“Not Everyone Agrees” – A Bad Argument

There’s an argument that I hear or read more often than not. It’s used typically by people who have a theological view that differs from the predominant view. A discussion will arise about some point regarding the predominant view and someone will step in with a view that disagrees with the predominant view. After a couple of arguments or explanations are bandied back and forth, if the person lobbying the opposing view senses that the argument is going badly for them, then they make this argument to give some sense of legitimacy to their position.

Now they don’t typically state the argument as a dry proposition.  Usually it will be worded something like this:

“All I’m trying to say is that there are people who disagree that this biblical passage means what you say that it means.”

Or:

“My point is that not everyone agrees on this theological issue.”

The argument that is insinuated is that the case for the legitimacy of a position is made by trading on the fact that people don’t agree. This argument assumes that the disagreement doesn’t include heresy. It also fails to make the observation that only one mutually exclusive truth is possible. Therefore, only one view can actually be true.

Now there are areas of theological disagreement that are legitimately subject to uncertainty based on different hermeneutical presuppositional structures. That’s a mouthful for most of you so I’ll break it down. Hermeneutics is the area of theological discovery that applies principles for understanding written text. This is where you investigate the writer and the audience, the sentence structures, the cultural context, figures of speech and idiomatic expressions, etc. When using these kinds of principles you often find a variety of possible meanings depending on how you apply the principles. Some passages are simply clearer than others. In order to understand more difficult passages, it helps to use facts learned in clearer passages to shed light on which meaning is most possible. As the Bible is studied and various facts understood, it helps to arrange these facts in logical associations to see the larger truth. Some facts depend on other facts and ultimately a small set of related facts will form that foundational truth for how you understand the rest of the Bible. This is your presuppositional structure.

Ideally, a presuppositional structure is formed by hermeneutical principles consistently applied to the scriptures. Unfortunately, most people will have a set of ideas already in place as their initial presuppositional structure and they will apply hermeneutical principles in such a way as to reinforce it rather than to change their presuppositional structure as consistently applied hermeneutical principles contradict their presuppositional structure. So where one presuppositional structure is suggested by the Bible, many people end up with different presuppositional structures.

Let me pick one of the less-controversial conflicts to use as an example. The Bible doesn’t say that the pets we have here in this world will be resurrected in the next. In fact, as far as the Bible is concerned only humans will be resurrected. That doesn’t mean that there won’t be animals of some sort in the hereafter. The Bible simply doesn’t focus on this. It’s not important. This is a consistent way of approaching the Bible. I’m looking at what the Bible views as important. I have pets that I enjoy as companions but I don’t expect to have them with me for all time and it’s not important to me because it’s not important in the Bible.

However, it is important to some people. They are particularly attached to their pets. Instead of letting the Bible guide their thinking on this, they import ideas that are foundational to understanding the Bible so that the Bible ends up meaning what the Bible never teaches. These ideas are things like, “God just wants me to be happy,” “Fluffy and Fido make me happy,” and “God gave me Fluffy and Fido to make me happy.” Therefore, they conclude, “God will give me Fluffy and Fido in heaven to make me happy.” So they read the Bible with this logic in mind as to how they should apply hermeneutical principles to understand the Bible. Since they don’t see a passage that specifically says that pets won’t be in heaven, they dismiss the passages that when taken together logically won’t allow that conclusion.

So let’s say there’s a discussion about animals in heaven. These passages are brought up. But the person who holds the pet-friendly hermeneutic is upset because people are saying that pets we have today like Fluffy and Fido won’t join us in the resurrection and be our companions for all time. They jump in with a contention against this. When the consistent hermeneutic is explained, they retreat to the argument I spelled out in the beginning of this article.

Believing that Fluffy and Fido will be resurrected isn’t specifically a heretical idea. It’s a bad one and an erroneous one, but we know that we have some church members who insist on these kinds of errors for their own reasons.

But there are people who espouse heresy who resort to that same argument. That’s why it’s important to point out that it’s a bad argument. Just because people disagree within the realm of orthodox Christianity doesn’t mean that both are true. Only one is true. The other is in error although not in a bad way. Dr. Al Mohler has developed his theological triage and wrote about it 8 years ago. It’s an extremely helpful tool for analyzing theological error.

