian Theology. Philadelphia: Westminster Press,

1969.

This volume is useful as a survey tool for biblical studies in areas where theology
has implications for biblical hermeneutics.

Rylaarsdam, J. Coert or Via, Dan O., Jr., eds. Guides to Biblical Scholarship. Philadelphia:
Fortress Press, 1969–1972.

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 This series, including Literary Criticism of the Old Testament, Form Criticism of
the Old Testament, Tradition History of the Old Testament, Literary Criticism of the
New Testament, What Is Form Criticism? and What Is Redaction Criticism? surveys
the disciplines of biblical criticism from within the disciplines themselves.

Young, Edward J. An Introduction to the Old Testament. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Wm. B.
Eerdmans Pub. Co., 1970.

A conservative discussion of introduction to and methods in the study of the OT.

Receiving his early education in his home State of

Washington, and with a number of years of ministerial
service in the Michigan Conference of Seventh-day
Adventists, Dr. Kenneth A. Strand is professor of church
history at the Seventh-day Adventist Theological
Seminary and has taught there since 1959. His
doctorate in church history was awarded by the
University of Michigan. His dissertation was entitled: “A
Low-German Edition of the Gospels and Book of Acts
Based on Hieronymus Emser’s Version and Published
by the Brethren of the Common Life at Rostock About
1530.”

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 6. Modern Protestant Conservative Biblical
Studies in America
KENNETH A. STRAND

SDA Theological Seminary

Andrews University

At the beginning of the twentieth century Protestant conservative Bible scholarship in

America was generally held in high esteem, but between the two world wars it neglected to
keep pace with liberal scholarship in producing carefully researched publications;
consequently it experienced serious loss in influence and prominence. However, recent
years have witnessed a change of emphasis whereby conservatives are again beginning to
regain distinction by their serious e orts in biblical and theological research, and a brief
description of certain recent trends among them will be worthwhile here.

In treating the specific question of the hermeneutical concerns of modern Protestant

conservative Bible scholarship in America it will be necessary first to define what is meant
by the term conservative. This designation, like the term liberal, covers a great variety of
attitudes and approaches. In conjunction with the need for definition, a brief historical
survey will be necessary. After treating these preliminary matters, we will proceed to a
discussion of hermeneutical questions as they relate to four main areas of concern among
conservatives: (1) The matter of inspiration of Scripture, (2) the question of utilizing modern
scholarly tools and techniques in Bible research, (3) the question of the Bible in relationship
to modern scientific discovery, and (4) trends in the field of biblical eschatology. Although
other topics could well claim our attention, space necessitates limiting the discussion; and
these four areas will serve to focus on the major issues germane to the subject.

The “Conservatives”: Definition and Brief Historical Survey

Conservative Christianity as we know it today is a variegated phenomenon. Not only does

it represent a variety of views among its adherents but also it often crosses denominational
lines, to include various groups of Baptists, Lutherans, Methodists, Presbyterians, and
others. In some cases the conservative wing of a particular denomination or confession
represents a small minority of the adherents of the a iliation or confession; but in other
cases, entire denominations may lie within the framework of conservatism—as is the case,
for example, with Seventh-day Adventists. Conservatives of today vary greatly with respect
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to such matters as social concern, some taking a real and active interest along these lines
and others virtually neglecting this area of service. There are also degrees of openness to
scientific discovery and to using methodologies in vogue in biblical and theological studies.

Just who, then, are the conservatives? What characteristics bind them together?

In a general way it may be said that conservatives, in contrast to liberals, (1) emphasize
the Bible as directly the revelation of God, inspired by Him, and put more emphasis on
propositional truth than liberals do; (2) place revelation as a source of knowledge of God
above such things as reason or intuition;

(3) proclaim the deity of Christ as traditionally held and stress Jesus’ virgin birth and the
miracles He performed during His ministry; (4) emphasize the reality of Christ’s resurrection
from the dead; (5) look forward to His second advent; (6) stress the redemptive nature of
Christ’s substitutionary death on the cross;

(7) take both sin and salvation from sin by grace seriously, attaching great significance to
the conversion experience of the individual; (8) believe in predictive prophecy; and (9)
recognize God’s supernatural activity in Creation and at various times in history as recorded
in Scripture. In addition, conservatives of our time characteristically have held a more
negative and pessimistic view of modern culture than have the liberals. (It should be noted
that the term conservative as used herein is a broad designation that includes
fundamentalists, new evangelicals [or new conservatives], and other groups, as will become
more clear as we proceed.)

Throughout the Christian era there have been numerous conservative Christians. The
major Protestant Reformers of the sixteenth century should be classified as such, of course.
More recent roots from which modern American Protestant conservatism has stemmed may
be found in Pietism, in English Puritanism, in the Wesleyan revival, and in other similar
movements that in due course crossed the Atlantic. The Great Awakenings on the North
American continent itself provide still further backgrounds. However, an especially critical
development that has been basic to the formation of major trends in present-day American
conservative Protestantism is the liberal-fundamentalist controversy and its aftermath. In
order to defend traditional Christian views on such matters as the inspiration of Scripture,
the deity of Christ, and the supernatural activity of God in Creation and redemption, some
twelve volumes entitled The Fundamentals were published from 1910 to 1914. About three
million copies of these volumes were distributed throughout the English-speaking world;
and a number of other works repudiating liberalism, higher criticism, and modernism
appeared. There were attacks on science and on the scientific method, especially because

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of uniformitarian and organic-evolution theories propounded by scientists and accepted by
the modernist Christian theologians.

Because of the significance of the set of volumes entitled The Fundamentals the name
fundamentalist became attached to the defenders of the faith whose views were
represented in these volumes. From that day to this the so-called fundamentalists have
tended to be rigid in their doctrine of scriptural inspiration, and often place great emphasis
on adherence to certain traditional or orthodox doctrinal positions. On the other hand, they
frequently have been accused of failing to make the Bible message relevant to modern man
and of failing also to become involved in the area of social concern. Doubtless fearful of the
connotations of the social-gospel movement, they have shrunk from meeting the needs of
society, and in this respect have revealed a strange departure from the truly strong social
concern of many of their forerunners in the nineteenth and earlier centuries.

During the 1920’s and 1930’s various literary battles and oral confrontations took place
between outstanding liberal and fundamentalist representatives. It seemed for the most part
that liberal scholarship repeatedly gained ground and that the overrigid stance of the
fundamentalists was seen as untenable. Whereas during those decades the liberals had
many qualified scholars, fundamentalists could boast but few. In fact, fundamentalists
often took a rather defensive position against advanced education.

In large part, the fundamentalist regression came about through loss of seminaries for
training the ministry, failure to reach the general public, and a tendency to become so
exclusive as to bring about not only isolation from liberals but also division within
fundamentalism. It is pertinent to say that in addition to the fundamentalist movement as
such there is a fundamentalist mentality, and that the latter bears within it the seeds of
divisiveness. As Edward J. Carnell points out, the mentality of fundamentalism is
characterized by such things as ideological thinking (which is “rigid, intolerant, and
doctrinaire”), intellectual stagnation, and negative ethic (see The Case for Orthodox
Theology [1959], pp. 113–125).

By the 1940’s and 1950’s a concerned group of conservative Christian scholars within the
fundamentalist movement endeavored to infuse new life into it. Adhering to the traditional
fundamentals of the Christian faith—including belief in the Bible as the inspired Word of
God, acceptance of the deity of Christ in its historically accepted sense, and other basic
tenets of the fundamentalist position—they were more flexible than some of their colleagues
with regard to such matters as the findings of science and the use of newly developed tools
and methods for Bible study. Frequently they manifested real concern for society and its
needs—without, of course, denying the necessity of the individual conversion experience.

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 An early harbinger of this new attitude may be found in discussions that created the
National Association of Evangelicals for United Action in 1943, a group referred to as new
evangelicals (to distinguish these particular conservatives from the fundamentalists, from
the evangelicals of earlier times, and from evangelicals in other parts of the world). The
National Association itself was to be interdenominational, and it had a test of fellowship
covering only doctrines held to be most essential (a list of seven basic teachings is
conveniently quoted by Bruce Shelley in his Evangelicalism in America, pp. 71, 72). A
softening attitude toward society and its needs was seen in the work of a iliated
organizations such as The World Relief Commission and The Commission on Social Action.
Although the relief and welfare work of these new evangelicals may be comparatively
modest, it reveals a significant break from the attitude of older fundamentalism.

Perhaps one of the most striking steps in the division between fundamentalism and the
new evangelicalism came in 1947, when one of the prominent leaders of the new movement,
Carl F. H. Henry, published his book The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism.
According to his preface Henry did not intend to deny any of the fundamentals of doctrine;
but he was quite critical of the position fundamentalism had taken with regard to meeting
the needs of society. The following year Edward J. Carnell published his Introduction to
Christian Apologetics, which is sometimes considered a major turning point in conservative
endeavor to dialogue with modern philosophers and with theologians of nonconservative
stance.

