What is the difference between exegesis and eisegesis?

To which Schaff adds: "This style of interpretation is not exposition, but imposition: the meaning is not read out, but read in. History, the grammar, and the dictionary, are the proper aids in Bible study; not the subjective imagination."*

Whenever you put an interpretation, you go wrong; there is a remark of one of the old fathers (so-called), to this effect, that "he reads Scripture well, who brings back a sense from it, and not one to it."

I remember glancing at a book by a certain Regius Professor of Greek upon the Epistles to the Thessalonians. You would expect a Greek Professor of Oxford to understand Greek; but the extraordinary thing was that he continued the same mistranslation as is in the Authorised Version. There is no ground to doubt that the closing verb means "is present," not "at hand:" an error alike of rendering and of doctrine, which would contradict the apostle's own teaching in Rom. 13:12, that the day is at hand. Certainly the false teachers did not anticipate what the apostle taught; they pretended to have his authority for saying that the day was come, to the alarm of the Thessalonians. There is no just reason for questioning the regular sense. What is now admitted by every Greek scholar worth consulting eluded the Professor. How do you account for that? People go to the New Testament with their own ideas of what it ought to be, instead of to receive what God says. This is the way that people do when they rise up against the plainest truths that are in the Bible. It is because their minds are preoccupied. They have got a certain pre-conceived idea, and because of this they make the greatest blunders. Remember I do not say that the person who is addressing you is not liable to as great a blunder. I am sure we all are if we go to the Bible in that spirit. You will not, therefore, suppose I mean to speak disrespectfully of any person, but to press positive facts. We ought to have far more homage for the truth than for persons. I do not understand a man writing to keep back the truth. It may seem a wonderful thing to find a person who has the just reputation of being a scholar misinterpreting plain Greek. But he did so; and it was entirely owing to the fact that he had got a system in his mind which falsified his views of Scripture and the translation of Scripture. The only way in which a man can get rid of that is when, by grace delivered from prejudice, he looks to the Lord and approaches Scripture with the desire to learn what God says.

At the same time we must read it as it is, or rather as God wrote it; and God has addressed it, beyond controversy, not merely to Christian Jews, nor even to Jews, but to the twelve tribes that were scattered abroad. Thus it embraces such of them as were Christians; and it gives a very true and just place to those who had the faith of the Lord Jesus. Only it is a mistake to suppose that it contemplates nobody else. People may come to it with the thought that all the epistles were addressed to Christians, but this is simply wrong. If you bring this or any other preconception to the word of God, no wonder His word leaves you outside its divine and holy scope. For He is ever above us and infinitely wise. Our business is to gather what He has to teach us. There is no more fruitful source of error than such a course. No wonder, therefore, when persons approach scripture with preconceived thoughts, hoping to find confirmation there instead of gathering God's mind from what He has revealed, — no wonder that they find disappointment. The mischief evidently is in themselves and not in the divine word. Let us prayerfully seek to avoid the snare.

But the word of prophecy is of a consistent, interdependent character. No prophecy has any independent interpretation. If my interpretation does not fit perfectly with the rest of Scripture, then I am wrong. How vital it is therefore that we take Scripture itself deeply to heart, not taking a meaning to it, but bringing a meaning from it, which corresponds to the rest of Scripture.

We learn the true sense of a verse by its context. If we ignore the context, we are apt to miss the mind of God.

Some argue that because all Scripture is for us, for our edification and use, it is therefore about us. Any serious consideration must assuredly shatter such an assumption. Is it then left to uncertainty or guesswork? In no way. Nor is time the great interpreter, or history: it is the Holy Spirit. Inasmuch as He inspired to write it, so does He give understanding of God's mind to those who wait in dependence on the Lord for it. Therefore, weigh well not only the text but the context, and all other Scriptures converging on the same point.

To understand well any part of Scripture we must not take an isolated passage (though, when understood, such may be rich in edification) but read, as we should in every writing, each passage with its context, and in its place. It is with this view that, in treating of Romans 7 and 8, I take a rapid survey of the structure of the whole Epistle.

He warns us against disputes of words and recalls us, not only to the word of truth, but to the word of truth rightly divided. All Scripture is the word of truth and yet what disaster may be wrought by giving Scripture a private interpretation, or by using texts out of their context, and thus, as Peter says, wresting Scripture to our destruction.

I believe there is no exposition of the scripture which satisfies all the conditions of the context and of the rest of the Bible but this. Who would deny that scripture must have as its ultimate force some fixed determinate meaning? There must be a true and full object for the word of God, and this is in no way adverse to the principle of applying particular passages meanwhile. This is all right, and would not be objected to for a moment; but we must distinguish between the application of scripture and its just interpretation. The latter means the full mind of God, the intention and scope whether of prophecy or of anything else. Application is justifiable according to apostolic precedent as a practical use of it before "that day."