Thoughts on the Perils and Promises of Proof-Texting

J. Neil Daniels 

If you spend any time around theologians or seminary students, you’ll hear someone scoff at “proof-texting.” The phrase has become shorthand for a slapdash approach to theology: plucking verses from here and there, wrenching them from their contexts, and forcing them into the service of tidy doctrinal systems. Ralph Martin once complained that such “dogmatic approaches” turn the New Testament into an “arsenal” of isolated texts, atomizing meaning and ignoring historical, literary, and theological context. Kevin Vanhoozer warns that this approach can flatten Scripture’s rich diversity of genres and confuse biblical language with doctrinal formulation. And D. A. Carson worries that proof-texting risks distorting Scripture by imposing on it categories foreign to its own historical and literary world. In short, the prosecution’s case is strong: proof-texting can encourage cherry-picking, subjectivism, and even anachronism. But as Michael Allen and Scott Swain argue in their provocative essay “In Defense of Proof-Texting” (JETS 54.3 [September 2011] 589–606), this is not the whole story. The caricature obscures a deeper, more constructive theological practice.

Allen and Swain concede that theologians have indeed committed “sins of omission” and “sins of commission.” Too many systematicians, they note, write entire tomes on doctrine with only the thinnest biblical engagement—sometimes none at all. Others mishandle Scripture by assuming that doctrines must be tied directly to particular words or phrases. Consider the debates over the eternal generation of the Son: some contemporary theologians question the doctrine on the grounds that the Greek monogenēs does not necessarily mean “only begotten.” But as Vanhoozer points out, doctrines do not stand or fall with word studies. The biblical witness to the Father-Son relationship unfolds across many texts, metaphors, and analogies—“sender and sent,” “giver and receiver,” “Word and God,” “glory and radiance.” The point is not that terms dictate doctrine, but that Scripture’s broader patterns and canonical logic shape it. A mature theological method must reckon with those patterns rather than demand that doctrines appear ready-made in single verses.

Even more telling is the fact that Scripture itself engages in something very much like proof-texting. Paul’s citation of Leviticus, Isaiah, and Samuel in 2 Corinthians 6, his linking of Abraham’s blessing to the Spirit in Galatians 3, and the author of Hebrews’ catena of Psalms in Hebrews 1 all deploy texts in ways that transcend their immediate historical horizons. Such uses only make sense when read within the larger canonical drama and its Christological climax. Allen and Swain insist that this is precisely the point: proof-texting is not a hermeneutical method but a citation technique. Its value depends entirely on the deeper interpretive framework at work beneath the surface. If Scripture’s own writers cite Scripture in this way, then we should not dismiss theologians for doing likewise—provided that they, too, are reading texts canonically, contextually, and Christologically. The technique is not the problem; the hermeneutical naiveté behind some uses of it is.

The great theologians of the past understood this. Thomas Aquinas, master of sacra pagina, wove more than 25,000 biblical citations into his Summa Theologiae, not as proof by themselves but as signposts pointing to a vast exegetical tradition. His “sed contra” sections often quoted Scripture or Augustine, signaling not the end but the beginning of interpretive work. John Calvin followed suit, insisting that his Institutes must be read alongside his commentaries. Proof-texts in Calvin’s dogmatic work functioned as shorthand for deeper exegetical engagement, grounded in sedes doctrinae and structured by the unfolding history of redemption. For both men, citing Scripture was never a substitute for exegesis; it was the fruit and distillation of it, a way of gesturing toward the exegetical scaffolding beneath doctrinal claims.

That’s the promise of proof-texting when done well. Far from being a lazy shortcut, it can serve as a literary signal of what Allen and Swain call “disciplinary symbiosis”: the vital interplay between exegesis and dogmatics. Theologians, for their part, must shoulder the burden of demonstrating exegetical depth—writing commentaries, saturating their arguments with biblical reflection, and immersing themselves in Scripture’s shape and storyline. Biblical scholars, meanwhile, should resist cynicism and approach theological uses of proof-texts with charitable curiosity, probing the broader hermeneutical rationale at work. When both sides labor together, proof-texts cease to be isolated fragments and instead become windows into the deep logic of Scripture. They remind us that doctrine is not imposed on the Bible from without but drawn from its depths—rooted there “in principle,” as Allen and Swain put it, when read in its larger canonical frame and with its implications fully teased out.