My copy of A New Kind of Christian is full of notes in the columns of all the times Brian McLaren fails at making his argument. Here’s the first one that caught my eye when I read the book:
Claim unquestionable authority for your argument.
God’s Unquestionable Authority
This isn’t often in the form of “God told me to tell you this,” but often God’s unchallengeable authority is bestowed on one’s self of, as in McLaren’s case, a fictional character invented to be McLaren’s mouthpiece but with divine authority.
Neo said, “My pastor at Saint Tim’s tells me that I have the spiritual gift of putting into words thins people already know but didn’t know they know – or didn’t want to know. On several occasions I’ve offered to return the gift to the Lord…. It’s not always a pleasant job. People often don’t thank you for it.” – A New Kind of Christian, Chapter 1. (That’s not an added ellipsis “…”, it’s how McLaren wrote it in the book.)
For the rest of the book, Neo’s words are absolute truth. To deny Neo’s words is to deny God’s gift.
Certainly there are arguments where Divine authority can be claimed, at least in a conversation between Bible-believers – when you’re making an argument from scripture. Then again, most of the time when this happens, we’re assigning our interpretation and eisegesis God’s authority, which is another way to fail at arguing.
Experts’ Unquestionable Authority
Outside of religious circles, how can you claim unquestionable authority? One way is to exalt “experts” to godhood. ‘
We’re told global warming is true because experts say it is. We’re told children are raised better by schools than parents because experts say so. Often experts are invoked with unquestionable authority because the conclusion drawn from these experts contradicts common sense.
If you can’t convince someone without pulling out the sledge hammer of unquestionable authority, you’ve got a lousy argument indeed.
