The Sufficiency of Scripture & The Principles Of Sound Reasoning (Part 4)

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

Here are some examples…

4 - Special Pleading - At its heart, Special Pleading is just plain hypocrisy.   If a disputant doesn’t play by his/her/their own rules, then that’s hypocrisy.

If a gay man appeals to his biology then Greg Koukl says (correctly), “Is-Ought fallacy!” When Greg Koukl does the same thing in the same article, it’s baptized.

The Sanhedrin’s attitude toward giving serves as a stellar example. 

 

21 Jesus looked up and saw the rich putting their gifts into the offering box, 2 and he saw a poor widow put in two small copper coins. 3 And he said, “Truly, I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all of them. 4 For they all contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty put in all she had to live on.”

The Sanhedrin’s members were notorious for trumpeting their gifts in public.   Yeshua sees this widow & laments that she has been taught to give up even her day’s meal.  Meanwhile the Sanhedrin was doing this:  

15 Then Pharisees and scribes came to Jesus from Jerusalem and said, 2 “Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? For they do not wash their hands when they eat.” 3 He answered them, “And why do you break the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition? 4 For God commanded, ‘Honor your father and your mother,’ and, ‘Whoever reviles father or mother must surely die.’ 5 But you say, ‘If anyone tells his father or his mother, “What you would have gained from me is given to God,” 6 he need not honor his father.’ So for the sake of your tradition you have made void the word of God. 7 You hypocrites! Well did Isaiah prophesy of you, when he said:

8  “ ‘This people honors me with their lips,

but their heart is far from me;

9  in vain do they worship me,

teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’ ”

What happens when we moralize to homosexuals about their Is-Oughting to their sexual ethics while we do so to our own?   We wind up agreeing with God that His image & authority is a sufficient warrant for our worship ethics then run to our own image & authority to underwrite our sexual ethics.   We accuse the homosexual of doing the very thing we are doing. 

We answer the world with the world just like the Pharisees & Sadducees who understood the Romans to be a bigoted occupying force yet put their hypocrisy on display when the Pharisees answered Yeshua’s lawsuit with a bigoted question about Roman taxation.   We also sound like the Sadducees who taught that we ought to love our neighbors (Lev. 19) while asking a question about the Resurrection & marriage that demonstrated their misogyny (Matt. 22)

The definition of Special Pleading is vindicated by Scripture correctly understood.  God plays by His own rules. 

16 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).