The Psalmist prays, “Through thy precepts I get understanding: therefore I hate every false way.” (Ps 119:104) As we seek understanding through God’s precepts, we’re encouraged to learn to identify false ways of thinking and to reject them.
A false way is irrational, deceptive, a vain thought pattern, an invalid, empty type of reasoning that’s only convincing when we want it to be; it’s biased, intellectually dishonest; it’s faulty logic, logical fallacy.
For example, last week, a well-meaning friend sent me an email outlining nine distinct points opposing a position I hold called One Law: We’re all responsible to obey all of God’s Law, the Law of Moses, or Torah, that we’re able to obey. I believe God has only one set of laws defining holiness and sin (1Jn 3:4); I think it’s generally applicable for every people group and culture for all time. I’ve written many articles supporting this viewpoint, and I continually invite anyone to challenge me on it, which is what my friend was doing.
As I considered each of the nine points, it was not difficult for me to see that each was invalid, based on false reasoning. The first, “(One Law) is anti-Jewish because it opposes any continuing distinction between Jews and Gentiles,” is false by counter-example; Jews observe many traditions which distinguish them as a people which are not required in order to obey Torah (Mk 7:3-4), and Torah-obedient Gentiles are not required to become Jewish, but are encouraged to maintain their ethnic identity. (1Co 7:18)
The second was similarly false: “(One Law) is supersessionist because it considers Israel as redefined and now composed of one law believers rather than the Jewish people.” Gentiles starting to try to obey Torah cannot redefine Israel since Israel has never been defined simply as “the people group that obeys Torah.” Israel has, for the most part and just like all other people groups, always been ungodly (Ro 11:26); they don’t obey Torah today, and they never have consistently obeyed it. (Ac 7:51)
The third point, “(One Law) is anti-Christian because it claims that the Church is pagan, apostate and sinning by not keeping distinctively Jewish commandments,” was a case of circular reasoning, assuming what we’re trying to prove, that most of God’s commandments in Torah are only for Jews.
The rest of the points were either redundant with the first error above, or association fallacies: claims that One Law is invalid because some people who hold it are bad. For example: “(One Law) promotes arrogance and a critical spirit towards Synagogue and Church authority and tradition.” This is an attempt to discredit One Law by crediting the doctrine itself with the malice of those who promote it. Though many proponents of One Law may be arrogant or have a critical spirit, there’s nothing inherent in the position that actually requires or implies such a disposition.
It is tempting to employ logical fallacies because they’re effective in convincing careless, biased people, yet each type of fallacy is easily exposed as a false way since they are all context specific: we recognize them as invalid when someone is trying to dismiss something we want to believe, like the fact that Earth is spherical. Many wicked people believe the earth is round, but most of us can easily see that this is irrelevant … it doesn’t prove the earth is flat because it has nothing to do with the claim.
It’s very easy to to commit logical fallacy and to be deceived by invalid reasoning; if we’re not carefully pursuing truth, hating vain thoughts, we’ll be blinded by our bias, unable to detect false ways of thinking. The wicked lay them out for us like snares (Ps 119:110); we must remain humble and vigilant. (1Pe 5:8) Whenever Christians commit logical fallacies, the world goes out of its way to notice and bring dishonor to the name of Christ.
The safest way I’ve found to avoid the false way is to ask others to challenge me with their strongest arguments. Humbly and carefully considering opposing viewpoints in their strongest possible form, and prayerfully comparing these with God’s Word, is the only way I know. (Ps 119:59)
Unless one is claiming that Torah has been abolished altogether, which contradicts Mt 5:17-19, the only real strategy against One Law can be summarized as follows: First, arbitrarily classify God’s Laws into two sets, A and B, so long as A laws are not explicitly repeated in the New Testament. Then argue from silence that since the New Testament does not strictly impose A laws on Gentiles, that Gentiles are not responsible to obey them.
The strategy can easily be used to promote nearly anything, such as homosexuality, bestiality and pedophilia: claim that moral law only forbids non-consensual sexual relations, and then observe that the New Testament never explicitly condemns consensual sexual relations.
I felt beat up a bit after writing the One Law article last week; on Friday I felt disrespected by the brother mentioned in this post as I reasoned with him, and he did not seem the least bit convinced of any of my thoughts here. I was a tiny bit unnerved by this, and then bothered that I was unnerved by something so small.
However, I sensed God’s encouragement and validation on Shabbat as another brother brought up the One Law topic himself, totally without my prompting, and publicly repeated and reinforced many of my same arguments with this same brother who I felt dissed by. I think it might have helped him to see the light a little, and I learned a bit of balance and gained some further depth through the conversation. It was, in my sense, a miraculous thing, and very encouraging. Thank you Father!