How to Follow an Argument

Tracing a Pauline argument often feels to me like trying to find my way out of an unfamiliar woods. Paul and the other New Testament authors are not the most tidy thinkers you'll ever run into. What's more, they are often trying to communicate things that contradict conventional wisdom, so their arguments are often not immediately clear. Even so, we can usually find some clues within the text to orient us to what they mean and where they are headed.

The lost-in-the-woods analogy works on one other level too. There is always more than one way out. Some paths will definitely take you deeper into the woods and so are not so good to take. But various ways will lead out, too.  In the same way, there is almost always more than one sense-making way to outline a text or to represent its argument visually.

Four Steps toward Following the Argument

1. Get a look at the big picture.

Remember our first question when tracing the action of a story? It is this: "What's going on?" That question gets us started tracing the flow of an argument too. Read through the text. What is it about, in general? What's going on? Get a glimpse of the big picture as you start trying to follow the argument closely.

2. Look for rhetorical devices or conventions.

New Testament writers will use catch phrases and other devices that act as trail markers for you as you are following their logic. Here are examples of some rhetorical devices that help orient you to the flow of an argument.

Stock Phrases

Sometimes your author will use common phrases that alert you to the direction of their argument. Here are some examples:

Rhetorical Questions

Speakers and writers often incorporate questions into their presentations that move their argument along another step and/or "guide" the audience to the conclusion they hope we will draw. When you see a question in an argument you're trying to understand, it may help to figure out first what answer the question seems to be expecting. That may be a clue to the conclusion the author wants you to draw.

Diatribe

The American Heritage Dictionary, 4th ed. (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2000), lists as the primary definition of diatribe, "A bitter, abusive denunciation," but it adds an archaic sense, "discourse, critical dissertation." When New Testament scholars use the word to describe features of a Pauline argument, we mean it in the more neutral sense of "discourse."

In ancient rhetoric, the diatribe was a way of speaking in which a speaker imagined what the audience might say incorporated possible objections into his speech.  Charles Cousar helpfully describes this rhetorical device as "the use of an imaginary dialogue partner" (The Letters of Paul, 41). Here is an example of Paul's use of diatribe.

You will say, "Branches were broken off so that I might be grafted in." That is true. They were broken off because of their unbelief, but you stand only through faith. So do not become proud, but stand in awe. For if God did not spare the natural branches, perhaps he will not spare you" (Rom. 11:19-21, NRSV).

Part of orienting yourself to an argument may be deciding what part of the speech is to be understood as coming from the speaker and what part is understood to be coming from an "imaginary dialogue partner," or a potential adversary to the idea of the speaker.

Conditions

Using Your Greek | For more on conditional clauses in Greek, see "Grammar Notes for New Testament Greek," by James L. Boyce (Luther Seminary, privately printed, 1991), p. 22. The examples here are from Professor Boyce's notes.

Conditional statements give you a window on a writer's logic. The form is "if x, then y."

• The "if" phrase is sometimes called the protasis or premise of the condition.
• The "then" phrase is called the apotasis or conclusion of the condition.

Paul uses a condition when he says, "If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied" (1 Cor. 15:19, NRSV). The devil uses a condition when he says to Jesus, "If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread" (Matt. 4:3).

Three types of conditions are common in the New Testament. If you have studied Greek, you know that word forms and moods of verbs alert you to different types of conditions. In English, the translation will often alert you to the type of condition you're looking at.

Type of Condition	In Greek, look for:
Condition of Fact (also called Future Most Vivid Condition)
Example | Gal. 5:18. "But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not subject to the law."
Type of Condition	In Greek, look for:
Condition of Uncertainty (also called Future Less Vivid Condition)
Example | Matt. 9:21. "If only I touch his garment, I will be healed."
Type of Condition	In Greek, look for:
Condition Contrary to Fact
Example | John 11:21. "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died."

Parallelism

Parallel structure can tell you something about how an author is viewing relationships between various topics in a speech. In their book, Seeing the Text (Nashville: Abingdon, 2001), Mary H. Schertz and Perry B. Yoder point out the parallel structure in 1 John 2:9-11. They present the text this way:

"Whoever claims to be in the light
while hating his brother,
    is still in the darkness.

Whoever loves his brother
dwells in the light,
   and there is not scandal in him.

But whoever hates his brother
is in the darkness,
   and he walks in the darkness,

and he does not know where he is going
because the darkness blinded his eyes" [1 John 2:9-11, translation from Seeing the Text, 58].

The Greek text repeats the same subject-verb structure, as the arrangement of the text here shows. Translating and arranging the text this way highlights the similarities and differences among the three "whoevers" in the text, as well as the connections between dwelling either in light or darkness and loving or hating one's brother.

3. Diagram the text.

Online Resource | The software tool, Logos, is available to Luther Seminary students on lab and library computers or from your home lab account.

Word processing programs and biblical texts available on the web (for example at the Bible Gateway) or in software programs such as Logos make it possible to paste blocks of text into a document and then insert tabs, spaces, returns, etc. so that you can easily see parallel structure, grammatical relationships and other features of the text "lined up" on the page.

Diagramming can be done simply or in very complex ways. You can make a simple diagram of a text by:

1. Finding the main subject and verb in a sentence and then lining up modifiers under the subject and verb.
2. Using underlining or colors to mark repeated words or phrases.
3. Arranging the text so that important rhetorical conventions stand out to you.

Print Resources | The best resource I know for learning to diagram a text is Biblical Greek Exegesis: A Graded Approach to Learning Intermediate and Advanced Greek, by George H. Guthrie and J. Scott Duvall (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1998). This workbook requires you to be able to work with Greek.

Mary H. Schertz and Perry B. Yoder offer even more ways to diagram and analyze scripture in their Seeing the Text: Exegesis for Students of Greek and Hebrew (Nashville: Abingdon, 2001). In spite of the subtitle, there is much in this book even for students of scripture who do not read biblical languages.

Diagramming can be complex enough to represent on a page all sorts of grammatical relationships and meaning relationships between words, phrases and sentences in a text. I now diagram every text I prepare to preach on, and I often diagram texts if I'm preparing material on them for a class. I know of no better way to "get" the relationships between the words and the meaning they make together.

Diagramming Interaction

The Flash movie here offers you a chance to "drag and drop" phrases and build diagrams of Romans 5:1-5. You may choose to work either in Greek or in English, or to switch back and forth between languages as you go.

4. Analyze your findings.

Finally, as you make your way through a text, return to the "What is going on?" question. Based on the work you have done to notice rhetorical and grammatical feature of the text, how would you answer these questions?

• What is the subject or problem that the author is discussing?
• What is the conclusion the author wants his audience to come to regarding the subject or problem?
• What evidence does the author cite for that conclusion?
• What possible objections to the desired conclusion does the author anticipate?
• How does the author answer those objections?
• What assertions (that is, unsupported claims), if any, does the author make as part of his argument?
• Are you convinced by the argument? Why or why not?

What's Next: Tracing Action & Argument Quiz

Problems Offer Real-World Practice

For practice tracing the action of a story or following the argument of a discussion in scripture, click on any of the cells in the Tracing Action column on the Activity Grid. The problems are the best way to use your knowledge of this skill in context.

Quiz Offers Review of Resource Pages

For a list of topics covered on these resource pages and some questions to help you review what you have read here, continue to the Tracing Action and Argument Background Quiz.

Next: Review Quiz for Tracing Action & Argument