Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Seven Common Fallacies of Biblical Interpretation

The Parchment and Pen blog offers seven common fallacies of biblical interpretation:

1. Preunderstanding fallacy: Believing you can interpret with complete objectivity, not recognizing that you have preunderstandings that influence your interpretation.

2. Incidental fallacy: Reading incidental historical texts as prescriptive rather than descriptive.

3. Obscurity fallacy: Building theology from obscure material.

4. Etymological root fallacy: Looking to the root etymology of a word to discover its meaning.

5. Illegitimate totality transfer: Bringing the full meaning of a word with all its nuances to the present usage.

6. Selective use of meaning: Selecting the meaning you like best.

7. Maverick fallacy: Believing that you don’t need anyone but the Holy Spirit to interpret the text.


Read the whole post here for further explanation and examples.

HT: Thabiti Anyabwile