What the Bible Really Says?

Breaking the Apocalypse Code

Thomas A. Howe

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2009
• Print ISBN:
  9781556358586
  9781498251228
• eBook ISBN:
  9781498275637
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Criticism & Interpretation

The study of the End Times has been a popular topic for many years, and there are many different positions that are proposed on how to understand the unfolding of God's program. The debate over the End Times has often been heated and has failed to showcase the best that Christian scholarship has to offer. It sometimes seems like everyone wants to get in on the action, and anyone who has an audience can (and has) put together his thoughts and made his opinions known through the printed page. Anyone can publish his views regardless of the level of competency in the original languages, his level of hermeneutic ability, or his understanding of history or theology. In his book The Apocalypse Code, Hank Hanegraaff declares that his goal is to "put hermeneutical tools into your hands so that you can draw from Scripture what God intends you to understand rather than uncritically accepting end-time models that may well be foreign to the text." It would be extremely helpful for someone to equip readers to be able to make their way through the maze of views. What the Bible Really Says? is a point-by-point analysis of the arguments of Hank Hanegraaff concerning end-times prophecy. This book is not an effort to promote one eschatological perspective over another. Rather it is an analysis of Hanegraaff's arguments and claims in order to discover whether or not he has succeeded in putting hermeneutical tools into the hands of his readers, or whether he has simply added his voice and his opinions to the cacophony of claims and counterclaims.

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Exegetical Eschatology e2

Method vs. Model

Hank Hanegraaff begins his section on Exegetical Eschatology by briefly discussing the book by Hal Lindsey which was published in 1997 by the title, Apocalypse Code. It should not escape the reader’s notice that, in contrast to Lindsey’s book, Hanegraaff’s book employs the definite article—The Apocalypse Code. This corresponds to the subtitle that promises to give the reader what the Bible “REALLY” says. It should also not escape the reader’s notice that interpreters have been making similar claims for at least two thousand years, that is, that so-and-such is going to tell you what the Bible “REALLY” says. Everyone from orthodox Christians to cultists have made the same claim, and it has done them no more honor than it does Hanegraaff. It would have been more in line with the humility of a servant of God to claim that he will endeavor to understand the Bible correctly and make his claims accordingly. Usually, those who claim to tell you what the Bible “REALLY” says are no more successful at it than Hanegraaff. Nevertheless, Hanegraaff declares that he will help the reader learn “to read the Bible for all it’s worth!”1 Hanegraaff says that the “backbone” of his book is a principle which he calls “Exegetical Eschatology.”2 He explains the term ‘exegesis’3 as “the method by which a student seeks to uncover what an author intended his or her original audience to understand.”4

Exegesis and Eschatology—Defining Terms

Immediately we run into a problem. Hanegraaff tells his reader that “exegesis” is the method by which a student uncovers what an author intended his original audience to understand. The problem with this statement is that Hanegraaff does not tell the reader how to know if the meaning that is found in the text is what the author intended his original audience to understand. In fact, Hanegraaff never tells his reader how to discover who the original audience was. With reference to many books of the Bible, the identification of the original audience is a thorny debate, and most scholars are not agreed on who in fact the original audience was of many books of the Bible. For example, was the original audience of Ephesians the Ephesian Christians, the Galatian Christians or both? Which “Hebrews” constituted the original audience of the letter to the Hebrews?

Hanegraaff’s claim that exegesis is the effort to discover what the author intended his original audience to understand is not dissimilar to the claim of Functional or Dynamic Equivalence translation theorists about the goal of translation. Eugene Nida and Charles Taber give the following definition of dynamic equivalence translation theory: “Dynamic equivalence is therefore to be defined in terms of the degree to which the receptors of the message in the receptor language respond to it in substantially the same manner as the receptors in the source language.”5 Rainer Schulte and John Biguenet point out that Matthew Arnold denounced the very idea of attempting to produce in a contemporary audience the same response that may have occurred in the original audience: “He [Arnold] elaborates on his own translation theories by discussing various translations of Homer’s work. The nature of the impact of Homer’s work cannot be reconstructed by the contemporary reader/translator. Thus, to expect the contemporary reader to react to Homer’s work the way Homer’s audience did in his time would be futile. Translators have to interact with Homer from their own frame of mind.”6 In Arnold’s own words, “No one can tell him [the translator] how Homer affected the Greeks; but there are those who can tell him how Homer affects them.”7 Likewise, if “exegesis” is supposed to be the method of uncovering what the author intended his original audience to understand, doesn’t it matter who the original was? And how are we to know if the meaning we get from the text is the one the author intended his original audience to understand. And if Hanegraaff cannot tell his readers how to uncover this information, then he has failed even to get his exegetical eschatology off the ground.

