How to Spot Fallacies

Lesson Transcript

This week we're going to be talking about learning to spot theological fallacies, but this isn't an academic exercise. Fallacies can sound very logical; they can be very persuasive, very convincing, and yet they can mislead us. They can pull us away from the historic faith and cause us to follow after false doctrines.

Now, the message is tied to a specific fallacy that was presented to members of our congregation, and so I'm specifically addressing a particular argument that was made, but the same principles would apply to lots of arguments. But maybe we should begin with the question: what is a fallacy? What do we even mean when we talk about fallacies? Well, a fallacy is a misleading or a deceptive argument, an unsound argument. And when I say deceptive, I don't mean that somebody's out there trying to mislead you.

Usually, people aren't, you know, aren't trying to do that. They've been misled. Maybe the same argument persuaded them, and they think, "Ah, I found the truth," and now they're using this same argument to convince other people. I mean, in my experience, there are very, very few professing Christians who are trying, you know, to deviously, "Ah, how many people can I mislead and pull away from God?" That's not usually the problem.

They're sincere people; they think they're presenting the truth, but they're misleading people, as I said, because they've been misled. Now, because we're looking at a specific argument that was presented to members of our congregation, I'm not going to be talking about all of the fallacies that are out there. In fact, I'm going to be looking today at just three common fallacies, and we're going to be looking at them in the context of two false doctrines.

One of these is the doctrine of, "Once you're saved, you can never be lost, no matter how ungodly your life becomes." And the second false doctrine is that good works and obedience to Christ play no role in our salvation. Now, you might be saying, "Those are false doctrines? I've been hearing that all of my life." Well, yeah, they're very common teachings today, but they're not the historical faith. They came into being in the early 1500s through Martin Luther.

Before then, I'm not aware of anybody who taught it at least in that fashion, that, "Oh, you can live a disobedient, ungodly life and still somehow be saved." More importantly, those two doctrines directly contradict the teachings of Jesus Christ. So that's why we want to look at some of the false arguments that are used to support that. And one that was presented, like I say, to some members of our congregation that, in my mind, was an extremely effective argument, and it's there on the slide in front of you.

I'm calling it the argument of the scales; that's not what it would be called. But in the slide that we're looking at, you have a pair of scales there, and on one side, it's argued good works. The other side is the blood of Christ, okay? And the speaker used the analogy: on the one side, you know, you could stack up all of your works, every good thing you did, just keep stacking them up on that one side of the scale, and it might weigh it down.

It might look like, "Wow, that's considerable." And then on the other side, you just put a drop of the blood of Christ, and boom, it way outweighs all of the good works that you do. You know, you look at that and, well, that sounds reasonable and logical. And of course, the message then is, well, why even worry about obedience to Christ? I mean, sure, I mean, it's nice. We know it pleases Christ. We want to please Him, but why be overly concerned? Because in comparison to His blood, it just doesn't matter.

Well, this is actually a fallacy. It's a fallacy that's got a name. The name is the misuse of analogy. So when we're in the field of scriptural truth, the field of theology, the field of Christianity, you don't prove a scriptural doctrine through an illustration. That's a fallacy, like you say, the misuse of an analogy, trying to use an analogy to prove something. Instead, the way it works is you first establish something from the scriptures and prove that the scriptures teach something.

Now, once you've done that, then sure, use an analogy to explain, to give your listeners an idea of how it works, but first you prove it from the scriptures. Now, that might sound pretty easy. Well, yeah, sure, prove it from the scriptures. Well, what usually happens in most churches, most churches I've ever attended, it's normal human reaction, is that you just group together some proof texts.

And what we mean by proof texts is you cherry pick, you go through the New Testament, and you pick the verses that support a particular line of argument, and then you ignore all of these other verses. It's like, "Ah, yeah, we don't want to see them. Let's shove them under the rug." Okay, that is another form of a fallacy, you know, cherry picking, and that's not how you prove what the scriptures teach.

What you do for any subject, it doesn't matter if you're looking at salvation, if you're looking at eternal security, if you're looking at the Trinity, if you're looking at life after death, communion, I mean, you just name whatever topic you want to put in there. And how you establish what the scriptures teach is you've got to start off with a blank slate, and I realize that's extremely hard to do.

