Hermeneutics in Modern and Classic Faith Movements

If we want to live our lives according to the Bible, how we approach Scripture means everything. What differences in interpretation can we see between the contemporary Word of Faith movement and the classic Faith movement?

This chapter is from Paul L. King’s book Only Believe: Examining the Origins and Development of Classic and Contemporary Word of Faith Theologies.

 

Many, perhaps even most, of the controversies regarding contemporary faith theology and practice have involved the interpretation of various passages of Scripture. Regarding the “health and wealth gospel,” Fee affirms: “The basic problems here are hermeneutical, i.e., they involve questions as to how one interprets Scripture. Even the lay person, who may not know the word “hermeneutics’ and who is not especially trained in interpreting the Bible, senses that this is where the real problem lies. The most distressing thing about their use of Scripture … is the purely subjective and arbitrary way they interpret the biblical text.”¹

Hermeneutics and the Contemporary Faith Movement

James W. Sire, in his book Scripture Twisting, addresses ways in which cults misuse the Scriptures: inaccurate quotation, twisted translation, ignoring the immediate context, collapsing contexts of two or more unrelated texts, speculation and overspecification, mistaking literal language for figurative language (and vice versa), selective citing, confused definitions, ignoring alternative explanations, among others.² Many of these misuses of Scripture in the contemporary faith movement have been pointed out by their critics. However, this does not mean that the contemporary faith leaders are cultic as some have claimed them to be, but it does demonstrate that there is a serious problem with some contemporary faith exegesis.

Copeland appears at first glance to have a concern for proper interpretation of Scripture when he asserts “that we are putting the Word of God first and foremost throughout this study, not what we think it says, but what it actually says!”³ However, Fee responds:

This is nobly said; but what does it mean? Implied is the hint that interpretations that differ from his are based on what people think, not on what the Bible says. But also implied is the truth that good interpretation should begin with the plain meaning of the text. The plain meaning of the text, however, is precisely what Copeland and the others do not give us, text after text. … But “plain meaning” has first of all to do with the author’s original intent, it has to do with what would have been plain to those to whom the words were originally addressed. It has not to do with how someone from a suburbanized white American culture of the late 20th century reads his own cultural setting back into the text through the frequently distorted prism of the language of the early 17th century.⁴

To illustrate Fee’s apprehension, a popular saying in the contemporary faith movement proclaims, “God said it; I believe it; and that settles it.” That statement is true as far as it goes. But it leaves something out: what is it that God really said, and what does it mean? Often this is presumed, rather than thought through and studied exegetically. Lovett, formerly a professor at Oral Roberts University, also writes of his concern, explaining, “The problem with exponents of the Rhema [word of faith] interpretation is their biased selection of biblical passages, often without due regard to their context. The self-defined phrase ‘confessing the Word of God’ takes precedence over hermeneutical principles and rules for biblical interpretation. This approach not only does violence to the text but forces the NT linguistic data into artificial categories that the biblical authors themselves could not affirm.”⁵ Simmons concludes that the shaky hermeneutical foundation of the contemporary faith movement stems from its acknowledged founder: “In Kenyon’s hands, even the texts that were a major focus of Keswickeans in general proved to be remarkably elastic. … Kenyon’s tendency was to stretch a term or metaphor to a literal extreme that the original word or figure of speech did not intend.”⁶

In addition to Kenyon’s influence, Pentecostal circles generally had an aversion to formal education due to rejection of Pentecostal belief and practice by academics. As a result, some charismatic and word of faith leaders eschew theology and biblical exegesis as being traditional and not Spirit-led. James Zeigler, himself a former Rhema student and former director of the Holy Spirit Research Center at Oral Roberts University, pointed out that many of the Word of Faith teachers, not being schooled in the biblical languages, hermeneutics, and theology, rely heavily upon a literalistic rendering of the King James English version of the Bible.⁷ They have mostly secondhand knowledge of Greek and Hebrew, based on helps such as Strong’s Concordance or Vine’s Expository Dictionary, Dake’s Annotated Reference Bible and the Amplified Bible (which some scholars believe is deficient because it gives so many options, rather than defining a term within its context). One of my professors when I was a student at Oral Roberts University astutely remarked many years ago, “A little bit of knowledge [about Greek and Hebrew] can be a dangerous thing.”

