Controversies And The Necessary Dangers Of Deduction

Ever since the Apostles have died off, because they did not see the  2nd coming of Jesus Christ the Church has had to employ deduction in answering some questions and controversies. Why? Because as time marched on, the Church faced new controversies and questions that were not directly addressed by the teachings of Christ or of the Apostles. The controversy over the Arian view of Christ is an example. Arius, and his supporters, argued that if Christ was begotten by the Father, then Christ did not exist eternally. Such would then contradict His deity. And if Christ was not God, then our salvation in Christ is called into question for it is only the Lord who saves.

Part of the problem in combating the Arian teachings on Christ was that those who followed it did so because they believed that they were being faithful to what the Scriptures literally said. Thus, in how they defined Christ, the Arians felt that they were faithful to the Apostles and Christ because they were most faithful to the language used by Christ and the Apostles. Athanasius, on the other hand, employed logic to deduce that Christ had to be eternal. Athanasius reasoned that because God is eternal, that His begetting of His Son Jesus is also eternal. Here is where deduction was correctly applied to defeat a misunderstanding caused by literalism.

However, deduction can cause problems as well. In determining what should become the law of the land and what shouldn't, some religiously conservative Christians reason that since rulers are to punish evil as stated in Romans 13:1-7 (click here for the passage), God's laws should, either in part or in whole, should become the laws of the land. As a result, we see some Christians conclude that the government must punish the LGBT community because of their sexual practices. Not only that, they want the government to punish all forms of adultery. Their powers of deduction are limited or selective however in that many of these same Christians don't want those who engage in economic exploitation to be punished. Nor do they want those who harm the environment to be punished. Nor do they want their own countrymen who wage unjust wars to be punished. The point is, however, that they show how one can misuse deduction in interpreting the Scriptures.

This brings us to the article to be reviewed. It is actually an open letter from PCA minister Todd Pruitt (click here for a bio) to a fellow PCA member Andrew White who is running to become Governor of Texas. While campaigning, White has said that he both personally objects to abortion but would do nothing but to recognize Roe v. Wade as the law of the land. White also said that he would not let his personal faith interfere with how he governs. Todd Pruitt's open letter uses deduction to challenge White's position (click here for the open letter).

What bothers Pruitt about White's abortion position is that Pruitt believes that White's personal objection to abortion has to do with White's belief that the unborn child is a human life and thus abortion would be taking an innocent human's life. Thus, Pruitt reasons that anyone, especially any Christian, who believes that about the unborn child should object to abortion for it is the taking of human life and thus murder. Pruitt then concludes that since God's Word is important to White because White is a ruling elder in the same conservative denomination that Pruitt belongs, that White is bound to oppose abortion because God's Word does not speak of the life in the womb in any other way than that it is fully human.

Now while Pruitt's logic in his open letter is flawless, he makes a possible error in his claim that the Scriptures do not recognize the life in the womb to be anything else but fully human. In the OPC committee report on abortion, the minority position written by Paul Woolley questions whether the fertilized egg is a human person and thus not fully human (click here for the full report from the committee). Here we should note that the OPC is a far more conservative denomination than the conservative denomination of the PCA. And yet, in its minority report, there is a disagreement on whether the fertilized egg is fully human. And Woolley not only calls such a notion 'rationalistic folly,' he cites an admission from the majority report that says the following:

There is no way to demonstrate, either from Scripture or from science or from some combination of the two, that the unborn child is a human person from the point of conception.

Here we should note that Woolley was not saying that all cases of abortion are not sinful for he wrote that some cases of abortion are. He was simply challenging whether all cases of elective abortion are sinful. 

So the question becomes whether Pruitt either overstated what the Scriptures say about life in the womb or he is misusing deduction to compel White to change his political position on abortion. As one who believes that human life begins at conception, it seems that we should always be willing to reevaluate the definition of human life. At the same time, one should remain faithful to how one sees the scriptural definition of human life.