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Desire is Often the Mother of the New Interpretation

by John Waddey

All have heard the old saying, "Necessity is the mother of invention." It's truthfulness is demonstrated daily. There is a religious variation of this proverb. "Desire is often the mother of new interpretations."

Our Protestant neighbors greatly desire salvation without baptism. Faced with the several verses that clearly link salvation and baptism, what can they do? They interpret all the verses that link faith with salvation and pronounce that the Bible teaches salvation by faith alone. Some desire to have their infants baptized. Finding nothing in the New Testament about infant baptism, they discover the Hebrew ordinance for circumcising baby boys. Noting that the surgery made them members of the covenant nation, they conclude the New Testament must teach infant baptism. Then they discover that Lydia was baptized and all that were in her household (Acts 16:15) and voila they
interpret that to mean babies were baptized. They are free to proceed
as they wished.

There was a time when any man who preached among churches of Christ understood this and exposed those who used this faulty method for their distortion of God's Word. Now a generation of exegetes have arisen among us who, because of faulty training, are using this same discredited method to achieve the approval they seek for their doctrine, worship and congregational activities. They need authority for such things as women in church leadership roles, instrumental music, infant dedication, interpretative dancing in worship and similar practices. These things they desire to have, but no authority is found for them in the New Testament of Christ. Refusing to accept that as the final word (Matt. 28:20), they search the Old Testament and find just what they are looking for. But there stands Colossians 2:14 as an impediment to their desires. Paul says that Christ blotted out" the bond written in ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us: and he hath taken it out of the way, nailing it to the cross...Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in a new moon or a sabbath day...." (2:14-16). Not to be deterred, they reinterpret the passage to mean that Christ merely took away our condemnation, nailing it to the cross. Now they can claim those verses from the Hebrew Scriptures and offer them as justification for their innovations.

The desire to be free to add anything they wish to the worship of the church drives them to deny the oft repeated principle that God's silence is prohibitive. It is respect for that principle that caused our brethren to reject instrumental music, choirs, solos, communion on other days than the first day and a host of other practices of denominational bodies. Positively stated, we must "not go beyond that which is written" (I Cor. 4:6 ASV). The example is seen in Hebrews 7:13-14. There, the writer notes that since the priesthood was reserved to Aaron's sons, of the tribe of Levi, and since Moses said nothing about men of Judah serving as priests, there had to be a change of the law before Christ could be our High Priest. Other citations commonly given are the cases of Nadab and Abihu (Lev. 10:1-4) and Noah's instructions for building the ark (Gen. 6:14-17). We now see our promoters of change laboring long and hard to find a new way to interpret God's Word that will eliminate the idea of a law of prohibitive silence.

Wishing to preach new and different doctrines and yet remain among Churches of Christ, change agents labor to find a new meaning to II John 9 which says, "Whosoever goeth onward and abideth not in the teaching of Christ hath not God..." After much hard labor they bring forth a new interpretation, "Behold, it means the teaching about the divinity of Christ." Now they can teach and do as they wish and this verse cannot be used to reprove them.

To escape the binding authority of the New Testament of Christ, these brethren have employed their exegetical skills and concluded that the New Testament is not the law of Christ. It is a love letter from the husband to his bride. The epistles are friendly letters to churches, but not to be considered as of binding authority. It is hard to do, but their system allows them to neutralize those many verses that
speak of the law of Christ (Rom. 8:2; Gal. 6:3; Jas. 1:25; I John 3:4,etc.).

Desiring to be accepted by their local ministerial alliance and their Evangelical theological peers, these brothers have had to reinterpret the role of baptism in salvation. Since our religious neighbors flatly reject the idea that baptism is necessary to salvation and since they tend to scorn those who think it is necessary, the masters of creative hermeneutics have restudied the matter and concluded that baptism is a declaration or testimony of ones salvation. So much for Acts 2:38 and 22:16.

Thus is fulfilled the saying, "Desire is mother of the new interpretation."

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