A further significant step in the history of the new evangelicals was the establishment of
the Evangelical Theological Society for mutual association and discussion among biblical
scholars and theologians of conservative viewpoint. Further treatment of the position of this
society with respect to the question of inspiration of Scripture will be given in our next
section, where we will discuss the society’s doctrinal basis which was adopted as part of its
constitution in 1951.

So the older fundamentalism has now been divided by the emergence of the new
evangelicalism, but it is not always simple to di erentiate between the two groups because
of the variety of belief within each. Indeed, positions held by the more liberal
fundamentalists may well tend to merge with those held by the more conservative new
evangelicals. However, a distinction usually can be made between the two groups on the
basis that the new evangelicals show a greater openness toward dialogue with the modern
world, including an attempt to make the gospel message more relevant to modern man in
both theological presentation and social action.

Not all present-day conservative Protestant Christians are to be classified as either

fundamentalists or new evangelicals, as has been indicated earlier. This terminology, in the
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first place, is most appropriate to the North American scene. Present-day conservatism in
England and on the continent of Europe, for example, has for the most part a somewhat
di erent line of development. But even in America there are conservative groups, such as
the Seventh-day Adventists, that cannot easily be classified as either fundamentalists or
new evangelicals.

Inspiration of Scripture

One of the most basic concerns of conservative theologians relates to the question of
the inspiration of Scripture. The old fundamentalists took a rigid position that the Bible was
verbally inspired. Not all fundamentalists would see eye to eye on this matter, but for some
the total e ect of their position has been to suggest that Scripture was given virtually by a
dictation method. Even though the term dictation is often repudiated by them, some seem
to say that God inspired not only the men but also the very words in which the divine
messages were transcribed by prophets and apostles. A few fundamentalists would carry
the point as far as to claim that the English King James Version was uniquely authoritative or
inspired. There has also been some skepticism toward any type of study relating to the text
and the history of Bible books or of Bible passages. The di iculty in establishing the exact
views of inspiration held by the new evangelicals may be somewhat represented by Wick
Broomall’s book entitled Biblical Criticism, produced in 1957. In it he points out (pp. 23, 24)
that many liberal scholars equate “verbal inspiration with dictation” and thereby endeavor
to make the conservative position look ludicrous. But he goes on to say that “whatever may
be the unjust caricature of the conservative view, the Bible most deliberately teaches the
verbal inspiration of its documents.” He even goes so far as to say that “the modern idea that
only the thought (but not the words) was inspired is utterly foreign to the Scriptures and
absolutely obnoxious to any true view of inspiration.” Broomall, on the other hand,
recognizes the value of using certain tools for better understanding of the text, and he
emphasizes the need to be well versed in biblical languages.

There is growing evidence that the new evangelicals have broadened the concept of
inspiration held by the fundamentalists. An indication of this tendency is seen in the newer
attitudes toward the use of tools by which to gain a better understanding of Scripture.
Edward Carnell, for example, in his Introduction to Christian Apologetics (pp. 192–194) in
1948 made a distinction between the acceptability of lower criticism, which deals with the
state of the biblical text, and higher criticism, which deals with the application of secular
scientific historical methodology to the study of the biblical text. He believed that the former
was legitimate but the latter was not. By 1959, however, he was willing in his The Case for
Orthodox Theology (p. 97) to go as far as to declare that “any investigation that throws light

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on the literary and historical background of the Bible” would be welcomed by orthodoxy.
Bernard Ramm had earlier expressed a similarly favorable view toward the use of both lower
and some aspects of higher criticism in his Protestant Christian Evidences of 1953 (see pp.
19–21). Indeed, Ramm notes that the “factuality of the Bible as a document” would be
vindicated by proper use of such methods.

We more specifically now come to the question of what inspiration of Scripture signifies
to the new evangelicals. Again, it is di icult to generalize their mainstream position, but their
basic understanding of inspiration at an early stage of development was perhaps
characterized by the constitution of the Evangelical Theological Society, adopted January 1,
1951. In Article III, entitled “Doctrinal Basis,” we find the following statement: “The Bible
alone and the Bible in its entirety, is the Word of God written, and therefore inerrant in the
autographs.” All members of the society were required to subscribe to this doctrinal basis
yearly. It seems evident that this particular statement, although it broadens somewhat the
position of the earlier fundamentalists, adheres basically to a verbal-inspiration theory,
sometimes referred to as plenary inspiration. The matter of verbal inerrancy is safeguarded
in the phrase “inerrant in the autographs.”

Apparently the new evangelicals were quite ready to recognize the obvious fact that
di erent extant Bible manuscripts vary somewhat, but in 1951 they may have wished to
maintain the idea of an original God-given wording. Be that as it may, the decade of the
1960’s brought about a breach within the society itself and among evangelicals in general
over this matter. Especially important was Dewey M. Beegle’s publication The Inspiration of
Scripture, which appeared in 1963. In Beegle’s opinion conservatives have erred in using a
deductive approach to the question of inspiration, based on the postulate of God’s
sovereignty. They have deduced that a sovereign God must needs have revealed Himself
inerrantly. However, the very fact that extant manuscripts often di er has shown that not all
of them can be error free, and thus there has had to be a further deduction that the
autographs must have been error free.

Beegle himself would break with this sort of reasoning and use an inductive approach to
the question of inspiration. Instead of beginning with generalities from which a series of
deductions are drawn he thought it better to go to the Scriptures themselves to see what they
say about the manner in which they are inspired. According to Beegle, the Bible does
proclaim for itself inspiration and authoritativeness, but it does not proclaim a doctrine of
inerrancy. In fact, one should remember that when Jesus and the apostles appealed to
Scripture they utilized the manuscripts of their time, not the supposedly inerrant autographs.
Beegle also points out the problem of whether human language is really capable of giving
inerrant communication from God.

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 Beegle is not the only scholar among the new evangelicals who seems to have broken
with the view given in the 1951 “Doctrinal Basis” of the Evangelical Theological Society, but
he perhaps represents as radical a departure from that position as any first-rate new
evangelical scholar (obviously not all aspects of his position have been treated here).
Moreover, although some of the original excitement within evangelical circles on the
question of inspiration has subsided, probably the debate is not yet over. Nevertheless, in
spite of mutual disagreements on the matter, evangelicals of rather di ering views can—and
still do—live within what is to them a generally acceptable conservative confraternity.

Although on the North American scene a great deal of prominence has been attached
either to the fundamentalist viewpoint or to the somewhat similar evangelical attitude
toward the question of the inspiration of Scripture, it should be noted that not all
conservatives have accepted either a strict or a modified verbal-inspiration theory. In fact,
the more recent indications are that some evangelical positions—although retaining the
expressions verbal or plenary inspiration—may be close to that held by the Seventh-day
Adventists, among others, as stated in the introduction to the book The Great Controversy,
by Ellen G. White (pp. vii–ix):

The Bible points to God as its author; yet it was written by human hands; and in
the varied style of its di erent books it presents the characteristics of the several
writers. The truths revealed are all “given by inspiration of God” (2 Timothy 3:16); yet
they are expressed in the words of men. The Infinite One by His Holy Spirit has shed
light into the minds and hearts of His servants. He has given dreams and visions,
symbols and figures; and those to whom the truth was thus revealed, have
themselves embodied the thought in human language.…

The Bible, with its God-given truths expressed in the language of men, presents a
union of the divine with the human. Such a union existed in the nature of Christ, who
was the Son of God and the Son of man. Thus it is true of the Bible, as it was of Christ,
that “the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us.” John 1:14.…

The testimony is conveyed through the imperfect expression of human language,

yet it is the testimony of God; and the obedient, believing child of God beholds in it
the glory of a divine power, full of grace and truth.

Reasons for the unacceptability of the inspiration theory implied in the “Doctrinal Basis”
of the Evangelical Theological Society have been aptly discussed by a Seventh-day Adventist
scholar, Dr. Raymond F. Cottrell, in a series of editorials in the Review and Herald during
1966. On the one hand Cottrell points out that the wording “the Bible alone” imposes a
limitation on God’s ability to reveal Himself—a limitation that Seventh-day Adventists
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cannot accept. Cottrell calls attention to the fact that Scripture itself mentions other
inspired writings that have not been included in the canon, and he warns against the danger
of closing the door to the possibility of God’s revealing Himself any further after the last
material in the canon was produced. Such a limitation obviously would preclude God’s
choosing to reveal Himself in any special way today. (See Review and Herald, February 17,
1966, p. 13.)

Cottrell has also challenged the usefulness and meaningfulness of the statement
“inerrant in the autographs” because of its bypassing “the real question—can we have
confidence in the Bible as it exists today?” As Cottrell clearly points out, “The state of the
original text is irrelevant to faith today, but it does make all the di erence in the world
whether we can have confidence in the adequacy of the text of Scripture that has come down
to us, as a means to salvation.” Such adequacy of the present text Cottrell, of course, fully
accepts. (See Review and Herald, February 24, 1966, p. 13.)

The position enunciated above regarding the divine-and-human nature of God’s Word,
together with the conviction that God has indeed preserved in the transmission of His Word
all that is essential to salvation, provides a truly sound basis for a genuine conservative
approach to the question of inspiration—one that harmonizes with the Scripture’s own
testimony regarding inspiration and revelational method.

