Paul's Great Ad Hom

An ad Hominem is a general category of fallacies in which a claim or argument is rejected on the basis of some irrelevant fact about the author of or the person presenting the claim or argument. Typically, this fallacy involves two steps. First, an attack against the character of person making the claim, her circumstances, or her actions is made (or the character, circumstances, or actions of the person reporting the claim). Second, this attack is taken to be evidence against the claim or argument the person in question is making (or presenting). This type of “argument” has the following form: 1. Person A makes claim X. 2. Person B makes an attack on person A. 3. Therefore A’s claim is false. The reason why an ad Hominem (of any kind) is a fallacy is that the character, circumstances, or actions of a person do not (in most cases) have a bearing on the truth or falsity of the claim being made (or the quality of the argument being made). [Source: LaBossiere, Michael. 42 Fallacies]

The Apostle Paul in his Epistle to the Romans, chapter 1 states:

18For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. 19For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. 20For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. 21For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22Claiming to be wise, they became fools, 23and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. 24Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, 25because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen. 26For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; 27and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error. 28And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. 29They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, 30slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, 31foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. 32Though they know God’s decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them. [Source: The Holy Bible, English Standard Version]

Paul states that the existence of God is self evident to all, and that those who claim otherwise, do so because of their flawed character. Therefore, Paul’s argument is a classic ad Hominem fallacy.

I would say that Paul’s argument is less that these people deny God because of their flawed character, and that this makes their denial of God wrong, and more that these people are flawed because of, or through, their denial of God, or by their wanton suppression of the truth that is evident in all things.

They are not unrighteous first and deniers of God second, but rather they are unrighteous in their denial of God. There’s no ad hominem here.

To say that some are “unrighteous in their denial of God” is simply to state that they are wrong. If that were the case, Paul would be supplying no reason why they are wrong, and no reason why they are worthy of punishment. Yet he clearly states that they are worthy of punishment.

Even granting your interpretation, Paul’s is still an ad Hominem argument. For, by your reckoning, Paul takes the denial of God to be an immoral act. The morality of the claim is irrelevant to its truth or falsity. What is at issue is God’s existence. Paul diverts attention from the issue of God’s existence to an irrelvant fact about anyone who would deny it. That’s an ad Hominem. “Everybody knows God exists , so anyone who denies God is lying.” That’s an ad Hom.

Yer such a Pollyanna alyoshka. The manufacturer created a flawed product, and blamed the product for the flaws.

And then, as the story goes, the manufacturer cooked up a plan whereby a human/god would be sacrificed so the Manufacturer can forgive the flaws he created in the product.

Clearly such a manufacturer is loopy ; quintessentially loopy …

Felix,

This is why the is - isn’t argument can never be resolved. It begins with each person’s assumptions. One chooses to believe god is while another believes god isn’t. All argumention, all claims of ‘knowing’ fall from the assumptions made, and they simply look past one another. Only genuine agnosticism allows is - isn’t to be moot. Was Paul’s viewpoint an ad hom? Well, if you accept his assumptions, there really couldn’t be any other line of reasoning, but the falsity lies in the assumptions. The so-called ‘reasoning’ is the conclusions drawn from the assumptions.

Paul supplies a reason. “They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Though they know God’s decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.”

So what more reason could you want? They’re assholes! They’re evil-doers and promoters of evil. It’s not to say that they are simply wrong, but rather that they are engaged in terrible acts and that because of this they deserve punishment. Let’s leave God out of it for a minute. Can’t we agree that these things Paul lists are wrong? Not because God says so but because they are? And that these people should know better?

I would indeed say that denying God is an immoral act. Perhaps the problem is that you’re taking “denial of God” to mean “denial of the existence of God,” a move that I think misses what Paul is talking about.

What Paul says is evident in all creation is not God’s existence per se but rather God’s “eternal power and divine nature,” viz., wisdom. That is what the people deny when they deny God. They don’t deny that God exists but rather they deny that the power and nature that Paul is referring to (wisdom) is divine. They suppress truth/wisdom and turn to other powers instead. Or they turn to other powers and in doing so suppress truth/wisdom (as obvious as it is). Either way they ascribe divinity to the wrong thing, and while they think they are being wise they are in fact foolish.

