Christians. They are all the same. No matter how committed we are to follow our Lord, no matter how well we claim to know the very simple yet extremely powerful message of the Gospel, we all have been there: we forget the extent of that power. We forget what it really means and entails to be saved by grace alone through faith alone. And we get entangled in our âdeedsâ, we look at ourselves, our own performance, our own fruits. And we end up using these things as the way to perceive the security of our salvation; to determine whether we are truly saved or not.
So, itâs Sunday, Iâve just come back from Church and had a nice Sunday meal with my family. Then I went and had a peek on Facebook.
From a recently-joined theological group I read this question from a Calvinist:
Does anything happen outside the sovereignty of God? If so, what? (Scripture references please)
Funny enough, having spent a good year in an apologetic group filled with reformed folks very much acquainted with reformed apologetics (aka presuppositional apologeticsâââpossibly the one and only thing Iâve made my own from the âreformedâ camp), I can spot blatant logical fallacies with great ease.
So, whilst others are actually answering his question (giving him a leverage by ignoring the fallacy), my immediate response to the reformed brother is
Loaded question fallacy.
A good lesson I learnt is this: never answer a fallacious question without first pointing out that it is indeed fallacious (Proverbs 26:4-5). The built-in fallacy gives leverage to the questioner; whether it was planned or not, it will put them into an advantageous position, since youâll end up trapped in the fallacious presuppositions they laid out for you.
The brother, asked, of course, why his question was fallacious. Well, itâs easily said.