Protecting Sola Scriptura from Sophism, Part IV: Identifying Arguments That Are Not Logically Rooted in the Language of the Text

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.

Protecting Sola Scriptura from Sophism, Excursus II: Why We Need to Understand the Ancient World and Its Texts in order to Help Us Understand Scripture

 One of the objections to what I have argued above is that the Bible should be self-sufficient and we should have no need to learn anything that is external to the Bible in order to understand it.

There are a couple things I want to say to this. The first is that I don’t think the Bible itself teaches this idea. I think it stems from a misunderstanding of sola Scriptura and confuses it with what Keith Mathison would refer to as solo Scriptura. 

But the second thing I would say is that I think the Bible can be understood by itself without using anything external to it. The problem is not the Bible's communication but our lack of understanding it due to our having inserted our own cultural and linguistic concepts into the Bible. In other words, we tend to read an English translation of the Bible and think we are reading the words inspired by the Holy Spirit and forget that the words inspired were Hebrew, Aramaic, and Koine Greek. We tend to read into it all sorts of cultural assumptions that stem from our worldview instead of from the author’s. 

The problem is that I do not know ancient Hebrew, Aramaic, or Koine Greek as a native language. I could spend years trained as a linguist and decipher the language on my own from the Bible itself without ever having to use a grammar, syntax, or lexicon external to the Bible. In many ways, I still do this when I study the Bible. However, it is not unfaithful to the Scripture to trust that others have done this already so that reliance upon these external sources to understand the ancient Hebrew, Aramaic, or Koine Greek text is perfectly in keeping with faithfulness to the text of Scripture as being self-sufficient. 

The further problem, however, is that I am not a native of the ancient cultures in which these texts were written and so must learn the worldviews, idioms, and literary devices and signals (including any genres not shared by our cultures) of those ancient cultures in order to understand a text written within them. 

Again, I can do this by using the Bible alone, since the Bible has so many books that give us a conceptual sampling of these things. The problem, however, is not the deficiency of the Bible, as stated before, but the deficiency in our own understanding due to our having already put so much of our modern cultural concepts that come from our worldview, idioms, literary devices and signals, genres, etc. into the text. We have eisegeted so much of our understanding into the text that we are simply not careful enough to notice that the Bible teaches within another world that is not always in continuity with our own. Because of this, the more we can immerse ourselves in the ancient world, the more we can dislodge what we have ignorantly assumed about the text and the more we can pay more careful attention to what the text is saying. 

To put it plainly, a study of external texts to the Scripture is not because the Scripture needs help in communicating its ideas. It is because we need help seeing our externally cultural ideas with which we have twisted the Scripture. The person who refuses to immerse himself in these cultural contexts will most often lack the ability to see how he has distorted the text with his own ideas. 

As I have argued earlier, the logic of language functions off of referents. When we change the referents of a text, we change the meaning of the text, and we end up with alternate interpretations of the text that were unintended by the author. When the modern interpreter reads a text and subconsciously adds his own cultural referents to it, he ends up changing the text he is reading into something else. In other words, the Bible he is reading is no longer the Bible that was written but a new text that has been rewritten in his head.

Examples:

1. A linguistic example would be the oft cited text of Proverbs 29:18, which in English reads: "Where there is no vision, the people perish: but he who keeps the law prospers." One might remember many a sermon on this text that supports a church building project or new civic programs for the church to follow. This is because our English word "vision" can refer to a plan that someone has as a future goal. The problem is that the Hebrew word here is חָזוֹן, which refers to a revelatory vision, i.e., revelation from God, not some human plan or goal. The adversive parallel to the clause is that which follows, "but he who keeps the Torah prospers." This is because the Torah is revelation from God that instructs God's people so that they do not perish. 

Without understanding the language, the text is misread and becomes a completely different statement, and therefore, a completely different idea that will now be believed by the modern reader to have divine authority as a part of what the Bible teaches. There are numerous examples such as these.

