Paul's "Contradiction" in 1 Corinthians 1:14-16
by Bill Ramey
In 1 Corinthians 1:14-16, Paul writes:
(14) I thank God that I baptized none of you but Crispus and Gaius; (15) Lest any should say that I had baptized in my own name. (16) And I baptized also the household of Stephanas: besides, I know not whether I baptized any other. (KJV)One might read this and simply conclude that Paul's point here is that he baptized Crispus, Gaius, and the house of Stephanas. But there are those who see in this passage absolute logical proof that the Bible is errant. Their argument runs as follows. In verse 14, Paul asserts:
1' I baptized Crispus and Gaius and no one else.But in verse 16, he asserts:
2' I baptized the house of Stephanas.This second assertion, goes the argument, falsifies the first; by Paul's own admission, it is not true that he only baptized Crispus and Gaius. Hence we have clear evidence of a false statement in the Bible, and hence the Bible is errant. The significance of this to the errantist is that those who follow the logic of the argument must admit that v. 14 is false and hence must admit that the Bible contains a false statement within its pages--and if the Bible contains a false statement, concludes the argument, it is therefore errant.
Even as it stands, this argument is a non sequitur, for reasons I will discuss shortly, but for now let us analyze the logic behind the argument. In brief, the problem is that when logicians translate assertions from informal language into formal logic, they take into account exactly the kinds of qualifications that Paul makes in the above passage. Suppose someone asks me what I had for lunch today, and I respond: "All I had was a ham sandwich and a root beer. Oh, and I also had a candy bar." How would a logician translate this into logical notation? If we adopt the model used in the argument, we would have to translate my answer as (see the appendix for a quick guide to the symbols and terms used here):
1. H & R & ~F
2. C
3. C -> F
4. F
5. ~F
----------
6. F & ~F (4, 5 conjunction)
7. F (2, 3 modus ponens)
8. ~F (1 simplification)
(1) asserts that I had a ham sandwich (H), a root beer (R), and no other food item (~F). (2) asserts that I had a candy bar. (3) states that if I ate a candy bar, then I ate another food item; and because I did in fact eat a candy bar, (4) states that I therefore ate another food item. (5) reasserts what I said in (1)--that I ate no other food item. Hence these premises lead to the contradictory conclusion:
I ate another food item, and I did not eat another food item.The problem here is that although the logic is valid, the translation is faulty; I did not assert the contradictory conclusion imparted to me. Rather I asserted that I had a sandwich, root beer, and candy bar; or in logical notation:
1. H & R
2. C
--------
3. H & R & C (1,2 conjunction)
The difference between the meaning of a statement in natural language and its grammatical form is called by logicians "conversational implication." The meaning of a statement is not merely a function of its form, but of its intended implication. For example, if you and I know that Bob is a bad driver, but I say to you "Oh, Bob is a great driver," you know that I'm being sarcastic. Yet the form of my statement clearly asserts that Bob is a great driver, even though I mean the exact opposite. Any logical analysis of what I really believe about Bob's driving would have to take my conversational implication into account, or else run the risk of creating a straw man argument. As one logician writes:
It is important to realize that conversational implication is a pervasive feature of human discourse. It is not something we employ only occasionally for special effect. In fact, virtually every conversation relies upon these implications, and most conversations would fall apart if those involved in them refused to go beyond literal meaning to take into account the implications of what is being said. (Fogelin 18)Returning to Paul, the conversational implication of 1 Corinthians 1:14-16 is: "I baptized Crispus, Gaius, and the house of Stephanas." In fact, the attempt to force even a formal contradiction here is dubious, because one could also argue that the first part of v. 14, "I thank God that I baptized none of you," contradicts the next part, "but Crispus and Gaius." One part denies that Paul baptized anyone at all, but the other asserts that he baptized Crispus and Gaius. Of course, this would mean that any statement that uses a qualifying conjunction is open to charges of contradiction--an absurd notion. But the qualification of v. 16 is exactly like the qualification of the second clause of v. 14. The connective words "and," "but," "also," "moreover," "yet," and "nevertheless" in natural language are treated as equivalents in logic and are translated into formal statements with the conjunction sign. Paul uses the conjunctive words "but," "and," and "also," so his assertion can be summarized as:
I baptized no one in Corinth.There is a possible objection here. In "A Case in Point," Dr. Robert H. Countess writes:
But Crispus.
But Gaius.
And also the house of Stephanas.
