Conclusions: Necessary, Unnecessary, and Impossible
This article is based on a class I taught in 2020, which you can watch here.
Necessary Conclusions
A necessary conclusion is where you don’t have a direct teaching or direct example of something but because of the evidence that is there, it has to be true. If we are looking at the evidence properly, reading what God taught properly, and using the examples properly then any conclusion that has to be true based on those things is in fact true.
A common statement that Jesus makes is “Have you not read?” This means that Jesus fully expects us to be able to use this type of thinking to determine what is the will of God.
Matthew 12:1-8 (NKJV)
1 At that time Jesus went through the grainfields on the Sabbath. And His disciples were hungry, and began to pluck heads of grain and to eat. 2 And when the Pharisees saw it, they said to Him, “Look, Your disciples are doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath!” 3 But He said to them, “Have you not read what David did when he was hungry, he and those who were with him: 4 how he entered the house of God and ate the showbread which was not lawful for him to eat, nor for those who were with him, but only for the priests? 5 Or have you not read in the law that on the Sabbath the priests in the temple profane the Sabbath, and are blameless? 6 Yet I say to you that in this place there is One greater than the temple. 7 But if you had known what this means, ‘I desire mercy and not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the guiltless. 8 For the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.”
The Pharisees are complaining that what the disciples of Jesus are doing is contrary to the teaching of the Sabbath. They are working on the Sabbath. And it doesn’t matter if they are hungry. If they are working on the Sabbath, it is unlawful.
But Jesus gives an example of David doing something “unlawful” but approved by God. Some brethren will argue that Jesus was saying that David sinned but the Pharisees are being inconsistent in their arguments by justifying David and condemning the disciples but I don’t think that makes sense in this context.
Even if you want to take that view of David’s example, in the example of the priests working on the Sabbath, Jesus specifically says that they profane the Sabbath (break the Sabbath law) but are guiltless. They are clearly working in the temple on the Sabbath but because the law regarding the temple is a greater law than that of the Sabbath, they are not actually breaking God’s law. Now, Jesus says that One greater than the temple is here.
Jesus then reminds of them a statement about God’s desire (something that does not change) for mercy and not sacrifice. This principle, if properly understood, demonstrates that the disciples were justified in what they did. I don’t know that I would know how to apply this principle in every case, but Jesus did.
There was nothing in particular in the teaching about the Sabbath that would directly state that one could pluck grain and eat it if they are hungry on the Sabbath day. But Jesus says that they should have been able to come to that conclusion based on these other examples and direct statements regarding the will of God. It was a necessary conclusion according to Jesus when everything is put together and understood correctly.
Jesus uses this same method in dealing with the question about divorce. When the Pharisees asked about divorce, I assume that they were only thinking about scriptures that directly spoke about divorce. However, Jesus never goes to those passages, but rather uses a passage that speaks about marriage.
Matthew 19:3-6 (NKJV)
3 The Pharisees also came to Him, testing Him, and saying to Him, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for just any reason?” 4 And He answered and said to them, “Have you not read that He who made them at the beginning ‘made them male and female,’ 5 and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? 6 So then, they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate.”
Jesus quotes here from Genesis 2:24, which says “they shall become one flesh.” If I am not mistaken, Jesus uses the wording from the Septuagint (Greek translation) and thereby approves it where it says, “the two shall become one flesh.” This also rules out polygamy by necessary conclusion because only two can be involved in marriage.
How does this teach about divorce if this says nothing about divorce? Jesus uses logic here. “Have you not read?” This says that they should have been able to understand God’s will on this if they had read (and properly understood) God’s teaching about marriage. Do you see the language of logic in what Jesus says? “So then” and “Therefore.” Jesus was drawing a conclusion and He speaks about it in that way and indicates that anyone else who properly understood the meaning behind what God had said would reach the same conclusion because it is a necessary conclusion.
This was not a new teaching. Jesus says it was from the beginning. In Matthew 5:31-32, Jesus introduces a new teaching, but we see the logic of drawing a necessary conclusion in Matthew 19.
In Matthew 22, the Sadducees tried to use a necessary conclusion to deny the resurrection. What was wrong with their logic?
Matthew 22:23-33 (NKJV)
23 The same day the Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to Him and asked Him, 24 saying: “Teacher, Moses said that if a man dies, having no children, his brother shall marry his wife and raise up offspring for his brother. 25 Now there were with us seven brothers. The first died after he had married, and having no offspring, left his wife to his brother. 26 Likewise the second also, and the third, even to the seventh. 27 Last of all the woman died also. 28 Therefore, in the resurrection, whose wife of the seven will she be? For they all had her.” 29 Jesus answered and said to them, “You are mistaken, not knowing the Scriptures nor the power of God. 30 For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels of God in heaven. 31 But concerning the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was spoken to you by God, saying, 32 ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.” 33 And when the multitudes heard this, they were astonished at His teaching.
The Sadducees were assuming that there would be marriage in the resurrection even though God never said anything about that. They used their assumption as a step to reach their conclusion, but if you have to assume a step in your logic, it is no longer a necessary conclusion. As Jesus said, they did not know the scriptures or the power of God.
The Sadducees did try to make a necessary conclusion, but they made a false assumption. Jesus makes a proper necessary conclusion. He uses the language of “I am the God of…” to conclude that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were still living even though they had died. This led to the conclusion that there must be a resurrection. Now, I can’t say that I fully follow every step Jesus made in this argument even though I know if He made the argument it is right. The main thing I want us to see is that Jesus uses this logic and expects others to do the same, but we must be careful not to make false assumptions as steps in reaching a “necessary conclusion.”