2. There are numerous verses about the "heart" throughout the Hebrew Bible. David is a man after God's own heart, the heart is sick above all things and who can understand it, the thoughts of the heart of man is evil from his youth, God will give His people a new heart, etc. 

We read this word and interpret all of these in light of our own cultural referents. To us, the heart is the seat of emotion and desire. Hence, we tend to interpret all of these passages as having something to do with desire or longing. For instance, a man after God's own heart means a man who wants to desire as God desires and to be like God in that way. The heart being sick above all things and incomprehensible to us has to do with our sinful desires. The thoughts of the heart of man being evil from his youth refers to his wants and desires being evil, and God replacing the heart of His people has to do with giving them new desires.

Now, none of these are necessarily untrue theologically speaking, but they are not the emphasis of the text, and therefore, not to what the text is referring. Instead, if we were to just look closely at all of the texts throughout the Hebrew Bible, we would see that the heart often refers to the mind of the person. The Scripture itself could teach us that "thoughts of the heart" or "he said in his heart" are obviously talking about the mind, not emotions. He said in his emotions? Thoughts of his emotions? We don't really need any external witness to tell us that we have been reading these texts wrong because the texts are unclearly communicated. Instead, what external witnesses, like reading ancient Egyptian or Mesopotamian literature for instance, help us to do is to ask the question as to whether we are reading the texts of the Bible as closely as we should. If I go to Egyptian concepts of the heart and see that they see the heart as the seat of the mind rather than the seat of emotion, it causes me to ask the question whether the biblical concept is different or the same as that of the Egyptian culture. In fact, it causes me to realize that there even is a different concept of the heart that I did not even know about before I read that literature. When I go back to the Bible and read it more carefully, it seems clear that the concept is very similar. This is not correcting the Bible but my flawed assumptions that I have been placing into the texts that I have been reading and with which I have been unknowingly changing the Bible.

3. There are a lot of similarities between the genres the Bible uses to communicate its messages and the various genres that we use but there are a couple genres that we do not use, and with which we are just flat out unfamiliar. One of these is apocalyptic literature. We have literature that we refer to as apocalyptic in our culture but they are not the same as the types of apocalyptic literature found in the Bible and 2d Temple Judaism. Because of this, the modern mind naturally seeks to read texts like Daniel or Revelation with the next best genre with which it is aware, which is largely as a type of prophetic-narrative that describes the future (or within preterist circles, a type of prophetic-narrative that describes the past). This is because the mind is seeking understanding with the tools that it has. It reminds me of a computer that wants to open a file but doesn't quite have the right program so it defaults to some file that frankly just does not do the job well. 

Now, can I understand apocalyptic literature by just reading Daniel, Revelation, some of Zechariah, etc.? Sure. But since I am not familiar with the genre in my modern context, it would be immensely helpful to me to read all sorts of apocalyptic literature external to the Bible like 1 Enoch and the various forms of apocalyptic literature one sees in the Pseudepigrapha and Dead Sea Scrolls. The Bible even quotes from 1 Enoch, an external text to the Bible. Why wouldn't I read it and try to understand it in order to understand what the Bible might be doing? Again, this is a method of correcting myself and my misguided interpretations. It does not add or take away from the Bible. It adds or takes away from what I have been assuming about the Bible and possibly interpreting or misinterpreting it with. In other words, it adds or takes away from what I have already been adding and taking away from the Bible via my modern cultural assumptions.

I say all of this to argue that arguments that include the reading of ancient texts are not additions to exegesis or eisegetical when handled logically. They are a helpful part of deciphering the language used by an author, to figure out his cultural referents, and to correct the modern assumptions we have already sewn into the text. They can be the seam rippers that remove the thread that binds our cultural ideas to the text and allow us to see the text as the author intended. 

This means that a good argument that keeps in line with the logic of the language will seek to understand a text within its linguistic and cultural environment and any interpretation that merely assumes the meaning by using modern concepts through the method of soundslikegesis is to be dismissed as unsupported by the text.