Utilization of New Tools and Techniques in Biblical Studies

We have already briefly mentioned that as twentieth-century conservative Christianity

moved generally in a direction away from strict fundamentalism to new evangelicalism,
there was also greater acceptance of scholarly techniques and of tools for use in biblical
and theological studies. Indeed, from a very early time, archaeology was recognized by
conservatives as a useful aid in the study of the Bible. Although fundamentalists tended to
use archaeology to “prove” the Bible, most conservatives today would rather call attention
to the remarkable confirmation that archaeological discovery has made at many points with
regard to historical data recorded in Scripture. Conservatives have been among the
foremost, for example, to hail the value of such discoveries as the Nuzu Tablets for the light
they shed on patriarchal times and for numerous other findings that illuminate the
backgrounds of the OT and the NT.

As briefly noted above, conservatives have also become increasingly willing to enter into
dialogue with nonconservatives (although the nonconservative response has not always
been enthusiastic), and they have shown themselves to be generally adept in biblical
languages and in knowledge of the history and transmission of the biblical text. They have

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come to the place where they are often quite ready to look seriously at the methodologies of
literary criticism, form criticism, and other approaches used by modern liberal scholars in
treating the Bible text. We may note that a number of fairly solid studies by conservatives
have been forthcoming to deal with critical questions pertaining to the OT and NT books.
Various conservative publications such as Edward Young’s Introduction to the Old
Testament and Donald Guthrie’s New Testament Introduction carefully weigh the strengths
and weaknesses of the various modern methodologies in common use, and they are also
fairly substantial works in their own right. Men such as Young and Guthrie, in their critiques
of biblical criticism, give occasion for the question to be raised as to whether a student of
the Bible can adopt the methodologies of critical biblical scholarship without embracing
consciously or otherwise the presuppositions on which those methodologies are built. (See
chap. 5.)

The historical introductions, grammars, and linguistic-lexigraphical tools of high quality

that have been produced in recent years by conservative scholars are too numerous to
mention here. But it may be noted that conservative scholarship has taken on an air of less
bitterness toward the position of the liberals; furthermore, that where conservatives have
adopted some of the newer methodologies their use of them is frequently more balanced
than has been the case with liberals. The latter altogether too often have tended to carry one
methodology or another to extremes. Indeed, it is important to observe that the incisive
critiques often given by conservatives of the methodologies used by liberals are well worth
pondering by liberals and conservatives alike. Whether the liberal scholar recognizes it—and
it appears that some such scholars are beginning to do so—conservatives have often
brought a wholesome corrective into the field of present-day biblical and theological study.
Wherein the conservative thus far generally has failed is in not having su icient creativeness
to develop new methodologies and approaches that would enhance our understanding of
the biblical text and its message.

With regard to hermeneutic itself, conservative scholars have been giving increasing
attention to the need for work here too. Moreover, representative publications by evangelical
scholars in this area have not neglected historical antecedents nor been unaware of
contemporary trends. One may note, for instance, A. Berkeley Mickelsen’s Interpreting the
Bible (1963) as well as the symposia edited by John F. Walvoord, Inspiration and
Interpretation (1957), and by Carl F. Henry, Revelation and the Bible (1958). Also worthy of
mention are Clark H. Pinnock, Biblical Revelation (1971); the paperback reprint of Section 3
of Baker’s Dictionary of Practical Theology (1967) under the title Hermeneutics; and the
series of essays in Merrill C. Tenney, ed., The Bible: The Living Word of Revelation (1968).

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 In closing this section it may be useful to notice one striking example of the kind of
recognition that conservative scholars have begun to gain. The lengths of reign and
synchronisms of the kings of Israel and Judah as recorded in the OT have long ba led
scholars because of apparent inconsistencies and contradictions, but a Seventh-day
Adventist scholar, Edwin R. Thiele, unraveled the mystery in his book The Mysterious
Numbers of the Hebrew Kings. In this book, first published in 1951 by the University of
Chicago and Cambridge University presses and again in a revised edition in 1965 by the
Eerdmans Publishing Company, Thiele shows the reliability of the biblical text. A liberal
scholar, William A. Irwin, states in an introduction to Thiele’s volume that the “unique feature
of Professor Thiele’s work is that he has attained his results by the most rigid application of
scholarly facts and methods.” Indeed, Irwin goes so far as to declare that “it is a matter of
first-rate importance to learn now that the Books of Kings are reliable in precisely that feature
which formerly excited only derision” (rev. ed., pp. xxi, xxiii).

Religion and Science

As noted earlier, one of the basic characteristics of early fundamentalism was inherent
antagonism toward the sciences—antagonism largely connected with the fact that theories
of uniformitarianism and biological evolution not only were strongly promulgated by
scientists but also were adopted by liberal theologians into their “modernist” theology. The
new evangelicals have endeavored to be true to the orthodox position, but they also have
taken a more open attitude toward scientific discovery. Frequently, new evangelicals have
produced defenses of fiat Creation, the biblical account of the Flood, and similar matters.
There is even an e ort by many conservatives to become adept in various of the sciences by
advanced study in these disciplines.

An interesting new development among certain prominent individuals of evangelical

persuasion is a posture toward scientific theories that would, in the opinion of many of their
brethren, lead away from a genuine Bible position. Many evangelicals still hold a chronology
of Creation based on the genealogies in Genesis as given in the Masoretic text. Others, while
retaining a relatively low chronology, either point out that genealogy should not be treated as
chronology or utilize the somewhat longer LXX chronology. Still others tend to dismiss
chronological concerns when they deal with the early chapters of Genesis. It still would be
incomprehensible, of course, that any of the new evangelicals would deny fiat Creation, but
some have made unusual concessions to the theory of biological evolution. Bernard Ramm,
for example, speaks favorably of theistic evolution, although he would rather classify himself
as a progressive creationist, for his feeling is that “in progressive creationism there is the best
accounting for all the facts—biological, geological, and Biblical” (see his The Christian View

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of Science and Scripture [1954], pp. 292, 293). He claims that many evangelicals would
place the origin of man about 10,000 B.C., “whereas others are willing to admit that man is
hundreds of thousands of years old”—Ibid., p. 347.

Parallel to his posture toward the origin of man, Ramm has also argued against an
anthropologically universal Flood—a position challenged in a 1961 publication by John C,
Whitcomb, Jr., and Henry M. Morris, The Genesis Flood: The Biblical Record and Its Scientific
Implications (see pp. 36 .). Various articles in the Creation Research Society Quarterly
foster the concept of a universal Flood, together with a low chronology of that Flood as well
as of Creation.

Many well-informed conservatives continue to hold a relatively low chronology for

Creation and the Flood. They recognize that newer types of scientific time clocks are yielding
results out of harmony with their own concept of biblical time, but they also tend to stress
that tentativeness should be attached to the findings of such time clocks. What may appear
to some researchers as scientific certainty may in reality be quite tentative, they would
suggest; and as one interesting example, they can point to developments on the Isle of
Surtsey, which island appeared and took shape in 1963–1964 through volcanic action in the
North Atlantic Ocean near Iceland. Although scientists have suggested that sandy beaches
require millennia or even millions of years to develop, a sandy beach appeared on Surtsey in
a matter of a few weeks! (See Sigurdur Thorarinsson, Surtsey, tr. by S. Eysteinsson [1964], p,
39.) Although this phenomenon cannot be considered quite parallel to the more
sophisticated time clocks, it does indicate the appropriateness of a critical attitude toward
supposed scientific knowledge.

Biblical Eschatology

In the field of biblical eschatology, the Augustinian amillennialism dominated the scene
for centuries, even until after the Protestant Reformation. But early in the eighteenth century
a view called postmillennialism was set forth by Whitby and Vitringa. It was soon espoused
by such religious leaders as Jonathan Edwards, and it found wide circulation through such
famed Bible commentators as Adam Clarke, Albert Barnes, Thomas Scott, Matthew Henry,
and David Brown, Eventually, in the early nineteenth century there was a resurgence of
premillennialism. This went hand in hand with the widespread proclamation of the soon-
expected second advent of Christ and was similar to the premillennial views held among
most of the early church fathers prior to Augustine.

Whereas the amillennialists looked upon the thousand years of Revelation 20 as a

figurative or symbolic number that depicted the Christian dispensation of this earth’s history,

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the postmillennialists thought of the millennium in terms of a sort of utopian thousand years
(not always taken to be a literal figure) that was to come before Christ’s second advent. The
premillennialist view is that Christ’s second coming will be prior to the thousand-year period
of Revelation 20. Premillennialists so generally believe in an earthly millennial reign of the
Jews that Seventh-day Adventists, because of their di ering view on the millennium, are
sometimes thought to be amillennialists. However, Seventh-day Adventists do believe in a
premillennial second advent of Christ and a real millennium, and hence are indeed
premillennialists. They obviously do not hold the amillennialist position.

The aforementioned varying views regarding the millennium relate specifically to

interpretation of the 20th chapter of Revelation. As for interpretation of the whole book, there
has been a tendency—especially from the time of the Protestant Reformers onward—to
regard various of its prophecies as finding fulfillment in the course of this earth’s history,
especially during the Christian era.

