A dog, limping and whimpering, hobbles over to a preacher. He’s seen this before and knows that the poor pup has been hit by a car. Having a well-oiled imagination, this preacher is quick to concoct an enchanting origin story for his new pet, Lucky.
He’s hosting the prayer meeting for local pastors this week, he’ll joyfully bring his new pup and tell everyone about how he rescued it after it was clipped by that speeding teenager. It might even give him an opportunity to wax eloquent about the need for a speed trap in that area.
When the morning of the prayer breakfast comes our pastor begins to weave his tale. His excitement soon turns to horror as the Reformed pastor informs him, and the rest of the crowd, that this dog hasn’t been hit by a car. It has a thorn in its foot.
Our Reformed pastor had taken a closer look. All of the context clues surrounding that dog told him that it hadn’t been clipped by a car. “Lucky” seemed to be favoring his paw—not what you might expect if he’d been drilled by a fender. Rather than simply pulling a story out of thin air, he was able to rightly diagnose the issue and help the dog.
Eisegesis and Exegesis
This is the difference between eisegesis and exegesis. Those are fancy words for saying that the first pastor imposed a story onto the “text” (eisegesis) and the other pastor started with the “text” itself (exegesis) and was able to discern an accurate meaning. By doing this he was able to help the dog and guard everyone else from the silly story concocted by the rambling preacher.
Thankfully, we’re training our pastors these days to focus upon exegesis and leave eisegesis dying on the side of the road where that first preacher should have left his imagination. “It doesn’t matter what you think about the text,” we say. “It only matters what the text meant to the original author.”
We exegetical preachers can be disheartened when seeing sanctuaries swarming with people to hear the story-teller. They lack substance, often leaving people entertained instead of helped. But we have to confess, a narrative like “Lucky the dog who miraculously limped his way to a benevolent pastor after being struck by a speeding teen” will invariably attract a larger crowd than a straightforward account of “Lucky the dog who stepped on a thorn.”
We console ourselves by remembering our calling. We aren’t supposed to attract a crowd. We’re just supposed to be truth-tellers. And because of this commitment we become highly skilled in magnifying glass usage. We’re able to spot thorns and thistles and save all the puppies of the world from the fluff of eisegetical preaching.
The Need for a Third Preacher
The only problem is that after years of this focus you begin to lose sight of the dog itself. You can go back to that prayer breakfast and listen in to how the story shifted off Lucky and onto the danger of thorns. Soon, everybody is telling their own thorny tales, save for the embarrassed preacher who is silently licking his wounds.
Nobody has noticed that Lucky, no longer having the thorn in his paw nor being the topic of conversation, has now wandered off. The first preacher not only lost his story but also his pet. And even our exegetical preacher seems to have lost the plot. He’s left holding only the thorn he picked out—and somehow missed that there was ever a dog there.
We might change a word here or there to get it to fit our theme, but I think all of this is why Os Guinness speaks of appealing to “thinkers” instead of “intellectuals”:
Too many so-called intellectuals think solely within their own minds. They leave their conscience out of the discussion, and they have lost all sense of wonder. They are one-tool thinkers who have blindly devoted themselves to what can be discovered by reason, and by reason alone. As a result, they’ve become as shortsighted as mole. (Guinness, The Great Quest, 35-36)
Guinness is telling us that we need a third pastor at that prayer breakfast. This is a pastor who also noticed the thorn but after pulling it out he keeps his focus upon the dog. His sense of wonder is not satiated simply because he has now solved the riddle of the dog’s pain. He wants to know how that dog came to get a thorn in it’s paw. He’s still intrigued by the dog and the story it has to tell.
That third preacher, still firmly in the school of exegesis, adds to the equation a dedication to wonder. He realizes that the point of exegesis isn’t about thorns, or even making sure preachers don’t spin yarn, but his purpose is to grab that dog by the scruff of its neck and joyfully play with it. Lucky enjoys stirring up joy and dogs stick around for these things.