Tried With Fire

Social media can be a rather rude place at times. There are moments of thoughtful give-and-take, but there are moments when the interaction consists of name calling those in the opposition. Maybe I'm becoming an old fuddy-duddy, but I'm not impressed with the latter. Rather than strengthening a person's position, it seems to weaken it, in my opinion. Any reasonable debate about an idea is lost in the rapid exchange of derogatory comments, and maybe that's the point. Maybe we've lost the whole concept of debating ideas for the sake of the truth in the desire to have the last word, even if that last word is an insult. In With Good Reason , the author gives details of several fallacies of presumption. Here's what he has to say about the fallacy of begging-the-question epithets: [T]he error lies in the use of stated language that reaffirms what we wish to prove but have not yet proved. An epithet is a descriptive word or phrase used to characterize a person,...

Lately I've been digging into the nuts and bolts of Bible interpretation. This was triggered by a journal article I had read which examined different views among conservative Christians on a particular subject. These differing view stemmed from different interpretations of a single New Testament (NT) word which in turn led to different applications. On one side, the meaning was derived with emphasis on the root definition. On the other side, the context was given more weight. As a result, I've been consulting D.A. Carson's Exegetical Fallacies , Invitation To Biblical Interpretation by Drs. Kostenberger and Patterson, and this Tabletalk article. These resources shed quite a bit of light on the pitfalls of interpreting Scripture and the fallacies we inadvertently commit. It's also been highly mortifying. I've committed many if not all of these word fallacies and made assumptions about biblical words that were just plain wrong. After cringing inside at my mistakes...

Careful handling of the Bible will enable us to "hear" it a little better. It is all too easy to read the traditional interpretations we have received from others into the text of Scripture. Then we may unwittingly transfer the authority of Scripture to our traditional interpretations and invest them with a false, even an idolatrous, degree of certainty. Because traditions are reshaped as they are passed on, after a while we may drift far from God's Word while still insisting all our theological opinions are "biblical" and therefore true. If when we are in such a state we study the Bible uncritically, more than likely it will simply reinforce our errors. If the Bible is to accomplish its work of continual reformation of our lives and our doctrine - we must do all we can to listen to it afresh and utilize the best resources at our disposal. Exegetical Fallacies , 2nd edition, D.A. Carson, Baker Book House, 1996, pp. 17-18.