From small beginnings of such historical-type interpretation, wherein isolated

prophecies were treated as having historical fulfillment, there eventually arose full-fledged
historicist, or continuous historical, expositions. Most frequently these looked upon the
prophetic messages in the book of Revelation as signifying a sequence of historical events
in a straight line down through the centuries, culminating in Christ’s second advent and
subsequent events. Among adherents of this straight-line historicist interpretation were
such outstanding expositors as Albert Barnes and E. B. Elliott.

Some historicists, such as Uriah Smith, also viewed the book of Revelation as being for
the most part fulfilled in historical events during the present age; but instead of seeing a
straight line through the book, these expositors found evidence of repeated sequences
throughout Christian history. In other words, the prophetic messages of the churches, seals,
trumpets, and so forth, gave recapitulation of history from the NT period to the grand
eschatological climax.

Among some premillennialists of the early nineteenth century a futuristic outlook

emerged. It was similar to that of the Jesuit scholar Ribera, who fostered such a concept
during the late sixteenth century. To futurists virtually the entire book of Revelation, except
possibly the messages to the seven churches and the material in the final few chapters, is
thought of as referring specifically to a short period of time near the close of this earth’s
history. The message to the seven churches could be taken as relating either to the churches
in John’s own day or to the church down through the ages (or to both). Otherwise, history
virtually was left out of the book except for a short period just before Christ’s second coming.
To this period almost the entire book up to 19:11 is supposed to address itself.

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 A particular variety of futurism known as pretribulationism originated early in the
nineteenth century through the work of John Nelson Darby and various of his colleagues in
the Plymouth Brethren movement in the British Isles. This view is also premillennialist, but
inserts an additional secret second coming of Christ seven years prior to Christ’s open and
visible second advent. The term pretribulationism stems from the belief that at this secret
second coming, all true Christians are raptured and taken to heaven so as to escape the
great tribulation that is to take place during the closing scenes of earth’s history. The rapture
aspect of the doctrine is popularly known as the secret rapture.

Followers of the Darbyian pretribulationism are also often referred to as

dispensationalists, because of their belief that earth’s history may be divided up into a
number of eras or dispensations wherein God has used di erent means in dealing with His
people and in testing them with respect to obedience. In the words of one of their
spokesmen, William Trotter, in his Plain Papers on Prophetic and Other Subjects these so-
called dispensations “have run, are running, and have yet to run their course, so widely
di erent in their character, that what is simple obedience and for the glory of God in one
dispensation, may be entirely foreign to the character of another.”—p. 401. He states further
“that what God sanctions under one dispensation, may be so diverse from the spirit and
character of another, as to be the subject of rebuke to those who desire to imitate it.”—p.
402.

Pretribulationism originated in Britain, as we have noted, but then it spread to America,

where by the last two decades of the nineteenth century it began to enjoy rather widespread
popularity. The Scofield Reference Bible, which was first published in 1909 and has sold
widely, helped greatly to foster the spread of the movement, especially among laymen; and
today in America this variety of conservative eschatology appears to be the most widespread
of any conservative position on the subject.

The question may well be asked. Why should this particular view take such firm hold in
North America? Certainly the popularity of the Scofield Reference Bible, just mentioned,
accounts to a considerable degree for this. But there may also be another important factor,
especially as far as the early years are concerned; namely, that conservative Christians
tended to see this premillennial position as more biblical than postmillennialism, and
accepted it in reaction against the latter. This possibility has been suggested by George
Eldon Ladd in his book The Blessed Hope.

Pretribulationists, of course, cannot provide any strong biblical evidence for their secret-
rapture idea. Rather, this idea comes by inference from texts relating to deliverance from
tribulation, as well as from a peculiar interpretation of such Bible passages as “one shall be
taken, and the other left” (Mt 24:40, 41). Also, a frequent practice of adherents of this
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particular viewpoint is to utilize Revelation 4:1, where John is bidden to “Come up hither,” as
an indication of the so-called secret rapture of the church!

According to the pretribulationists-dispensationalists, the prophecies of the book of

Revelation from 4:1 to 19:11 deal specifically with events that are to occur during a still-
future seven-year period of earth’s history just prior to Christ’s visible advent. It is further
believed by them that this seven-year period is the “70th week” of the prophecy of Daniel 9.
The first 69 of the 70 weeks of years allotted to the Jews in that prophecy extended to Christ’s
first advent. Then came an interlude in the form of the Christian dispensation. Finally this
70th week—seven literal years—will find fulfillment after the secret rapture of the church. At
this time the Jews will again become prominent in fulfilling God’s purpose. During this 70th
week a personal antichrist will at first favor the Jews but in the middle of the week will turn
against them and persecute them. Finally, at the close of this seven-year period Christ will
come and will set up an earthly millennial kingdom for the Jews. This kingdom,
pretribulationists think, is in reality the kingdom promised to the Jews by the OT prophets
and then by Christ Himself, but which was never fulfilled because of their rejection of Him
as Messiah. But God is true to His word; He does not fail His promise: therefore finally the
kingdom will be given the Jews, in the millennial age!

In addition to the tenuousness and unbiblical nature of the secret-rapture and

dispensation ideas of the pretribulationists, other di iculties in their hermeneutic may be
mentioned here. In the first place, the concept of such a literalistic and unalterable
fulfillment of prophecies about ancient Israel, regardless of conditions and circumstances,
flies in the face of the Bible’s own principles. One may refer, for example, to Jeremiah’s
prophecy about two directions Jerusalem might take and which would lead to very di erent
consequences (see Jer 17:24–27). Also important is the fact that the NT looks on certain OT
prophecies regarding ancient Israel as finding fulfillment in connection with God’s new
Israel, the Christian Church (see e.g., Acts 15:13–16 and Gal 3:26–29).

In the second place, pretribulationists draw unwarranted distinctions regarding certain

terminology in the Scriptures. They di erentiate, for example, between Christ’s use of the
expressions “kingdom of heaven” and “kingdom of God.” The former is supposed to indicate
the kingdom promised to the Jews and eventually to be set up as the millennial kingdom,
whereas the latter is taken to depict God’s over-all rule in the universe. In this regard, serious
question may be raised inasmuch as there is no biblical evidence to substantiate such an
application of the terminology. Even more crucial are the facts that the context of the
statements frequently defies such di erentiation and that the two terms are used
interchangeably by the Gospel writers.

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 This leads us to a further point of great hermeneutical significance—the pretribulationist
contention for the need of “rightly dividing the word of truth” so as to distinguish in the
Gospel records between things pertaining to the Jews and things pertaining to the Christians.
For example, it is a common dispensationalist belief that Christ’s Sermon on the Mount is a
message for the Jews, not the Christians. What basis can there be for this kind of arbitrary
treatment of the text, except that it arises as a natural consequence from other unwarranted
and unfounded presuppositions?

By no means have all conservatives in America adopted dispensationalism. There are

nondispensationalist premillenarians, among whom Seventh-day Adventists stand out as a
prominent group. There are also a number of amillennialists, especially in Christian
Reformed and Dutch Reformed groups and among conservative Presbyterians. Certain
amillennialists, such as Floyd Hamilton in his Basis for Millennial Faith and Oswald Allis in
his Prophecy and the Church, have given critiques of dispensationalism. Perhaps even more
important is the work of George Eldon Ladd, a one-time pretribulationist who has moved
away from that position to a general kind of premillennialist futurism. Ladd, who is more
impartial than might be expected from one who has left the movement, analyzes fairly and
quite extensively in his book The Blessed Hope the weaknesses of dispensationalist
theology on the matter of eschatology. He also provides some excellent chapters on the
same topic in his Crucial Questions About the Kingdom of God. There seems little doubt but
that dispensationalist-type hermeneutic has brought a certain amount of disrepute to
conservative biblical scholarship, and it has become a point of attack from conservatives
who do not share such a hermeneutic.

A further word may be said about futurism in general. Even futurists who are not
pretribulationists tend to claim that the earliest church fathers held the futurist position.
And, in fact, many church fathers of the first several centuries did speak of a personal
antichrist who would dominate for 1260 days at the close of time rather than an antichrist
system that would rule for 1260 years. But it must be remembered that by virtue of the very
time in which they lived, those church fathers were of necessity futuristic in their outlook
concerning fulfillment of the prophecies of the book of Revelation. After all, most of Christian
history was still ahead, and there was no concept of how long that history would last. The
end was felt to be rather near, and hence a so-called “futuristic” outlook would have been
natural. But were those church fathers truly “futuristic” in their basic perspective? Perhaps
this perspective is better revealed by their attitude toward the book of Daniel, and here the
common interpretation of the major prophecies was in a historicist vein!

One might just add from the biblical evidence that texts in 1 John 4 and 2 Thessalonians
2 already imply more than a personal antichrist who was to reign for 3 ½ literal years, for the

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concept of a “spirit” of antichrist is set forth—something already in evidence as early as
apostolic times.

