Exegetical Fallacies - D. A. Carson

The fallacy at hand offers the clearest need for distanciation on the part of the interpreter (a notion
explained in the introduction of this book). Unless we recognize the "distance" that separates us from the
text being studied, we will overlook differences of outlook, vocabulary, interest; and quite unwittingly we
will read our mental baggage into the text without pausing to ask if that is appropriate. We are truly
prepared to understand a text only after we have understood some of the differences between what the text
is talking about and what we gravitate to on the same subject. Failure to recognize the nature and scope of
our own mental equipment is to commit what David Hackett Fischer calls the Baconian fallacy:
The Baconian fallacv consists in the idea that a historian can operate without the aid of
preconceived questions, hypotheses, ideas, assumptions, theories, paradigms, postulates,
prejudices, presumptions, or general presuppositions of any kind. He is supposed to go a-
wandering through the dark forest of the past, gathering facts like nuts and berries, until he has
enough to make a general truth. Then he is to store up his general truths until he has the whole
truth. This idea is double deficient, for it commits a historian to the pursuit of an impossible
object by an impracticable method.30
This does not mean real knowledge is impossible. Rather, it means that real knowledge is close to
impossible if we fail to recognize our own assumptions, questions, interests, and biases; but if we
recognize them and, in dialogue with the text, seek to make allowances for them, we will be better able to
avoid confusing our own world-views with those of the biblical writers.
7. Fallacies of question-framing
This is a subset of the preceding fallacy. The old chestnut "When did you stop heating your wife?"
still evokes grins, because it foists an uncomfortable situation on the person to whom the question is
addressed. If he has never started heating his wife, a question about when he stopped is irrelevant. The
questioner has imposed his or her understanding of the situation on the person being questioned.
Fischer gives a number of choice examples in the arena of historical study: "Why was American
slavery the most awful the world has ever known?" (a question that asks why without first demonstrating
the presupposed what); or again, "Was Reconstruction shamefully harsh or surprisingly lenient?" ( a
question cast as a disjunction of two components, even though Reconstruction may have been partly harsh,
partly lenient, and partly something else).31
In Fischer's words:
The lair ofthe excluded middle may demand instant obedience in formal logic, but in history it is
as intricate in its applications as the internal revenue code. Dichotomy is used incorrectly when a
question is constructed so that it demands a choice between two answers which are in [act not
exclusive or not exhaustive. But it is often used by historians in this improper way.-
But before we theologians smugly thank God that we are not primarily historians, we need to
recognize that We ourselves tumble into many fallacies because of the way we frame questions. Perhaps
we do not write books with titles like Napoleon 111-Man o/ Destiny: Enlightened Statesman or Proto-
Fascist? But we do manage titles like Paul: Libertine or Legalist?" How many evangelical theologians
(especially in North America) expend large amounts of energy asking whether I Thessalonians 4:13-18