As a result of what we have talked about above, arguments of one who is exegeting and one who is not will look very different. Both may still look academic in that they will talk about Hebrew, Greek, backgrounds, genre, etc. but the methodologies that direct the use of that information will be displayed in the arguments themselves. In other words, one person's arguments, the one using exegetical methods, will be consistent with the logic of language and the other person's arguments, whether academic in nature or not, will be inconsistent with, or completely ignore altogether, the logic of the language. This will, of course, often lead to interpretations of the text that are completely different from one another. Yet, one will be rooted objectively in the text and the other will be rooted subjectively in the cultural opinions and ideas of a particular culture and linguistic logic foreign to the original text.
In other words, if one is not properly exegeting, it means that his interpretations of the Bible will be solely rooted in his own culture-bound opinion and he will be doing nothing more than making his best guess at what the right meaning of a text might be just like everyone else who doesn't know the language and is only reading an English Bible.
This means that the arguments of the non-exegetical interpreter will take a different shape to bring him to his conclusions and in a debate, whether formal or informal, whether in dialogue or monologue, he will argue his case very differently than his exegetical interlocutor. His arguments will be rhetorical but not logical. They will be sophist but not realist.
As I discussed before, sophism is a philosophy where a position is adopted and then any and all arguments that are assessed to be persuasive are used to support that position, whether they are valid arguments or not. When it comes to arguments made from the biblical text, there is a way to argue from the text and a way to use the text to argue. In the former, logical arguments from the text will be used to interpret the text and support the argument being made. In the latter, all sorts of linguistic and logical fallacies will be adopted, including using the text out of context or in disregard of its language, in order to support the argument being made.
The fact that this occurs should allow the careful audience of an argument to discern between valid and invalid interpretations of the text. The following are some of the tactics employed by sophism to support an argument that should be dismissed immediately as invalid.
Let's look at the easier logical fallacies to spot first.
Ad hominem, circumstantial ad hominem, or argument from bias are types of argumentation that attack the person making the argument but completely leave the opposing position untouched. It is meant to persuade an audience that one's opponent in a debate should not be listened to because of some characteristic about them (e.g., he is a bad person, he is biased and wants what he is saying to be true, he is just influenced by someone or something he likes or has close relations with, etc.).
An example of this might be if you're discussing Reformed theology and someone says that Reformed people are mean-hearted, arrogant, know-it-alls who just like to show their superiority in putting other views down. Even if all of this might be true of the person, it hasn't refuted a single iota of any biblical or logical proof in Reformed theology's favor.
Tone policing is a type of ad hominem fallacy where the person, not the argument, is attacked for how their argument is presented. Again, people who have a bad tone might be accused of being arrogant or condescending, which are bad traits, and therefore, this argument implies that their arguments should be dismissed because they are unlikeable people. Their position, however, remains completely undefeated at this point.
Arguments from tradition and ad populum are arguments where one appeals to what a particular group of people have always believed or what a particular group of people believe now. It usually appeals to the majority opinion throughout history (tradition) or the contemporary majority opinion (ad populum). Neither one of these establish the truth or falsehood of a claim, and if we are talking about Christian circles that uphold the doctrine of sola Scriptura, these types of arguments set up external authorities to rival the Bible rather than support its teachings. Now, if these are simply arguments that supplement good exegesis, it becomes less of an argument from tradition or ad populum and more of a support that shows that others have also used good exegesis to come to the same opinion. The problem remains only in the use of these arguments absent of the logical support of the text itself. Unfortunately, most people appeal to the fact that lots of people have different opinions and therefore lots of people couldn't all be wrong. This, of course, assumes that truth is found by somehow appealing to the majority of a group. Nazis anyone? Weren't the Jews who thought Jesus was the Messiah a minority group?
Genetic fallacies are fallacies similar to above, where an argument is being accepted (the church fathers or reformers said X) or rejected (the heretics said Y) based upon who held it.
