Command, Example, Necessary Inference
How God Communicates Authority
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Command, Example, Necessary Inference
How God Communicates Authority
In a recent exchange I saw online, a leftist pressed a Christian podcaster with a familiar demand. She wanted him to show where the Bible literally says the thing under dispute. The issue was not whether Scripture speaks about God making man and woman, God’s authority over the body, or God’s right to define what He created. The issue was whether the Christian could produce the exact sentence she demanded.
That move sounds like respect for Scripture. It is often a refusal to receive what Scripture has already communicated. The reader sets the terms, demands his chosen wording, and then calls Scripture silent when God has not addressed the issue in the form he demanded.
This is the same move being used against command, example, and necessary inference. Men attack CENI because they want command without the obligation to infer what God’s words necessarily require.
That standard does not come from Scripture. It holds God to a higher burden of communication than men place on any ordinary speaker. Men follow instructions, read letters, interpret literature, obey laws, and make arguments without requiring every conclusion to be restated in their chosen wording.
The Nomenclature Names The Reality
CENI is nomenclature for the way men interface with linguistic communication. Man did not invent the fact that two plus two is four. Man recognized it, named it, and used it.
In the same way, man did not invent the fact that communication includes command, example, and necessary inference. He recognized those realities and gave them names. The nomenclature can be mocked, rejected, or replaced, but men still have to receive what is commanded, recognize what is shown, and infer what necessarily follows from what has been said.
The absurdity of attacking command, example, and necessary inference is that no one can read a text, follow an instruction, receive a letter, interpret literature, obey a command, or make an argument without doing those very things. Even communication that carries no authority still has to be read this way. A poem may give no command, and a novel may impose no duty, but the reader still has to ask what is stated, what is shown, and what must be inferred if he wants to understand the text.
Authority raises the stakes. When God speaks, man is handling the Word of the living God. Scripture is more than a rulebook, but that does not make it less than authoritative. It also does not mean there are no rules contained therein.
A list of rules, a poem, a letter, and a novel still require interpretation. If 12 Rules for Life were somehow adopted as the moral canon of the universe, men would still have to ask what its rules require, what its examples approve, and what its words require them to infer. The title contains the word “rules,” and the reader would still have to interpret.
A husband says, “Go to the store and buy me a six-pack of Diet Coke.” That command contains liberty, restriction, and necessary inference. The wife may choose the store, the route, and the checkout line, but she may not bring home Pepsi, a two-liter, or a twelve-pack and claim obedience.
The command specified a six-pack of Diet Coke. The necessary inference is that she bring it back to the one who sent her. If someone disputes the meaning of “six-pack,” the question must be settled by the speaker’s words, the setting, and the way he has used that language elsewhere.
Someone may object that she could bring home a six-pack of Diet Coke plus a banana and still obey the command. That is true if the husband gave no further restriction. The illustration changes when the speaker also says, “Do not add to my words, and do not take away from them.”
God has given that restriction in His Word. He warned Israel not to add to His word or diminish from it. (Deuteronomy 4:2) Proverbs warns man not to add to God’s words. (Proverbs 30:6) Revelation closes with a warning against adding to and taking away from the words God gave. (Revelation 22:18-19) God also warned His people not to turn aside to the right hand or to the left. (Deuteronomy 5:32; Proverbs 4:25-27)
The additional warning forbids man from treating silence as permission to add whatever he pleases. When God specifies what He wants and warns man not to add to or take away from His words, the reader has no authority to turn silence into permission.
What God’s Words Require
A command governs every act necessarily included within that command. Recognizing that inclusion is necessary inference. If God forbids murder, and He does, then He forbids murder committed through another man’s hand.
Thou shalt not kill. (Exodus 20:13)
The command forbids murder. A man cannot hire a hitman and claim innocence because his own hand did not hold the weapon. Hiring a man to murder is necessarily included under the command, “Thou shalt not kill.”
That is necessary inference. The inference is not necessary because a clever reader can argue for it. The inference is necessary because the command itself includes the act.
Reasonable inference can guide judgment. Necessary inference binds conscience. A man may reasonably infer many things from Scripture, but an inference rises to the level of sin or obligation when God’s words require the conclusion.
Jesus Used Necessary Inference
Jesus used necessary inference against the Sadducees because they denied the resurrection. They came to Him with a foolish case about a woman who had seven husbands, and they thought their question had cornered Him. Jesus answered them from the words God spoke to Moses.
But as touching the resurrection of the dead, have ye not read that which was spoken unto you by God, saying, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living. (Matthew 22:31-32)
God spoke those words after Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had physically died. Jesus drew the required conclusion from the wording God gave. The resurrection was bound up in what God said, even though Exodus 3:6 did not state the resurrection in the exact wording the Sadducees denied.
The Sadducees were responsible for the inference God’s words required. Jesus did not allow them to demand another sentence before they submitted to the meaning already communicated. God said enough, and Christ held them accountable for what necessarily followed.
The Postmodern Attack
The attack on CENI is postmodern ideology infiltrating the church. It allows the reader to demand exact wording before he will submit to what God has already communicated. It subjugates God’s communication to man’s interpretation, then projects the reader’s refusal onto CENI.
A man says the Bible never uses the modern legal phrase he demands. Another says Scripture never uses the modern medical or political language attached to the sin under discussion. That move does not honor Scripture. It makes the reader’s preferred wording the judge of God’s meaning.
God does not have to name every modern form of sin in modern vocabulary before His Word governs modern men. If God forbids murder, then murder through an agent is forbidden. If God said, after the patriarchs’ physical deaths, “I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob,” then the Sadducees are responsible for the resurrection inference Christ drew from those words.
Conclusion
CENI does not boil Scripture down to a list of commands. It opens Scripture up and makes it fuller, more vibrant, and more applicable. It lets the reader receive what God commands, what God approves, and what God’s words require us to infer.
Some necessary inferences are brutal. They show us God’s will, and they show us how woefully lacking we are. The standard is perfection, and the same Scripture that reveals that standard also reveals the blood of Christ.
That is why diligent Bible study matters. We are not playing word games. We are handling the Word of God, learning what God has said, what God has shown, and what God requires us to infer.
Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. (2 Timothy 2:15)
We strive to be approved unto God, and we walk in confidence and assurance because of Jesus. God does not have to say everything in the reader’s preferred wording before man is obligated to obey. God can command. God can show. God can imply. And when God’s words require a conclusion, faithful men must infer it and submit to it.