In closing this section, it should be noted that in recent years conservatives have begun
to take an interest in the presence and meaning of apocalyptic in the synoptic Gospels—an
area of study that heretofore has been dominated by liberal biblical scholarship. As
indicative of this new thrust one may Just mention the appearance in 1964 of George Eldon
Ladd’s Jesus and the Kingdom and in 1972 of Leon Morris’ Apocalyptic.

Summary and Conclusion

We have traced briefly the history and the main trends that relate to the hermeneutical
stance of present-day conservatives, especially in North America. We have noted the basic
issues and questions relating to the inspiration of Scripture, and in this connection also have
provided the essence of the Seventh-day Adventist position as enunciated by Ellen G. White.
Furthermore, we have noted the growing respect for and use of scholarly tools for Bible study
among conservatives. We have looked, too, at changing conservative attitudes toward
scientific discovery and even scientific theories. Finally, we have touched briefly on
conservative biblical eschatology, with primary attention given to dispensationalism.

In all this we have been able to observe that there has been a strong tendency for
pendulum swings among conservatives. But balance should be a key word for sound
Christian hermeneutic. The balance in such hermeneutic may readily be realized in the
position enunciated by Ellen G. White with regard to revelation and inspiration as we noted
earlier. This position safeguards against the extremes of the liberals on the one hand and
protects from the extreme views of verbal-inspiration adherents on the other hand.

With respect to scientific discovery, here again it is necessary for the conservative
Christian to find balance by keeping his mind fully open to truth from both of God’s books
that reveal Him—the Bible and the book of nature. The Christian must take care not to
become overly enamored of his own theological views and presuppositions; on the other
hand, he should not be hasty to reject long-held theological positions simply because of a
supposed scientific discovery of the moment. While he needs to avoid the overly critical and
sometimes injudicious attitudes of old-line fundamentalism, he should beware lest he
subordinate his biblical understanding to certain scientific theories, as some new
evangelicals now appear to be doing. It is important to be cognizant of the revelational intent
of biblical passages, and not to seek scientific understanding from Scripture where such
scientific understanding is not intended. Equal care must be taken to shun any methodology
or approach that would make the biblical text subservient to whatever scientific theories and

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scientific world view might be in vogue at any particular moment. God’s truth transcends all
of that!

Finally, our quick glance at pretribulationism-dispensationalism has been given, first of

all, because adherents of this belief are so numerous that most gospel workers who deal
with conservative Christians to any significant degree are highly likely to encounter the view.
Moreover, importance may be attached to the fact that the dispensationalist-type
hermeneutic provides an example not only of the manner in which unsound principles can
lead to erroneous conclusions but also of the way in which discredit can be brought upon
conservatives when they lack sound scholarly methodology in their work. Finally, the history
of dispensationalism portrays, once again, the tendency of the pendulum to swing too far—
this time away from the postmillennialism so popular in some conservative circles when
Darby’s ideas reached America.

There is always the danger of moving too far and too fast in any direction. The history of
conservative Protestant Christianity in America unfortunately illustrates this fact. However,
many conservative Protestant Christians in America do recognize that God is a God of
balance, and they seek to be established by Him “in every good word and work” (2 Th 2:17).

Associate editor of the REVIEW AND HERALD,

Washington, D.C., since 1967, Don F. Neufeld was
associate editor of THE SDA BIBLE COMMENTARY,
editor of the SDA BIBLE DICTIONARY, editor of the SDA
ENCYCLOPEDIA, and coeditor, SDA BIBLE STUDENTS’
SOURCE BOOK. His denominational service began in
Canada as a pastor, then Bible teacher at Canadian
Union College. Andrews University conferred on him
the Doctor of Divinity degree in 1972.

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 7. Biblical Interpretation in the Advent
Movement
DON F. NEUFELD

Review and Herald

Publishing Association

The hermeneutics of prophecy will be discussed first because the early unique emphasis
of the Adventist movement was on prophecy. General principles of hermeneutics will then
be examined.

Hermeneutics of Prophecy

In the restricted sense, an Adventist is a member of the Adventist (or Millerite) movement,
or of one of the bodies that sprang from it. In its broad sense, the term is sometimes used to
describe one who believes that the personal Second Advent of Christ is near. Today the term
is used almost exclusively in its restricted sense. This is the sense in which it is used in this
chapter. Of the emergent bodies, only the largest—the Seventh-day Adventist Church—will
be considered.

As one aspect of the general Advent expectation of the early 19th century, the Adventist,
or Millerite, movement flourished in America from 1840 to 1844. The leader of the movement
was William Miller (1782–1849), a farmer and a Baptist preacher. He was joined by other
ministers, notably Josiah Litch (a Methodist minister) and Joshua V. Himes (a minister of the
Christian Connection). Estimates run from 200 to 800 ministers who during the height of the
movement were identified with it. Estimates of followers range from a conservative 50,000
to a million.

The principal feature of William Miller’s preaching was the interpretation of apocalyptic
Bible prophecy and the resulting announcement that the second coming of Christ was to
occur in the “Jewish year” 1843, which would end in the spring of 1844. He based his
argument for the expectation on several lines of prophecy, principally the prediction of Dan
8:14, which stated, “Unto two thousand and three hundred days; then shall the sanctuary
be cleansed.” By applying to this time period the year-day principle, a principle already in use
among interpreters for centuries, he arrived at a period of 2300 years. The beginning date he
found in Dan 9:25, “The commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem,” which he applied

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to Artaxerxes’ decree issued in 457 B.C. Simple subtraction brought him to his “Jewish year”
1843. To the cleansing of the sanctuary he gave the primary interpretation of the cleansing
of the earth at the Second Coming of Christ.

When the “Jewish year” 1843 passed without the realization of the Second Advent, and
the more specifically determined date of October 22, 1844, projected in the summer of that
year, also passed, it became evident that there had been some basic error in interpretation.
Miller and most of his followers of that time concluded that they had been mistaken in their
calculation of the time, and they continued looking for the Advent to occur shortly. A group
of his followers spiritualized the Advent and held that it had actually occurred on the
anticipated date. Restudying the Millerite positions, another group concluded that whereas
they could find no error in the calculations by which October 22, 1844, had been derived,
there was some mistake in the event expected. Some from this group, concentrating on the
term sanctuary, became convinced that there was no biblical evidence for the Millerite
assertion that this earth was the sanctuary to be cleansed by fire at the Second Advent. This
little handful became the pioneers of the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

Tracing the word sanctuary in the Scriptures, this minority group noted that the Bible
speaks first of an ancient sanctuary, or tent, at which the Israelites worshiped in the
wilderness. This portable tent was later replaced by Solomon’s Temple and still later by
Zerubbabel’s. But Zerubbabel’s temple, enlarged and beautified by Herod the Great, was
destroyed in A.D. 70, and with its destruction the Israelite sanctuary passed out of existence.
Hence this sanctuary could not be the sanctuary designated in Dan 8:14 to be cleansed in
1844, the terminal date for the 2300 years.

But they noted that the Bible speaks of another sanctuary, one in heaven, after which the
earthly had been patterned, to which Jesus Christ ascended after the resurrection and in
which He functions as High Priest. This, they concluded, must be the sanctuary of Dan 8:14,
for it was the only sanctuary mentioned in the Bible that was in existence in 1844. In the book
of Hebrews, where this heavenly sanctuary is described, they noted a reference to a
cleansing (Heb 9:23), a work they concluded the heavenly High Priest commenced in 1844.
In a brief but unspecified time they expected Him to return to the earth to gather His people.

Although the Seventh-day Adventist Church had its roots in Millerism, the church took a
direction of its own. Nevertheless “they [members of this group] regarded themselves as the
true successors of the movement, as retaining and carrying on to completion the main
principles of Millerite doctrine and correcting and clarifying the misunderstanding that had
caused the disappointment and had resulted in the repudiation of the 1844 message by the
leaders.”—SDA Encyclopedia, p. 796. Turning now to our investigation of the hermeneutics
(prophetic and general) of Adventists, we begin with that of the Millerites, then follow with
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that of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. The Millerite movement was an
interdenominational movement. Its adherents came from many churches and, although
embracing Miller’s teachings, continued to hold membership in their churches if so
permitted. The rallying point in Millerism was belief in an imminent advent and the ending of
human probation at that advent. In other doctrinal positions, adherents held generally to the
teachings of their respective religious bodies. Thus there was no unified doctrinal position
among the Millerites.

By what hermeneutical principles did Miller arrive at his conviction that the Advent was
to be expected about the year 1844? Three schools of prophetic interpretation were in
existence when the Millerite movement began to flourish: (1) Preterism, the belief that the
major portion of the book of Revelation was fulfilled long ago; (2) historicism, the belief that
the events of Revelation have been fulfilling all through history, with some having been
fulfilled, others being fulfilled, and still others yet to be fulfilled in the future; and (3) futurism,
the belief that what is predicted from Rev 4 onward is yet to take place; nothing has been
fulfilled, nor will it be fulfilled until just before the end of this age.

Futurism originated with Ribera, the Spanish Jesuit who in 1590 published a commentary
of Revelation. In the early 19th century futurism took root among Protestants. Today it
dominates the portion of the Protestant scene that is most vocal in the area of prophecy and
its fulfillment.

