Protecting Sola Scriptura from Sophism, Part V: The More Subtle Forms of Sophistry

 Sophistry can look very academic. In fact, it most often looks academic. Most commentaries, monographs, journal articles, lectures, and other forms of media use the same material that an exegete uses in order to interpret the Bible. Hebrew and Greek words are discussed. Backgrounds are used as referents of the text. Syntax and grammar may be discussed, along with genre and literary considerations. But none of this is exegesis. These are merely the materials one uses to build the house. They do not control the methodologies used to build it. 

For instance, with backgrounds, one can change the referents provided within a text, and in doing so, change the text itself and therefore its meaning. With word studies, one can dictate what a text can and cannot say because a word is defined separately outside of the context rather than letting the context dictate the use of the word. One can misunderstand the grammar by putting too much semantic weight to it (e.g., "the Greek verb means this is past, present, or future" when the Greek verb is not tense based). One can have a faulty or made-up understanding of syntax or paragraph structure that then changes what words refer to what in the text. All of these elements can and are abused by academics who are actually eisegeting rather than exegeting, but all of them seem very convincing to those who are merely looking at whether the interpreter uses these elements rather than being critical of the methodology he is using to piece them together. 

In the same way that sophistry elevates one's vocabulary in order to persuade an audience to believe the veracity of an opinion, academic Bible interpretation that is void of good exegesis seeks to convince by virtue of how properties of biblical language are used rather than with the logical methodology of proper exegesis that allows those properties to form one's interpretation of the text. 

Another type of faulty exegesis is when texts are used to interpret the event rather than the text. This happens when one attempts to recreate the event with the text or multiple texts that now reinterprets the e event that was already interpreted for the reader by the text. The Bible often uses events as teaching tools for theology and ethics, but often these are stripped of the text as though it is a literal description of the event that is merely attempting to put the reader into the event rather than to teach the reader theology and ethics or even history through the event. An author has a specific amount of information that he wants the reader to take from the event, but a reconstruction seeks to put in more details and recreate the event in a way that the author did not include in his text. This takes the audience's mind off of the text and onto the event, often, ironically, ignoring the true authorial intent and meaning of the text. Often, this can be spotted when lots of other biblical texts or details from outside the text are employed to add information to the text at hand. Topical teaching and intertextual teaching can tend toward this fallacy.

Another key issue in biblical interpretation is applying the right hermeneutic to a text, which is really what this entire series is about. The historical, grammatical hermeneutic is derived from the fact that God uses language to communicate and language assumes the legitimacy of this hermeneutic in order to understand it. In other words, the Bible teaches this hermeneutic because by using known, coherent languages that function in accordance with the rules of logic, the authors intend to be understood. Hence, with grammar, syntax, specific words with specific referents within the context of the text, the biblical authors teach to their audience not only the substance of what they are communicating but also the means by which that communication is to be understood.

One of the worst crimes committed, however, is the "bait and switch" fallacy when committing non sequiturs when applying a text. This is where the interpreter making the argument will make a solid argument of the biblical text, understand the meaning of the text, but then assign an application that is not logically consistent with the interpretation. This is because the logic of the language is not really connected to an application that the interpreter wants from the text. This is still teaching a different Bible even though the interpretation may have been correct since it introduces teaching that is not consistent with the biblical text but teaches a foreign idea as though it is.

The above statement proves true even when the authors are using non-literal hermeneutics that may be in play within their culture and context (e.g., 2d Temple hermeneutics) because we know their non-literal intent by employing the historical grammatical hermeneutic. In other words, I know that Paul is making an allegory of Sarah and Hagar in Galatians, not only because he says he is doing so, which I would understand by employing the historical grammatical hermeneutic, but also because he uses similes in the context that, in accordance with logic, convey that the author is symbolically interpreting the two women. This, therefore, does not give me, as an interpreter, the right to go into biblical texts and do the same thing that Paul has done in his typological interpretation, but rather to keep the historical grammatical hermeneutic that Paul is assuming his readers will use to interpret him in order to understand the allegory he is using. I, therefore, know what Paul is saying in Galatians, i.e., that God had an additional authorial intent with the Genesis text than the original author had, and what the human author of Genesis is saying when he contrasts the two women by using the historical grammatical hermeneutic. 

This does not mean that no outside of the apostles can use typology of texts that the apostles did not say were typological. It just means that there is no way to verify that our typology is also God's additional authorial intent to the original author's. This is why, historically, no doctrine should be established based upon typological or allegorical interpretation. It cannot be verified as intended by either author of the biblical text, human or divine. The historical grammatical hermeneutic, however, is inherent in the use of language and a hermeneutic derived from exegesis of the language, which is why it can establish the authorial intent of both authors as long as those authors have communicated that intent through the logic of language.

Hence, if one is arguing in a way that commits etymological fallacies with words, illegitimate referential transference between biblical texts or other background sources, misidentification of genre, is attempting to interpret the even rather than the text, or imposes hermeneutical theories external to the Bible, then one can be sure that these arguments are not in support of the position for which he is arguing.