Implicatures: The Unsung Heroes of Good Exegesis

 I don't know if you ever watched The Fall Guy as a kid but it was one of my favorite shows. The theme song at the beginning of the show tells of how stuntmen in movies are the unsung heroes of the movies. They do all the cool stuff. If it were not for stuntmen, all of those action movies would never likely be made (all Tom Cruise action movies excepted of course). These men do behind the scenes the stuff that makes the magic happen. But they are largely unseen by the audience. Well, seen but unseen. And if one wanted to deny their existence, he or she could simply say, "That guy was never in the movie because I never saw him and you can't show me him in the movie." They would be wrong but difficult to prove wrong because their presence isn't explicitly made known. 

Implicatures in language function the same way. Scripture uses language to communicate not only in the explicit statements but also in implied statements/propositions that are assumed by what is explicitly stated in order to form an argument. 

For instance, Paul's argument in Galatians 3 is that Christ is the only offspring of Abraham that receives the promises of Abraham and that those who believe in Christ become offspring of Abraham "in" Him and by "putting Christ on." Therefore, the distinctions in individual identity that would exclude someone from being an heir of Abraham's promises no longer exist because all are "one in Christ." These are the explicit statements in Chapter 3. 

However, what is often missed are the implicatures. For instance, how is Christ the heir of Abraham? And how am I the heir of Abraham if I am made one with Christ? 

The first implicature is easy for most to get. Christ is the heir of Abraham because he is the only perfectly faithful Israelite who has ever lived. But not just an Israelite. He is of the line of Judah, so he is Jew of Jews. So Christ, Paul's argument implies, is the only heir of Abraham as a Jewish Israelite.

But the second implicature is often missed. This is that if a person is one with Christ, and Christ is a Jewish Israelite, then as His hand is a Jewish Israelite hand and His feet are Jewish Israelite feet, all that are one body with Him are Jewish Israelite. Hence, all in Christ, one with Him, have put Him on, are Jewish Israelites in Him, and thus, sons of Abraham in the same way, not in a different way, that He is.

That's Paul's argument. That's what is often missed. Hence, he ends the letter by calling the entire church "the Israel of God" because that is what they have become in Christ. 

But implicatures are often ignored or dismissed by those who would like to interpret texts to fit their theology instead. Like those who deny that stuntmen were in the movie, these people can simply say, "I don't see where Paul explicitly says any of this and so it's not there."

But implicatures are interesting parts of language. They actually are assumed by the author and he assumes his audience will also assume them. If I say, "I gave two dollars to my friend," this sentence assumes all sorts of implicatures that are not explicitly stated. I exist. I have at least two dollars. I have a friend. My friend received the two dollars. etc. etc. If I had to explicitly detail every implicature, language would be laborious. Instead, I assume you can get all of that by my explicit statement. 

And this is important to note. It isn't an eisegetical assumption. It is an exegetical one. Not all assumptions are eisegetical but you must show their necessity by the explicit statements in the text. 

What I find is that most cults and people with bad interpretations ignore and dismiss the necessary assumptions that the author intends that you make in order to substantiate his argument. To reject these is to reject the communicative process and to refuse, therefore, to partake generously in the language game of the author.

In other words, to ignore the implicatures is to leave the author's statements up for subjective interpretations that massacre his meaning and subject it to a possible replacement it with their own. 

When I see people who seem to lack reading comprehension skills it is often due to this inability to follow a logical argument through the implicatures, so this skill is definitely one that should be taught in exegesis courses but is, unfortunately, most often completely unidentified as a key contributor to understanding the text, and therefore, left out.

It's the unsung hero that would save the day from bad interpretation but is too often ignored because of its inconvenience to what are truly eisegetical assumptions that the poor exegete uses to change the text.