The doctrine of scriptural perspicuity, championed particularly during the Protestant Reformation, contends that the Bible communicates clearly such that an individual reading it should be able to understand the contents without an outside source. This belief should not be confused with the early Church’s statements on Scripture being clear, as those examples are often talking about a specific belief that is clear in Scripture, other beliefs notwithstanding.
The Protestant Revolution created a rather new idea: that Scripture is not only clear on some points, like that Jesus is God, but clear on every essential point. If this is the case, I am unsure why so many Protestants have differing views on the essential points. This would seem to completely invalidate the point, but I digress.
Protestant apologist James White is a huge proponent of this belief. In a debate this past weekend, in the process of making his point, White employed a formal logical fallacy known as denying the antecedent to make his claim.
Before getting to the specific example, it would be beneficial for me to explain what this fallacy consists of. Denying the antecedent has this logical form:
- If A, then B.
- Not A.
- Therefore, not B.
This logical form is invalid, because even though A leads to B, the negation of A would not necessarily lead to the negation of B. Real-world examples often make it much easier for someone untrained in philosophy to recognize this. In plain English, we could think of this example:
- If it rained, then the ground is wet.
- It did not rain.
- Therefore, the ground is not wet.
This is clearly an invalid logic structure. If it rains, the ground will be wet, but just because it didn’t rain, it wouldn’t necessarily mean the ground is not wet. There could be other reasons why the ground might be wet, like someone’s sprinkler going off or someone watering some plants.
Another example may go like this:
- If Person X is a doctor, then he studied medicine.
- Person X is not a doctor.
- Therefore, Person X did not study medicine.
This is also an invalid logic structure. Although doctors study medicine, so do other professionals, such as nurses, as well as former medical students who decided to change paths.
As obvious as this may seem, it is the exact fallacy James White made in his debate against Joe Heschmeyer in their debate on the Mass.
The passage that White was quoting comes from 2 Peter 3:16. It reads, “There are some things in them hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other Scriptures.”
Specifically relating to the subordinate clause in this sentence, White used the phrase “which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other Scriptures” in the debate to argue that if ignorant and unstable men twist Scripture, then knowledgeable and stable men will be able to understand them. Here is White making his point:
Peter warns that untaught and unstable men distort Paul’s words. . . . If he says “untaught and unstable men,” would it not follow that a taught and stable man can understand Paul’s words and can accurately handle what he wrote?
This statement is a textbook denying the antecedent fallacy. The form goes like this:
- If they are untaught, they will twist Scripture.
- They are not untaught.
- Therefore, they will not twist Scripture.
This argument holds the same form as the logical form originally given in the original examples. It does not follow.
It also seems unusual to quote a verse from Peter’s letter saying that some things in Paul’s letters are hard to understand while also attempting to argue that taught men will not have trouble. Putting aside the formal logical fallacy problem, if White is attempting to argue that taught men will understand Paul’s writings, why is Peter saying they are difficult to understand? Was Peter not taught? One may argue that Peter meant that these difficult passages would be difficult to understand “for some,” but Peter never makes such qualifications. Why read into the text?
In any case, despite not naming the fallacy, Joe did a good job of giving a counterexample on the spot to prove that the logical form is invalid: “If I said Gnostics misuse this text, that doesn’t mean that if you’re not a Gnostic, you’re going to use it correctly. That doesn’t follow at all. That’s not logical.”
This is absolutely correct. If I say A leads to B, the negation of A does not necessarily mean the negation of B.
In conclusion, White’s defense of scriptural perspicuity through 2 Peter 3:16 falters due to his use of the denying the antecedent fallacy. The absence of the antecedent would not necessarily mean that the consequent would not occur. Heschmeyer’s counterexample effectively exposes this flaw. When defenders of perspicuity must employ fallacious reasoning, perhaps the doctrine needs reconsideration.