Protecting Sola Scriptura from Sophism, Part II: Arguing from Authorial Intent

The discovery of the logical base of the language used by an author is parallel to the discovery of the logic the author is using in order to communicate his intended point within a text. This means that authorial intent is the logical base that must be discovered through the contextual clues that exist within the referential world of the text. Calvin argued, “It is the first business of an interpreter to let his author say what he does say, instead of attributing to him what we think he ought to say” (Preface to Calvin’s Commentary on Romans). As Vanhoozer comments, “The author is the foundational principle in what we might call the traditional metaphysics of meaning. According to this standard picture, the author is the sovereign subject of the sign, the one who rules over meaning, assigning names to things, using words to express thoughts and represent the world” (Is There Meaning in This Text? 40 digital).

Although the idea of authorial intent has been challenged by postmodern philosophies such as those advocated by Derrida, these authors defeat their entire movement by communicating their ideas in languages that assume that their audiences will understand their authorial intent to undo the idea of authorial intent. In other words, as is the case with logic itself, the assumptions of its legitimacy must be assumed in order to disprove its legitimacy, and thus it becomes self-defeating.

Of course, most Christian interpreters will not argue from atheistic worldviews that give rise to subjectivism. They will agree with the idea that one must find the authorial intent of a text in order to discover its original meaning. The question becomes, What is authorial intent?

Authorial intent is the logical base of all communication. When someone attempts to communicate anything, whether explaining an advanced idea or asking someone to pass the salt, he attempts to be logically understood by his audience. He will therefore use language and references within the audience’s understanding of the world to communicate to them.

What this means is that authorial intent of an ancient author is rooted in the ancient language of the author and the referential world of the author, not the language and referential world of the modern interpreter.

When we come to biblical interpretation, this is often the most misunderstood concept of authorial intent. The search for authorial intent is often reduced to what I refer to as “soundslikegesis,” where the modern reader assumes that because the text sounds like X to him, that is the intent of the ancient author who may be lightyears away from him in terms of his language and referential world.

To give an example of this, missionaries often have a hard time translating the word “God” in Chinese Bibles. The closest word for God in Chinese, I am told, is the word tao as in the word Taoism. Of course, the word tao refers to an impersonal lifeforce that pervades all of creation and is not understood as a personal being. As a result, the Chinese Christian may read his Chinese Bible and assume what he considers the “plain reading” of the text, mainly that God is an impersonal lifeforce that pervades all living things. But the real question is not what the Chinese reader of his translation thinks the word tao sounds like to him but what the original word meant to the biblical author and his ancient, religious audience.

Absent of a shared linguistic and referential world, the words Elohim, theos, “God,” and tao only correspond to one another superficially. Even in our own Western context, the word “God” can refer to so many different things that to use the word is to simply be ambiguous until further referents are added to it by more descriptive words that would provide a larger context for the purposes of exposing authorial intent in its use.

This means that the “plain reading” to the modern interpreter is not necessarily authorial intent, and in fact, is often a method of eisegesis that ignores authorial intent, since it places the modern readers referential world into the text by assuming that what the text sounds like to him is what the author intended to convey.

What this ultimately assumes, then, is that the modern reader, and his modern world, along with all of the referents that come with it, is the intended audience the author had in mind when he attempted to communicate his ideas through the biblical text.

This, of course, is not likely true. In fact, I would argue that God communicated through these ancient men and their ancient references so that the entire world would have a key to understanding the Scripture, perhaps, in times such as ours when its meaning has been reduced to the subjective whims of the modern reader.

What this all ultimately means is that the key to understanding the text is authorial intent and the key to understanding the authorial intent is reference-filled context of the author’s literary work and the author’s world his words reference.

We will explore the implications of this for hermeneutics and exegesis, and how one who is being consistent with the logic of language should argue to establish a legitimate interpretation of the text, in subsequent posts.

Protecting Sola Scriptura from Sophism, Part I: Introduction to the Problem

 I suspect that you’ve listened to countless debates and read countless books concerning issues that seem to all come down to the way someone interprets the Bible. Many people just throw up their hands and pick a position because they just cannot figure out which interpretations are true. So many things sound reasonable to them. The Bible just seems to be a giant inkblot and every man, woman, and child subjects its meaning to his own whims. Who can really come up with the authorial intent when possibilities seem endless. Language can be bent left and right to support multiple views of just about any subject one might imagine.