Protecting Sola Scriptura from Sophism: Excursus concerning the Holy Spirit's Role in Biblical Interpretation

 Some might look at what I have written thus far and argue that it seems more mechanical and that the Holy Spirit is able to bring one to the truth in his reading of Scripture without following the logic of proper hermeneutics and exegesis. Of course, this is absolutely true, since God can do anything. In fact, the Holy Spirit is able to lead people into all truth through a sunset or a Harry Potter novel.

The real question, however, is what we can expect the Holy Spirit to do based upon the revelation He has given us in the Bible. Every person can claim to have the Holy Spirit, but how does anyone know whether this claim is true, especially in light of completely contradictory interpretations of the Bible that are so legion today? 

The point I want to make briefly here is this: the Holy Spirit is going to use the logic of language to interpret the text in accordance with the logic of the language He used to have the text written in the first place. 

He could have communicated His truth to the world in some other way. He could have made it intuitive to every man and left it there. He could have done it through feelings. But He didn't. He used languages, now foreign and ancient to us, from cultures, now foreign and ancient to us, and the logic of referential meaning to communicate truth to us. If that is what God used to communicate, and we have no other reliable revelation to argue otherwise, then we must conclude that is what God uses to communicate, and follow the interpretive methods that are supported by it while rejecting the interpretive methods that are not.

In other words, what I have argued thus far in this series IS what the Holy Spirit uses to help us interpret the Bible accurately. Anyone who claims to be interpreting the text by the Holy Spirit who ignores these and ends up with interpretations that contradict their conclusions should be dismissed as one who is mistaken.

Protecting Sola Scriptura from Sophism, Part III: Relying upon Multiplying Referents for Successful Interpretation

 I stated in the last post the following: "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."

I want to now argue that this fact limits the modern interpreter to only those interpretations that argue from the context of the literary work as it is situated in the language of the original audience. What this ultimately means is that one is at a sever loss of any ground for a reliable interpretation of the Bible unless he knows the original language of the author and his intended audience. 

Now, one might agree that the original languages of Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek must be learned in order to have grounding for a reliable argument that supports any given interpretation, and he would be right to do so. However, Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, as is English or any other language, are dependent upon the author's use of them to point to his intended referents within his world. In other words, if I were to attempt to understand a document written to ancient Mayans during the fall of the Mayan Empire, I not only would need to learn the formal aspects of ancient Mayan language (i.e., grammar, syntax, and English glosses for Mayan words), I would have to also learn ancient Mayan culture during that time period and locale in order to understand the references to which the author was pointing his audience toward in order for what he intended to communicate to be understood. 

If I instead insisted that cultures are universal and so all I needed to learn was the formal language but not the cultural referents intended, I would be simply replacing the context with my own and completely misunderstand what was being communicated. In fact, I would argue that since the formal language includes lexicography that points to things within the conceptual world of the author, one has not learned the Greek language Paul is using, for instance, until he learns the referential concepts within Second Temple Judaism to which Paul is referring. One has not learned the Greek language that John is using until he learns the ancient Gnostic concepts and practices he is referencing or the genre of apocalyptic and its symbolic references to which he is pointing. 

In other words, language is more than its formal symbols. One must also know to what those symbols refer in the mind of the author, and because of this, the modern interpreter must learn not only the formal language but the author's referential use of that language. This is because without the larger argument of his literary work, the understanding of the genre he is using, and/or the ignorance of worldview concepts within his cognitive universe and the cognitive universe of his audience, the likelihood of the text being misunderstood when worldviews collide is astronomical.

Now, it needs to be understood that there are enough cultural similarities between most cultures that the Bible is not a completely foreign entity even to the interpreter who uses only an English Bible. So the overall message, the historical-redemptive message, once the Bible is translated by competent scholars, as it has been many times, can be understood by the average reader. This is what the Reformers referred to as the perspicuity of Scripture. However, this doctrine is obviously reliant upon teachers who have learned the language as noted above. This doctrine assumes that texts have been translated correctly and that the ambiguities of the receptor language, like English or German for instance, are not so great so as to obscure the overall message of the Bible. (And, of course, no who claims to understand the Bible on their own without the languages is able to just read a Hebrew and Greek Bible when it is handed to them. Everyone needs it to be interpreted and translated first, so theirs is an interpretation built upon an interpretation.)