Just because people can disagree on one level that carries some legitimate uncertainty doesn’t mean that people can disagree on another level with the same legitimate uncertainty. If the Bible is clear about a matter, it’s not open for debate within orthodox circles. It’s clear heresy. Today orthodox Christians have the sensibility that no one is going to be killed for being a heretic. That unfortunate historical approach in itself should be considered heretical. However, it is academically and pastorally necessary to point out mistaken beliefs among people who profess to be Christians. That includes pointing out the error in this kind of an argument.

Fighting for Rights and Losing the Right-Giver

Two items have been in the news lately. Neither one is surprising because the philosophical foundation for them have been in place for a number of years now.

The first item is the court case that PETA filed against Sea World arguing for the human rights for cetaceans (marine mammals like orcas, whales, dolphins, etc.). It caused a flurry of debate in the public square. Example 1. Example 2. The court ruled against PETA. You can count on similar cases being appealed. This won't die. They rarely do.

But I have to ask what we would be giving the cetaceans if we grant them human rights. Take this next news item for example:

Ethicists Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva have published a paper arguing for the ethical permissibility for After-Birth Abortion. ("After-Birth Abortion" is euphemistic for "infanticide".) So finally here is vindication for the Vietnam veterans charged with being "baby-killers". But really, this rationale was around in Nazi Germany. They went farther and classified entire ethnic groups as being sub-human, not just humans in earlier stages of developments.

So, let's go ahead and give human rights to everything because really there are no human rights according to the justification cited by Giubilini and Minerva. Just follow the justifications to their logical conclusion. Nothing need change.

But my Christian brethren should not despair. The rights codified in the Constitution of the United States are not complete or fully biblical anyway. A couple of examples are given by Paul in his first letter to the Corinthians. In chapter 9, Paul cites rights that he has as a preacher of the gospel of Christ. Those rights aren't in the US Constitution, but they are in the Bible. What's interesting is that with regard to the proclamation of the gospel, while these rights are indeed right to follow, he found it even better to not follow the rights divinely accorded to him. His reward for proclaiming the gospel, found in verse 18, is to proclaim the gospel free of charge making no use of the rights he cites. The only way that makes sense is if his goal is not to obtain rights for himself but rather to proclaim the gospel.

Where our rights interfere with the proclamation of the gospel of Jesus Christ, it is better not pursue those rights. Now that might upset some, but here it is. Many of the difficulties we see in church life are from many individuals vying to obtain their rights over and against the proclamation of the true gospel.

I can go in so many different directions at this point, but I'll save each of those directions for other posts that I may or may not ever get to. But I'll sum up how they fit together. Among those directions are importing non-Christian forms of leadership into the Church, the effects of moralism (as distinct from legalism) on the Church, hindering the outworking of Christian love in the Church, the destruction of marriage, and anemia in the Body of Christ due to not relying on the gifts that others have been given. There are probably others as well, but that's the list I have forming as I type.

What all of these things have in common is a propensity for people to compete selfishly for their rights against the larger work of Christ in the Church. There is a sense that if we don't use it, we lose it. However, if the Bible says it, we have it. In fact, many are often so concerned for their own selves that pursuit leads to the practical loss of their rights in the Church. This is because they fail to contend not for the gospel that provides these rights, but only for their rights. They cling to the rope and neglect the mountain that the rope was supposed to be attached to falling to their spiritual deaths.

So while one hand seeks to offer rights to creatures who shouldn't have them, the other undermines the rights that are being sought. Let's not make the same mistake in the Church.

Operating Manual For Spaceship Earth

Good post on Triablogue. Read it to understand the title. Very thought-provoking. The thoughts that it provoked in me:

Jim Pemberton said...
It seems to me that people generally promote discipline in those areas they consider fundamental to morality and they promote liberty otherwise.

Political conservatives hold to traditional values and leave everything else up to personal responsibility as a matter of some liberty. Rebelling against traditional values, political liberals have declared liberty in those areas while developing a different set of moral strictures otherwise.

Both general schools of moral thought are arbitrary when untethered from biblical revelation, even where they happen to be similar to it.