The role of experience in exegesis

by Dan Phillips

I have an office in our garage, an asset my wife lovingly engineered for me. Recently, I went out in the darkness, taking a meal with me. I had my drink in one hand, my plate of food in another. To free my hand for my keys, I set the plate down on a flat surface, in the dark. I unlocked the door, then distractedly looked for the glass — which I was holding in my hand. The plate was in front of me, but I couldn't see it. I was looking for something else.

Why didn't I see the plate? It was right there, smack-dab in front of me. My eyes even registered its shape in the dark. The plate didn't move. It was just as there when I didn't see it as it was a moment later, when I realized what I should be looking for, and looked at the exact same spot again.

I didn't see it because I wasn't looking for it. No problem in the external evidence, no problem with the organs of perception. The problem was in my mind, my orientation, my focus.

In interpreting Scripture, we rightly stress objective exegesis: the rules, procedures, and standards by which we bring out the meaning of the text. Also, we rightly eschew the "Well, what it means to me is..." school of slushy interpretation. I've responded to that sloppy line with what was quoted to me (apocryphally?) as John MacArthur's response: "Okay, so what would it mean if you were dead?"

Scripture itself is given, fixed, and perfectly fulfills God's grand intent for it (Psalm 19:7-11; 2 Timothy 3:15-17). Revelation was an unfolding process that has reached its goal (Hebrews 1:1-2; 2:1-4). It is not itself in need of any improvement, but is God's appointed means of our improvement in holiness (John 17:17). Everything we need is there. But are we seeing what is there?

Is there a role for experience in interpretation? Is it possible that Calvin, Luther, Knox, Edwards, Spurgeon — with gifts and/or education vastly superior to ours — might have actually missed something that really is there, was there, right in the text? A truth, or an aspect of truth that was looking them square in the face, but which they simply did not see because they were not looking for it?

As a doctrinal matter, I would expect that the contents of the Bible, coming as they do from the vast mind of the infinite-personal God of Scripture, would not ever be exhausted, even under the examination of a thousand generations of careful scholarship. No believer should have a moment's hesitation praying, with utmost sincerity, "Open my eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of your law" (Psalm 119:18). The wonders are there, to be sure. They've been there all along. But am I seeing them?

Beyond that, we've all experienced it, if we've grown even slightly as Christians. The text does not change, but we do, and so do our observations. I recall vividly reading a passage in the Old Testament one morning, then later that very day going to a Bible conference where the speaker opened up that same passage. I'd just read it, but his exposition made me feel as if I'd never read it at all.

Shouldn't we expect that successive generations of believing Bible readers would legitimately see some aspects of Scripture in new lights? Shouldn't we expect growth in doctrinal understanding, as the church matures (cf. Ephesians 4:11-16), and as the specific challenges we face change?

Let me give an example. After a great deal of careful exegesis, and reading (and trying to make sense) of competing interpretations, I've come to the position that the most natural reading of 1 Corinthians 13:8-10 is what is today the minority position: that to teleion ("that which is perfect") is the completed product of the process of revelation. Now, there are some pretty good arguments against the position, and some very good arguments for — neither of which is my point at the moment. Here's the point.

One of the criticisms of this position is that it was not held by earlier interpreters. If it was there, surely they would have seen it, and it would have gained ascendancy by Calvin's time.

John Calvin had a pretty full plate. He was at the vanguard of Biblical response to Rome's oppressive stranglehold, and his focus was on matters of theology, soteriology and ecclesiology. I doubt that any one of us agrees with absolutely every conclusion Calvin reached. Every one of his modern students makes allowances that even such a prodigious man was finite, had his limitations.

(Any "Calvinist" who denies that simple assertion, while using "TULIP" [which Calvin did not], or explaining limited atonement with depth and specificity [which Calvin did not], is self-refuting.)

But do some of those limitations grow out of the false teachings to which we are called to respond in our day, which had no prevalence in theirs? When it comes to Gospel issues and Rome's damning errors, we today have the unique luxury of sitting on the shoulders of Calvin himself and a host of other worthies. We can regard some issues as objectively "closed," as Calvin could not.

But is not the converse also true? Is a fresh look at Scripture warranted in some areas?

I specifically have in mind the uniquely modern practice of acting as if the Canon had not been completed, as if revelatory or attestational gifts still were needed. The purported production of fresh revelation has not been mainstream Christian claim since the apostolic age. There were heretics and oddballs here and there, now and then; but as a rule they were exposed and rejected as "enthusiasts," fanatics, and/or heretics. They were not the mainstream distractions from the Word that they are today.

So is it possible that our forefathers, though our betters in many ways, did not see some aspects of Scripture that were, in fact, there? Is it conceivable that they were not seeing these aspects, because they were looking at them but not for them?

Don't we experience this on an individual basis as we grow? The Bible has not changed since we were 10, 20, 30, 40... but do we not see more in it than we did at that time? And if not, is that not a cause for alarm rather than pride?

And if it is so for us as individuals, should it not be so for the church as a whole?

Concluding caveats: I will not stand with anyone who says that that a Biblical construct can't be true unless Calvin, Knox, Owen, Edwards, the Westminster Divines or the other greats saw it first. These folks stand in danger of not finding what God has put in His living Word. They almost might as well not bother with the Bible, and go straight to their heroes to find out what the Bible says.

But I equally will not stand with anyone who does not boast he's hit on something that every last one of them missed, unless he trembles when he says it — and stands ready to make a deucedly good Biblical case for it. This spirit of arrogance is often warned against in Proverbs, and the disasters threatened there loom as real and imminent today (cf. Proverbs 11:2; 12:1, 15; 13:10; 16:18; 18:12; 21:4, 24). The hope of discovery must be coupled with appropriate humility before one's elders and betters.

Otherwise, one stands in danger of "finding" something that had never been found before, simply because it was never there.

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