Derek Vreeland, a defender of the basic principles of contemporary faith theology, nonetheless acknowledges, “The writings of E.W. Kenyon lack theological sophistication and, in part, reveal a departure from the most sound of hermeneutical principles. However, the whole of his teachings falls within the bounds of historical orthodox Christianity, on the fringe perhaps, but still within orthodoxy.”⁸ Vreeland, even though a now and again supporter of contemporary faith leaders, also admits that Hagin uses a “loose pragmatic hermeneutic” and a “selective hermeneutic.”⁹ To illustrate this lack of theological and exegetical sophistication, a few examples of hermeneutical flaws in contemporary faith teaching include:

Referring to Hebrews 1:6 where Jesus is called in KJV Bible “the first begotten,” Copeland asserts, “He’s no longer called the only begotten Son of God. He is called the first born from the dead, the first begotten of many brethren. … The next thing He does is include you and me in the begotten of God.”¹⁰ This appears to denigrate the deity of Christ and deify mankind. However, I do not believe Copeland is intentionally propagating heretical views here. Rather, he is showing his theological and exegetical ignorance by failing to distinguish between “first begotten” (prototokos—firstborn, prototype) and “only begotten” (monogenes—unique, one-of-kind).

As mentioned earlier, Capps interprets Matthew 7:7 in light of his assumptions regarding other passages of Scripture, denying that it can mean to keep on asking and seeking. Ignorant of what the text really says and means in the original language, he comes to an erroneous conclusion. Barron points out correctly, “Capps’s inflexibility demonstrates a major flaw in positive confession teaching: it attempts to make universal laws out of isolated texts.”¹¹

Regarding Hebrews 11:1, I have several times heard contemporary faith teachers claim, “Now faith is. . .—that means faith is NOW.” However, the problem with that interpretation is that the Greek word translated “now” (de) does not mean “now in time.” Rather, it is a transitional word that can be translated, “therefore.” It is valid to say that sometimes faith is now, but it cannot be claimed arbitrarily that faith is always now, nor can this verse legitimately be claimed as support for the teaching.

As has been cited earlier, inferring from the wording in the KJV Bible, some contemporary faith leaders mistake the subject of Romans 4:17, believing that believers can “call those things which are not as though they are,” when, in fact, God is the person being referred to in the context.

MacGregor notes that Copeland “interprets Isaiah 40:12 in precisely the same manner as Mormon hermeneutics: ‘The Bible says [God] measured out the heavens with a nine-inch span. Well . . . my span is eight and three-quarter inches long. So God’s span is a quarter of an inch longer than mine. So you see . . . God . . . stands around 6’2”, 6’3”, weighs somewhere in the neighborhood of a couple hundred pounds, little better.’”¹² While MacGregor believes that Copeland is intentionally borrowing from Mormonism, I think it is more likely that Copeland, if he was being serious when he made the statement, was slavishly adhering to a literalistic wording of the KJV Bible, not comprehending Isaiah’s hermeneutical use of anthropological metaphorical language to describe God in terms that ancient man could understand.

These are only a handful of the many erroneous interpretations pointed out by contemporary faith critics. Having pointed out these flaws, we must also recognize that Hagin before his death in 2003 acknowledged this problem in the contemporary faith movement and emphasized the need for interpreting Scripture in its context and not mistaking figurative for literal (though he needed to go farther with it).¹³ It should also be noted that there are some contemporary faith leaders such as Bob Yandian and Rick Renner of Tulsa, Oklahoma, who have studied the original languages and seek to apply sound exegesis and exposition, bringing moderation to contemporary faith movement interpretation and praxis.¹⁴

Hermeneutics and the Classic Faith Movement

In contrast with most contemporary faith teachers, the major classic faith teachers and their predecessors, by and large, had received a scholarly theological education, as was customary at the time. George Müller was a brilliant scholar, fluent in six languages, yet merged together scholarship and a vibrant faith. John Wesley, Andrew Murray, Thomas Upham, A.B. Simpson, Oswald Chambers, and R.A. Torrey were all seminary-educated and studied the classical languages, such as Greek, Hebrew, and Latin. Simpson won academic awards for his scholarship. Jonathan Edwards was president of Princeton in its early days. Charles Finney was trained in law. Torrey was highly educated as a graduate of Yale University and Yale Divinity School, and read the Bible in Greek, Hebrew, and German. Charles Blanchard served as president of Wheaton College. A.T. Pierson wrote a book on hermeneutics.