In a word they commit idolatry, which stresses again that the question is less about whether God exists and more about what constitutes the divine, and what should happen when we deny what is truly divine divinity.

tent–

Well, when I first came to ILP, I thought that the existence of God was self evident because it was evident to ME. I could have argued that anyone who disagreed with me was denying what they knew in their heart of hearts. I’ve seen it done here plenty of times. I got to know that argument very well by seeing it here over and over. So when I re-read the Romans passage above, I recognized it.

You know, I was actually taught that when I was a fundamentalist. I was taught that the reason people don’t believe in God is because they are sinners and they don’t wish to change their ways, so they deny that God exists. So this hypothesis is taught by Christians.

But my opinion has changed so I believe it is possible to “resolve” such issues, at least on an individual basis. If one tries on different hypotheses even as thought experiments, one can change one’s own gestalt. One can see things differently, see different viewpoints and change opinions when the preponderance of evidence shifts. My mind set and world view have changed many times throughout my life. I hope it continue to change. Paul talked about being “transformed by the renewing of your mind”. I hope my mind stays open so that it can be continually renewed.

Paul’s presupposition is that God is self evident and that anyone who doesn’t agree is a lying liar. This argument becomes important to his gospel later because he must show all are under sin, sinners. Why? Because if they are not, then Christ did not need to die on the cross to save them all.

You misunderstand. Jesus is the proof that the product is good afterall. That it was good all along (Jesus being a direct descendent of Adam). And that God was right to persevere and not blot us out completely (or to blot us out now).

Now you have come full circle and are agreeing with my opening post that Paul’s argument is an attack on the character of anyone for whom God is not self evident. Paul even exaggerates the unrighteousness of everyone to make his case.

I think you are probably right that Paul isn’t referring to God’s existence per se, but rather to God’s self evident attributes. But he is still impugning the motives of the human race rather than making valid arguments for his position. His God is better than theirs and the proof is that they are, how did you put it?.. “assholes.”

Let me approach it another way.

Your reading of Paul is that he is making an argument, and that his argument goes something like this: “These people have denied God. But these people are also bad. Therefore we must not take their denial of God seriously because they are bad.”

With this reading Paul’s point is to uphold God, and to do so by discrediting those who deny God. If this was the case I would say that you are absolutely right. This would be an invalid argument for upholding God, or at least it would be an argument lacking substance.

In my reading of Paul I hesitate to even say that Paul is making an argument at all. Rather I would say that Paul is preaching. He’s fulfilling his role as an apostle, not as a logician. He’s telling people that they are going to pay for their sins, that they should know better, and that even God has given them up to their misdeeds and to the consequences that follow. There’s no argument but more a warning and a calling for people to change their ways and to acknowledge the truth. To stop doing these things that we all know are wrong and to start doing what we all know is right.

If you want an argument for why these things are right or wrong, well, I think you’re right, it’s not in the verses that you cite. Paul seems satisfied with their self-evidence. Again, that we should simply know better.

If you want more of an answer I would say that we know them by their fruits. That is, we know what is right because it leads to life, and we know what is wrong because it leads to death. To return to Paul’s list, we all know what the result of envy, strife, deceipt, and maliciousness is. We all know where gossip, slander and hate get us. They all lead to death. It’s pretty evident. And the same holds for the other side: things like thoughtfulness, good will, and honesty, we all know where these lead to.

So why do these fools keep doing otherwise?! (Can you not feel Paul’s frustration, and why he might sound argumentative even though he isn’t really making an argument?)

alyoshka,

Paul may have been involved in rhetorical preaching, but in disregarding those who held no belief in the christian god and yet were moral, ethical, and living as any ‘good’ christian might, committed an ad hom against those people. Intentional or not, it is what it is. Should Paul be forgiven his slight? I suppose it would depend on which group you find yourself, no? Evangelism carefully excludes a great many people. That’s one of the problems with exclusionary religion.

