The Only Honest Ways Off the Plane

Article 10 of 10 — No Parachute: Following a Doctrine to Its Final Destination

No one enjoys discovering that a favoured doctrine has travelled farther than he intended.

The discovery threatens more than an argument. A teacher may have repeated the claim for years. Friends defended it; opponents attacked it badly; an institution came to depend upon it. Retraction can feel like surrender to people who do not deserve the victory.

Logic takes no account of those pressures. If the premises are true and the inference valid, the conclusion follows. An argument can still be escaped, but the exits are few.

Retract or Revise the Premise

The cleanest exit is often the hardest sentence: “I was wrong.”

Retraction does not require abandoning every concern which produced the claim. A theologian may still acknowledge complex manuscript evidence, fallible editions, and the proper work of scholarship after rejecting a definition of preservation which cannot satisfy Scripture.

Revision must remove the entailment. An orthodox disclaimer added to an unchanged theory does nothing. If the claim still makes the authentic text unavailable for centuries, appending “I strongly believe in providential preservation” preserves the contradiction.

A responsible correction identifies the change. It might say:

I previously defined preservation as the survival of every original reading somewhere in the manuscript tradition. I now recognize that this leaves purity, availability, identity, and ecclesiastical use unresolved. I therefore revise the doctrine to affirm that God kept the authentic Hebrew and Greek text available and identifiable for his church while using fallible copies and editions as ordinary means.

Readers may dispute the new formulation, but they can see that the premise moved. Public teachers should make such corrections visible with a dated note or revised edition. Quiet alteration leaves earlier readers with the error and later readers confused about the controversy.

Break an Indispensable Connection

An entailment fails when one necessary bridge is false.

A defender may argue that Matthew 5:18 concerns fulfilment of the law but not providential transmission. If the exegesis is sound and no other passage supplies the premise, the proposed route breaks.

He may dispute the meaning of Westminster’s “kept pure in all ages.” Perhaps, he argues, the phrase requires only the survival of original readings somewhere in the evidence. That account must face the whole sentence, its proof texts, historical setting, and representative divines.

He may show that his doctrine has been misstated. Perhaps he affirms a stable, determinate authentic text and can explain how the church possessed it. The critic must then redraw the map.

These are real answers because they meet the argument where it bears weight. A premise is not disproved by citing authorities who deny it, declaring the subject complicated, or repeating the opposite conclusion. The challenger owes a reason.

Expose Equivocation or Invalidity

An apparent proof may trade upon a word which changes meaning. Preserved can mean kept by God for the church in one paragraph and extant somewhere in a body of evidence in another. Available can shift from publicly possessed to theoretically recoverable. Text may name a determinate sequence of words when discussing inspiration and an abstract set of competing readings when discussing preservation.

Replace the shared term with its different definitions. If the argument loses its necessity, the route was verbal.

Definitions introduced after an objection must govern every use. A writer may not retreat to a weak sense when challenged and return to the stronger sense when claiming confessional agreement.

An inference may also be invalid even when its premises are true:

1. A theory allows human uncertainty about some variants.
2. God’s Word is certain.
3. Therefore, the theory denies the certainty of God’s Word.

The conclusion does not follow from those premises alone. Human uncertainty about which reading is authentic is not identical to uncertainty in God’s Word itself. The stronger argument needs another premise: the kind and degree of uncertainty built into the theory prevents the church from possessing an identifiable final standard. That premise requires proof.

Showing invalidity does not prove the disputed doctrine true. It proves that this argument has not refuted it. The critic should repair the route if possible and withdraw the verdict if not. Truth loses nothing when a bad defence is abandoned.

Counterfeit Exits

Several responses reduce social pressure without touching the reasoning.

• “That conclusion was never my intention” may bear upon culpability, not consequence.
• “I have always affirmed the opposite” may prove inconsistency rather than compatibility.
• “Respected scholars agree with me” directs readers toward evidence but cannot make a contradiction true.
• “Your language is too strong” may identify a fault in tone while leaving the inference intact.
• “The accusation is divisive” does not identify a false premise.
• “No doctrine should be taken to an extreme” confuses an imported exaggeration with a necessary conclusion.
• “It is a mystery” forgets that Christian mysteries exceed comprehension without affirming contradictions in the same respect.
• “I use the traditional word” treats the label as though it could preserve abandoned content.

Each response changes the subject from the route to the discomfort produced by it.

Correction Is the Purpose

Paul traced denial of the resurrection to a ruined gospel so that the Corinthians would recover the truth: “But now is Christ risen from the dead” (1 Corinthians 15:20). Severe consequence served glad proclamation.

The same purpose should govern this series. If a preservation theory makes God false, the desired end is not a permanent epithet attached to its advocate. It is the recovery of a doctrine worthy of the truthful God. If the entailment was drawn badly, the critic must correct it. If the theory was stated badly, its author must revise it.

Both acts honour Christ.

The final examination is straightforward:

1. State the exact proposition.
2. Define the governing terms.
3. Print and warrant every indispensable premise.
4. Test whether the inference is necessary.
5. Distinguish the doctrine’s content from the advocate’s profession, knowledge, and culpability.
6. Identify the premise which must be surrendered to avoid the conclusion.

If a critic cannot complete that work, he should not announce an atheistic entailment. If an advocate cannot break any step, orthodox intention will not reroute the argument.

The image for this series shows a bus approaching a dark tunnel while tentacles reach from within. The sign on the vehicle may say Christian. The destination is still determined by the road. The driver must stop and turn before the darkness takes the bus.

You may retract the proposition. You may disprove a connecting premise. You may expose an equivocation. You may show the inference invalid.

Those are the honest ways off the plane.

There is no parachute made of denial.

Sources and Notes

• Greg L. Bahnsen, “Arbitrariness (1 of 5),” Practical Apologetics, especially 8:31 on consequences and 1:11:09 on reductio ad absurdum. See the timestamped lecture outline.
• The Westminster Confession of Faith (1647), 1.6.
• Scripture quotations are from the Authorized Version.