Propositions versus Proverbs

Part of the introduction to the logic chapter of my philosophy book:
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This chapter sets out some of the basic rules and mistakes people make when thinking and arguing both deductively and inductively. It is concerned not just with whether a proposition or “truth claim” is true or false. It is about valid and invalid ways to move from one thought to the next.

We should also make clear the difference between a proposition and the kinds of things we often say in ordinary language. “I’ll never forget how happy I was to get that dog” is not a proposition. For one thing, it is a hyperbole, an exaggerated comment. You may very well forget, especially if you get senile in old age or get Alzheimer’s disease. Propositions are usually literal rather than metaphorical or figurative statements.[i]

It is also not a statement about what is always true about something. A propositional version of this statement might be something like, “People are always happy when they get dogs.” Of course, this statement is not true as a proposition, since many people do not like dogs, and sometimes even individuals who generally like dogs do not like the ones they get. To be true, a proposition must always be true.

For this reason, it is important to distinguish proverbs and most statements in the Bible from propositions. For example, take Proverbs 22:6: “Start children off on the way they should go, and even when they are old they will not turn from it” (TNIV). This is not a proposition, because it is not something that is always true. It is a general principle that is usually true but sometimes through no fault of their parents children choose to go down the wrong paths.

A great example of the “proverbial” nature of biblical statements appears in Proverbs 26:4-5 which says in succession, “Do not answer fools according to their folly” and then in the next verse, “Answer fools according to their folly.” Since one of the rock bottom principles of logic is the law of non-contradiction, both of these statements cannot be true as propositions. However, since proverbs are not statements of absolute truth but of general truth, both of these statements are true as proverbs.

It is important to recognize that the vast majority of biblical statements are not meant as propositions—they are not made as absolute statements of truth that do not have exception. Here we are talking about statements of truth rather than commands (although we will see in chapter 11 that most of the Bible’s ethical commands similarly do not function on the level of exceptionless absolutes). And we are not talking about the many figurative and metaphorical statements in the Bible. Jesus in particular seemed to have used metaphor and hyperbole extensively in his teaching, as we see in his use of parables.

Take Jesus’ intriguing statement to the Syro-Phoenician woman in Mark 7:27, “It is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs.” To start out, this is a metaphor. We might literally put it, “It is not right for me to cast a demon out of a non-Jew” with a supporting statement, “My exorcist ministry is for Jews.” However, neither of these statements is a proposition. If they were, they would be false—or else Jesus did wrong when he then went on to cast the demon out of the woman’s daughter.

In the end, the books of the Bible were written to address ancient Israelites, Romans, Corinthians, and so forth. The statements these writings make were made not only in these contexts, but in terms that people from these ancient cultures could understand. It is the exception, rather than the rule, to find propositional statements like “there is but one God, the Father… and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ” (1 Cor. 8:6).[ii] Our default expectation is that biblical statements are qualified by their historical-cultural contexts and that even then they are more general statements than exceptionless propositions.

[i] Although George Lakoff and Mark Johnson have made a good case that not only speech but even our concepts are ultimately metaphorical in nature (Metaphors We Live By, [Chicago: University of Chicago, 1980]). Nevertheless, the distinction between literal and metaphorical stands when we think of the literal as the ordinary use of words and metaphors as an unusual use of words based on comparing them to other things that are unlike them.

[ii] Interestingly, Paul does not exactly word this statement like a proposition, introducing it with the relativizing phrase, “for us there is…”