Exegesis Vs Eisegesis As Validated By Cardinal John Henry Newman

 A White Paper by Bishop Jerry Lynn Hayes

View the video version of this Epistle at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rJI4sSlUlY

At some point during the year of 2012 a statement made by Cardinal John Henry Newman(1) was brought to my attention concerning the presence of Modalistic Monarchianism during the second and third centuries. The eminent Cardinal had made a statement in a book entitled Essays and Sketches that the Trinitarian faith was hardly preached at all in Christendom during  this time. Newman wrote that Modalism dominated the geography of the Christian world. I made a search for the book and found it being sold by a used book seller who had required it from the Queenswood Library, Victoria, British Columbia. I purchased the book and have it in my personal library.

A second book by Newman came into my possession just recently entitled Apologia Pro Vita Sua. The title simply means: In defense of my life. Newman had converted to Roman Catholicism after being a celebrated churchman of the Church of England. This particular book was written as his autobiography tracing his spiritual and doctrinal development. 

These two books have become very important to me in the debate between the Oneness (also called the Modalistic Monarchian faith) and the Trinitarian faith, in an historical sense. This essay will explain why that is true. 

At the heart of the Christological debate of oneness versus trinitarianism is the subject of hermeneutics. It is often been postulated that the Oneness and Trinitarian schools employ different hermeneutics to arrive at their Christology. At the heart of this essay is the subject of a hermeneutic involving the proper way to research a doctrinal matter. Thus we will look at: exegesis versus eisegesis.

One thing that both camps can agree upon is that exegesis is the proper hermeneutic for biblical research, while eisegesis is not only faulty but in many cases down right dishonest. If I may give the definition of these two words in laymans terms, I would say: exegesis is approaching Holy Scripture with no pre-conceived notion or opinion but permitting the texts to speak for themselves; eisegesis, on the other hand is holding a pre-conceived notion, or opinion, on a matter and going to Holy Scripture to find evidence for one’s pre-held notion.

In the running debate, both the Oneness and the Trinitarian camps have accused the other of attempting to prove their opposing positions through eisegesis methods instead of the more honest and correct method of exegesis. In the name to transparency, I will admit that as a Oneness apologist I will be renewing that accusation in this writing.

The reason that Cardinal John Henry Newman figures so central in this discussion (concerning exegesis and eisegesis) are admissions that he has made in his writings which unmask the Trinitarian church’s hermeneutic of eisegesis.

To The Point

In the Cardinal’s book Essays and Sketches, Volume I, on pages 151/2 he writes that the received Godhead doctrine of the third century throughout Asia Minor, Rome and Africa was what historians call Modalism and moderns call Oneness. Newman admits that the Trinity (which he calls “the true faith”) “was hardly preached in the churches”. He writes it this way: “… Praxeas, Noetus, and Sabellius in the third (century)  protest against the Catholic or Athanasian doctrine of the Holy Trinity. … Noetus was in Asia Minor, Praxeas taught in Rome, Sabellius in Africa. Nay, we read that in the latter country their doctrine prevailed among the common people, then and at an earlier time, to a very great extent, and that the truth was hardly preached in the churches.” 

Newman writes of “the truth” that was “hardly preached in the churches”. Of course he referenced this “truth” as the modal of the Trinity set forth in the Athanasian Creed (of which the noble Athanasius knew nothing). We would ask: how did the few, the very few, arrive at this “true faith” of which the vast majority knew nothing? Was it the proper hermeneutic of exegesis of Holy Scripture, or the mischievous method of eisegesis?

Strange as it seems, in his book entitled Apologia Pro Vita Sua the Cardinal tells us the method by which the Trinity was arrived. In my 2005 Dover Edition of Apologia Pro Vita Sua, page 6, Newman writes of a sermon preached by a Dr Hawkins, with which he agrees, thusly: “he lays down a proposition, self evident as soon as stated, to those who have at all examined the structure of Scripture, vis. That the sacred text was never intended to teach doctrine, but only to prove it, and that, if we would learn doctrine, we must have recourse to the formularies of the Church; for instance to the Catechism, and to the Creeds. He considers, that, after learning from them the doctrines of Christianity, the inquirer must verify them by the Scripture. This view, most true in its outlined, most fruitful in its consequences, opened upon me a large field of thought. Doctor Whately helted it too.” 

The above text from Newman establishes the fact, as he understood it, that the “true faith” is only discovered in Holy Scripture by an eisegesis mode of research. In other words the true doctrine is learned through and by the Catechism, and the Creeds (trinitarianism’s Third Testament); sources exterior to the Bible. Only then, is the Bible consulted for evidence of beliefs established apart from it. This, to any thinking person is the quintessential definition of eisegesis. Thus, my question previously asked, I.e. “How did the few, the very few, arrive at this “true faith” of which the vast majority knew nothing? Was it the proper hermeneutic of exegesis of Holy Scripture, or the mischievous method of eisegesis?” Is answered by Newman himself. It was through “ the mischievous method of eisegesis”!

Whenever, Trinitarian apologists deny the use of eisegesis to establish their various heresies (which they call the “true faith”) we only ned to point them to Newman, Hawkins, and Whately.

Footnote (1): John Henry Newman  (21 February 1801 – 11 August 1890) was an English theologian, academic, intellectual, philosopher, polymath, historian, writer, scholar and poet, first an Anglican priest and later a Catholic priest and cardinal, who was an important and controversial figure in the religious history of England in the 19th century. He was known nationally by the mid-1830s,^[11] and was canonised as a saint in the Catholic Church in 2019.

Apostolically Speaking

☩Jerry l Hayes

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