Exegetical Fallacies - D. A. Carson

teaches or presupposes a pretribulation or a post-tribu lation rapture, when on the face of it Paul's interest
in writing that pericope is far removed from such questions? Or consider the (de)merits of disjunctive
questions such as "Did Jesus die because of his spiritual agony or because of physical depletion?"
8. Unwarranted confusion of truth and precision
Occasionally the Scripture's truthfulness is depreciated because of its demonstrable imprecision. But
it is a fallacy to confuse these two categories, or to think there is any entailment from the second to the
first.
Wayne A. Grudem has recently treated this matter well.;` As an illustration, he offers three sentences:
a. My home is not far from my office.
b. My home is about one and a half miles from my office.
c. My home is 1.6 miles from my office.
Each of these three statements is true; but they are not equally precise. Many other examples could be
given: the rounding off of integers, the use of phenomenological language to describe events in the
physical world (e.g., the sun rises), the nature of reported speech. In none of these cases is there an
entailment from the degree of precision or imprecision to the question of truth, unless the text gives the
unmistakable impression that a higher degree of precision is being supplied than is in fact the case.
9. Purely emotive appeals
There is nothing intrinsically wrong with emotion, of course. Indeed, it is scarcely proper to preach
and teach about heaven and hell, justification and condemnation, and the forgiveness and retention of sins
without expressing any emotion whatsoever. But emotive appeals sometimes mask issues or hide the
defectiveness of the underlying rational argument. An emotional appeal based on truth reflects sincerity
and conviction; an emotional appeal used as a substitute for truth is worthless (although unfortunately
often successful in winning the gullible). The fallacy lies in thinking that emotion can substitute for reason,
or that it has logical force.
Sadly, the more disputed the issue, the more frequent will be the illegitimate emotional appeals; and
sometimes these will be laced with sarcasm. "Calling and not sex is the test of authentic ministry," writes
Steinmetz; "the church has been called to prove the spirits, not determine the gender."' The statement is
cute, emotive, slightly sardonic-and worthless as a rational argument, unless the author has already shown
that "proving the spirits" (I John 4) has to do with determining general competence for ministry (it does
not) and is set over against "determining the gender" (for otherwise the two might be complementary, not
antithetical). But emotions are so high on this issue that the worthlessness of the argument will not be
spotted by most readers until long after it has had significant psychological effect.
Sometimes a mild case of emotional abuse occurs when one writer responds to another with some
such phrasing as this: "Astonishingly, Prof. Smith fails to take into account the fact that...." Sometimes, of
course, what Prof. Smith does or does not take into account is indeed astonishing. For example, if Prof.
Smith claims to have provided a complete list of the uses of a word as found in the New Testament canon,