Others who themselves were not scholars nonetheless availed themselves of academic materials and submitted and confirmed their teachings with academics. Phoebe Palmer conferred with her husband who was a medical doctor and theologian. D.L. Moody became close friends with renowned professor Henry Drummond. Hannah Whitall Smith consulted pastors and theologians and pastors regarding her teachings, and wrote a booklet on interpreting the Bible. Amy Carmichael studied the Greek New Testament and scholarly reference material and commentaries. A.W. Tozer and John MacMillan, though never completing high school, read voraciously the church fathers, mystics, reformers, and classical writers and theologians. MacMillan learned Greek and Hebrew through self-study, conversing with rabbis, consulting with professors, and attending college and seminary classes. Spurgeon obtained a working knowledge of Greek and Hebrew and read broadly a variety of classic writings.

Still, these classic faith leaders were not stodgy academics or ivory tower theologians who had little vital experience in a walk of faith. Rather, they walked close to God and practiced a life of daring faith, yet studied intensively, practically applied exegesis to life, and relied upon the Spirit to illuminate interpretation. Seminary-educated Murray counseled both the need for study and for revelation, saying, “As all the Word of God is given by the Spirit of God, each word must be interpreted to us by that same Spirit.”¹⁵ Simpson was concerned with grammatical-historical hermeneutics, but also perceived that God had provided much divine symbolism in Scripture: “It would be a great mistake to read the Bible only symbolically. But it is beautiful to see hidden truths beneath the history.”¹⁶ This is not to say that classic faith writers all had interpretations that would be accepted by scholarship today or that they would always agree with one another’s interpretations in all matters.

Reflections and Conclusions

Spirit-guided revelation and hermeneutics are not mutually exclusive entities that oppose each other. Again, this is not a case of “either-or” but “both-and,” two polarities that are maintained in dynamic tension in the elliptical nature of truth. Scholarship and Spirit-led knowledge go hand-in-hand. Exegetical and hermeneutical study provides the banks needed to contain and maintain the flow of the river of God’s Spirit. This is not to say that a person must be a scholar to be used by God or to hear from God. Moody, Smith Wigglesworth, Tozer, and MacMillan had not completed a high school education yet were greatly used by God and received genuine insights from God. Tozer stressed the need to be not just Bible taught, but Spirit taught.¹⁷ Torrey, though a Yale graduate, did not denigrate lack of education. He too understood that a person may be well-educated but not Spirit-taught: “Prayer will do more than a theological education to make the Bible an open book. Only a man of prayer can understand the Bible.”¹⁸ Torrey balanced human education with divine education:

The man who can be most fully taught of God is the one who will be most ready to listen to what God has taught others. … But we should not be dependent on them, even though we can learn much from them. We have a divine teacher: the Holy Spirit. We will never truly know the truth until we are taught by Him. No amount of mere human teaching, no matter who our teachers may be, will give us a correct understanding of the truth. Not even a diligent study of the Word, either in the English or in the original languages, will give us a real understanding of the truth. We must be taught by the Holy Spirit.

The one who is thus taught, even if he does not know a word of Greek or Hebrew, will understand the truth of God better than someone who does know the original languages, but who is not taught by the Spirit. The Spirit will guide the one He teaches “into all truth”—not in a day, a week, or a year, but one step at a time.¹⁹

There is a need, therefore, on the one hand, for contemporary faith teachers to accept, learn and apply sound principles of hermeneutics, and, on the other hand, for those from a non-charismatic background to recognize that God does speak to people today and give special insight—whether it is called revelation or illumination or whatever. Those of us who are evangelical and/or charismatic scholars need to be open for the Holy Spirit to give new insights and fresh application to Scripture.