Having said this, beyond the main message of Scripture, it is possible that many texts can be misunderstood due to a lack of cultural continuity between the cultures, languages, time periods of the original author and audience so that teachers who learn these discontinuities are able to bridge the gap between them and argue for the probable interpretation of a text within its literary and cultural context.

Going back to the main point of this series now, it becomes imperative that teachers learn the original languages of the Bible and that includes the larger arguments of the authors' literary works as well as the cultural concepts that the languages of these authors reference. 

It reminds me of someone who recently said that they don't need to know Hebrew and Greek because they can interpret the Bible for themselves. But this is an illusion. The Bible is written in Hebrew and Greek so what they really mean is that after scholars have learned the languages for them and told them what the Bible is saying, they can now interpret it. I would agree, that is, in so far as they have understood the intended meaning of the translators and not hooked their interpretations onto an ambiguity in the receptor language or a referent that they have inserted from their own culture due to a cultural discontinuity between the two civilizations.

Now, context is such that the more context given to a text, the more likely that text can be deciphered by anyone (that is, if he or she is paying attention to the context). This is simply because our brains are able to decipher the logic of a text the more referents are supplied by an author or the more texts with which the interpreter is familiar. In the case of the Bible, because it consists of 39 books that come from the ancient Israelite context and 27 that come from the Hellenistic Jewish context of first century Judean Greek, an interpreter may do just fine without having read any of the literature from the ancient Near East or extrabiblical texts that come out of 2d Temple Judaism. 

However, as said above, more referents provide a greater clarity toward the author's intended meaning, so the more one can read ancient Near Eastern and 2d Temple Jewish literature, the greater advantage he will have in interpreting a text accurately. 

Having said that, can one still interpret a text accurately without them? Of course. Due to what I also said above, so much context is given because the Bible provides so many pieces of literature from those time periods that, as long as one is paying attention to the flow of the author's argument and context, no further context outside of the Bible is needed. But it does add support and help substantiate what an interpreter may have already understood from the Bible itself.

My point of this post is simply to point out that an argument that is filled with the understanding of the language and all of its referents is made by an interpreter, it is to be favored as working within the author's communicative process rather than outside of it. Those arguments for interpretations that work outside of it must be rejected as establishing no support toward a legitimate interpretation and often may be seeking to establish support through an illogical and eisegetical means, often unbeknownst even to the unskilled interpreter who is attempting to do it. 

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.

The Shepherd of Hermas: A Lesson for the Modern Church Critic

One of the most iconic songs of the 80's was Michael Jackson's "Man in the Mirror." The song was all about if you want to change the world, what you really need to do is change yourself because you are a part of the world that needs to be changed. The more people who focus on themselves, the more the world will change. It's a ground-up type of philosophy that I find to be very much a Christian idea. 

There is an early Christian book that teaches a similar sentiment. The Shepherd of Hermas, although not canonical, was nonetheless considered by early Christians to be one of the most important books for believers to read. It is the most widely attested book besides a couple of the Gospels and even appears as the final book in Codex Sinaiticus, which is one of the most well-known and reliable codices from which many modern translations adopt their readings.

The book has many important things to say but one of the most important in my mind is the image of the church that appears to Hermas as an old, worn out woman who is viewed as ugly because of the sins and shortcomings of her children. The woman appears to Hermas and tells him that he and his household need to repent. As he continues to repent and grow in the faith, the woman reappears to him, but each time that she does, she gets younger and more beautiful, finally appearing to him as an amazingly beautiful bride adorned in all of her glory. 

