Eisegesis On Display

Although I’ve covered the subject of Jesus and the claims Trinitarians make that he is God, just because the topic of eisegesis is fresh on my mind, I performed a web search for the topic: “does the bible say Jesus is God”. Several websites came up, the one I looked at was everystudent.com. Sure enough, every scripture they listed is what I expected to see there.

So, we as those who do not believe Jesus is God are charged with eisegesis (intentional misrepresentation of scripture based on select verses that are favorable to our beliefs). Well, the everystudent site is full of the same. A blatant example of using a passage taken out of context to prove Jesus is God is John 10:30 (“I and the Father are one”). “What could be plainer?” demand those supporting Jesus’ divinity.

What could be plainer is to pay close attention not only to the context but to the whole of scripture. But to make it easy to the reader, I’ll stay in the gospel of John. One thing our opposers are famous for is interpreting one verse one way, while interpreting another completely different. Did Jesus mean “one” in that they were the same person? John 17:21 makes it quite plain that is not so. (Other versions, interlinear, Kingdom Interlinear) The point is quite clear to those willing to accept what the Bible teaches as opposed to insisting on unscriptural doctrines solidified during the Nicaean Council. The “oneness” is one of unity, unified purpose. Otherwise, to choose to understand John 10:30 as teaching God and Jesus are one person, you must also accept that Jesus was asking that his disciples join the godhead, themselves becoming “God.”

But that isn’t all. Conveniently, those advancing the idea that John 10:30 teaches Jesus is God, manage to ignore the rest of the context. It was his opposers that misapplied his words. He tried to reason with them that God Jehovah even called human judges in Israel “gods” (most probably because of their power of potentially condemning someone to death). He then says that if even humans can, in a very limited sense, be called gods, how can they fault him for claiming to be God’s son. There are numerous other passages in scripture that make it quite plain Jesus is indeed “the son of God,” not “God, the Son.” But one that has always stuck out in my mind is toward the end of John’s gospel. There, he sums up the reason for writing his gospel. One would reasonably conclude that he would use this to drive home his main point. So did he say “I wrote this because I want people to believe Jesus is God”? NO! The verse quite plainly states, in John’s own words, that he wrote because he wanted everyone to appreciate Jesus is the Messiah and “the Son of God.”

So it is our opposers who are guilty of eisegesis, not us.

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