Dungan - Hermeneutics

D. R. Dungan's Hermeneutics: A Text-Book: Chapter IV.
think a good thought, of himself, the thinking world says your Bible teaches what every man knows to be
false. Supposing that the Scriptures have been fairly dealt with, the thinking man turns away from them
in utter disgust.
(2.) Not only is the Bible made to teach what we know to be untrue, but also to contradict itself.--It is
said that to come to God in any acceptable devotion, we must not only believe that God is, but that He is
a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him. Then we are told that faith is a direct gift of God, and that
the only thing that one can do in order to become a believer, is to ask God for that faith by which he can
be saved. The logical mind balks at the sight of such confusion. He says: I can not be heard and have my
prayer answered, unless I have faith when I go to Him. But I have not that faith, and am told that I must
pray for it. That is, I must have the faith before the prayer can be heard, and I must pray before I can have
faith. He says that such doctrine is nonsense. And, supposing that the exegetes have done their work all
right, he declares the Bible to be self-contradictory, and, from that hour sneers at the claims of inspiration
made in its favor.
(3.) False methods have turned over the Bible to the clergy, as a kind of convenient toy.--We wonder
that Christianity has outlived the treatment it has received at the hands of its friends. From the beginning
of the fifth century to the close of the fifteenth, real scriptural examination was almost entirely dispensed
with. The most ingenious travesty on the word of God was accepted as evidence of the fitness for the
ministry of the man who could arrange it. Theology related to the forms of church government, or some
question about Transubstantiation, [55] Trinity, Predestination, Indulgences, Penance, or whether tonsure
should be made by shaving the head from the forehead, backward over the crown, or to begin at one ear
and shave over the crown to the other ear. This was a grave question, on which the English Church and
the Church of the Pope could not agree, until it was settled by King Oswy, before whom the question had
been argued by the ablest theologians of the time.
There were reformers, here and there, who wished to give to the people the word of the living God,
and to urge them to follow it as their guide to heaven; but, as said before, they were few in number, and
their power for good was scarcely felt. Religious people were controlled by scientific theology, and not
by the word of God. As the philosophical puzzles of the day had little or nothing to do with the
Scriptures, everything was left to those who had the time and were paid to attend to such things.
We think that it was a great misfortune to have lived in that day, and yet how much have we
improved? Orthodoxy and heterodoxy are determined now, more by the canonized authorities than by the
word of God. If a missionary now be questioned as to the soundness of his faith, it is to be decided more
by the custom of the church, than by the word of Scripture. The sensational sermons of to-day are
excused on the ground of dullness of the people and the need of something to appetize them. But
whatever the cause, it is lamentably true that the masses are getting but little help in understanding the
Bible from the pulpit at the present time. Upon the weaknesses of the pulpit, not of ancient, but of
modern time, in matters of exegesis, I have nowhere seen a clearer or more manly statement than is to be
found in [56] a work of Homiletics, "The Theory of Preaching," by "Austin Phelps, D. D., late Professor
of Theology in Andover. He says:
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