As I mentioned last week, the figurative fallacy means “either (1) mistaking literal language for figurative language or (2) mistaking figurative language for literal language.”[1]
There I looked at how the Watchtower, in its 1917 book, The Finished Mystery, made this error and came up with a now-abandoned teaching about there being four degrees of salvation, a doctrine which Jehovah’s Witnesses today would consider both wrong and fanciful.
Today, I want to look at how the Watchtower makes a similar mistake when interpreting Jesus’ account of the rich man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19-31). Continue reading
The figurative fallacy means “either (1) mistaking literal language for figurative language or (2) mistaking figurative language for literal language.”
The word play error is defined this way: “A word or phrase from a biblical translation is examined and interpreted as if the revelation had been given in that language…”
The Watchtower teaches that some people will be resurrected while others will not.
A major source of biblical error is reading more into a passage than God actually put there. Sire calls this “overspecification”, which occurs when “a more detailed or specific conclusion than is legitimate is drawn from a Bible text.”
