The victim of a human theory, newfangled or old, is injured in many ways--chiefly in that he is robbed of the word of God. The Bible is still in his hand, to be sure, perhaps more than ever; but it is now no longer God's word drawing near to his soul to speak to him. The warmth and beauty and fragrance and the personal communion with the Father are gone. The Book has become an arsenal of weapons, a collection of proof propositions, a pincushion full of points to stick somebody with. The beauty has fled from the fairest, sweetest chapter, and it has no longer any worth or relevancy unless it bears in some way upon the theory. Like a buzzard who sweeps over a wonderful landscape and has eyes for nothing except a carcass, so the man poisoned with a theory sees just that in God's sublime revelation which goes to confirm his theory and enables him to meet some one's objection to his system of doctrine. Alas, poor man! As a worm gnawing at the root of a vine makes it to dry up and die, so is your theory doing its deadly work in your soul; and from a living, warm-hearted child, you have grown to be a dry, disputatious, argumentatious, talkative dogmatist, whose world revolves around the idol theory your mind has conceived or seized. Your fountain of life has dried up. You will grow no more. Never again shall you hear (if, indeed, you have ever heard) the heart beat of your Father's love, except by some means you be delivered from the [112] snares in which you are taken captive. "Who steals my purse steals trash;" who "filches from me my good name" has done me a greater wrong; but he has done me the immeasurable harm who robs me of the word of God.

      I said above that this theory spinning and system building is easy. Let me point out the method of making a new theory--not, I hope, to aid any one in constructing one, but to expose the poor little secret of them all. First, it may be from a partial glimpse of God's word, or from some suggestion received from man's wisdom, or out of his own philosophy, a man conceives a certain idea or scheme of doctrine; second, he goes to the Bible to find support for it; third, he goes about to explain away any text of scripture that conflicts with the theory and which might be used against it; fourth, he tries to make the new theory which has been thus established an absolute essential to salvation, if possible so far as to baptize people again on the strength of it. For if that latter item were omitted, people would say, "Yes, it is very good," and go their ways; and the poor inventor, having thus lost his patent, remains to blush unseen, instead of becoming "a prominent figure on the ecclesiastical horizon" and the leader of a great movement, and, if possible, the "founder of a new church."

      As for the task of "explaining away" difficulties, that is the easiest part of all. There never has been a passage so plain that some one could not make it appear to mean something else than what it said, or nothing at all. [113] It takes but a little shrewdness, a little sophistry, a little Greek or Hebrew if necessary, a little imagination and assertion, when--lo!--it is done. "How about the law which is written and engraved on stones, mentioned in 2 Cor. 3:7, and which is spoken of as 'passing away' in verse 11?" I asked a person somewhat taken with Seventh-Day Adventism. "That was not the Ten Commandments," was the reply. "But they alone were written on tables of stone." "But the Adventist make a distinction between 'stones' and 'tables of stone.'" I expected as much. They are simply obliged to make a "distinction" or something, else their theory is exploded. Just so the various stripes of soul sleepers, and annihilationists are absolutely compelled to "explain" the story of the rich man and Lazarus. It would never do to let it stand just as it is. It must be "explained;" for if it goes at face value, our theory is done for. So it is made a parable; nay, an old rabbinical myth which the Savior but relates and applies; nay, a fable which does not and cannot truly represent the state of the dead, for this grave reason or that; nay, an allegory in which Lazarus was the Gentile, the rich man the Jew; etc.--anything, only so this passage is got rid of and the precious theory saved. If it should be a plain term that stands outright in the way, it can be made figurative. You ask how? Well, let us assume it is the word "all" that must be removed to save the doctrine. Turn back now and see how "all Jerusalem and Judea" went out and were baptized of John. Now there "all" did not mean "all." It was used figuratively to mean "a great part," "many." Therefore "all" does not mean "all" here; do you see? And he smiles in his triumph over the obnoxious word. But wisdom is justified of her children. I could pledge myself to "prove" anything at all, if I am allowed to deal with the Bible in that way. [114]

      There is another vicious principle of Bible interpretation constantly adopted by theorists. It lies in the "harmonizing" of apparently conflicting texts. Here is a passage making a statement; over there is another which seems to declare the opposite. Now for those who simply believe God's word it is not difficult to see that there must be a higher harmony between the two which does violence to neither, and that we are at liberty to believe and preach both these passages just as they stand--and that whether or not we are able to perceive the tie that unites them. But with the theorist it is otherwise. One of these passages is for him, the other against him. One of them, therefore, is accepted at what it says and strongly emphasized; the other has to be knocked out of commission. I do not have to tell you which one it is that will be demolished and which one will be saved. Thank God that a Christian needs not learn the serpentine arts which those who have a theory to defend are obliged to practice.

[TAG 112-115]