Over at Evangelical Outpost, Joe Carter is calling for blogs to follow up on something that Dallas Willard’s wrote entitled “Jesus the Logician.” Here’s the abstract for Willard’s essay:

In understanding how discipleship to Jesus Christ works, a major issue is how he automatically present[s] himself to our minds. It is characteristic of most 20th century Christians that he does not automatically come to mind as one of great intellectual power: as Lord of universities and research institutes, of the creative disciplines and scholarship. The Gospel accounts of how he actually worked, however, challenge this intellectually marginal image of him and helps us to see him at home in the best of academic and scholarly settings of today, where many of us are called to be his apprentices.

Dallas Willard does not need me to tell him that he’s on to something, but I think he is. We don’t often think of Jesus as an intellectual, and perhaps we have underestimated His mind. We believe that He is omniscient (he knows all things) but don’t stop to consider how and what He thinks about all the things that He knows. Being a perfect being – even as a perfect human being during His first advent – Jesus’ powers of reasoning far exceeded anything that the world has seen before or since. And we won’t see it again until He returns.

What Evangelical Outpost is calling for, then, is to have Christian bloggers (Godblogs) pool their efforts to create a “comprehensive database outlining the ways in which Jesus used logic in his discourses.” To assist those who respond to the challenge, EO has provided a list of logical and rhetorical forms through which the teachings of Jesus can be analyzed. I didn’t find the rhetorical list very complete, but I saw enough to make me pause.

The problem, I think, is one that occurs Sunday after Sunday in thousands of pulpits around the world. It is a subtle error that Willard seems to have made and that EO is multiplying. It is this: eisogesis. Eisogesis is the error of reading into the text ideas, thoughts, motivations, purposes, forms, or anything else that are not there. For example, I read Mt 18.18-20:

“Truly I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven; and whatever you loose on earth shall have been loosed in heaven. Again I say to you, that if two of you agree on earth about anything that they may ask, it shall be done for them by My Father who is in heaven. For where two or three have gathered together in My name, I am there in their midst.”

Based on these words of Jesus, I claim this as a promise for prayer: if I can get one or two other Christians to join with me in prayer – and maybe especially if I say, “Father, I just really agree with that prayer” – then it shall be done for us by the Father. After all, isn’t that what Jesus said?

Well, no. I have read prayer into this passage (that is, I have eisogeted) because it sounds like Jesus could be talking about prayer, and because I’d like to have that kind of guarantee for my prayers. In context, however, Jesus is not talking about prayer at all: He’s talking about forgiveness, church discipline, and restoring a sinning Christian. If I exegete the passage, I draw out what is there; if I eisogete, I read into it what is not there.

Most (if not all) of the investigations into Jesus’ intellectual abilities over at EO are using Greek logic and rhetoric to evaluate Him. But Jesus was not Greek and He was not Western; He was Jewish and He was Eastern. These are two very different ways of thinking. And if I don’t use the right lens through which to view and analyze Him, I’m not going to get a clear or accurate picture. I might have fun doing it, and it might tickle my intellectual funny bone, but I really will not have learned anything about Jesus at all.

Apparently, there is some current debate on what language Jesus spoke. It has always been assumed that He spoke in Aramaic, but Greek was actually the common language of the day; furthermore, the entire New Testament was written in Greek, not Aramaic, by the men who heard Jesus speak. But – and this is important – whatever language Jesus might have used, He thought like a Jew, not a Greek.

I am no expert on Jewish rhetorical devices, philosophy, or logical forms. I don’t even know if they have those types of categories – well, I do know they have philosophy and rhetoric, but they’re different than what we Westerners have. When I was in college, a friend and I shared the gospel with an Oriental student. We explained that Jesus was the only way to God and, to our surprise and delight, the student agreed! And then he went on to say that Hinduism and Buddism and other religions were also ways to God.

I thought the guy was nuts but fortunately kept my mouth shut. He explained that, in his way of thinking, to say that something or someone was the only way did not rule out other ways. I still don’t understand how that can be, but I’m sure he was just as puzzled that I didn’t get it.

Jesus certainly didn’t go that far, but His thinking was nevertheless more Eastern than Western. Perhaps this kind of thinking was why Paul, the Jewish rabbi, could teach sovereign election in one chapter (Rom 9) and then immediately follow it with a chapter on human responsibility (Rom 10). For Paul, there wasn’t a problem.

I searched the internet to find papers and books on the subject, but didn’t find much. I was able to locate some books on Amazon by Brad Young, who has written a lot about the Jewish influences underlying Jesus’ teachings. I have ordered three of them and, when I’ve gotten through them, I’ll let you know what’s there.

All this is to say, “Be careful how you read the Bible. It may not be saying what you think it is saying.” To understand Jesus, Paul, Moses, David, John, Jeremiah, or any other writer we have to be able to think like they think and understand the message as their original audience would have understood it. It is a lot of work, and it takes a lot of time, but we are handling the word of God. It is worth whatever it costs us to see God more accurately.


2 Cor 1:13