I don’t think Paul is including these people in his exhortations. They aren’t the people that Paul is speaking of. If they do what is right then they cannot be associated with the unrighteous who suppress the truth.

alyoshka–

No that’s not what I’m saying. My point is that Paul claims that God’s existence or his attributes are self evident and to support his claim he states that those who don’t believe it are liars who are suppressing the truth.

By argument I don’t mean that Paul is quarreling with the Romans. I mean that Paul is presenting a discourse with the intent to persuade. By that definition preaching is a kind of argument. You say that Paul is not acting as a logician, but surely he does not intend to be illogical. And he is writing to the Romans who are Christians that he has never met so why would he be calling on them to change their ways etc? Rather, he presents his general message here.

Paul was speaking to the Roman Christians many of whom were probably converted Gentiles or God-fearers. Their backgrounds would have been full of other gods. Hence, the message about idolatry would have special relevance to them. Paul is not shy about reminding them that he, on the other hand, is an apostle[ chapter 1verse 1] who is proud of his work for God [chapter 15 verse 17].

This information is irrelevant to my argument as far as I can tell.

I don’t detect frustration. Again, let us not conflate argumentativeness with argument. Think of it as presenting his case for Jesus as the Christ whose death on the cross was necessary to save us all.

I think it’s possibly being overlooked that around this era, especially if we were to look over at the Levant region and Macedonia (though Paul was not in that region; I just meant that in tangent), ad hominem wasn’t a fallacy; it was a truth.
This is an era brushing off the shoulders of the Bronze age explosion into the Iron age, and we’re looking at the tail end side of the Iron Age in Paul.
Think of the the Age of Classicism’s shift to the Age of Enlightenment in Europe.
Now imagine the Bronze Age as Classicism and the Iron Age as the Age of Enlightenment.
Then plop your author a couple hundred years before the end of the Age of Enlightenment writing about ethics.
There’s a real chance you have an individual that you are reading who will have influences of the Age of Classicism even if they are classed as an author of the Enlightenment.

In similar fashion, the Bronze Age was the age where this whole region learned how to unite and grow as a united people.
In fact, it was by the lever of uniting by a division of people that permitted the accomplishments at all.
There was nothing invalid in claiming that a Samaritan’s view of god was immoral simply because they were Samaritan (speaking from the Hebrew perspective).
Hell, at this time, even simply stating that a given Samaritan had attained a proper view of god (meaning, the Hebrew view) was dodgy.
In Rome, it was more extreme. If you were Roman, immediately trusted more in law than any other.

It hadn’t been that long since a movement of acceptance attempted to push through, followed by everyone getting killed or driven out for being different.
And this was pretty standard all around the region.

So really, Paul would be making a convincing argument for his time if he’s writing to a people he expects to be “one of us”.
If so, then the reason “they” are wrong is simple: “they are them, and not us”.
And that can be further proven during this age by asserting that “By being them, instead of us, they are vial and blasphemous. Have nothing to do with them.”

It doesn’t have to be logical by today’s standards.
The era Paul was in was just hitting strides in Stoic confrontation and then would eventually collapse backward into a disorder of who “them” and who “us” even were and wouldn’t really be resolved in the Roman and Holy Roman Empire until…oh…the late part of the European age of Imperialism? Somewhere around there.

Critically to random people picking up the text and reading it today?
No, it’s not that compelling…well…unless “you” argue by emotion in general; then it would be compelling to “you”.

But this is the age of globalization…us/them arguments aren’t going to be quite as popular.

Jayson-

You are asserting that Paul’s argument is an ad Hominem now but wasn’t for people of Paul’s time? That would mean his argument is invalid now but it was valid then. In other words, that truth is relative to time. If truth is objective (in this case, that means not relative to individuals of different time periods), then your argument is false. People of Paul’s time may not have identified such arguments as fallacious, but that did not make them any less so. Logic, is not historically relative.

shrug
Works for me.
I can’t help but look at it in context; regardless if I would condone the argument he’s making or not (I don’t).