Now, in point of the manuscript tradition, Paul DID NOT WRITE, "I baptized no one" (period). On the contrary, he wrote, "I baptized none of you except Crispus and Gaius."Countess' key argument is that Paul states a universal negative followed by "two--and only two--exceptions." I have argued that Paul asserts a universal negative followed by three exceptions, and my comments above regarding conversational implication and the logical equivalency of conjunctions support this view.[1] But there is also another reason for doubting Countess' interpretation. His statement that "[w]ithout the correction, we probably would have never become aware of the error" commits the contrary-to-fact fallacy; the fact is that Paul does qualify his universal negative again in v. 16 , and only one clause (i.e. v. 15)--not even a sentence--separates the qualification from the universal negative. Countess wants us to consider v. 14 in isolation from v. 16, but there simply is no reason to do so. No logician would ignore v. 16 in translating the passage into formal language; its conjunctive structure is all too clear.That is a simple assertion. Taken at face value, it is an assertion of universal negation but having expressly two--and only two--exceptions: Crispus and Gaius. Paul then leaves off naming the exceptions and goes on to speak of his concern about people who would place an exaggerated emphasis upon having been personally baptized by him.
It is only after the latter that his memory becomes jogged to the extent that he recalls his having baptized more than just Crispus and Gaius. He failed to include the Stephanas household. Paul then CORRECTS his earlier universal-negation-with-only-two-exceptions assertion. He adds another exception: the household of Stephanas.
. . . .
One inescapably must conclude that in verse 14 Paul erred when he wrote that he had baptized no one but Crispus and Gaius. In verse 16, Paul corrected himself by the addition of the Stephanas household. I must insist that we readers are not aware of the error of verse 14 until we read of Paul's correction of that error in verse 16. Without the correction, we probably would have never become aware of the error. (Emphasis Countess')
Moreover, the scenario presented by Countess--that Paul "leaves off naming the exceptions" in v. 14, "fails" to include the house of Stephanas, and then "corrects" his earlier mistake--is eisegetical and cumbersome. Again, only one clause separates the third qualification from the universal negative, making the above scenario rather superfluous; there simply is not a gap wide enough here to fill with such a scenario.
I remarked earlier that even as it stands, the attempt to prove the errancy of the Bible with this passage is a non sequitur.[2] To see why, let's sum up the argument:
1. 1 Corinthians 1:14 is a false statement.The problem with this argument is that it doesn't lead logically to its conclusion; it equivocates on the word "error." A false statement found within the body of a text does not impute falsity to the text itself. There are several explanations for the inclusion of false statements within a text, only one of which is that the text itself is errant. A false statement in a text can be a facetious remark, an allusion, a quote from another source, a fictive statement, a metaphor, a rhetorical remark, a character's remark, and so on. For example, suppose a respected astronomy textbook contains the statement "the moon is made out of green cheese." This statement is an obvious error of fact, but we do not impute this error to the text or to the author without first knowing the context of the statement. The above argument confuses such incidental errors with non-incidental errors.
2. Thus there is a false statement in the Bible.
3. A false statement is an error.
4. Thus there is an error in the Bible.
5. Therefore, the Bible is errant.
Unfortunately, inerrancy debates often hinge upon this equivocation. But the implied definition of errancy as the inclusion of a false statement within the body of a text is too vague to be useful. If valid, then by definition any text not made up of formal, denotative, factually true statements is errant, and though one can then claim that the Bible is errant, such a claim is vacuous.
Notes
[1] Should one object that conversational implication does not apply to written discourse, a point to consider is that Paul most likely used an amanuensis to take down his letter (cf. Romans 16:22; 1 Cor. 16:21). This a fortiori suggests that conversational implication applies to the passage in question.
[2] I'm not referring here to Countess' article, which is aimed at a very particular definition of inerrancy, but to other variations of the argument encountered elsewhere.
Works Cited
Countess, Robert H. "A Case in Point." The Skeptical Review 1 (1992). http://www.infidels.org/mag/sr/1992/1/1case92.html
Fogelin, Robert J. Understanding Arguments: An Introduction to Informal Logic. Third Edition. San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1987.
Appendix
~ means "it is not the case that."
-> means "If ... then" (so X -> Y would read "If X then Y").
& means "and."
Conjunction is the rule that allows one to conjoin two or more premises together in just the same way we use the word "and" or "but" to join items in a sentence. For example, if Todd ate a Snickers Bar and Mary ate a Milky Way, we could express this as:
T (Todd ate a Snickers)
M (Mary ate a Milky Way)
-----
T & M (Therefore Todd ate a Snickers and Mary ate a Milky Way)
Simplification is the rule that allows one to "simplify" a conjoined statement by separating a conjunct from the rest of the statement. For example, "T & M" above can be simplified into T and M:
T & M T & M
----- or -----
T M
Modus Ponens means the "asserting mode" in Latin. It works by affirming the antecedent of an "if ... then" statement, allowing us then to affirm the consequent. For example:
If it rains (antecedent), then the streets will be wet (consequent).
It is raining (affirming the antecedent).
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Therefore, the streets are wet (affirming the consequent).
"A Case in Point" by Robert H. Countess