Expressio Unius

I’m a lawyer. Worse yet, I’m a bond lawyer and tax lawyer. This means I have to read and interpret complex, tedious, mind-numbing regulations and statutes. I read and write 80-page, single-spaced document. I argue over commas, for crying out loud! I deeply and thoroughly understand what it means to be a legalist — I am one in the purest, truest sense of the word.

It’s great training for reading the Bible and confronting arguments about what the Bible means. And I learned a long time ago that even bond and tax lawyers aren’t one-tenth the legalists that some of my brothers in Christ are! I mean, the theologians put the lawyers to shame when it comes to straining out the meaning of words.

Some of our preachers (none in my congregation) make arguments in all sincerity that a lawyer would be too embarrassed to take money to make! And when a lawyer won’t take money to make an argument, well, it’s a pretty bad argument. We call this the “red faced” test — whether you can make the argument without your face turning red. When the argument is that bad, you don’t make it because you lose all credibility with whomever you are arguing with.

This little article is a plea that our preachers elevate their discourse to at least the level of the most dastardly, unethical, venal lawyers. And that surely isn’t asking too much.

We lawyers have a few sayings that we recite in Latin. Latin is largely a lost art among lawyers, but a few sayings are too deeply rooted in the original Latin — from back when the church ran many of the courts in “Olde England” — to leave behind. You’ve heard of habeas corpus, for example. It’s been in the news quite a lot lately.

We also say, “Expressio unius est exclusio alterius.” And, no, we don’t know how to pronounce it either, which is why we shorten it to “expressio unius” (ex-SPRES-i-o you-NYE-us). The phonetic pronunciation will likely curdle the blood of anyone who actually knows Latin, but pronounce it right among lawyers and we’ll consider you pretentious — not that we’d care. We’re used to lawyers acting that way!

This means that the express mention of one thing excludes all others. Sound familiar? Expressio unius is a rule of statutory construction that is used to figure out what the legislature means in its often-badly written laws. And it makes sense. If you say x, you mean x and not something else. Seems too obvious to mention, actually.

In Church of Christ circles, the argument comes up in the instrumental music debate. We say, correctly I think: God told Noah to build his ark with gopher wood (cypress, in the NIV). If Noah had used cedar or pine instead, he surely would’ve violated God’s will-and certainly he would have. Expressio unius.

Therefore, we reason, not quite so well, if God said to sing, he didn’t mean play an instrument. Not expressio unius. Not even close.

Why does the first example about Noah work and the second one about instruments not work? Well, because you can’t build an ark out of gopher wood while also building it out of pine. The nature of the thing is that you must do one or the other. In fact, expressio unius, and common sense, tells us that God didn’t mean to use mainly pine and trim it out with gopher wood. He meant just gopher wood.

However, using an instrument does not by any means contradict the command to sing. Sing with an instrument and you are, plainly enough, singing. The command to use gopher wood does not contradict using nails or bringing lanterns on board or storing hay or using brass hinges on the door or doing anything else — so long as Noah didn’t substitute the wrong kind of wood for components made of wood.

Just so, if we didn’t sing at all — if we just played kazoos in church — that would violate expressio unius. But adding to the singing does not change the fact that we’re singing.

At this point, the usual rejoinder is that we’re adding a sixth act of worship, as the instrument is a mean of worship. That argument is answered at /files/2007/02/15-acts-of-worship.pdf.

The next response is that the people playing instruments aren’t singing, but by that standard, about 40% of most churches are damned! After all, many of our members decline to sing. And we often have a soundboard operator or PowerPoint operator or someone counting the money or even the preacher not singing! Of course, many instrumentalists sing while they play or during other parts of the service, and they are generally much more involved in the song service than the women in the nursery.

The final argument is that instruments are not permitted because they are unauthorized — and authority is required for all acts of worship. Now, this is a more serious argument. It goes back to the so-called Regulative Principle propounded by John Calvin and his disciples — and Calvin was a most serious guy. But addressing the merits of the Calvinistic argument on worship is for another day.