Contemporary faith people need to be willing to submit all supposed revelations to the tools of sound hermeneutics. (I once had a friend and colleague who was a Christian education director in a church where I was serving as assistant pastor. She often received insights into the Scriptures that could be described as revelations. However, since she had not studied the Bible in the original languages, she would come to me and say, “I believe God is saying to me that this passage means this. Does this square with the Greek or the Hebrew?”). I would recommend this approach to contemporary faith leaders. Whenever they believe they have received a special revelation from God, it would be biblical and appropriate to submit it for confirmation to scholars of like mind who are open to the realm of the supernatural—for instance, professors at charismatic or Pentecostal colleges and seminaries—like Oral Roberts University, Regent University, Assemblies of God Theological Seminary, Church of God Theological Seminary, etc., or Pentecostal/charismatic scholars at other evangelical seminaries, such as Gordon Fee and Wayne Grudem.
Ultimately, Tozer’s “truth has two-wings” principle is needed in the issues of faith and hermeneutics to maintain a healthy tension of the contra-polarities. A.J. Gordon cited William Lincoln’s insightful commentary on the need for balancing polarities of truth: “The only way for a believer, if he wants to go rightly, is to remember that truth is always two-sided. If there is any truth that the Holy Ghost has impressed upon your heart, if you do not want to push it to the extreme, ask what is the counter-truth, and lean a little of your weight upon that; otherwise, if you bear so very much on one side of the truth, there is a danger of pushing it into a heresy. Heresy means selected truth; it does not mean error: heresy and error are very different things. Heresy is truth; but truth pushed into undue importance to the disparagement of the truth on the other side.”²⁰ I once heard Dr. Costa Deir, Dean of Elim Bible Institute, a Pentecostal school, proclaim this balance in a perceptive motto: “It is good to be highly educated; it is better to be educated from on High; it is best to be both.”

PR

Notes

¹ Gordon Fee, The Disease of the Health and Wealth Gospel (Cosa Mesa, Calif.: Word for Today, 1979), 3.
² James W. Sire, Scripture Twisting: 20 Ways the Cults Misread the Bible (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 1980).
³ Kenneth Copeland, cited in Fee, 3.
⁴ Ibid., 3, 4.
⁵ L. Lovett, “Positive Confession Theology,” in Stanley M. Burgess and Gary B. McGee (ed.), Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1988), 720.
⁶ Dale H. Simmons, E.W. Kenyon and the Postbellum Pursuit of Peace, Power, and Plenty (Lanham, MD and London: Scarecrow Press, 1997), 108.
⁷ Personal conversation with Zeigler, Tulsa, Okla., 1997. See also Vreeland, “Reconstructing Word of Faith Theology,” 13.
⁸ Derek E. Vreeland, “Reconstructing Word of Faith Theology: A Defense, Analysis and Refinement of the Theology of the Word of Faith Movement.” Paper presented at the 30^th Annual Meeting of the Society for Pentecostal Studies, Oral Roberts University, Tulsa, Oklahoma, Mar. 2001, 5.
⁹ Ibid., 12, 19. In fairness to Hagin, it should be noted that his most recent book, The Midas Touch, does show more concern for sound hermeneutics.
¹⁰ Kenneth Copeland, “The Prayer of Binding and Loosing,” sound recording. Ft. Worth, Tex.: KCP Publications, 1987.
¹¹ Bruce Barron, The Health and Wealth Gospel (Downers Grove, Ill.: IVP, 1987), 102.
¹² Kirk R. MacGregor, “The Word-Faith Movement: A Theological Conflation of the Nation of Islam and Mormonism?” Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Vol. 75, No. 1, (March 2007), 89.
¹³ Kenneth Hagin, The Midas Touch: A Balanced Approach to Biblical Prosperity (Tulsa, Okla.: Faith Library Publications, 2000), 147, 150-153, 161.
¹⁴ I have heard Renner admit publicly, “We faith people have done some crazy things,” and then he proceed to teach a balanced approach to faith.
¹⁵ Andrew Murray, The Spirit of Christ (Springdale, Penn.: Whitaker House, 1984), 162.
¹⁶ A.B. Simpson, Divine Emblems (Camp Hill, Penn.: Christian Publications, 1995), n.p.
¹⁷ A.W. Tozer, The Root of the Righteous (Camp Hill, Penn.: Christian Publications, [1955] 1986), 34-37.
¹⁸ R.A. Torrey, How to Obtain Fullness of Power (New Kensington, Penn.: Whitaker, [1982] 1984), 77-78.
¹⁹ Ibid., 51. Simmons (E.W. Kenyon, 93-94), however, misunderstands Torrey’s statement as an anti-intellectual claim for not needing hermeneutics, perhaps not realizing that Torrey himself was a scholar and had studied biblical criticism at a German university.
²⁰ A.J. Gordon, The Ministry of Healing (Harrisburg, Penn.: Christian Publications, n.d.), 261-262.

This article is an excerpt from Only Believe: Examining the Origins and Development of Classic and Contemporary Word of Faith Theologies (Tulsa, OK: Word and Spirit Press, 2008). Only Believe is available through the author’s website, HigherLifeMinistries.com, and through online sellers, such as Amazon. Used with permission.