In other words, you've got to have some objectivity, and we, yeah, we've all been indoctrinated, so it's only pretending to say, "Oh, yeah, I have a blank slate." Yeah, well, I think you have to begin with and be honest, "No, I don't. I've been indoctrinated. I've been taught a certain thing. I'm convinced this or that is right." But to have a blank slate or at least to approach it as best as we can, you have to start off with the thought of, "Hey, you know, I could be wrong.

What I have been taught may not be the historic Christian faith. The historic Christian faith is not wrong. We don't have to worry about that. The scriptures are never wrong, but maybe the way I've been taught is wrong." And so you have to take the approach of, you know, if I didn't know any better, if I was just somebody picking up the Bible and reading it, what would I think this verse was saying?

So you have to have that, like I say, blank slate, some objectivity, and then you have to look at every verse in the New Testament that pertains to that subject or perhaps pertains to it. Again, whether it's the Trinity, whether it is salvation, you just, you know, insert whatever doctrine it is, but you want to look at the totality of the New Testament, not if I grab this verse and that verse from here and there, what can I put together by doing that? But no, what does the totality of the New Testament teach?

Okay, once you have that, okay, it's clear this is the totality, then you can illustrate it with whatever illustration fits that totality, but first prove it from the scripture. But see, what people want to do is to prove something from an analogy because the analogy sounds good, and it's like, "Oh, wow, yeah, that analogy proves it." No, an analogy doesn't prove anything.

A real-life example that happened in a church I was attending, this was 40 years ago, yeah, a good 40 years ago, and that church, most of the people in the church believed in eternal security. Once you are saved, if you're truly saved, you cannot lose that no matter what happens, no matter even if you deny Christ openly, if you lose your faith, if you live a wicked life.

Now, if all of that happened, they might say, you know, "I really doubt that person was ever saved in the first place," and so there was always that, you know, counterbalance to a degree, but that was a main teaching of the church. Well, yeah, our pastor began to question, "Is that really what the Bible teaches?" There seems to be an awful lot of verses in the New Testament that say just the exact opposite of that. And so he was giving a, it was a Sunday night message.

I don't even remember what the topic was, but he was just applying the scriptures, and he never specifically said, "Well, this just proves eternal security." He didn't even directly hint at that, but it was obvious from just looking at that that that's what it was showing.

And when he finished, one of the sisters in the back of the church, ignoring, of course, what the scriptures say about a woman being silent in the assembly, she suddenly shouted out from the, you know, back of the auditorium, "Are you questioning eternal security?" And I forget what the pastor said. He said, "You know, I'm not questioning anything. I'm just, you know, presenting what the scriptures are saying." And then she said, "It's really clear.

If you look in the book of Genesis, when Noah and his family got in the ark, God closed the door." And I was sitting there thinking, "Yeah, okay. None of us disagree with that." And then she said, "And that's the way eternal security is. God shuts the door. Once you're in the ark, God shuts the door. You don't have any say in it.

That's the end of the matter." Well, again, if the scriptures prove that once you're in the church or once you're among the saved, however you want to phrase it, that you can't possibly ever lose that, then maybe you could go to Genesis and use that as an illustration. But hey, first prove that that's what the scriptures are saying. You don't prove it by pointing to something that's not even pertaining to that issue.

Now, when it comes to that analogy of the scales, which again is a very effective argument, one thing we should ask is, did Jesus ever use that analogy? I mean, he gave us lots of parables. The scriptures say that without a parable, he wouldn't even speak. And if you go through his teachings, it's pretty rare that you'll go through any extended passage where Jesus is teaching, where he doesn't have an analogy, a metaphor, a parable, you know, something like that.

So I think the first question is, is this a parable that Jesus gave? Is this an illustration? No, he never gave anything like that. Well, what about one of the apostles, Paul or Peter or one of them? No, there's nothing like that anywhere in the New Testament. So this is not a scriptural argument. If the scriptures teach that, then it might be an effective illustration, but it's not an illustration from the scriptures.

And we'd have to ask the question, is there anywhere in the scriptures where it contrasts obedience to Christ, godly living, however you want to put it, good works, it contrasts that with the blood of Christ, that the two are in opposition to each other? No, there's nowhere in scripture. The argument sounds very good. I mean, you show someone that scale and you can see how that would persuade somebody. An argument can be totally fallacious and be very, very persuasive, but it's misuse of analogy.

