False Dichotomy
If you love Jesus, then you will read this article. If you refuse to read this article, you do not love Jesus.
How do the statements above strike you? They prove full of rhetorical bombast; they might influence some people’s behavior.
But if you are left wondering if they do not capture all of the valid possibilities involved, and especially if the limitations imposed seem deliberate, you would be correct: the statements above represent the fallacy of the false dichotomy.
In a false dichotomy, a set of choices offered regarding an issue are sharply circumscribed when not logically or ontologically demanded. By strict definition, false dichotomies are false binaries, with only two options given; colloquially, however, we would also speak of a situation in which more than two options were given when yet even further would be theoretically possible as a false dichotomy. False dichotomies are also often called false dilemmas, although properly the false claim itself is the false dichotomy, and the overall argument itself would thus be made a false dilemma.
False dichotomies often seem legitimate because many people, by personality or training, prefer binary, “black and white” thinking. Likewise, human language and thinking also tend to prefer binary, either/or frameworks. Furthermore, there are certain domains in which a binary is not logically fallacious: an event either occurred or it did not; a thing exists or it does not exist; and such like. People tend to be quite familiar with the idea of contradictories, in which one proposition in an argument must be correct, and thus any other proposition(s) must be incorrect. And yet, in many aspects of life, our arguments will involve contraries: opposing propositions regarding which one perhaps represents the truth, but in fact all options might be false, or there may be aspects of truth found in many of the options. People thus prove tempted to suggest arguments as contradictories when they are really contraries, leading to the presentation of false dichotomies.
In this way false dichotomies end up saying much more about the people who express them than the subject matter at hand. Many people advance false dichotomies with earnestness, even if their argumentation remains logically fallacious. Perhaps the person has come from a more authoritarian heritage or perspective and attempts to reduce everything to a “black and white” binary; perhaps the person simply has experienced a failure of imagination about the possibilities inherent regarding the proposition or topic at hand. Maybe other reasons are involved which come from a place of sincerity. Unfortunately, however, many times people advance false dichotomies with deceptive and manipulative purposes. Such people remain aware of the existence of other possibilities, a spectrum of gray between the black and white of the binary. Yet they exercise motivated reasoning in advancing false dichotomies, attempting to force others to fit the binary to advance their economic, political, and sadly enough, even religious purposes.
We find plenty of examples of false dichotomies in the realms of politics and religion. Politicians and partisans invest a lot of resources into framing political discourse in terms of two options: choose party A and its candidate, who stands for all which is good, right, and holy, and oppose party B and its candidate, who hates the country and wants to completely destroy everything which is good, right, and holy. In this way both the choice itself and those involved are characterized in terms of false dichotomies. Note well how the existence of any other party or viewpoint are suppressed or dismissed. How many times have we heard some variation on the theme of “not voting for candidate/party A is a vote for candidate/party B”? Such a claim is fallacious: to not vote for a candidate or a party does not demand the endorsement of the other candidate or party; one may, in fact, support an entirely different candidate or party, or not support any of the parties or candidates. In a similar way, framing the party or candidate with which one has more agreement as more “righteous” or “good,” and framing the party or candidate with which one has more disagreement as “wicked” or “evil” almost invariably leads to justifying or rationalizing those ways in which one’s preferred party proves less than righteous or good, and likewise trying to dismiss, neglect, or suppress those ways in which the party or candidate with whom you disagree displays some form of righteousness or goodness. This is the fruit of the false dichotomy, for no political party or politician is either good or evil. Binary thinking has not elevated American political discourse.
The tendency toward false dichotomies in religion prove very strong, and for understandable reasons. Christians seek to affirm the truth of God in Christ through the Spirit, and have been encouraged to call out and resist every evil way (John 14:6, Ephesians 5:11-13). For generations many sincere, well-intending Christians have been profoundly shaped by authoritarian thought patterns and structures, and thus they tend to see everything in the world and in the faith in “black and white” terms. They look for something to either be right or wrong; they have been conditioned to believe looking at a situation in any other way leads to moral relativism.
Let none be deceived: it is possible to attempt to consider certain matters in terms of multiple options or a spectrum in ways which leads to excusing of false doctrines or sin. When God has condemned certain ways of thinking, feeling, and acting as sinful, we should affirm those ways of thinking, feeling, and acting as sinful, and should not attempt to justify or rationalize such behavior (1 Corinthians 6:9-10, Galatians 5:19-21, etc.) But not every matter of the faith can be so easily established in “black or white” terms; such is why those with such a “black or white” perspective find Romans 14:1-15:7 or 1 Corinthians 10:23-33 challenging, since the eating of meat or observing a day is not intrinsically either right or wrong, or it is not just about whether something is righteous or sinful, but also whether it is profitable or beneficial: you can eat meat in one context and be righteous before God, but if you eat meat in such a way as to cause a Christian to stumble, or to attempt to impose your confidence about meat eating on another who does not have that conviction, you have sinned and done wrong; something can be right to do but may not be the most profitable or wise decision in a given situation, and the Christian would, in that instance, do better by avoiding the practice.