Some Conclusions are Possible but Unnecessary
The conclusion reached by the Sadducees might have been possible if there was nothing else written that would contradict it, but even then it would not be a necessary conclusion because they did not know if there would be marriage in the resurrection. Because other teaching contradicted their conclusion, it actually became and “impossible conclusion.” But there are some conclusions that are possible, but not necessary.
What makes a conclusion unnecessary where you cannot know for certain that it is the right conclusion? One example of this is drawing a conclusion about whether one can eat the Lord’s Supper by yourself rather than with a church. One argument for this is essentially as follows:
Since Paul spent so much time away from churches–in prison, traveling, and preaching in areas without churches–he must have eaten the Lord’s Supper by himself. Therefore, we can also.
What would we have to have to make this conclusion necessary? We would have to have some scripture that demonstrates that as individuals we are clearly expected to eat the Lord’s Supper every first day of the week. Therefore, he would have had to eat it by himself if he was by himself. But you notice that we would already have the answer to the main question and the conclusion would be about Paul’s practice, not whether we should eat it by ourselves.
If we do not already have the understanding that the scriptures teach us to eat the Lord’s Supper as individuals, we cannot reach this conclusion. I don’t know what Paul did when he could not eat the Lord’s Supper with a church. He might have eaten it by himself (if that was the right thing to do). He might not have eaten it at all if he was by himself. We cannot know from the record because it says nothing about it. We would have to have some other teaching to know what is right and wrong about this practice.
An argument from the other view can be summarized this way:
Since Paul stopped in Troas to eat the Lord’s Supper with the church there, he must not have eaten the Lord’s Supper when traveling on the ship (Acts 20:1-7).
Why would Paul wait seven days to eat the Lord’s Supper with these brethren if he could just eat it while traveling? For that to be a necessary conclusion, we would have at the very least to know that this was the only reason Paul had for waiting to be with the church that day. Since we know he also preached and spoke with them for a long time, we know he had other reasons besides eating the Lord’s Supper for wanting to be with them. So while it is possible that Paul only ate the Lord’s Supper with the churches where he stopped and not while traveling, this is not at all a necessary conclusion from this passage alone. It is an unnecessary conclusion.
We will have to use another method to determine whether or not it is right to eat the Lord’s Supper by ourselves. We cannot draw any necessary conclusion about it from this passage alone. You may reach a conclusion, but you need to know that if it is not a necessary conclusion, you cannot use it to establish authority from God for anything. It is easier to see this logical flaw when looking at the arguments of our opponents, but we need to be careful not try to establish authority from what might be true rather than from what must be true.
I will point out that if we can establish through other means clearly what God’s will is in this matter, we can then draw a necessary conclusion about what Paul did and the other idea of what he did becomes an impossible conclusion.
Some Conclusions are Impossible
What makes a conclusion impossible? It is an impossible conclusion when it cannot be true. This is generally because other scriptures contradict the conclusion. It may also be that logic itself contradicts the conclusion, but we will focus on scriptures demonstrating a conclusion to false. We are talking here about conclusions that are impossible to reach if we have a proper understanding of the scriptures.
Let’s look at one example.
Infant Baptism
In the Catechism of Trent (used by the Catholic church for about 400 years until the 1960s) it says this about infant baptism:
Moreover, when we read that an entire family was baptised by Paul, it is sufficiently obvious that the children of the family must also have been cleansed in the saving font.
http://catholicapologetics.info/thechurch/catechism/Holy7Sacraments-Baptism.shtml
They changed their wording in the latest catechism.
The practice of infant Baptism is an immemorial tradition of the Church. There is explicit testimony to this practice from the second century on, and it is quite possible that, from the beginning of the apostolic preaching, when whole “households” received baptism, infants may also have been baptized.
Something made the Roman Catholic Church change from saying that children “must” have been baptized to saying that they “may” have been baptized. Apparently, they noticed that there is nothing said about infants being part of these households, so that would actually be a rather big assumption to say that there must have been infants there. It is certainly not a necessary conclusion.
So they acknowledge that they get their authority from the practice they trace to the second century on and not from the Bible. They would classify infant baptism in the households as an unnecessary or possible conclusion, but not a necessary conclusion.
So is this a possible conclusion or not? In Acts 8:12, we are specifically told that “men and women” were being baptized. There is never a mention of children being baptized, or needing to be baptized in the entire New Testament. Only believers were to be baptized and infants cannot believe. Even in the cases of the Philippian jailer and Crispus, the ruler of the synagogue in Corinth, it specifies that the entire household believed, which rules out infants being included in those households (Acts 16:34; Acts 18:8).
If only believers are to be baptized, it is a necessary conclusion that no infants were baptized as part of these households that were baptized. According to Acts 2:38, before baptism, one must repent (change their mind) but that is not possible for an infant. Therefore, the necessary conclusion is that only those who can believe and repent were included in those who were baptized.
When we draw a conclusion from the scriptures, we need to ensure that we are drawing a necessary conclusion. Some conclusions are possible but unnecessary and cannot be proved one way or another. These cannot be used to establish authority for anything. Then some conclusions are impossible and can be proved to be wrong through a proper understanding of the scriptures. Let us be careful, but also recognize that Christ is looking at us and asking, “Have you not read?”