It is a fallacy, and always keep that in mind when you hear an illustration. Has the speaker first proven his point from the scriptures, or is he trying to prove it by an illustration? Okay, now the next one, we're just going to stick just with that same illustration of the scales. One of the fallacies was misuse of an analogy, but there's a second one that the speaker uses at the same time, and that is the fallacy of a false dilemma. Sometimes this is called the either/or fallacy.

And basically what it says is somebody is trying to argue by presenting a situation that maybe is multifaceted and trying to make it look like it's either this or it's that, but it can't be both. The slide there we have somebody is in front of a, I don't know, checkout standard or something like that, and the guy behind the counter says, "Do you want to donate $15 to feed starving children, or do you not care about the poor?" See, that's an either/or fallacy. Well, okay, what do you, what am I supposed to say?

No, I don't care about the poor, or, well, yeah, then I have to donate the $15. One, every time I pick up my laptop, and I should figure out how to turn this off, but I haven't. It's nearly two years old. You'd think the thing would have run out, but often I'm in the middle of doing something, suddenly it pops up on the screen, and the first time it really startled me.

It said, "Your computer is unprotected against viruses," and then it has a check mark, "I want to remain unprotected," or, "I want to get protection," something to that effect. Well, I mean, the first time I saw that, I mean, I saw, "I want to remain unprotected." Well, no, I don't want to remain unprotected. And then it was, "Oh, click here." Well, no, wait a minute, I don't want to, it was McAfee. I don't know, I don't want to subscribe to McAfee.

Well, then it's back, "So you want to remain unprotected?" Well, no, the truth is it's not an either/or. I have Windows Defender on the computer, so I am protected from viruses. Now, maybe McAfee is better than Windows Defender. I don't know, but no, I'm not interested in being unprotected, but I'm not interested in subscribing to McAfee.

It's the either/or fallacy, like it's, "You got to do this or do that." Well, the analogy of the scales is trying to say, "Well, either our works play a role in salvation, our obedience plays a role in salvation, or we're saved by the blood of Christ." Now, which one do you think it is? Are you saved by the blood of Christ, or does your obedience somehow play in your salvation? Well, whoa, you're making it look like it has to be one or the other, that there's not a middle ground between the two.

Maybe both things can be true. Maybe I am saved by the blood of Christ, but maybe to be saved by the blood of Christ, I have to walk obediently with Jesus. In other words, both things can be true. In fact, the scriptures teach that, and I'm just going to read some scriptures here.

Revelation 1:5, it says, "Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, and the ruler over the kings of the earth, to him who loved us and washed us from our sins in his blood." So there it talks about the fact that we are washed in the blood of Christ. So to deny that, you'd have to be denying scripture, that we're saved through the blood of Christ.

I personally, and I am familiar with so many different Christian groups, not only ones who are around today, but ones that have been around from the very beginning. I'm not aware of any. Maybe the Gnostics. The Gnostics may have said, "You're not saved by the blood of Christ." I'm not sure even on that part, but as far as anything even remotely resembling orthodoxy, I'm not aware of any church that teaches that we can be saved apart from the blood of Christ. That's part of the historic faith.

On the other hand, James 2:24 says, "You see then that a man is justified by works and not by faith alone." Okay, so now you have two scriptures. We're saved by the blood of Christ, but then James says that we're also justified or declared righteous by our works, that is, by how we live, by our obedience, by our faithful life, and not by faith alone. It's not just by faith, but it's living out that faith. So now you have both.

So the scales, see, it's a false analogy that, okay, it's either good works or it's the blood of Christ. Well, yeah, maybe it's both together. In fact, that's what the scriptures do say. Hebrews is very pointed in that regard to explain how the blood of Christ and obedience both fit in together. It starts off, I'm going to go back to Hebrews 26. The slide is Hebrews 28.

It says, "For if we sin willfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remains no more sacrifice of sins, but a certain fearful expectation of judgment." So it is saying that, you know, after we have the knowledge of Christ, that if we go on sinning, then there is judgment awaiting for us. Well, of course, the answer is always, "Oh, well, that's talking about people who weren't saved, and that's why they're going to be facing judgment." But Paul didn't say that.

He didn't say, "If we have not been saved." He said, "After we have the knowledge, after we have come to know Christ, if we go on sinning willfully." And then just to make that clear, he goes on in the next verse, verse 28, Hebrews 10:28. He says, "Anyone who has set aside the law of Moses dies without mercy on the evidence of two or three witnesses.