Miller belonged to the historicist school. He looked in history for fulfillments of the
various features of the visions of John the revelator and, for that matter, of Daniel also. He
believed that both prophets gave an outline of history from their day to the end of time. He
did not originate the historicist system; many scholars before him had followed this system,
and many in his day held it.

In fact, the Reformers were historicists. George Eldon Ladd says that “this ‘historical’
type of interpretation with its application of the Antichrist of papal Rome so dominated the
Protestant study of prophetic truth for three centuries that it has frequently been called ‘the
Protestant’ interpretation.”—The Blessed Hope, p. 32.

Albertus Pieters calls historicism “the standard Protestant interpretation.”—Studies in

the Revelation of St. John, p. 43.

In other words, although initially independent, Miller and his associates actually built on
the work of their predecessors, retaining much of what had already been developed by a
methodology that had been practiced for centuries. Into the general pattern, which had
already been established, they inserted a few unique ideas.

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 This building on the past has been abundantly demonstrated by L. E. Froom in his four-
volume work The Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers. He lists scores of interpreters who expected
the end of the 2300 days sometime around 1844 or 1847, although they di ered as to the
events to be expected at that time.

In his discourses Miller frequently referred to the rules by which his conclusions were
reached. He firmly believed that only if correct principles of interpretation are applied can
correct conclusions be arrived at.

A discussion of Miller’s rules appears in his introduction to his printed lectures Evidence
from Scripture and History of the Second Coming of Christ, about the Year 1843. His 1836
edition contained 16 lectures; his 1840 edition, 19. Following is a summary of his rules:

1. Much of the message of prophecy is communicated by symbols. For example, beasts

represent kingdoms; and water, people.

2. All figures have both a literal and a metaphorical meaning. Thus, literally, a beast would
represent a kingdom; but metaphorically, for example, if it were a lion, the power to rule.

3. The literal meaning of a figure is discovered by finding other Scriptures to explain the
figure. Scripture must be compared with Scripture.

4. There is unity in the Scriptures. One prophecy complements another. “There never was
a book written that has a better connection and harmony than the Bible.”

5. The biblical student must select and bring together every part of the subject he wishes
to investigate.

6. The smallest unit, the word, must be given its scripture meaning.

7. The larger unit, the sentence, must have its proper bearing.

8. The word and sentence must have their proper bearing in the grand whole.

How did the Millerites in particular or how do historicists in general determine which
events in history are fulfillments of specific prophecies? They examine closely the
specifications of prophecy, then study secular and religious history to find a corresponding
event. To verify whether the true historical event has been discovered Miller suggested the
following:

“If you find every word of the prophecy (after the figures are understood) is literally
fulfilled, then you may know that your history is the true event. But if one word lacks a
fulfillment, then you must look for another event or wait its future development. For God
takes care that history and prophecy doth agree, so that the true believing children of God
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may never be ashamed.”—Views of the Prophecies and Prophetic Chronology, Selected
from Manuscripts of William Miller with a Memoir of His Life; by Joshua V. Himes, 1841, p.
22.

Besides requiring a thorough knowledge of Scripture, the historicist method demands

also a thorough knowledge of history. Group e ort bringing together minds skilled in various
disciplines is important. But it should be remembered that by the time Miller did his work the
basic interpretations of the books of Daniel and Revelation had already been set forth by
various expositors in commentaries or in works on prophecy. After his initially independent
study, Miller criticized his own conclusions and examined all objections. On the basic
outlines of prophecy, for example, the four beasts of Dan 7, he found himself in agreement
with the expositors. But he reached certain independent conclusions. Thus he stood on the
shoulders of his predecessors. His associates in turn stood on his shoulders and corrected
and clarified some of his positions.

In turn the Seventh-day Adventist interpreters later corrected and clarified earlier
prophetic positions. So far as apocalyptic hermeneutical principles are concerned,
Seventh-day Adventists introduced few if any new principles, though they enlarged and
systematized the interpretation particularly of the two apocalyptic biblical books Daniel and
Revelation. In 1882 they published a book entitled Thoughts Critical and Practical on the
Book of Daniel and Revelation, which had already appeared as two separate volumes, the
one on revelation first printed in 1867, and the one on Daniel in 1873. The author, Uriah Smith
(1832–1903), became a Sabbath-keeping Adventist about the end of 1852 and in 1855
became one of the editors of the primary church publication, The Review and Herald, and
served as editor for many years. He also authored several other theological books. The book
has gone through many editions and some revisions.

The book takes the historicist principle for granted. The introduction of the 1897 edition
argues against those who spiritualize prophetic fulfillments.

“There are two general systems of interpretation adopted by di erent expositors in their
e orts to explain the sacred Scriptures. The first is the mystical or spiritualizing system
invented by Origen, to the shame of sound criticism and the curse of Christendom; the
second is the system of literal interpretation, used by such men as Tyndale, Luther, and all
the Reformers, and furnishing the basis for every advance step which has thus far been made
in the reformation from error to truth as taught in the Scriptures. According to the first
system, every declaration is supposed to have a mystical or hidden sense, which it is the
province of the interpreter to bring forth; by the second, every declaration is to be taken in its
most obvious and literal sense, except where the context and the well-known laws of

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language show that the terms are figurative, and not literal; and whatever is figurative must
be explained by other portions of the Bible which are literal.

“By the mystical method of Origen, it is vain to hope for any uniform understanding of
either Daniel or the Revelation, or of any other book of the Bible; for that system (if it can be
called a system) knows no law but the uncurbed imagination of its adherents; hence there
are on its side as many di erent interpretations of Scripture as there are di erent fancies of
di erent writers. By the literal method, everything is subject to well-established and clearly-
defined law; and, viewed from this standpoint, the reader will be surprised to see how
simple, easy, and clear many portions of the Scriptures at once become, which, according
to any other system, are dark and unsolvable. It is admitted that many figures are used in the
Bible, and that much of the books under consideration, especially that of the Revelation, is
clothed in symbolic language; but it is also claimed that the Scriptures introduce no figure
which they do not somewhere furnish literal language to explain. This volume is o ered as a
consistent exposition of the books of Daniel and the Revelation according to the literal
system.”—Daniel and the Revelation (1897), p. 4.

In 1953–1957 the church published the Seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentary, a

commentary on the entire Bible. This commentary in the main endorses Smith’s positions
on the prophecies of Daniel and Revelation, at the same time enlarging and clarifying some
of the interpretations. But the historicist principle remains.

With futurism dominating Protestant prophetic interpretation, Seventh-day Adventists

today are almost the only ones championing the historicist view. Characterizing the current
Protestant scene in prophetic interpretation, Bernard Ramm does not even make specific
mention of the historicist school. He says, “Among Protestants three principal schools stand
out: there is the premillennial school that follows a literalistic method of prophetic
interpretation; the amillennial school which is spiritualistic in its interpretation; and the
post-millennial school that is midway between literalism and spiritualization. It is axiomatic
that the ‘root of their di erences lies in the method of Biblical interpretation.’ ”—Protestant
Biblical Interpretation, pp. 155, 156.

While Seventh-day Adventists are premillennialists so far as the literal meaning of the
term is concerned (that is, they believe that the second coming of Christ precedes the
millennium) they do not belong to the premillennial school that Ramm describes. Ramm’s
premillennialists look for the Temple to be rebuilt at Jerusalem, the Jews to turn in large
numbers to Christ, and for probation to continue through the millennium. His amillennialists
spiritualize many of the prophecies.

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 This observation is significant in that it may show why current Adventist prophetic
interpretation is largely ignored by current scholars in the field of prophetic interpretation.

One point of di erence between the Adventist position and contemporary literalist
premillennialism deserves attention. Whereas Miller and later Adventists a irmed that
human probation ends at the time of the Second Advent, literalist premillennialists look for
a millennium during which the Jews, restored, not only to Palestine, but also to God’s favor,
will rule over mortal kingdoms.

Against these literalist notions the Adventists contended from the beginning. Their
opposition was evident, for example, in a recommendation of the twelfth Millerite Second
Advent Conference (1842), from which literalist premillennialists were excluded: “All
persons who reject the doctrines of temporal millennium and the restoration of the Jews to
Palestine, either before or after the Second Advent, and who believe the Second Advent of
Christ and the first resurrection to be the next great events of prophetic history, be invited to
enroll their names as member[s] of this conference.”—The Signs of the Times, 3:69, June 1,
1842.

The conference also a irmed: “No portion of the New Testament scriptures give[s] the
most indirect intimation of the literal restoration of the Jews to old Jerusalem; we believe that
the arguments drawn from the Old Testament prophecies are based on a mistaken view of
those prophecies.”—Ibid.

Concerning the millenarian view, Miller declared, “There is not a text, promise, or
prophecy, written or given of God” to support the idea that the OT prophecies require a future
restoration of the Jews.—Views of … William Miller, ed. 1842 by J. V. Himes, p. 233.