Hi Felix,

I think that much of what I said in my last post still applies, even if it didn’t come across clearly, or even if there is some drift between the terms we are using. I certainly do get the distinction between being argumentative and making an argument. It was precisely that distinction that I was trying to make (my point being that Paul is more argumentative because frustrated and at a loss than he is trying to make an argument here).

I did try to address this. To try again, I would say regarding an argument for the self-evidence, a more substantial one, that you are right. Paul doesn’t make one in the verses that you cite. Paul’s message here comes down, for me at least, to the idea that we should simply know better. Hence why I proceeded in my last post to try and make a case for the self-evidence of the rightness and wrongness of certain actions, notably the self-evidence of the wrongness of the actions that Paul himself adumbrates. (We all know these things are wrong (malice, hate, envy, etc). Just as we all know what’s right. So how can these people suppress this and do what is wrong? Because they do they deserve what is coming to them.)

(There is an important difference between us though still. You’re treating what is self-evident to be attributes of God while for me it is more the way of God. It’s God’s way, the way of turning from evil and doing what is right, that is self-evident.)

Anyways, my broader point, the only point that I need to make really, was that there is no real reason to think that Paul is making an argument here. So it’s hard to say that he’s committing a fallacy.

So when you say:

I certainly can’t say that you are wrong, and I can certainly see where you’re coming from, for no matter what Paul is doing there are strands of arguments present in his discourse or there are propositions being made in it that beg an argument and have us looking for an argument.

Furthermore, I certainly don’t want to say that Paul isn’t making an argument in Romans more broadly. I think that he is. I think that he is making lots of arguments. I just don’t know if there is a complete one in the verses that you cite (so you might be committing a fallacy by thinking he is?). The verses that you cite seem more, as I said before, a voicing of Paul’s frustration and a final warning to evil-doers to change their ways. That God has already forsaken them and that if they don’t do so soon there will be hell to pay.

And while that’s a complete thought, it’s not really an argument. Thanks Felix.

Paul was certainly human. I’m not suggesting that he should be perfect. But aren’t these examples of aggression? How would you say this compares to Jesus’s exhortation that his disciples “turn the other cheek”? Likewise, what about when Jesus chases the moneylenders out of the temple?

Personally, I think Jesus chasing the moneylenders out of the temple is not an example of aggression. It’s an example of protecting from aggression. He used his authority to protect the ability of people to fulfill their highest values - values that ideally include complete acceptance of others, as they are. I also believe that Jesus here acted spontaneously, as a natural expression of his basic orientation towards the world. Jesus was truly “beyond good and evil” - he didn’t require external rules to guide his behavior.

Paul, on the other hand, is perhaps miming the outwards behavior of Jesus in the temple, but he is not “beyond good and evil”. His anger is poisoned with aggression. He is not protecting, he is invading. It could be said he’s making a preemptive strike against evil. But that’s a shady thing to do…

There are limits to that. (Seventy times seven times?) As Paul says regarding the people he is speaking of here: Even God has given them up to their depravity and the consequences that come of it. Even God can no longer turn the other cheek but must send the wrath of heaven upon them…

Sometimes the way to life involves the death and annihilation of those who simply refuse to change their ways.

I see Paul copying more the prophets than Jesus in this speech. He’s trying to turn these people from evil and to save them from annihilation.

He’s frustrated, yes, because these people have stubbornly persisted in what is obviously wrong, but I still see him as trying to save and protect the people by turning them from evil. (So if that counts as a preemptive strike against evil, and if that’s shady, then I’d have to agree with you.)

What a difference in interpretation! :laughing:

Jesus says to forgive beyond what you think reasonable, and you suggest his point was placing a limit on forgiveness? When Paul says “even God”, he is speaking for one person only: Paul.

I believe this is in direct contradiction to all of Christ’s exhortations. But I am no expert - can you point out a passage where Jesus ever taught otherwise?

Likewise, I find it obviously wrong to condemn homosexuality as unnatural, and to claim that things like “envy” or “covetousness” are punishable by death. So Paul is obviously wrong, and I assure you - even God has given him up to his depravity.

I’m semi-serious about that, by the way. The serious part is that I think Paul poisoned Christ’s teachings.