Ben Cartwright, February 4, 2001
Some of the discussions on the message board have prompted me to write a brief article on the issue of �analogies.� In debates regarding the Bible, I am often presented with analogies, and the problem I have is that they are typically offered as some type of proof. I feel that this is an abuse of the purpose of an analogy, and I will here explain why.
Analogies are helpful in that they can help to clarify an issue for someone. For example, if I am your teacher, and I am trying to teach you about web page design, I might say, �You need to have a main page from which all your other pages are reached. You might think of it like coming home at night. No matter where you go in the daytime, you need a place to come home to when you�re finished, and it is from this place that all your other destinations can be reached.� Now, this might help you to understand the need for such a �main page,� but the key, and the thrust of this article, is that I have not in this analogy proven your need for a main page. This idea of having a �main page,� upon which I built my analogy, may be entirely untrue! In other words, the truth of an issue cannot be supported by analogies, only clarified.
The reason I feel that this is important enough to write about is that I think that people truly feel that if they offer the right �courtroom� analogy about the substitutionary death of Jesus on the cross, then they have somehow proven it. Once they get people arguing against the analogy, rather than the central issue which is trying to be proven, they have won half the battle. At that point, it is only an issue of making sure the analogy is internally consistent and supports itself. The problem with this is, even when someone has finished laying out a coherent scenario of a judge, and how he might choose to take the punishment upon himself, the real issue of the substitutionary death of Jesus has not been touched. The reason is that an analogy can only help someone to clarify something which can be proven in other ways. If the only way this death of Jesus makes sense is within the confines of a courtroom analogy (or other similar ones), then it doesn�t make sense at all. If, at some point, it does not make sense in a simply logical way, then it has not been proven.
It is generally understood that there is a point at which analogies begin to break down. For example, in my �web page� scenario in one of the above paragraphs, if you began to ask me how one would �cook dinner� in this �home,� I would say, �Well, that is nonsensical. The analogy was only useful in that it helped to explain the underlying concept I was trying to teach. Once that has been communicated, the analogy can be thrown out.� However, I often find that in such religious analogies, the scenario is taken very seriously in all its respects. It is taken too far at times. I find that often, the analogy is not seen as a way to clarify an already accepted issue� it is taken as part of the proof of the issue, and this is unacceptable. Sadly, it sounds good in a discussion, and if these things are not understood, a person can often fall into the trap of thinking that he has been convinced of a truth, when in fact, he has only agreed to the internal consistency of a given analogy.
Here is another example, as I realize this may be a somewhat tedious treatment of the issue. When someone is speaking of God�s love, he will often say, �Think about your own child. Think about how you love your son or daughter. That is how God feels about you.� In this way, the person has evoked emotion by bringing a very personal example into the matter. Once these emotions are aroused, it is sometimes more difficult to think clearly. But if you, the listener, upon hearing this, took into account what I have said in this article, you might think, �But has the underlying issue of God�s love actually been proven?� (If you thought that, I would pat you on the back and say, �Good job.�) Truly, although the powerful analogy may have felt very persuasive, the real question is whether the issue that the analogy is attempting to clarify is actually true. In other words, how do I know that God actually loves me in this way? Of course it�s easy for me to feel that sense of love that I have for my child, but that in no way proves that God loves me in this way, or at all. What I need to find out is how the speaker knows that this is true (in this case, the person would probably say, �Because it�s in the Bible,� at which point you become aware that nothing at all has been proven, since the infallibility of the Bible is impossible to prove). So, in this case, even though their analogy was internally consistent, and even though it may have even felt very true and right, the analogy was just a disguise for an unproven assumption.
I hope this article has been helpful, and perhaps I can refer people to it from time to time when I feel analogies are being used inappropriately. Just remember that analogies can only serve to clarify something which is already true. They cannot in any way prove that something is true. So when someone throws an analogy at you, keep your cool and ask them how they know that the issue which the analogy is attempting to clarify is true. If they don�t, or if they can�t prove it without the use of an analogy, chances are, it might not be true.
Think for yourselves!! Don�t be fooled by analogies which are offered as proof!
Go to the message board!
