Logical Reasoning
With all the arguing which has been going on among the brethren the past few years and the frequent references to logic and syllogisms, etc., some of us would have our sensibilities spinning in a hopeless maze of intangible human reasonings, were it not for certain fundamental facts. When I listen to all of this, I am called back to a simple injunction given to some common, ordinary folk by the inspired apostle Paul. He said, "Brethren, be not children in understanding: howbeit in malice be ye children, but in understanding be men." (I Cor. 14:20.) If it were necessary for people to have made a deep study of logic under noted logicians in order to understand the teaching of the New Testament, I am afraid that I and thousands, yea millions, of common, ordinary people would be hopeless, helpless and undone as far as an understanding of the scriptures are concerned. But I am glad that this is not the case.
The fact is, when someone has to resort to a lengthy process of higher logic in order to establish something, one would do well to look upon the conclusion with suspicion. The amount of logical reasoning which a person needs to understand the teaching of the scriptures is provided in the natural process of learning. This process covers the period of growth of the individual from infancy to manhood. This period of learning has been characteristic of people in general in all periods of history and people have been taught to reason on things, even people who are considered to be heathen.
Take, for example, the three recognized ways in which the Bible teaches. That is, by direct command, by approved example, and by necessary inference. Does a person need to know that some logician has established the fact that those three things are to be recognized as the three ways in which the Bible is to be understood? Surely there have been thousands of people who have understood the Bible thoroughly, believed it, obeyed it and lived by it without ever hearing of a logician, much less making a deep study of logic. But how can one understand these things without having learned logic? How can one understand the scriptures without knowing that these three definite ways have been established by which one may be taught the scriptures? The answer is simple. They learn reasoning by the natural process of mental growth.
First, let us consider the direct command. This is one of the first lessons one learns in logic. They do not learn it as logic from a professor but they begin to learn it in infancy from the only authority they then know. They learn it from parents or from others of the household. They soon learn to do or not to do something, depending on the nature of the command. When they have reached sufficient maturity to recognize divine authority, they know how to understand the will of that authority by the commands which are given by it.
Second, let us consider the approved example. The same thing is true of this way of instruction as the one we have just discussed. One learns early in life to be governed by the example of the environment by which he is surrounded. When one reaches enough maturity to consider the examples recorded by inspired men and approved by them, they have learned to be instructed by them.
Third, one learns to be instructed by necessary inference in the natural process of mental growth. Suppose a mother should tell her child to bring a loaf of bread from the store. They are at home and five blocks from the store. A child who is old enough to go to the store alone, is old enough to learn about a necessary inference. She did not tell him to go to the store but she necessarily infers that he must go to the store in order to bring a loaf of bread from the store. When one has gone through the normal process of learning to reason, and then considers the account of Philip and the Eunuch and does not necessarily infer that Philip, in preaching Jesus, preached baptism, that person is either an imbecile or so prejudiced that they refuse to accept that which they know to be true.
If a person thinks they can find some other way to he instructed in the scriptures, they know, not by a knowledge of logic as such, but by natural process of mental growth, that any further way of being instructed in the scriptures would have to depend upon imagination which they would also know by the same way cannot he relied upon as true.
The same things which we have said about this particular phase of logic, can be said of every other phase of logic relative to an understanding of the scriptures. Max we repeat that a person needs absolutely no knowledge of logic as such, that is, to have made a study of logic as such, to have a clear understanding of the scriptures. This being true, a person may prove anything which needs to be proven without going into a lengthy dissertation upon some process of logic as such to prove it.