Logic

The term ad hominem is much misunderstood these days. In popular usage, it’s a personal attack leveled against someone you disagree with. Many never use the term without appending the word attack. “It’s nothing but an ad hominem attack,” they complain, as though an ad hominem is a nasty species of attack that automatically disproves every claim the user ever made. (And is it just me or does just about everybody employ “ad homnem attacks” even though they insist nobody else should?)

My aim here is to clarify a few things about the much misunderstood ad hominem.

It’s an argument.

First, the ad hominem is an argument, a bit of reasoning employed to support or counter a claim. Specifically, ad hominem looks to some trait an individual possesses (usually a flaw) to show that a claim is false (or, less commonly, that a claim is true). Ad hominem means “to the man,” and as a form of argument it is not inherently invalid or improper—or even impolite.

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They say that any publicity is good publicity, but that may not be true. Pillsbury Baptist Bible College has recently received some rather unwelcome attention. First, a prominent pastor in Indiana has publicly narrated a pejorative but largely fictitious account of his expulsion from Pillsbury during the 1970s. Then a blogger from back East published a negative report complaining that the campus coffee shop wasn’t open at night and he was bored while visiting the college.

My wife knows when I want to eat. When she says, “I bet you want something to eat,” I don’t wonder if she has some weird link to my hypothalamus. She has reasoned. She bases this on many things that she knows about me. Among those things: 1) When I don’t eat for a while, I get hungry; 2) I hate bananas.

—Logically:

Premise 1: He wants to eat something when he doesn’t eat for several hours.
Premise 2: He hasn’t eaten for several hours.
Conclusion: He wants to eat something.

—And:

Premise 1: He does not like to eat things that have bananas.

This series of essays began by discussing the usefulness of logic as a tool for discovering biblical truth. Until now, the question has been whether necessary inferences from the Scriptural premises are somehow less authoritative than the original premises. These essays have argued that whatever Scripture necessarily implies is just as authoritative as what Scripture actually states.

All cats are dogs.
All dogs are quadrupeds.
Therefore, all cats are quadrupeds.

Here is a thought experiment. Imagine that you are given access to a banking machine, and told that you may withdraw in one transaction up to 500,000 dollars. You are also permitted to make subsequent withdrawals, but no withdrawal can amount to more than half of the previous withdrawal. How many withdrawals will you have to make before you have a million dollars?

I have been arguing against a philosophical theory that denigrates reason by stating that inferences drawn from Scripture are always lower in authority than the straightforward declarations of Scripture. I have attempted to show that this theory is bad philosophy, bad exegesis, and bad theology. Necessary inferences drawn from Scripture are just as authoritative as the Scriptures themselves.