Using Word Fallacies as a Model for Interpretive Fallacies

I'm afraid I don't own D. A. Carson's Exegetical Fallacies. The Table of Contents look good, even though in general the man makes me break out in a rash.

It occurred to me today that since word studies are really microcosms of the interpretive enterprise, we might expect to find parallels between the commonly rehearsed "word fallacies" and broader interpretive fallacies. Further, I wonder if I will find that such interpretive fallacies are only fallacies in regard to the original meaning. In other words, I wonder if this will turn out to be a good way to contrast original meaning interpretation with the currently popular theological interpretation.

1. overload fallacy
This is what sparked the thought today. When it comes to an individual word in an individual context, a word will have a somewhat limited meaning, usually only one of several possible meanings (although there are double entendres sometimes).

This applies to interpretation as well. We should not read more meaning into a passage than is necessary to minimally account for its meaning. This is a major "original meaning" problem for the traditional interpretations of countless Christian groups. To read the Wesleyan doctrine of entire sanctification into John 17:17--"Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth"--is to overread this verse massively, since this interpretation requires us to invest far more meaning in the words than is required from the verse in context.

Theological reading, on the other hand, often reads far more meaning into biblical texts than is necessary to make sense of them. Passages relate to systems largely external to the text.

2. anachronistic fallacy
In terms of words, one cannot understand a word in terms of a meaning it did not have at the time the text was written. This also applies to inductive Bible study and original meaning interpretation. We should not expect to find any reference to the Trinity, for example, in the biblical text because this idea was not fully worked out until the fourth and fifth centuries after Christ.

Similarly, our default expectation should be not to find any references to Christ in the Old Testament. Prophecy is a special case of course, but most specific OT passages when read inductively do not have a first meaning that maps closely to the "second meanings" they are given in the NT.

Once again, theological interpretation regularly, in my opinion, is anachronistic in its application of later theological meanings into the NT words. Many in this movement are still claiming to operate under an original meaning rubric, but eventually this movement will admit it is really a form of reader response.

3. etymological fallacy
If the anachronistic fallacy looks to later meanings, the etymological fallacy looks to earlier ones. What a word meant previously cannot in any way ensure and does not dictate what the word will come to mean later. Similarly, the component parts of a word do not dictate what a compound word ends up meaning.

With regard to interpretation, a closely related problem is "parallelomania." There is a temptation by some scholars to take a passage in background literature that sounds a little like a passage of interest and then to let the parallel dictate what the passage might mean. But of course the text itself is the delimiting factor when it comes to moving from the domain of all possible meanings to the probable meaning the text originally had.

4. root or lexical fallacy
Hard to think of a straight parallel in the interpretation of passages... In words, the root fallacy is the presumption that some core meaning a text has plays itself out in all the varied uses of that word.

I suppose if we go somewhat metaphorical, we might equate this fallacy to the presumption that all the passages in the Bible play out some core theology or worldview. Of course when we read these texts from a theological hermeneutic, we might very well say they do.

But from the standpoint of the original meaning, we cannot assume that Paul has the same theology as Mark or John or Isaiah or Judges. The reason why the notion of a biblical theology has been so problematic in the past is because, from the standpoint of the original meaning, it is a challenge to find within the text itself the unifying principles to contruct one. The theological hermeneutical approach finds it much easier because the unifying principles are in Christian theology.

These are just a few thoughts. It would be interesting either to use the work of Carson and others or simply for myself to create a list of interpretive fallacies. I've created a similar list in my Brief Guide to Biblical Interpretation--just this month now in its second edition (the picture on Amazon is still the first edition so I haven't linked it). But I've never approached the matter from the standpoint of "original meaning fallacies."