Exegetical Fallacies - D. A. Carson

purpose of undeceiving Christian readers (think, for instance, of substantial parts of Galatians,
Colossians, 1 Thessalonians, 2 Thessalonians, James, Jude, the Olivet Discourse, and so forth) or of
warning them against false teaching or practices.
So my purpose in citing the few texts that I mentioned in the article to which my interlocutor takes
exception is that Christians have been deceived and are often warned against being deceived. Moreover,
for the purposes of that article it was important to say that the range of possible deception includes
deception stirred up by miracles. It was not to argue from any one text or from the New Testament as a
whole that any true Christian can be finally deceived and so lost. None of this did I lay out in detail,
simply because I was writing a rather brief article.
But to argue from Matthew 24:24 that, because in that passage the elect are not deceived, therefore
Christians who humbly seek the will of God will escape deception, is a curious interpretation. If the elect
in the passage are not deceived at all, two things follow: (1) all the counterevidence in the New
Testament is not easily explained; (2) it still remains the case, judging by the New Testament evidence I
have briefly adduced, that many who are thought to be among the elect are eventually deceived, and thus
prove reprobate-so a little godly fear seems to be in order. It seems much better, then, to take Matthew
24:24 to be saying that the elect are not finally deceived (the context is, after all, strongly eschatological),
however much others may be, and, consonant with the way God's sovereignty frequently functions in the
New Testament,4i this is a call for believers to give extra attention to being discerning.
From my vantage, then, it appears to me that my interlocutor has taken a single text, rightly observed
that the elect in that verse are not deceived, apparently inferred (wrongly) that this includes all deception,
and generalized his conclusion in such a way that the bulk of the New Testament evidence is ignored.
Overspecification is scarcely less common. Sire provides an interesting example in the Mormon
treatment of Jeremiah 1:5, where God addresses Jeremiah in these terms: "Before I formed you in the
womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations
(NIV)."44 Mormons appeal to this text to justify their view that Jeremiah actually existed as a "spirit
child," as an "intelligence," before he was conceived. The words of Jeremiah 1:5 could just about be
taken that way if there were contextual reasons for thinking that is what they mean, but such reasons are
completely lacking. What the Mormons are really doing is appealing to their book Pearl of Great Price for
the content of their doctrine, and appealing to the Bible at a verbally ambiguous point and overspecifying
what the text says in order to claim the Bible's authority.
Unfortunately, evangelicals sometimes fall into the same trap. I have heard preachers argue, for
instance, on the basis of the text "God will wipe every tear from their eyes" (Rev. 21:4, Nlv) that at the
judgment of believers there will be a great catharsis as our sins are exposed and then forever put away;
but that is surely to overspecify the text, to read in a specific and limiting element not demonstrably
present in the text itself. To hold to the Word of God involves us in the commitment not only to believe all
that it says, but also to avoid going "beyond what is written" (1 Cor. 4:6, NIV).
11. Unwarranted associative jumps
This is a particular subset of the sixth fallacy in this chapter. It occurs when a word or phrase triggers
off an associated idea, concept, or experience that bears no close relation to the text at hand, yet is used to