03.14. 2. Seeking figurative meaning only when facts demand such an interpretation

2. Seeking figurative meaning only when facts demand such an interpretation

Though this point has been partially covered in discussing Jonah 2:3, it is such a vital element of our rule, I feel that I should emphasize it at this point. Possibly a violation or two of this principle will help to show emphatically why it is so very important. There are those of the rationalistic persuasion who do not believe that there ever was such a man as Abraham, the patriarch of whom we read in Genesis. If one should read Legends of Genesis by Gunkel, he would see how the rationalists break the force of the Scriptures arbitrarily and make them to mean something entirely different from what they say. They tell us that there was no such man as Abraham, the great progenitor of the Hebrew race. Having thus deprived us of this historical character, they proceed to explain to us how it is that the name of Abram, or Abraham, as it was later called, appears on the sacred page. According to the rationalistic theory the Jews, as they came in contact with other nations of antiquity, wanted to objectify their history as the nations did. They did this by inventing some great illustrious hero from whom they were descended. Instead of Israel’s having descended from Abram, a resident of the Ur of Chaldea, they were simply the descendants of various nomadic tribes that wandered around in the Arabian Desert until they finally crossed over the border into the fertile crescent, into Palestine. The so-called historians of the eighth and ninth centuries B.C. drew upon their imaginations, created the characters, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph, and thus manufactured the history which we read in the Pentateuch and in the earlier historical portions of the Scriptures. It is hard for us who are in the habit of believing that the Bible is the very Word of God to see how men—brilliant, scholarly men—can deal with history and facts in such a fast and loose manner. But such is the logical outcome of the violation of this phase of the golden rule of interpretation.

IN THIS connection I wish to call attention to what one of my old professors in the University of Chicago said in lecturing on Genesis. During his lecture (as I sat as a student in the class) he said that most scholars denied the historicity of the Hebrew patriarchs, and that he had taken the same position with reference to all of them at one time; however, he had changed his mind in regard to Abraham. The thing that caused him to revise his opinion regarding the Father of the Faithful was that a clay tablet had been discovered upon which the name Abram appeared. This man rented a wagon to another person in order that he might make a journey from Chaldea to the land of Ammuru, the westland. Think of it! A brilliant scholarly man denied the existence of Abraham, notwithstanding all that the Bible says about him. But that which caused him to change his opinion was a clay tablet on which the contract for renting a wagon was recorded. This account caused the learned professor to change his mind and to believe in the historicity of Abraham.

If a person can take a plain passage of Scripture, close his eyes to its real meaning, and read into it a figurative or symbolic meaning, he will be forced to do the same thing with related passages—if he is logical. In doing this, he is forced to reconstruct large sections of the Scripture and to impose upon them a meaning foreign to that of the original writer. When one has once adopted this method, one has no place to stop—short of a denial of the records and of forcing a meaning upon the Word of God contrary to all facts and reason. As we have seen above, the rationalistic critics have simply carried this spiritualizing process to its inevitable conclusion. Modernism and rationalism are the logical outgrowth of forcing a figurative meaning upon a passage that is clearly literal. In the light of these facts we can see how very important it is for us to apply the golden rule of interpretation rigidly to every passage in the Word of God.