It is interesting that this scene begins with Hermas viewing her as old and ugly. Yet, the rebuke is not for her to make herself more beautiful but rather for Hermas to repent and grow out of his immaturity. What this essentially presents to us is that when we are in our most sinful and immature state, we see the church as ugly. By "ugly" I mean that we don't like it. It's not attracting us. It holds no influence over us and instead we can do nothing but critique how it lacks beauty.

When we grow in Christ, we begin to see that our disdain for the body of believers of which we are a part becomes a vision of Christ's glory. It is a green oasis flowing with water in the midst of an ugly wasteland. 

In other words, the Body of Christ isn't ugly. It never was. It is cleansed by the blood of Christ and even its blemishes will soon be wiped away. Instead, we are the ugly ones and we project the frustrations of our own ugliness, the disorder of our own lives and households, onto the church and cannot see the beauty of Christ that it reflects.

Think on this, Disillusioned Christian, the world thinks the church is ugly too. When your view and the world's view of the Body of Christ is in agreement, that speaks more to where you are than where the church is.

Hypercritical people who have a need to fix every jot and tittle in what is almost surely a case of obsessive compulsive disorder created by the lack of complete control in their own lives and households don't need to be catered to but rather told that the imperfections they see are due to their own vision, not what exists in reality. Their high and lofty expectations for what the church should look like need to be applied to themselves and their own households, or to put it in the words of Christ, they need to "take the log out" of their own eyes and then they will see clearly to take the speck out of their brothers' eyes.

Of course, the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, so these people think that if they only were like someone else's church, if they only lived in some other area, if they only had some other spouse, if they only had some other family, etc., the world would turn right as rain. But what they fail to realize is that the ugliness is within. God Himself cleansed the world with a flood, and yet, sin blossomed anew. And why wouldn't it? Sin first came about in paradise. That's because one's environment does not dictate whether one will choose ugliness. It only exposes whether one has the desire to do so. 

Because of that very Augustinian (i.e., non-heretical Pelagian) idea, the imperfect church is beautiful. It is beautiful because in its imperfections it exposes our imperfections. It shows our lack of patience, blindness to the good around us, discontent and frustration with our lack of being gods who have complete control, etc. Its imperfections bring out that we are spoiled, ungrateful children who look to find reasons to complain and find fault rather than reasons to be thankful and praise God. It exposes where we have failed to realize that the gospel has given us hope and in hope a positive outlook to see beauty in God's people even when they are ugly to fleshly eyes. 

The imperfections of the church are there for our sanctification and woe to the man who finds a church that is perfect in his eyes, for that would surely be a judgment of God over his life. He will find himself in a counterfeit church, a cult, if in fact it is everything he wants and will now be kept from any exposure of his sinful disposition in the world.

Now, of course, if there is a church body in absolute unrepentant sin, it is ugly; but that is because there is a serious question as to whether it is actually the body of Christ at that time. Christ Himself has that local body under judgment for its compromise and will take away its lampstand from His temple if it does not repent. 

But if you go to a church that is the Body of Christ and all you can see is its imperfections, then you are not looking at the church as it truly is but in a mirror that likely reflects the disorder in your own character, household, and mind. Our consumeristic mentality feeds into our naturally judgmental minds. We are the ones who have the standards that need to be met if this church is a "good one" or not. "No one said hi to me." "I don't like the way they do communion." "I don't like the way the preacher said that." "This person offended me." "I don't like their music." "They're disrespectful in their casual dress." "They're too stuffy in their formal clothes." "I don't like where they meet." "I don't like when they meet." "They're too intrusive into our lives." "They're not involved enough in our lives." "They're too liturgical." "They're not liturgical enough." The thoughts of fault-finders are a radio turned up loudly to drown out the sins they themselves are committing against the church, fellow believers, their spouses, their children, etc. 

The solution is not to try and clean out every single particle of dust in every nook and cranny within the Body of Christ, but rather to do as the lady of Hermas commands, i.e., repent and ask forgiveness for yourself and for your household, i.e., "take a look at yourself and make a change." Only then will the church's beauty be restored to your sight.