The “threat of force” fallacy - 20 January 2011 |
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The new students on the Guided Reading Course have lost no time in coming up with curve-ball questions. Here’s one that we didn’t get round to dealing with explicitly yesterday: What’s the difference between the “threat of force” fallacy and the threat of church discipline?
That’s a good question. Here’s a stab at an answer:
The “threat of force” fallacy is the illegitimate and illogical attempt to argue for a position by alleging (truthfully or untruthfully) that unpleasant consequences will follow from rejecting it. “Vote for me or I’ll break your legs,” or “Don’t defend your wife if she’s attacked, you might get hurt,” would be obvious examples. A less obvious example (though one you’d be more likely to hear in some circles), might be: “Don’t read books by theologian X at theological college – you’ll never get a job in a British evangelical church.”
In both cases, the crucial point is that the unpleasant consequences of the actions in question cannot be morally justified, either by the person imposing them or by the person issuing the warning. It is unjust to break someone’s legs just because they don’t vote for you. And why should the mere fact that a person reads any book exclude them from consideration for a Ministerial position? The consideration of these unpleasant consequences therefore provides a morally insufficient reason for adopting the position proposed, and the threat of those consequences is a logically insufficient argument.
Put another way, the danger of injury ought not to deter you from defending your wife, because defending your wife is right. You should ignore the “threat of force” and just pile in regardless.
The threat of properly-applied church discipline is quite different, for here the unpleasant consequences (e.g. private rebuke, public rebuke, excommunication) are morally justifiable. Moreover, it would be right to issue warnings of these consequences in certain circumstances in order to deter the ungodliness or unorthodoxy that would ultimately bring them about.
Of course, such warnings do not themselves constitute logically sufficient arguments for godliness or orthodoxy, but that is not their purpose. Wise and responsible elders would use other arguments (biblical, theological, etc) to do this.
One final thought: In instances where church discipline is unwarranted, the threat of discipline would be an example of the “threat of force” fallacy. It wouldn’t be legitimate for the Elders at Emmanuel to excommunicate (or threaten to excommunicate) someone because they’re an Amyraldian or an amillenialist, even though we believe those positions to be mistaken. They’re not significant enough to warrant church discipline. Since the unpleasant consequences are morally unjustifiable, the threat of them ought ultimately to be disregarded by the person to whom they are given.
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Posted by Steve Jeffery · Topics: Guided Reading Course, Minister's Blog