The Sufficiency of Scripture & The Principles Of Sound Reasoning (Part 3)

Does the Bible teach us the principles of sound reasoning?   Yes, it most certainly does. 

Here are some examples…

3 - Overspecification 

The disputant will place a more specific construction on a verse of Scripture than the Scripture will bear. For example, a Roman Catholic will treat any favorable reference to the NT church as a direct reference to the Roman Catholic Church.

A Protestant can be guilty of this too, as when he treats any reference to the Antichrist as a direct prophecy of the papacy.

Contextually, the range of meaning for “natural” is abstract & moral not physical & ontological. It cannot bear the meaning the tradition-bound view employs.  Moreover, the tradition-bound view ultimately agrees with the thinking processes of the pagans described in 1:22 - 23 not God’s testimony in 1:20.  

How so?  The pagans in Romans 1:22 - 24 suppressed God’s existence, attributes, & authority in favor of their own existence, attributes; & authority - which is the very definition of the Is - Ought Fallacy.  

In this test case from Romans 1, the use of Natural Theology that finds its epistemic basis in the human image (human anatomy & physiology) results in a fundamental misreading of the text, insofar a God presents Himself as the only  generally & particularly authoritative epistemic foundation from which we are to  reason with respect to faith & practice.  

The interpretation of the word “natural” to mean “heteronormative / heterosexual” serves as a classic case of freighting a word with more than it can bear, resulting in the collapse of the tradition bound view as a whole — because if “natural” doesn’t mean “heteronormative / heterosexual,” then “unnatural” does not refer to homosexuality in general.   In context, it refers to same-sex sexual thoughts, words, & deeds that occur in the worship & service of pseudodeities instead of God Himself.   

The end result is works righteousness, because if what makes homosexual thoughts, words, & deeds sinful is deviation from a teleological norm grounded in human anatomy & physiology, then God commends & condemns based on characteristics like sex & gender - not what’s going on with respect to our internal volitional mechanism (Vox Kardia & Vox Kephale).  

Doing this also tends to ignore the fact that worship & sexual ethics are bound together.   The Judeo-Christian tradition teaches that God has no body, no sex/gender, & no sexuality, & centuries of Ecclesiastical Tradition that includes theologians of great stature like Thomas Aquinas (How could he be so wrong?!) have encouraged us to divorce worship & sexual ethics when examining this text.  Looking to our moral problems (Hebrews 5) we have felt free as a people to moralize to homosexuals & fail them a community while the entire time most of us have been reverse engineering our sexual ethics from the human image & overlooking what happens if you reverse engineer Theology Proper & worship ethics from the human image.  

By examining & understanding the results of importing human anatomy & physiology into the text, thus turning the text into a statement about what is allegedly anatomically & physiologically &/or psychologically natural instead of what is exclusively morally natural, we see the definition of Overspecification vindicated. 

All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, 17 that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.  (2 Timothy 3)