How To Establish Religious Authority #17
A. This lesson is a Two Part Study. In it we want to study the
question of how you establish Bible authority in terms of what
we call Necessary Inference. What does that mean?
The noun INFERENCE is related to the verb INFER. It comes from
a compound Latin term which literally means, To gather in.
It conveys the idea of going out and collecting, or gathering
in something. When you apply this to the process of human reasoning,
inference becomes a part of our everyday reasoning
process.
1. There are various facts, truths, bits of information that you
encounter that you have to put together. You combine all of these
things together and from them you draw a conclusion. And the conclusion
you draw is the inference. But, not all of the conclusions, or
inferences that you make each day are
necessary inferences. Many conclusions and inferences are reasonable
but they are not always
exclusive.
a. Sometimes you can explain your conclusions and inferences in
more than one way. That is not a
necessary inference. Thats when you have to decide which
of the two conclusion you want to
accept or use. Youre free to choose which conclusion or
inference you think is more reasonable. And you are at liberty
to exercise your choice in the matter.
(A) But, if after having gathered in all of the information on
a subject, if there is only one conclusion or inference that can
be drawn. If there is only one way to explain those facts, if
there is only one logical conclusion, at which you can arrive,
then the conclusion or inference suddenly becomes a necessary
inference. You have no choice in deciding what your conclusion
or inference will be. You are forced to conclude what are the
facts. A forced conclusion is a necessary inference. Necessary
inference is a part of Biblical interpretation.
(1) There are some people who want to be members of the Lords
church, but they have a relative or friend in a denomination with
whom they want to have religious fellowship.
(a) They want to have religious, Christian fellowship despite
the fact that what that friend or relative believes and teaches
is contrary to what the Bible teaches. To make that possible and
justify that doctrinally, they reject the rule of Biblical interpretation
called necessary inference. And they say, A
necessary inference is only your opinion and you cannot
bind your opinion on somebody else.
(b) Well, they are partly right in what they say. They are right
when they say, You cannot bind your opinions on anybody.
But, are wrong when they say, a necessary inference
is an opinion. A reasonable inference may be an opinion.
But a necessary inference is NOT opinion. Necessary
inference is based on, and carries with it, the force of
absolute, factual information. Therefore , in the context of determining
Bible authority, necessary inference becomes the equivalent
of an authoritative statement.
(2) Look at a common example of this and then look at some Bible
examples of establishing truth on the basis of necessary
inference. If you woke up in the morning, and remembered
that during the night you heard thunder. And now you look out
and see that the grass, drive way are wet you could make an inferenct
that it rained sometime during the night. That might be a reasonable
inference.
(a) But thats not a necessary inference. Why
is that so? Because there may be a reasonable explanation for
the wetness on your lawn and drive. Your sprinkler system may
have come on and one of the heads was broken and blew water all
over your driveway.
(b) By way of contrast: If you wake up, open the door, and there
is snow all over everything you can see. You may necessarily
infer that it rained and in the process the temperature
dropped below 32 degrees. That is what has to occur for it to
snow. You could draw a factual, undeniable inference, that the
temperature dropped below freezing last night. We draw such inferences
all the time.
(B) That process is correctly used to interpret the Bible. Turn
to 2 Chron. 7:12, Solomon has completed building the temple and
prays for Gods acceptance and blessing. The LORD appeared
to him at night and said: I have heard your prayer and have
chosen this place
for myself as a temple for sacrifices. Question? Exactly
HOW did God appear to him?
In the Old Testament God appeared to people in several different
ways. To Moses from a
burning bush. Sometimes God appeared in a vision. In a dream.
This says, God
appeared to Solomon at night. But, That does not say how.....only
when.
(1) If I want to know how God appeared to him I have to look elsewhere
to find out how God did that. When we go to a parallel passage
in 1 Kgs. 9:2, The LORD appeared to him a second time, as
he had appeared to him at Gibeon. How was that? 1 Kgs. 3:5,
At Gibeon the LORD appeared to Solomon during the night
in a dream.
(a) How do you draw a necessary inference from that?
You put all the facts together and they say, God appeared
to Solomon at night.....God appeared to Solomon at night the same
way He appeared to Solomon at Gibeon......God appeared to Solomon
at Gibeon at night in a dream.
(b) Put all three passages together and I am FORCED to the CONCLUSION,
I am forced to the NECESSARY inference that when God appeared
to Solomon in 2 Chron. 7:12, God appeared to him in a dream. That
is an undeniable conclusion. Thats why its called
a necessary inference.
(2) There are many necessary inferences in the New Testament and
from them we learn exactly what God is teaching us about how we
find Him, respond to Him, establish a spiritual relationship with
Him, how we maintain that relationship with Him, and exactly how
we can worship Him in spirit and in truth so we can continue our
relationship with Him.
(a) Next time we will begin to look at some of these necessary
Inferences in the New Testament that formulate the religious
doctrines that we believe. You will see why we believe what we
believe, and why what we believe is sometimes drastically different
from that of the denominations.
(b) Acts 20:32
Spur - 06/01/03 am
|