Among the earliest clearest explanations of this viewpoint were several articles in the
Review and Herald in 1856 and 1857 by J. H. Waggoner. In a book on the subject he said, “All
of God’s purposes of grace to man, are conditional, [and] as the blessings set before them
[the Jews] were conditional, they could claim them only on the fulfillment of the
conditions.… We consider that this was conditional prophecy, the promises of which have
been forfeited.”—J. H. Waggoner, The Kingdom of God (1859), pp. 87–109.

“This [the old] covenant was made at Horeb, and was conditional, as recorded in Ex. 19.
The Lord said to them, ‘If ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant, then ye shall
be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people.’ ”—J. H. Waggoner in Review and Herald,
9:77, Jan. 8, 1857.

Adventists looked for the ancient prophecies to be fulfilled in principle in the Christian
Church. The Boston Second Advent Conference (1842) a irmed that “the Old Testament

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prophecies … have been fulfilled in what the gospel has already done, or remain to be
fulfilled in the gathering of all the spiritual seed of Abraham into the New Jerusalem.”—The
Signs of the Times, 3:69, June 1, 1842.

Ellen White stated the principle as follows: “The glorious purposes which he had
undertaken to accomplish through Israel were to be fulfilled. All who, through Christ, should
become the children of faith, were to be counted as Abraham’s seed; they were inheritors of
the covenant-promises.”—Patriarchs and Prophets, p. 476.

“That which God purposed to do for the world through Israel, the chosen nation. He will
finally accomplish through His church on earth today.”—Prophets and Kings, pp. 713, 714.

The concept that prophecies may be conditionally stated is consonant with the general
Adventist view—that man’s will and action may alter the manner in which God’s purposes
are carried out.

On the other hand, literalist premillennialists emphasize the sovereignty of God and
maintain that since God cannot go back on His promises to Abraham, Abraham’s literal
descendants in the future must experience fulfillment of the glorious promises.

General Hermeneutical Principles

We turn now to a consideration of general hermeneutical principles followed by

Adventists. The Millerite contribution was largely in the area of prophecy. In general
principles the Millerites represented the various churches out of which they came, which
usually followed the Protestant hermeneutic.

The group of Millerites that organized itself into the SDA Church also represented diverse
backgrounds. This group faced the task of unifying its beliefs not only in the area of prophetic
interpretation but also in the area of doctrine. This process went on over a period of some
ten years, from 1844 to about 1855. During this time the leaders of the embryonic SDA
Church conducted private Bible study groups and held numerous conferences. Arriving
eventually at uniformity of belief, they organized themselves in 1860.

Although no one set himself to the task of formulating a systematic hermeneutic by

which Scripture interpretations were arrived at, certain principles were assumed or carried
over from their Protestant denominational heritage. The nature of these principles became
evident as doctrines were adopted and defended.

Although no thorough and complete survey of Adventist hermeneutic has yet been
attempted, a modest survey of the literature of the formative period reveals many references
to principles.
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 1. Sola scriptura. In the fifth issue of the earliest periodical published by the group—
Present Truth—edited by one of the founders of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, James
White (1821–1881), appears this a irmation: “The Bible is our lamp, our guide. It is our rule
of faith and practice.”—P. 40.

This same issue rea irms the Bible’s paramount position: “The Bible is our chart—our
guide. It is our only rule of faith and practice, to which we would closely adhere.”—P. 46.

When in 1850 the Review and Herald succeeded Present Truth, it too a irmed the
primacy of the Bible: “Every Christian is therefore duty bound to take the Bible as a perfect
rule of faith and duty. He should pray fervently to be aided by the Holy Spirit in searching the
Scriptures for the whole truth, and for his whole duty. He is not at liberty to turn from them
to learn his duty through any of the gifts.”—1:70, April 21, 1851.

Chiding Protestants for adopting the rule of the Romanists—the Bible and tradition—J.
N. Andrews (1829–1883), a prominent early minister, in a later issue enjoins: “We answer,
make the word of God your only rule, receive what is written therein, and reject all beside.
That the Protestant world now cherish an institution without foundation in Scripture, which
was established by the gradual development of the great apostasy [sic], can only be
accounted for by the fact that Protestants have adopted the rule of the Romanists in the
place of their own.”—Review and Herald 1:88, May 19, 1851.

The question constantly raised by those who formulated the system of belief was “Is it
sustained by the Word of God?” With respect to a certain unacceptable interpretation of Rev
1:10, the blunt denial was made, “We object to this view, because it is not sustained by the
Word. In fact it is entirely destitute of support from the Holy Scriptures. Others may refer to
the ‘Fathers;’ but we appeal to the Word of God.”—Review and Herald 1:76, May 6, 1851.

In the face of conflicting views they would “take the Bible alone as the sure detector, as
that which will discover unto us the truth.”—J. N. Loughborough, Review and Herald 7:33,
Sept. 4, 1855.

And again: “But in all doctrinal questions which arise in the theological world, there must
be some ground upon which we can anchor; there must be some standard by which to test
and decide conflicting opinions. Such a standard is the word of God.”—Review and Herald
12:196, Nov. 11, 1858.

2. The unity of Scripture. The unity of Scripture is a irmed in a reprint from American
Messenger: “Throughout the whole Bible, there runs one great idea—man’s ruin by sin, and
his redemption by grace; in a word, Jesus Christ the Saviour. This runs through the Old
Testament, that prelude to the New.”—Review and Herald 27:123, March 20, 1866.

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 This assumption of the unity of Scripture is evident throughout these early writings,
where one part of Scripture is constantly made to explain another. Unity of authorship is
assumed.

3. Let Scripture explain Scripture. This principle is a corollary of the principle of the unity
of Scripture. The principle is appealed to, for example, in an 1851 editorial by James White:
“Scripture must explain Scripture, then a harmony may be seen throughout the whole.”—
Review and Herald 1:62, April 7, 1851.

4. The words of the Bible must be given their proper meaning. An unsigned filler in an
1855 issue states, “To ascertain what any passage says, consider what the words mean,
according to their common acceptation and according to their usage elsewhere in the
Scriptures; if they have more meanings than one, consider their connection and subject of
discourse.”—Review and Herald 7:38, Sept. 4, 1855.

This rule was expanded, at least in practice, to include the definition of words from the
original languages. Thus Hebrew and Greek terms are frequently quoted, and authorities
cited as to meanings of the original terms. Those not versed in the original languages
frequently resorted to various translations in order to clarify the meanings of words.

5. Attention to context and historical backgrounds. With reference to Paul’s writings in

Romans 14:1–6 the direction is given: “If we would rightly understand the words of the
Apostle we should first learn the subject of his discourse.”—Review and Herald 1:68, Apr. 21,
1851.

This rule is repeatedly demonstrated as the question is raised, What was the Bible writer
speaking about, what was he saying, and what did he mean by what he said?

6. The Bible must be interpreted according to the plain, obvious, and literal import unless
a figure is employed. This rule was a recurring theme at a time when critics attempted to
demolish the positions taken by the Adventists. D. P. Hall sets forth the problem:

“I never realized the importance of being governed by correct principles of interpretation

more fully than at the present time, just having had an interview with a minister of one of the
popular denominations, who denied the literality and tangibility of everything taught in the
Bible. The second coming of Christ, death, resurrection, and in fact everything taught as the
foundation of faith and hope, are by this mysticism swept away, and the past, present and
future all thrown into chaos, and left without form and void. But there is a remedy for all this
jargon and confusion, and it is to be found in the use of the literal principles of interpretation.
Interpret the language of the sacred writers as you do the language of all others, and this
di iculty would be speedily obviated.”—Review and Herald 6:17, Aug. 29, 1854.

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 J. N. Loughborough (1832–1924) dealt with the same problem: “The beauty of Divine
Revelation has been shut away from the minds of the common people, by their being taught,
and supposing that the Bible does not mean what it says, or that the sense of the scripture
writers is not contained in the scriptures themselves, but that they are mystical and have a
hidden meaning. If this be a fact, we inquire, How shall we arrive at just conceptions of that
word and its true interpretation?”—Review and Herald 7:34, Sept. 4, 1855.

He continues: “We admit that figures are there used, and explained, but must claim that
a plain statement should be understood the same as when made in any other book. We can
form no just conceptions of God’s character as revealed in the word, if this be not the truth
of the matter. If God had revealed his will in such a manner that man cannot understand it,
and then pronounced in that word condemnation and death to those who did not obey his
will, we should at once conclude that he manifested none of the character the word
represents him as possessing.”—Ibid.

As to the mystical meaning and its source, Uriah Smith speaks of it as that “hidden,
spiritual and mystical interpretation of the word of God, which was introduced by the fathers
of the speculative philosophy, and has been continued by their successors to the present
time. Of these persons Mosheim (Church Hist. Cent. ii, part 2, chap. ii, S5) thus speaks: ‘They
attributed a double sense to the words of Scripture; the one obvious and literal, the other
hidden and mysterious which lay concealed as it were under the vail of the outward letter.
The former they treated with the utmost neglect, and turned the whole force of their genius
and application to unfold the latter; or, in other words, they were more studious to darken
the Scriptures with their idle fictions than to investigate their true and natural sense.’ But for
this course on the part of early commentators, views opposite to the obvious and literal
teaching of the Scriptures would undoubtedly never have obtained in the church.”—Review
and Herald 15:4, Nov. 24, 1859.