This all simply leads to a claim that we believe in an impotent sola Scriptura, and therefore, an impotent Bible, that cannot lead us to any absolute and convicting truth that must be proclaimed authoritatively to the exclusion of all other truth claims, as long as the Bible can be used to support them. Our claims to have the Bible as our supreme authority are negated as soon as we start to argue from other sources of authority and abandon the Bible as sufficient to accomplish the goal, or as soon as we start using the Bible as a support absent of its proper exegesis and logical application. 

What I want to do today is to discuss one major means to figuring out who is making a biblical argument and who is only seemingly making one. It is my contention that many are simply duping themselves and their hearers due to a lack of paying attention to the distinctions between logic and rhetoric.

I would argue that Scripture is built upon the principles of logic because it is communicated through the logic of language. Regardless of what language one speaks, there are universal principles of communication to which everyone who wishes to understand or be understood must adhere. This means that language not only has a logical base but it also functions with a logical trajectory. What that means is that, not only must it be interpreted within the logical parameters of its linguistic principles but it must also be applied in logical trajectories that are connected to its base. Hence, there are logical and illogical inferences that arise either from the logic of the language or from that which is in opposition to its logic.

I would argue that those who are arguing from the logical base of the language of a text and its inferences can be identified as those who are exegeting Scripture and applying it within the parameters of that logical base in distinction from those who are using Scripture as a part of a rhetorical argument that seeks to persuade by whatever means necessary.

In the former, the argument is filled with a logical use of grammar, syntax, lexicography, genre study, literary context, historical context, and canonical context along with logical arguments that do not utilize fallacious reasoning to come to their inferences of any further implications of the text and its applications.

In the latter, some of the elements of exegesis are ignored or unknown to the interpreter and/or logical fallacies are used to obtain an inference or application that is not supported by the logical base of the language used in the text.

I would further argue that this is the difference between the use of the Bible by a logician and a rhetorician. One gives rise to argumentation that upholds the doctrine of sola Scriptura and one upholds a type of argumentation that gives rise to sophistry.

Sophistry is derived from the Greek Sophists who did not necessarily believe that objective truth existed, or that it could be known if it did. Because of this, they argued to persuade others using whatever means possible: arguments from authority, tradition, emotion, experiential reasoning, ad hominem, consensus, etc.

Because sophistry tries to persuade rather than to come to the knowledge of what is absolutely true, its arguments are not directed toward discovery of what is true but rather an assumption of the chosen position, regardless of its actual truth, that must be supported by whatever means possible. This also means that Scripture becomes one of the many things used in order to persuade a hearer of that position rather than the ultimate authority that is mined for its intended meaning.

What I am trying to get at here today is that if we do not practice a logical understanding of language in our interpretations and applications of Scripture then we are liars when claiming to adhere to sola Scriptura. In order to truly uphold that doctrine, we must respect not only what God communicated, but how He communicated it. That is to say, that if God communicated to us, we do not respect His Word unless we also respect the logic of communication that participates with God in good faith to receive the intended meaning and applications of that communication.

Now, how does this all help us discern what is argued in debates and books and sermons and on social media or at the Thanksgiving table? If someone is using a rhetoric that misuses the logic of exegesis, i.e., eisegetes by leaving out the necessary elements to do so, or argues illogically either by false inference or one of the many other ways of appealing to alternate authorities, as the few mentioned above, rather than logically exegeting the text and logically inferring its applications in order to support their point, this person’s conclusions are to be discarded as having been legitimately substantiated.

It is not enough to proclaim that we all believe in the ultimate authority in the Bible. If our arguments do not conform to that proclamation we will find ourselves arguing as mouthpieces of the devil instead of God. As the Christian life must not only proclaim truths in declarations but also with displays of the applications of those truths, so also the proclamation of sola Scriptura must not only be proclaimed but displayed in our arguing for our positions.

It might seem that everyone is doing this, but to the trained ear, that is a far cry from the truth. Most people who are arguing from the Bible are actually not holding positions that are logically supported by it if proper exegesis and the logical inferences thereof were being deployed.

Most people do not realize they are doing this. Most people eisegete and then call it exegesis. Most people argue for applications that are merely false inferences, having added additional assumptions into the text. 

In no way do I mean to imply that people are doing this from some sort of malicious intent. We are simply a culture that has been saturated with poor logic and an abuse of language. We are more emotional than rational, more needing to be affirmed than reproved, more dependent upon traditions and peer pressure than we would like to admit. But God must be exalted above all of this, and we who proclaim His Word to others must make sure of the quality of our arguments before they leave our tongues lest we give the impression that the Bible is only one of many authorities, or worse, that God has produced nothing better than an inkblot that is incapable of giving any sure direction toward which we must sail.