Many times, false dichotomies in religious discourse are begotten on account of a failure of imagination. Few situations better exemplify this unfortunate trend than in how many brethren have considered the work and presence of the Holy Spirit in the life of the Christian. Many of the arguments advanced to support the “word only” position, expecting the only lasting influence of the Holy Spirit upon the believer to be mediated by Scripture, are often predicated on false dichotomies: either the Spirit works directly or through the word; if the Father and the Son do not indwell a person, neither can the Spirit, etc. The possibility of God in Christ dwelling representatively in the Christian by means of the Spirit according to Romans 9:8-11 was not countenanced or imagined by many of the disputants. Jesus’ being the embodied Word of God which we must consume to have life, as made known in John 1:1-18, 6:23-71, introduces another exegetical possibility which always must be kept in mind when the New Testament speaks about God’s “Word”; since Jesus was the embodiment of that which God communicated by means of the Spirit, when we see the “Word of God” discussed somewhere in the New Testament, we cannot so easily insist on it representing only the Scriptures. The category error of considering God’s “supernatural” work in terms of either “providence” or the “miraculous” easily leads to the false dichotomy which would consider the work of the Spirit as either providentially provided for in Scripture or miraculously given through God’s dispensation, without giving any space in the imagination for a continual work of God which does not sit comfortably in either the category of the miraculous or the providential.
The Spirit is active in the work of sanctification (cf. 2 Thessalonians 2:13), and sanctification goes well beyond information acquisition and distribution; focusing on the work of the Spirit primarily in terms of information acquisition and distribution has thus led to false dichotomies and a host of other logical fallacies as well as the establishment of arguments and doctrines foreign to what God made known in Christ through the Spirit in the pages of Scripture. Christian faith has never been a matter of “mind or heart,” or “reason or experience”; God in Christ through the Spirit has always expected Christians to both know and love Him, and to both learn of and walk in His ways. One can actively search the Scriptures and seek to come to a better understanding of what God has thus made known in Christ through the Spirit and confess they have received the gift of the Holy Spirit at baptism and have the Holy Spirit dwelling in them, just as the Apostles testified (cf. 1 Corinthians 3:14-16, 6:19-20, 2 Corinthians 5:5, Ephesians 1:13, 2:22). No false dichotomy is thus needed.
Christians are also tempted toward the false dichotomy of seeing people as either “good” or “bad.” The Bible has spoken clearly: all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23). None of us are truly “good people.” All of us have sinned and continue to have the propensity to sin. Unfortunately, even Christians striving toward faithfulness to God in many respects also often fall prey to sin in other respects. Sometimes the pervasiveness of their sin gives reason to question if their faith was truly sincere or if it were simply a façade overlaying a worldly, greedy, lustful heart. Sometimes even the best of people fall prey to evil desires and temptations or are led astray by deceptive actors. At the same time, save perhaps for a few truly diabolically psychopathic people, almost everyone has some capacity for good: people tend to love those who love them and do good for them, if nothing else (cf. Matthew 5:45-47). Therefore, to suggest or to look at the world in terms of the “good people” and the “bad people” proves not only fundamentally fallacious but contrary to what God has made known in Christ. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was not wrong when he said, “the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either — but right through every human heart — and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained.” Christians do well to recalibrate how they look at the world and themselves, to cease being surprised at the sins which become manifest from “righteous Christians” and to confess and lament them, and be willing to recognize that which is good and righteous in those with whom they disagree and would generally characterize as living in iniquity and wickedness.
False dichotomies will always represent a tempting fallacy for us. It is always easier to see things in binary, “black and white” terms, and to resist understanding aspects in terms of a spectrum, admit multiple possibilities, and above all, to maintain humility in remembering how limited our perspective is and how there might well be other possibilities we have not imagined. Furthermore, deceptive and manipulative actors will continue to assert frameworks and arguments saturated with false dichotomies or binaries in order to advance their economic, political, or perhaps even religious advantage. We must confess there will be times when a dichotomy is not false; in humility, however, we must also confess there will be many more times when any attempt to force a given argument or situation to fit into a binary proves problematic and fallacious. May we resist the tendency to frame things in terms of false dichotomies while seeking to do all things to the glory and honor of God in Christ through the Spirit!
Ethan R. Longhenry
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