Is It Worth Questioning?
How much is enough?
How do we know when to quit?
At what point do we determine we have legitimately rung-out every last drop of biblical truth from any given doctrine before we find we have gone just a little too far in defining the details?
And, if someone does over-step…just a little…what does it take for someone else (with some level of authority) to come along and recognize this over-stepping for what it is and to make an authoritative change?
Further, what if that slight over-stepping becomes formally documented “truth,” an official church doctrine, part of the seminary curriculum, and the like?
What if, over time, little-by-little, one more nugget of “truth” or one more “proof” passage gets added to the original slight over-stepping?
What if these new “truths” also get added to formal documents, official church doctrine, seminary curriculum, and the like?
What would it take for these supposed truths to be corrected rather than vehemently held onto, no matter what?
Pulling From or Reading Into?
Exegesis vs eisegesis.
Those are the fancy theological terms which simply refer to pulling meaning from the text vs. reading meaning into the text.
Exegesis is to pull meaning from the text of Scripture – allowing Scripture to speak to you.
Eisegesis, on the other hand, is to read meaning into the text of Scripture – imposing meaning upon the text. Put another way, eisegesis is seeing meaning in the text, which just isn’t there.
It can certainly be an easy thing to do, especially in this digital age, when we can so easily “search” for a particular word, phrase or topic and dozens of results pop up…all, out of context.
Context
Read out of context, a number of “proof” passages for UOJ, for example, could easily seem to suggest (on the surface) UOJ could actually be true.
Ahh, but context…context is always king.
Or…should be.
In context, any given passage can take on an entirely different meaning than that which may appear to be the case, when taken out of context. Only in context, can we legitimately expect to find and correctly comprehend the original (the true) meaning of the passage in question.
Any False Doctrine…
The topic of how man comes to be justified before a holy God is arguably the central, most important doctrine in all of Scripture.
When errors arise regarding any doctrine of Scripture, by-and-large, we do well to address them one-by-one. We do well to “put down” error with the light of God’s truth. We do well to quickly extinguish the flaming arrows of the evil one before his lies have the opportunity to take root and grow.
“Any false doctrine, carried to its logical conclusion, ends in spiritual death.”
If you have been around conservative Lutheran circles for any length of time, you may have heard this statement before.
I happen to agree with this statement.
If we need to take every precaution to squash any false teaching, in an attempt to avoid spiritual death (or preserve spiritual life, as the case may be) how much more important is it to pay particularly close attention to those teachings which have to do with justification.
Too Much of a Good Thing?
I don’t know exactly how the teaching of UOJ came to be, but if I had to guess, I would think it had something to do with addressing some sort of real or perceived doctrinal error. Or, maybe it was simply an attempt to find an answer to some previously unanswered question.
Either way, is it possible that somewhere along the way someone (or more than one someone) stepped into error, while trying to define things too precisely?
Possible…is it just possible?
If so, what would it take to correct it?
At what point do we determine we have legitimately rung-out every last drop of biblical truth from any given doctrine before we find we have gone just a little too far in defining the details?
Have proponents of UOJ attempted to define things a little too precisely?
How will you handle the word of God?
Which is more consistent with the entire testimony of Scripture, UOJ or JIC or something else?
To find out more about UOJ “proof” passages in context, see Category 3 – UOJ Proof Passages.