Besides this, how can a reader know what an author “intended”? Haven’t you had the experience of writing yourself a note, and then, some time later, reading the note and not being able to know what you intended? You can read the words of your note, and you know what the words mean, but you can’t for the life of you remember what you intended. AND YOU ARE THE AUTHOR. If sometimes you cannot tell what you intended with your own writing, how can Hanegraaff promise to help you know what the authors of the Bible intended for their original audiences to understand?

The fact is, the term ‘exegesis’ does not mean what Hanegraaff says it means. The term ‘exegesis’ is from the Greek word e0ch&ghsij (). According to the standard New Testament Greek lexicon, the word means to set forth something in great detail: “explanation, interpretation.”8 In the words of Grant Osborne, “Exegesis means to ‘draw out of’ a text what it means, in contrast to eisegesis, to ‘read into’ a text what one wants it to mean.”9 Exegesis is not about uncovering the author’s intent. It is about uncovering the meaning of the text. Of course some will say, “That’s what he meant!” which is not much different from saying, “That’s what he intended!” But, of course, we don’t know what he intended. All we know is what he said. Nevertheless, I am willing to give him the benefit of the doubt that what he intended to mean was that exegesis is the effort to uncover the meaning of the text. However, even though we may give him the benefit of the doubt that this is what he intended, it still remains that this is not what he said, and if he cannot more accurately communicate his intent than this, then any reader is going to have a difficult time knowing whether the meaning he gets from the text is what Hanegraaff actually meant.

But, it’s not just that he got the definition of ‘exegesis’ wrong, he also got the definition of ‘eschatology’ wrong too. Hanegraaff says, “the word eschatology is an intimidating word with a simple meaning—the study of end times.”10 Although eschatology certainly does include the study of the end times, that is not what the term means. The term ‘eschatology’ comes from two Greek words. The first is e!sxatoj (), which means “farthest” or “last,” and the word lo&goj (), which means “word” or “matter.”11 Eschatology is the study of last things. Eschatology includes much more than simply a study of the end times.

These criticisms may sound trivial to some. Why is it even important whether Hanegraaff gets the definitions of these words precisely right. Isn’t it close enough? Well, the fact is, he simply got the definitions wrong. One wonders that if Hanegraaff cannot even exegete his own terms, what does this say about his exegesis of the many and varied terms used in the Bible? And these terms aren’t even English. Perhaps it says nothing. But, the reader ought to begin to be a bit critical of the kinds of claims that are made in the pages of this “Exegetical Eschatology e2,” whatever that means, if the author can’t even get some basic definitions correct.

Exegetical Eschatology—Defining a Methodology

An exegetical eschatology, according to Hanegraaff, is an exegesis of the relevant biblical passages that are usually associated with the study of eschatology. Hanegraaff says, “I coined the phrase Exegetical Eschatology to underscore that above all else I am deeply committed to a proper method of biblical interpretation rather than to any particular model of eschatology.”12 According to Hanegraaff, the proper methodology includes the notion that, “The plain and proper meaning of a biblical passage must always take precedence over a particular eschatological presupposition or paradigm.”13 The reader is not told exactly what “the plain and proper meaning” means. It is assumed that the elucidation of the several principles, organized into the acronym “LIGHTS,” will make this plain and proper.

It is particularly important to note that Hanegraaff, by his own admission, wants to put tools into the hand of his reader “so that you can draw from Scripture what God intends you to understand rather than uncritically accepting end-time models that may well be foreign to the text.”14 Of course, as the story progresses the reader discovers that Hanegraaff does not necessarily mean that the reader should not accept his end-time model. Hanegraaff assumes that his own musings about the end times are precisely coincident with “what God intends you to understand.”...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Exegetical Eschatology e2
• Chapter 2: Literal Principle
• Chapter 3: Illumination Principle
• Chapter 4: Grammatical Principle
• Chapter 5: Historical Principle
• Chapter 6: Typology Principle
• Chapter 7: Scriptural Synergy
• Chapter 8: Conclusion
• Bibliography