When we say, “apples and oranges” what we mean is that there has been a confusion of categories. Sure, they are both fruit, but when you examine both, there is an obvious difference. An apple is not an orange, and an orange is not an apple. Macintosh, Granny Smith, and red delicious are all apples. Navel, blood, and Valencia are all oranges. To mix the two, for instance, to call a navel orange an apple, would be a categorical error, sometimes referred to as a category mistake.
How Identifying Categorical Errors can Help with Apologetics
It seems that simply learning about or being reminded of categorical errors can help us be more aware of them. We have all heard or thought of ourselves, the question, “Who made God?” Richard Dawkins speaks of what he calls his central argument in the book and asks, “who designed the designer?”[1]
The problem is that it is assumed when someone asks such a question that God is in the same category that we are. This is false. When someone asks this question, they are assuming that God is in the category of created beings. God is uncreated according to the Bible as well as philosophy. Nothing came into being before Him.
For anything material to exist at all, there must be something that exists outside the material in order to create the physical. There must be something that transcends material. If the thing that created material was material himself, then he would be self-caused, which is absurd. So, God lives outside the material boundaries and is therefore an immaterial being. The answer to “Who made God?” is that God always existed. He was never created. The Bible says in Genesis chapter one that “in the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth…” In other words, He was there before the beginning.
Another way people commit categorical errors is in asking questions like, “how can you be a Christian and have tattoos?” The assumption is that it is not allowed, because the Bible says so.
Leviticus 19:28 says, “Do not cut your bodies for the dead or put tattoo marks on yourselves. I am the Lord.” Whether this is saying “do not put tattoo marks on yourselves for the dead” or, “do not put tattoo marks on yourselves” is irrelevant in this discussion. This type of law is called a ceremonial law, which was designed to make the people of Israel stand out in a very particular way in the Ancient Near East. To say that the laws are all the same, would result in categorical errors. For instance, to say that a ceremonial law such as not getting tattoos is in the same category as a moral law such as “do not murder” (Exodus 20), would be to commit a categorical error. They are in different categories. Ceremony laws are not for Christians because we are under grace.
Moral laws are for Christians to hold, but not in a way that we are earning our salvation for such. After all, we are not under the Law, but are under grace (see Romans 6:14). But this does not mean we should toss them to the wind. Paul says, in Romans 6:15-18,
What then? Shall we sin because we are not under the law but under grace? By no means! Don’t you know that when you offer yourselves to someone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one you obey—whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness? But thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you have come to obey from your heart the pattern of teaching that has now claimed your allegiance. You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness.
A sin, a moral failure against God, is something we will constantly battle, simply because we are still composed of flesh. But we are no longer slaves to sin, but slaves to righteousness. In other words, when we sin, we are convicted in the flesh of our sin because of the Holy Spirit within us. Paul says in Romans 8:9-11 that,
You, however, are not in the realm of the flesh but are in the realm of the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, they do not belong to Christ. But if Christ is in you, then even though your body is subject to death because of sin, the Spirit gives life because of righteousness. And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of his Spirit who lives in you.
If we are in fact, Christians, then the Holy Spirit lives within us, convicting us of what is right and wrong. So, to claim that tattoos as a Christian is sin an example of a categorical fallacy. Much like asking the question what is the smell of brown? Brown is a property; it has no smell. Two different categories.
In any event, the categorical error is placing the law against tattoos in the same category as the moral laws. Sometimes, it is good to ask oneself if there is any chance of a categorical error being made when we hear questions like these. Another area that seems to be such is when someone asks the question, “Is it true that once we are saved, that we are always saved?”
[1] Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 147).
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