How many fallacies are in the bible

If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it. However, people can sustain the name-it-and-claim- it approach only by selective use of evidence while ignoring other passages that put certain constraints on the kinds of prayers God will answer: prayers of disciples who take up their cross and follow Jesus, prayers asking for resources to carry out God's mission in the world, and so on.

Such proponents also tend to ignore the mystery of suffering see, for example, Jesus' comments in Luke —6 , fail to explain why God answers certain prayers but not others such as for the salvation of loved ones , and neglect to point out that there is no scriptural guarantee that God will answer all prayers for healing. Unwarranted associative jumps, likewise, are treacherous and lurk at every turn.

Carson, in his excellent book Exegetical Fallacies , cites the classic example of Paul's statement in Philippians , "I can do all things through him who strengthens me. As Carson rightly points out, Paul's statement cannot be legitimately extended to such things as jumping over the moon, integrating complex mathematical equations in one's head, or turning sand into gold.

Certain constraints are brought to bear by the context of Paul's statement in his letter to the Philippians, most importantly the importance of contentment and of being able to deal with both poverty and wealth. Another common example of an associative jump is taking 2 Chronicles "If my people who are called by my name humble themselves.

Improperly handled syllogisms are very common as well. An example of a two-step argument for women serving authoritatively in the church based on the application of the term co-worker Greek synergos to both Timothy Rom.

However, there are several problems with this kind of reasoning. Most importantly, the first syllogism is invalid: the conclusion does not properly follow from the premises.

That is, if one were to say 1 some A is B and 2 all B is C, then one cannot from these premises categorically conclude that 3 all A is C. At best, one could seek to work inductively and contend that there is a strong likelihood that all co-workers of Paul functioned or could function authoritatively in the church. However, this would be a difficult case to prove, because contextual study of the relevant passages suggests that co-worker in the New Testament is a more flexible term that may indicate various forms of partnership, whether joint ministry, financial support, or other ways of collaboration.

In any case, our point here is that arguments based on syllogisms, while common and often having surface appeal, may turn out at closer scrutiny to be fallacious and unsustainable.

False statements are also quite common, though perhaps this category would better be labeled "the use of faulty premises. Remember, even if a syllogism is formally valid, as we have seen, the conclusion may still be false if one or both of the premises are faulty.

An example of this is the common manner of citing Proverbs "Where there is no vision, the people perish," with vision being used to indicate a leader's or group's forward-looking plans, desires, and expectations instead of the prophetic revelation that seems to be in view here. This is wisely brought out by the ESV translation of the verse: "Where there is no prophetic vision the people cast off restraint " emphasis added.

While I could continue, I'll close with one of my favorite categories, that of non sequiturs Latin for "does not [logically] follow". We need to remind ourselves that it is possible to approach the Bible theologically and miss the mark of truth, too. Theologizing by itself is no guarantee of truth. There has been as much false theology as there has been true theology, so a literary approach to the Bible is neither more nor less suspect than a theological approach.

The idea of the Bible as literature began with the Bible itself. The writers of the Bible refer with technical precision to a whole range of literary genres in which they write—proverb, saying, chronicle, complaint lament psalm , oracle, apocalypse, parable, song, epistle, and many another.

For example, the Ten Commandments are cast into the form of suzerainty treaties that ancient Near Eastern kings imposed on their subjects, and the New Testament Epistles, despite unique features, show many affinities to Greek and Roman letters of the same era. Mainly, though, we can look to the Bible itself to see the extent to which it is a literary book.

Virtually every page of the Bible is replete with literary technique, and to possess the individual texts of the Bible fully, we need to read the Bible as literature, just as we need to read it theologically and in the narrative parts historically.

While fictionality is common in literature, it is not an essential ingredient of literature. The properties that make a text literary are unaffected by the historicity or fictionality of the material. Nor does the presence of convention and artifice in the Bible necessarily imply fictionality. The modern television genre of docudrama is filled with conventions interviews of people, film clips of events, material from archives that do not detract from the factuality of the account.

But the same argument might be used to preclude a study of the history or language of the Bible, since with these approaches, too, a person might remain fixed on those aspects only. To analyze the Bible as literature need not entail abandoning the special authority that Christians ascribe to the Bible or the expectation that God will speak to us through it.

Nor does it necessarily mean that the reader will not pay equal attention to other aspects of the Bible—its history, its language, its theology, its sociology, its psychology. The Bible requires multiple approaches, and the literary approach is one of them.

A theological approach to the Bible by itself is incomplete. A literary approach seeks to complement other approaches, not to replace them. It is appropriate to say again, however, that the literary forms of the Bible are the means through which the content is expressed, and this means that literary analysis has a particular priority as the only adequate starting point for other kinds of analysis.

After commissioning Satan to ruin Job financially and to slaughter his shepherds and children to win a petty bet with Satan. Heaven and earth shall pass away: but my words shall not pass away.

The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light. These words were written between and years ago and were meant to warn and prepare the first Christians for the immediate end of the world. All that generation passed away without any of the things foretold coming to pass. No amount of prayer brought it about; nor ever so much patience and belief and sober living. The world went on, as usual, indifferent to the spoutings of yet another batch of doomsday prophets with visions of messiahs dancing in their deluded brains.