How much worse punishment do you think will be deserved by the one who has trampled underneath or underfoot the Son of God and who has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified and has outraged the spirit of grace?" So this is somebody who has been sanctified. It is somebody who is saved, and it says that if we have done that, if we have profaned the blood of Christ, so the blood of Christ is not in opposition to how we live.

If we live a godless life, then we can profane that blood of Christ by which we were saved, by which we were sanctified. So it's a false dilemma that the two are somehow in opposition. John explains it even better. He says, or I shouldn't say better, but at least in addition, he says, "If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth.

But if we walk in the light as he is in the light, then we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his son, cleanses us from all sin." So you see, not only are they not in opposition, the Bible says they are connected, that unless you are walking in the light, the blood of Jesus is not going to keep cleansing you from sin. In other words, it's not a once and done sort of thing. It's a daily walk with Christ. It's being on the vine, having an obedient, love, faith relationship with Christ.

If you're walking with Christ, the blood of Jesus cleanses you from all sin. It's not the good works that cleanse you from sin. It's not obedience that cleanses you from sin. It's his blood, but it's the obedience that keeps you walking with Christ, keeps that relationship alive, walking in the light, and then his blood cleanses you, keeps cleansing you. Okay, so again, obedience is not in opposition to the blood of Christ.

All right, the third fallacy, the last one we're going to talk about, is the straw man argument. And going back to that illustration of the scales, which, like I say, is a very persuasive argument, but it's full of fallacies. We've already talked about two of them, the misuse of analogy and the false dilemma. Okay, the third one is the straw man argument, and this is so misused. I mean, the fallacy, people use this all the time.

And what the straw man is, is instead of attacking what somebody is actually saying, you attack something they didn't really say, you create an artificial argument. The illustration there is this great big, looks like the mummy or something like that, and the guy's saying, "I can't attack that." So he creates instead this straw figure that, yeah, you can easily knock over with a bat. The next slide, it's the illustration.

This person is sitting, I guess, in front of his professor, a college student, and he says, "And given my contributions to this paper, I think that I deserve a share of the credit along with the first author." A reasonable request. And the professor responds, his response is, "So fame is more important to you than science. Is that it?" See, you're creating a straw man. Is that what the person said, that I'm more interested in fame than I am in science?

No, he just says, "Hey, I'd like to get credit for the work I did." But when you create a straw man, then you make a caricature of what the person is saying, and then you knock that down. And in this case, it's knocking down the argument that someone is saying, "Oh, if I stack up my works high enough, I don't need the blood of Christ." Now, let me ask you, have you in your lifetime ever heard of anyone say, "Oh, if I just have enough good works, I don't need the blood of Christ"?

I have never heard anyone say that, and I've had discussions with people of all kinds of religious stripes within the denominations of Christianity, people professing to be Christians. No one has ever said that. That's a straw man, like somehow somebody thinks that. Have you ever heard anyone say, "If I can just get my works stacked up high enough, I'll make it to heaven. I just need to add some more works on top of what I have"? Have you ever heard anyone say that? I haven't.

It's certainly not anything that Kingdom Christians believe that any of our churches teach. So this person is setting up a straw man as if that's what we are teaching. Now, there are people out there who aren't Christians or who are just remote nominal Christians who think, "Oh, if I live a good life, then I'll go to heaven." But that's different. These are people who aren't even saved, who don't know anything about Christianity.

But as far as somebody who is walking with Christ, there is nobody who is saying, "Oh, I just need to stack up my works high enough." So this has been, like I say, just focusing on this one illustration, but it describes three different fallacies. All three of them were used by this speaker, false analogy or misuse of analogy, I mean, false dilemma and the straw man argument. So keep those arguments in mind. They're used all the times in other situations. And when you see one, you realize, "Aha, this is a fallacy.

This is a wrong argument. I need to be on my guard when I hear this." Thank you. David Brissot is a superb teacher. And to find more teachings like this, please visit the Scroll Publishing website found in the description below. Please like the video by clicking the thumbs up icon. If this video gets enough likes, David will consider making a series teaching us how to spot all the most commonly used fallacies. These CDs will then be available on the Scroll Publishing website.

Thank you, and don't forget to subscribe.