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03/16/2022 – Identifying local fallacies – “begging the question”


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Categories : Christian Apologetics

No book in history has faced so many detractors over so long a period in history, and yet came up smelling like a rose everytime. Imagine that, God wins! Check out this excellent article from Walter C. Kaiser Jr. If we were starting from scratch , we could follow our line of investigations. As I’ve noted – my line led me to : “I don’t have nearly enough faith to be an atheist!”

https://www.biblestudytools.com/commentaries/csb-apologetics/is-the-old-testament-trustworthy.html

Post note – Go to the post for Day 017 dated 06/18/2022 for the full length article by Walter C. Kaiser Jr.

Now, let’s connect this up: All Scripture is God-breathed!” I am going to take you back to an August 14, 2021 Saturday post on Christian apologetics. In this post , I am critical of both Christian fundamentalists and Pagan Modernists (future Christians) for falling into fallacy traps within their arguments. Once again, I thank Peter Kreeft and Ronald K. Tacellii, authors of Pocket Handbook of Christian Apologetics. I highly recommend this power packed book, just don’t try to read this little 14 page in one night. It is much better as a few pages of a single chapter every day. (15 chapters in all)

Here it is from 08/14/2021:

We are going to work here with two worldview categories: 1) the fundamentalist extreme , and, 2) the modernist extreme. After I define the fallacy of “begging the question”, I am going to quote verbatim once again from : “The Handbook of Christian Apologetics” by Peter Kreeft and Ronald K. Tacelli. I echo what Alistair Begg noted with regard to using Sinclair Ferguson’s theological support from one of his books: “I could paraphrase it a little and claim it as my own but that would be dishonest, so I will read it to you in his words.”

Ok, our illustrated logical fallacy is “begging the questions”, and it is illustrated by an example that has been used by fundamentalists. First, the defintion of “begging the question”:

“Begging the Question is a logical fallacy that occurs when…

(1) You assume the truth of a claim that is yet to be proven and (2) instead of providing evidence for that claim, you merely rephrase it.” (reference: https://www.bettercognitions.com/articles/begging-the-question-fallacy/)

Here is our example:

“1. Scripture is infallible;

2. therefore Christ is divine;

3. therefore Christ is divine;

the more convincing order is

  1. Scripture is reliable as historical record, as data;
  2. Christ’s claims to divinity are found in Scripture;
  3. then comes the argument for the truth of these claims (chapter eight – “The Divinity of Christ”)” [Reference to this section – pg 81]

Now, I take us back to the start of the section entitled : “The Role of Scripture in Apologetics” – starting with page 80 to most of page 82:

The Role of Scripture in Apologetics

“We want to avoid two extremes here: the fundamentalist extreme and the modernist extreme. (Jimmy note: ‘christian’ theologians)

The fundamentalist extreme. Most fundamentalists, as well as many who call themselves not fundamentalists but evangelicals, will do apologetics only from the starting point of the authority of Scripture. We think this is a tactical error. There are three points to their tactics that seem questionable.

  1. They think that it is necessary to begin by convincing you of the authority of Scripture because they think that natural human reason alone, apart from Scripture, is not strong enough or good enough to direct unbelievers to belief.
  2. They think that therefore the only right order in apologetics is first to prove the authority of Scripture, and then to move on to other apologetics questions with this all-important weapon in hand.
  3. They think that special standards must be used to understand and interpret Scripture since, unlike all the other books, it is not just man’s words about God but God’s word about man.

But remember: for many years early Christian apologists and Church fathers argued quite effectively for Christianity without even having the New Testament Scriptures as authoritatively defined, since the canon was not established until generations later. And down through the centuries many people have in fact been led to belief – at least brief in a Creator God and in the possibility of salvation – through rational arguments not based on Scripture. (Of course, saving faith, as distinct from intellectual belief, is not the work of reason alone.)

Also, it is very difficult to prove the authority of Scripture, first to the unbeliever. It is much easier to prove something like the existence of God (chapter three), or even the divinity of Christ (chapter eight), where arguments can be simple, short and clear in a way that the arguments for the arguments for the authority of Scripture can never be. Traditional apologetic, Protestanbt as well as Catholic, has more used the opposite order, coming to the authority of Scripture later. (Jimmy note: Go back up to the more convincing order outlined above than the order of the fallacy illustration)

You don’t need to prove scriptural infallability first to confront someone with the claims of Christ.

The third difficulty is that the unbeliever will not accept the use of any special standards or assumptions or attitudes toward Scripture at the outset, since they clearly beg the question. You must first prove that Scripture deserves such special treatment as the Word of God, and you must prove this without presupposing it, without giving Scripture special treatment. Otherwise you argue in a circle, assuming what you need to prove.

The modernist extreme. Modernists make the opposite mistake from fundamentalists about Scripture. If fundamentalists worship it, modernists trash it. But strangely, the two extremes share a common mistake. Both sides use special standards to judge the Bible, standards that are not used to judge other books.

Fundamentalists interpret everything, or everything they possibly can, literally and insist right from the start on a believing attitude toward the Bible. Modernists interpret everything, or at least everything miraculous or supernatural (or morally unpopular), nonliterally and insist right from the start on an unbelieving skeptical attitute toward the Bible.

Typical modernist Scripture scholarship is not objective or neutral historical and textual scholarship. (Jimmy note – similar to their modernist pagan leftist brothers and sisters who take the same path to their so called “science”) It is eisegesis (“reading into”) rather than exegesis (“reading out of”); it reads a particular modern worldview – naturalism, denial of the supernatural and miracles – into the texts and judges the text on the basis of that worldview. Indeed, modernists commit a graver version of the very error they accuse fundamentalists of, for fundamentalists only read into the text the same worldview it contains – supernaturalism – while modernists impose an alien and modern worldview on it. Fundamentalists do not add miracles to the textual data; modernists subtract them. This is fudging the data to conform to the theory – the fundamental fallacy of bad science. It is the modernist who is being unscientifc here.

Unbelievers say (1) that Christianity is what the New Testament teaches and (2) that Christianity is false. Christians say (1) that Christianity is what the New Testament teaches and (2) that Christianity is true. Modernist theologians want to make peace with both sides, so they say (1) that Christianity is not what the New Testament, at face value, teaches but instead is what modernists have selected out of the New Testament (the love ethic without the miracles) as something that will be acceptable to both unbelievers and believers and (2) that this redefined Christianity is true.

But will Scripture allow Christianity to be redefined? (See Galatians 1:8 for an answer)”

For more, go to the previous Saturday series post on “The Bible: Myth or History”. This may very well conclude our look at material within “The Pocket Handbook of Christian Apologetics”. Stay tuned as I am praying how to proceed in this series, or move on to other countless possibilities.. And I hope y’all go out and buy a copy of the book. It is great to have at your bedside table or in your front pocket whenever you run into a queue line with nothing else to do.

Soli Deo Gloria!

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