The middle ground fallacy assumes that whatever is in the middle is the right answer. Hence, in biblical interpretation, if someone interprets Jesus to be saying that divorce and remarriage are allowed for any reason and another interprets Him as saying that it is never allowed for any reason, the rational position that is likely true is the middle position that interprets Him as not being radically on one side or the other but holding to a moderate position like divorce and remarriage are allowed only in a few circumstances. Of course, taking a middle position between two opposite "extremes" assumes what the extremes are first by determining what is true. In a way, therefore, it begs the question and assumes a faulty Hegelian dialectic that synthesis is the key to truth when truths may, in fact, exist at the extremities of the spectrum.
Strawman arguments and fallacies of missing the point are arguments that distort the positions of one's opponents or completely ignore them altogether and address some other point that is not being argued for. So if I argue that the Bible teaches a creational ethic when it comes to the sexual act where one is obligated to use all copulation in a way that is open to God to create human life, but then someone presents my position as arguing that accidentally spilling seed or kissing someone without making a baby is sin, this is a complete distortion of my argument that leaves it completely untouched since what is being argued is a different argument that I never made. In other words, if Argument X is made and the person attacks Argument Y, then Argument X stands. Strawmen and arguments that miss the point are usually done from carelessness with an argument that stems from a desire to psychologically sooth oneself when an unpleasant conclusion could be drawn from the real argument.
Arguments from consequences and some slippery slope arguments are arguments that reject or accept a proposition as true based upon whether it will lead to good or bad consequences. Hence, one might argue that Calvinism will lead to lower rates of Christians evangelizing, and therefore, Calvinism cannot be a correct interpretation of biblical passages since God wants us to evangelize. The consequences, even if bad and genuinely resulting from something true, do not determine whether an interpretation is true or not because they do not determine whether something is true or not.
Anecdotal fallacy is when someone argues against a proposition, e.g., the Bible says homosexuals are evil, by arguing from the experience and opinion of the person, i.e., I know some homosexuals and they are good people. All this says is that the person has a different conclusion from their experience, assumes their experience is greater than the authority presented in the argument, and therefore declares that it is false. This, of course, doesn't counter the argument presented but instead makes another argument that is not substantiated without further arguments.
Appeal to emotion is when, as in the rest of these fallacies the argument goes untouched, but the audience is made to feel good or bad about adopting a position. "Those who accept trans people are on the right side of history." "Trans people commit suicide because people say they're doing something wrong." "Donald Trump is a racist and anyone who votes for him is a racist too." None of these are logical arguments but they are surprisingly effective to human beings who are guided much more by their emotions than they would like to admit.
The Texas sharpshooter fallacy might sum up sophism itself since it is the fallacy where one adopts a position and then looks for arguments that support it and ignores others that do not. Cherry Picking is also a version of this, where only those arguments or data that support a position are mentioned and the data or arguments that might cast doubt on it are ignored. It's like one having the idea that libertarian free will is necessary in order for us to love God and then that person goes into the Bible looking to support the idea with passages that talk about choice while ignoring the passages that seem to contradict libertarian free will. In many ways, systematic theology and topical preaching, if not done with care, can fall prey most often to these fallacies.
The etymological fallacy assumes that the true meaning of the word is rooted in its etymology or original meaning. This is a lexical fallacy that is committed quite a bit by earlier works of lexicography like those of Brown-Driver-Briggs, Kittel and Colin Brown. This fallacy is often repeated in debates and sermons as proof of one's position when in reality it gives no support within itself to establish the meaning of a word as it is used in the context of a particular text by a particular author.