This antipathy to a hidden mysterious meaning was not intended to rule out typology, or
amplification of literal meanings, that a later inspired writer might bring out. The rule of
permitting Scripture to explain Scripture took care of the latter.

7. The typological principle. Perhaps the earliest clear statement of this principle after
1844 is the following by O. R. L. Crosier, who wrote on “The Law of Moses” in a Day Star Extra,
Feb. 7, 1846. He said, “The Law should be studied and ‘remembered’ as a simplified model
of the great system of redemption containing symbolic representations of the work begun by
our Savior at his first advent, when he ‘came to fulfill the Law,’ and to be completed in ‘the
redemption of the purchased possession unto the praise of His glory.’ Redemption is
deliverance purchased by the payment of a ransom, hence it cannot be complete till man
and the earth shall be delivered from the subjection and consequences of sin; the last act of
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deliverance will be at the end of the 1000 years. To this the shadow of the Law extended.”—
P. 37.

There are repeated instances of the application of the typological system with reference
to the ancient ritual services. The key for the application, as noted earlier, the Seventh-day
Adventist founders discovered in the book of Hebrews, which speaks of a heavenly
sanctuary where Jesus Christ ministers as priest. With reference to cleansing, it is stated
that “it was therefore necessary that the patterns of things in the heavens should be purified
with these; but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these” (Heb 9:23).

Midstream Confirmation of Formative Hermeneutic

As indicated earlier in this chapter, no complete survey of the Seventh-day Adventist

hermeneutic from 1840 to the present has yet been attempted. The need for such a work
may well be pointed up both by this chapter and this book.

Some clues to the general principles of interpretation recognized in the formative period
have just been given. The tentative thesis that there has been little change in these principles
may find some confirmation in an editorial appearing in two successive issues of The Signs
of the Times (an Adventist church publication of evangelistic intent) from the pen of E. J.
Waggoner, who was to play a significant role in the epochal 1888 General Conference of
Seventh-day Adventists.

In the second of these editorials (Jan. 6 and 13, 1887) Waggoner summarized the
principles of interpretation, which were the subject of the first:

We noted first, that the Bible is absolute truth and that anything that disagrees
with it in the slightest particular must be false. Second, that the Bible, though
composed of many books, is one Book with one Author; that there is perfect harmony
in all its parts. Third, that the Bible contains all truth, because that by it a man may be
“thoroughly furnished unto all good works;” and that therefore it must be its own
interpreter. Fourth, that one part of the Bible cannot be fully understood if taken out
of its connection, or without reference to the Bible as a whole. There is no book in the
Bible upon which light is not thrown by every other book in the Bible.…

Lastly, we showed that a term used in one place in the Bible must have the same
meaning in every other place where it occurs, especially if the same subject is under
consideration.

Waggoner concluded the second editorial with cautionary comments on the selection
and use of commentaries.
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 Hopefully, an outgrowth of this present symposium on hermeneutics may be the careful
and complete survey of the extensive denominational literature in order to trace the
evidence for the church’s hermeneutic.

Hermeneutics Applied to Sabbath

A demonstration of early Adventist hermeneutical principles may be seen in the Seventh-

day Adventists’ defense of the seventh-day Sabbath, one of their cardinal doctrines.

During the Millerite movement of the 1840’s the “Sabbath” was discussed, but there was
no widespread agitation. Sabbath-keeping among Millerites seems to have begun in
Washington, New Hampshire, in 1844, when certain members of the Christian Church there
read literature distributed by Rachel Oakes (later Preston), a Seventh Day Baptist. T. M.
Preble, a prominent Millerite minister, living not far from Washington, New Hampshire,
probably learned of the Sabbath through contact with the Sabbathkeepers there. He
published a tract on the Sabbath, which was read by Joseph Bates (1792–1872), one of the
founders of the SDA Church. Convinced, Bates himself wrote two tracts on the Sabbath, the
second of which was studied by James White, the principal founder of the SDA Church, and
his wife. Both began keeping the Sabbath in 1846. White and Bates were both strong leaders,
and from them the Sabbath doctrine spread to other Adventists by means of conferences
held in various areas, and through publications advocating the Sabbath.

When the embryonic church began publishing a periodical in 1849, The Present Truth,
the first three issues—the first published in July, 1849, and the next two in August, 1849—
dealt almost exclusively with the Sabbath.

Their argument was that the Scriptures enjoin the keeping of the seventh day of the week,
not the first day. They noted that the Sabbath was instituted at the end of Creation week (Gn
2:2, 3) and was made for man, generic man, not merely the Jew (Mk 2:27). It was embodied
in the Decalogue (Ex 20:8–11) but originated before Sinai, as evident not only from Gn 2:3 but
also from Ex 16, which describes the incident of the giving of the manna, which occurred
some 30 days before Sinai.

From such texts as Mt 5:17–33 they showed that the Decalogue is permanently binding
and must not be confused with the ceremonial law, which was temporary. Turning to the NT
they showed how the Sabbath was enforced there as well.

These same issues of Present Truth examined the various Scriptures usually quoted to
prove the abolition of the Sabbath. It is in the examination of these that hermeneutical
principles are appealed to, such as attention to historical backgrounds, importance of
context, importance of the meaning of words and sentences, and analogy of Scripture.
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 Another article examined the evidences presented for the first-day sabbath and found
each one of them lacking when the accepted Protestant hermeneutic is applied.

A reprint from Tract No. 6 of the American Sabbath Tract Society lists 20 reasons for
keeping holy in each week the seventh day instead of the first day. Its reason No. 17 appeals
directly to the sola scriptura principle:

“17. Because, if the fundamental principle of Protestantism be right and true, that ‘the
Bible alone is the religion of Protestants,’ then the Seventh Day must be the true and only
Sabbath of Protestants; for, unless that day of the week be kept, they have no scriptural
Sabbath at all.”—The Present Truth, Aug., 1849, p. 21.

Number 18 chides the Protestants: “Because the pertinacious observance of the First
Day of the Week, in the stead of the Seventh, has actually given occasion of great scandal to
the Protestant faith; it has caused the Papists to declare that Protestants admit the authority
of human tradition in matters of religion; and it has led to intolerance and persecution.”—
Ibid.

In a reference to the Reformers’ position, number 15 says: “… the leaders of the

Reformation never claimed for the First Day the name of the Sabbath, and never enforced
the observance of that day by any other authority than that of the Church.”—Ibid.

Summary and Conclusions

A preliminary examination of the hermeneutical principles followed by the Adventists

reveals that they worked within the established Protestant system and did not introduce new
rules of interpretation. They appealed constantly to the Bible and the Bible only as their rule
of faith and practice. They defended their faith by presenting what they frequently referred to
as “Bible evidence.” So strongly was their faith rooted in the Bible that they refused to write
a formal creed, maintaining that the Bible was their creed.

In the area of prophetic interpretation they followed, in general, the historicist system,
the standard Protestant interpretation. Today, it appears, they are almost the only
champions of the system and of the conditional nature of God’s promises to literal Israel.

By the time the Seventh-day Adventist Church was organized in 1860 the over-all
doctrinal system had been established. Since that time there have been clarifications and
amplifications but no changes in doctrine.

The same may be suspected concerning hermeneutical principles. These, inherited from
a Protestant background, still serve the church today. As the church developed its
educational system and established its seminary in 1934, these principles were reassessed,
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and they began to be more clearly and systematically stated. This present symposium is the
church’s first attempt to set forth in detailed and more complete form its present system of
hermeneutics. Lesser attempts were made in the past, notably in the book Problems in Bible
Translation, published in 1954. This work, although designed primarily to deal with
translation problems in the newly published Revised Standard Version, had several chapters
dealing with hermeneutical principles: “The Transmission and Preservation of the Bible Text,”
“A Survey of Translation Problems,” “The Place of Biblical Languages in the Life of the
Church,” “Principles of Biblical Interpretation,” “Application of Old Testament Prophecies to
New Testament and Later times.”

When the church produced a commentary on the Bible (1953–1958) it was necessary to
have a clearly understood system of hermeneutics as the base for the comments. Although
this system was not formally stated except in part, various of its principles are appealed to
and demonstrated in the various comments. But it remained for this symposium to attempt
to set it forth in an organized way. In the light of the continuing conflict between the liberal
and the new conservative branches of theology, it may prove a most timely attempt.

The founders of the church laid the foundation well. None of them possessed advanced
educational degrees. But their work has stood the test of the years and the scrutiny of
scholarly minds. The doctrines they formulated are still the doctrines of the Seventh-day
Adventist Church. They stand on sure footing, having now stood the test of the decades and
the application of constantly refining disciplines in the area of biblical studies.

After 12 years of ministry in the Potomac Conference of

Seventh-day Adventists, Professor Frank B. Holbrook
joined the religion faculty of Southern Missionary
College, Collegedale, Tennessee, in 1964. He is an
associate professor of religion and recently served as
acting chairman of the religion department. He holds

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the Master of Theology degree from the Seventh-day
Adventist Theological Seminary of Andrews University.

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