Recently, I have been learning about the life of Albert Einstein. When he was in college, he often challenged the teachings of his professors. His professors were teaching the established and long–accepted views of Newtonian physics.
After he graduated, he was unable to land a teaching position. Many of his fellow students, men less gifted, became college professors. But he was blackballed by the head of the physics department, one of the profs he had challenged in class.
The result was that Einstein became a patent clerk. He evaluated the scientific patents that no one else could understand.
During that time, he submitted a doctoral dissertation proposal to a leading physicist. When the physicist saw his proposal, he scoffed and said that the thesis contradicted over two hundred years of established doctrine.
Isaac Newton was the father of modern physics. He developed Newtonian physics in the 1670s and 80s. At the turn of the twentieth century, Einstein was thinking outside the box. He was convinced that Newtonian physics was wrong.
As I have learned more about Einstein, I realize how much his experiences match those of my mentor, Zane Hodges. Zane was confronted with nearly five hundred years of Calvinist doctrine. At the time, Dallas Theological Seminary (DTS) taught four-point Calvinism––everything but limited atonement/particular redemption.
Zane graduated in 1958 and worked for a year as a patent clerk. Well, not quite. He worked in the library at DTS. There was initially no teaching position for him.
A year later, he was hired to teach NT Greek and exegesis, a position he would hold for twenty-seven years.
In a book titled Exegetical Fallacies (see pdf here), Dr. Don Carson cited Zane Hodges sixteen times as a prime example of someone with erroneous views of exegesis. He wrote:
Perhaps one of the most intriguing—and disturbing—features of Zane C. Hodges’s book [The Gospel Under Siege], to which reference has already been made, is that to the best of my knowledge not one significant interpreter of Scripture in the entire history of the church has held to Hodges’s interpretation of the passages he treats. That does not necessarily mean Hodges is wrong; but it certainly means he is probably wrong, and it probably means he has not reflected seriously enough on the array of fallacies connected with distanciation [detachment] (p. 137, emphasis added).
Zane interpreted passage after passage differently than most of his contemporaries did. Rather than giving his views serious consideration, they mocked him as being out of step with “the entire history of the church.”
I sat under Zane’s teaching at DTS for five–and–a–half years. Then, after I graduated from seminary, I continued to sit under his tutelage for twenty-three more years until his homegoing in 2008.
Today, seminary students are taught to go to the commentaries to find out what the options are on what a text means. The student’s job is to pick the best views from the commentary literature.
Zane Hodges taught exactly the opposite approach. He taught his students to study the passage for themselves. Meditate on it. Draw their own conclusions on what it means. We were not to consult commentaries until after we had interpreted the text for ourselves. We did not go to the commentaries to find out the options. We went to them to see if they made any observations we missed.
I edited many of Zane’s articles and books. I found that he would go to the commentaries or journals to try to find someone who agreed with him. He quite often came up with views that he had never read in the literature. After careful study, he would sometimes find one or two people who held the same view. He would cite them in his writings to show that others saw what he saw.
In some cases, Zane could find no one who said what he said. Like Einstein, he was not interested in established doctrine. He was interested in Biblical doctrine. He found that established doctrine was often contrary to the Word of God.
I want to be like Einstein and Hodges. I want to know the truth. At the Judgment Seat of Christ, I will not be able to offer the excuse that I taught error because it was what all “the significant interpreter[s] of Scripture” were teaching. James 3:1 is important to me. I know that as a teacher of God’s Word I will experience a stricter judgment at the Bema. That realization leads me to prayerfully study God’s Word and take care to teach it rather than the commentary tradition.
The Lord Jesus said, “To whom much has been given, from him much will be required” (Luke 12:48). We in the Free Grace movement have been given very much indeed. May we be faithful to share the truth about justification and sanctification with all who have ears to hear. May we keep grace in focus.
