E.W. Bullinger — Prolegomena
b1 — Number in Scripture: Its Supernatural Design and Spiritual Significance
Theological Method
In the Preface, Bullinger states his methodological aim: to set forth general principles and illustrate them with examples from God’s Word, “leaving others to extend the application of these principles and search out illustrations of them for themselves.” (Preface)
He simultaneously warns against eisegesis: “Anyone who values the importance of a particular principle will be tempted to see it where it does not exist, and if it be not there will force it in, in spite sometimes of the original text.” (Preface)
The threefold goal of the work is: “to stimulate the labours of Bible students; to strengthen believers in their most holy faith; and to convince doubters of the Divine perfection and inspiration of the Book of Books, to the praise and glory of God.” (Preface)
Hermeneutics
Bullinger sets out a central hermeneutical principle in Part I, Chapter II: when numerical patterns in both God’s works and God’s Word exhibit the same laws, “the conviction is overwhelming that we have the same great Designer, the same Author; and we see the same Hand, the same seal stamped on all His works, and the same signature or autograph, as it were, upon every page of His Word. And that, not an autograph which may be torn off or obliterated, but indelible, like the water-mark in the paper; so impressed upon and interwoven with it that no power on earth can blot it out.” (Part I, Ch. I)
On the foundational hermeneutical rule he writes: “Our searching must be confined to what is revealed. With what God has been pleased not to reveal, but to keep secret, not only have we nothing whatever to do, but we are guilty of the sin of presumption in even speculating about it.” (Part I, Ch. II, citing Deut. 29:29)
Interpretation: Bullinger applies a strictly text-bound hermeneutic: the exegete may only work with what is revealed (Deut. 29:29), and must guard against reading in principles that are not present.
Bullinger also offers a concrete hermeneutical principle: “Every word of God’s Book is in its right place. It may sometimes seem to us to be deranged. The lock may be in one place, and the key may sometimes be hidden away elsewhere in some apparently inadvertent word or sentence.” (Part I, Ch. II) He illustrates this with the connection between Gen. 11-12 and Acts 7:4, and between Isa. 52:4 and Acts 7:18.
Special Revelation and the Doctrine of Inspiration
Bullinger develops his doctrine of inspiration as the conclusion drawn from numerical analysis. When words in Scripture occur a specific number of times (multiples of 7, 11, or perfect squares), he writes:
“This certainly looks like design; and, if so—if not only the ‘days’ in which revealed events shall take place are numbered, but the words also themselves are numbered— then we shall have a great and wondrous proof of the Divine, verbal, and even literal inspiration of the Word of God.” (Part I, Ch. II)
Interpretation: Bullinger argues for verbal and literal inspiration inductively, on the basis of empirically demonstrated numerical regularities — a reasoning that runs in the opposite direction from dogmatic inspiration theory.
On the role of the Holy Spirit in the composition of Scripture: “But all these worketh that one and the self-same Spirit, whose infinite wisdom is seen inspiring the whole of Divine revelation and securing a uniformity in results which would be absolutely impossible in a work written separately by different writers.” (Part I, Ch. II)
Evidence for Divine Authorship
Bullinger directly connects his numerical method to the question of divine authorship. He refers to the angel Palmoni (Dan. 8:13), whose name he translates as “the numberer of secrets, or the wonderful numberer”: “So that there is one holy angel, at least, whose function has to do with numbers. Numbers, therefore, and their secrets, hold an important place in the words as well as in the works of God.” (Part I, Ch. II)
He bases the evidence for Pauline authorship of Hebrews on numerical regularities: when certain words form perfect numerical patterns only when Hebrews is included with the Pauline Epistles, that constitutes “an argument for the Pauline authorship of the Epistle to the Hebrews.” (Part I, Ch. II, section “Evidence as to Authorship”)
Authority of Scripture
Bullinger places Scripture above all human counting systems and textual criticism. On the canonical ordering of the Old Testament: “the number and order of the books of the Bible come to us on precisely the same authority as its facts and doctrines.” (Part I, Ch. II, section “The Books of the Bible”)
He explicitly opposes higher criticism: the numerical patterns in Genesis “entirely explodes the elaborate theories of the so-called ‘higher critics’ concerning the Book of Genesis.” (Part I, Ch. II)
On Prov. 25:2 he writes: “It is the glory of God to conceal a thing: but the honour of kings is to search out a matter. In searching out, therefore, the secrets of the Word of God, we are doing not only a royal, but an honourable work.” (Part I, Ch. II)