The historian's fallacy is one that assumes that those who argued in the past had the same information and were dealing with the same arguments that those in the present are addressing. A lot of arguments from church fathers or reformers are often caught up in this fallacy. It looks something like, "No church father saw this biblical passage like this" or "no reformer saw this biblical passage this way." It assumes that those in the past had the same advanced grammatical, lexical, syntactical skills, knowledge of the ancient environment through texts and archaeology, knowledge of genre through ancient texts, etc. in order to make the same assessment of a text but come to a different or indifferent conclusion to one made in the present with all of those exegetical tools. Most of the church fathers did not know Hebrew and only read a Greek translation of the OT. Most of the Latin Fathers did not know either Hebrew or Greek and only had a Latin translation to go off of. The Reformers were just relearning Hebrew, and often learned a later rabbinic Hebrew rather than ancient Biblical Hebrew. Likewise, up until the nineteenth century, most people thought the Greek of the NT was Holy Ghost Greek because they only had Classical Greek to go off of and judged everything in relationship to it. Second Temple literature has been analyzed now far deeper than before, as it had been ignored by so many in the past, and ancient Near Eastern literature was buried in the sand and unknown until the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This doesn't mean that the Holy Spirit did not guide the church in God's Word, but it does mean that any individual text should be reevaluated in light of the lack of information we now have.
The nirvana fallacy argues that because a solution, or interpretation, of an issue isn't the most ideal that it should be rejected. This is often a fallacy committed in application of a text. For instance, since women can't attain to the Proverbs 31 woman, teachers should suggest that they should. Since no one sings as well as a cathedral choir, we shouldn't sing at all. This fallacy encapsulates the saying, "The perfect is the enemy of the good." Biblical ideals should be striven toward even if they are never fully realized.
Proof by assertion is a fallacy that we might rename as the Facebook Fallacy. This is where someone merely asserts a position or says, "I don't agree" but offers no support of their own position or disagreement. It is a claim or implication that one's conclusion is equally or even more valid than one's opponent without backing up that claim or implication. This is similar to what is called the "I'm entitled to my own opinion fallacy," where the mere opinion is asserted with as much authority as a conclusion that was well argued for simply because someone has the right to hold a different opinion.
The fallacy of appealing to the stone is similar to the above but the assertion is simply that the opposing argument is absurd, stupid, not biblical, etc. without the supporting arguments that show it to be absurd, stupid, or unbiblical. This is merely an assertion and assertions don't bring us to any understanding or confirmation of the truth.
Often the person using assertion fallacies are arguing emotionally and are offended since they view truth as something that is subjectively known rather than something that can be supported by an objective source through objective means. In the Christian context, a Christian might say that they believe that God's Word is objective but then believe that it can't be known through objective means, and so since everyone is just guessing subjectively, assertion is all we have and no one should assert his opinions over others.
The fallacy of affirming a disjunct is like that of false dichotomy. It assumes that if one thing is true the other is not. So if the Bible says that any given sexual act, for instance, has more purposes than procreation then procreation doesn't need to be a part of it. However, a logical biblical stance would be that the sexual act has its purpose in procreation and has more purposes to it, so that any given sexual act should have that purpose and seek also the others as well. In other words, it's more than procreation but it isn't less than procreation.
The division fallacy is where one thinks that something true of the whole must also be true of the parts. So if, as in the example above, the purpose of the sexual act is procreation, every part of that act must accomplish the goal of procreation. Hence, kissing, fondling of breasts, etc. are parts of the sexual act as the Bible describes, and they are not procreative, then the claim that the purpose of the sexual act is procreative is false. This is fallacious because it assumes that because the purpose of the sexual act is procreative that every part of the sexual act must be procreative when it is just the consummation of the sexual act in copulation that is procreative and the rest have a secondary purpose in procreation by leading up to that point.
Personal incredulity is the assumption that if someone cannot see an argument or that it is too nuanced to understand that this must give credence to the fact that it isn't true. People might admit that not all truths are easy to understand but the fallacy exists more in a skeptical sense where the person thinks that things are probably not true if they are hard to understand. Of course, lots of true things are hard to understand for most people. This has no bearing on what is actually true. An example of this might be the Trinity or Incarnation of Christ. So many people reject these doctrines based upon this fallacy.
I could go on and on but these are some of the most common ones I see in debates and conversations concerning biblical interpretation, application, and theology. These are the easier ones to spot, however, and there are some that are more tricky and are usually only spot by the trained eye. We'll explore those in the next post. Suffice to say that anyone who claims to believe in sola Scriptura should be careful not to use any of the fallacies above since establishing positions with these fallacies implies a denial of Scripture as his supreme authority.
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