UNIVERSITY

CALIFORNI

CHAPTER III.

THE SYSTEM OF INTERPRETATION.

Two very opposite systems of Scriptural interpretation have been brought into view; the one denominated THE LITERAL or GRAMMATICAL, and the other the ALLEGORICAL or SPIRITUAL. The general nature of each has been defined, and to some extent illustrated; the literal or grammatical having been shown to be the method commonly adopted by men in their attempts to understand each other's language, according to which, the words, grammatically understood, are taken as the proper guide to the meaning of the writer or the nature of the thing expressed ;-the allegorical or spiritual being an attempt to explain the meaning of the words according to some assumed or preconceived notions of the nature of the thing.

We have affirmed the literal system to be the true and proper one for the interpretation of the prophetical Scriptures; because it is the most natural, consistent, and satisfactory mode of interpretation, commending itself to the common sense of mankind; because it is more definite and certain, and far less liable to the charge of vagueness and to the vagaries of men's imaginations, than the spiritual or allegorical; and because it is sanctioned by the example of the patriarchs, the prophets, and the apostles, in their study and exposition of the prophecies. We add another reason.

IV. THE ENTIRE SYSTEM OF PROPHECY CONTAINED IN THE SCRIPTURES, AS FAR AS IT HAS BEEN CONFIRMED AND EXPOUNDED BY THE PROVIDENCE OF GOD, RECOGNIZES AND ESTABLISHES THE LITERAL OR GRAMMATICAL AS ITS APPROPRIATE METHOD OF INTERPRETATION.

In order to understand the force of this argument, it will be necessary to notice more particularly than we have done, the nature and character of prophecy. On this point there has been much confusion, which has not been much relieved by treatises designed expressly to give us philosophical explanations of the manner in which the minds of the prophets were affected. It has been taken for granted, that there is something essentially difficult to be understood in prophecy ; not only from the necessary obscurity in every attempt to describe future events, but especially from the mode in which the minds of the prophets were acted on and affected by the Spirit of God, who made to the prophets his revelations. Peter says, that prophecy is not the result of human excogitation. "It came not in old time by the will of man, but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost."*

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As to the precise amount of meaning in this word MOVED," there has been much disagreement among those who have written on the nature of prophecy. This diversity of sentiment has ranged from those satisfied with a general knowledge of the fact that God acted on them in some miraculous way, and who attempted not even to form an idea as to the mode, believing that Peter intended to intimate no notion whatever on this subject-to those, who, supposing that he did, have allowed themselves to class the phrenzy of the

2 Pet. 1. 21.

false prophets among the heathen, with the ecstasy of the true, as being of the same essential nature. Accordingly, it has been assumed, that "the true explanation depends on a correct theory of prophecy." I quote the language of Dr. Hengstenburg,† of the University of Berlin. He admits it to have been the prevailing opinion of the church, since the controversies with the Montanists," that the essential difference between the prophets of God and the heathen diviners, consists in the fact, that the latter spake in an ecstasy, but the former in full possession of reason and consciousness; and consequently with a clear knowledge of what they uttered." He does not seem satisfied with the orthodox belief on this subject, preferring the notions of Platonic philosophy as better adapted to his peculiar metaphysics. For, applying to the true prophets,

* Christology of the O. T., vol. i. p. 217.

† This style of speech adopted by Professor Hengstenburg has become common in these United States. Editors of religious papers, professors, ministers and others, talk about theory on the subject of the prophecies, as though the study of prophecy was necessarily connected with theorising and speculations-favorite expressions used when it suits their convenience to condemn others and excuse their own ignorance. The predictions of Scripture seem to be regarded much in the same light that many do the phenomena of nature, as affording materials on which the student is to display his ingenuity by inventing some theory to explain them. Theory is out of place and unallowable in the study of prophecy; and as long as men assume it, and act on the principle that they are to excogitate some mode of explanation, some clue to the meaning, and by its guidance interpret particular parts, or weave the whole system of prophecy together, we shall have nothing but schemes originating in the imagination, and as endless varieties as we meet among cosmogonists. It is a simple question that in all cases must be asked, what is the fair and legitimate meaning of the words-a matter-of-fact investigation-no theorising, no speculations.

what Plato has enlarged upon in his Ion and Phædrus, viz. "that prophesying is necessarily accompanied by the suppression of human agency, intelligence, and consciousness," he is prepared to look for more or less obscurity growing out of the very mode in which the divine communication was made, although he has, notwithstanding, made many valuable remarks, and decidedly, but not designedly, favorable to the literal or grammatical interpretation.

It does not comport with our design, nor indeed is it necessary, to enter into any discussion as to the physiology of inspiration, a subject, of which it is utterly impossible for us to have any accurate knowledge, or any means of investigation. Those, who deny that prophecy is the revelation of future events made miraculously by the Spirit of God, and who assume it to be a mere natural gift or power, of the same character with the divinations among the hea then, may, very naturally, attempt the explanation of the one by the other, and class what Dr. Hengstenburg has called the ECSTASY of the prophets of Israel, with the AFFLATUS and phrenzy of the prophets among the heathen. But it does not appear, from anything recorded in the Scriptures, that the prophets of God. were thrown into an ecstasy by the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, and deprived of intelligence, consciousness and voluntary agency, when they uttered his oracles.* There is nothing in the character of the dreams and visions, etc., of the prophets to prove it. Whatever effects may have sometimes been produced upon their animal system and sensations, by the disclosures thus made to them, and these, as in the case of Daniel and John and others, were very remarkable—

* See Gaussen's Theopneusty, pp. 313, 314.

the scriptural account of their visions and dreams and other divine communications made to them, does not intimate that they were unintelligible, or hard to be understood, in consequence of any supernatural mode by which they were moved by the Holy Ghost.

The obscurity of prophecy arises entirely from other sources, such as the partial character of the revelation; the impossibility of forming any vivid ideas of things yet future and but partially described; ignorance of the precise time and relations of distant events; the want of well-defined views as to the nature of the language and style in which the several prophets may have delivered their several predictions; the incidental difference, in the accounts of different prophets predicting the same things,-growing out of the circumstance, that some scenes connected with the events predicted, are noticed and more particularly described, by one prophet, while another has not even alluded to them; the difficulty there ever must be in harmonising an almost endless variety of future scenes and circumstances not chronologically arranged by the prophets, but described in some order of succes sion, and at intervals not always disclosed; and the pictorial character of the representations made to the prophets often in dreams, and more especially in visions, which doubtless often rendered them as much the matter of anxious study to the prophets themselves as to others in order to understand their im port.*

Professor Stewart† has fully and unanswerably vindicated the writings of the ancient prophets from any charge of obscurity founded on the peculiar psychological system of Dr. Hengstenburg, and his philoso

* 1 Pet. 1. 10, 11.

† Biblical Repository, vol. ii. p. 245.