The Dairy Worker Fallacy

At a recent sermon at Vine Church the passage taught in the sermon was Exodus 32:14: "So the Lord changed His mind about the harm which He said He would do to His people."

The sermoniser then committed the Dairy Worker Fallacy, and explained that Moses did not mean what he wrote, but something else. The something else did not involve God in a dynamic with his people (you know, the ones created for fellowship) and therefore not changing his mind at Moses entreaty.

The Dairy Worker Fallacy?

Whenever a person explains away the plain contextual significance of a biblical text, they commit the Dairy Worker Fallacy.

In Monty Python's The Life of Brian, the Jesus character, in giving the Sermon on the Mount said 'blessed are the peacemakers...'. A listener at the very edge of the crowd wondered why he blessed the cheesemakers. A nearby rabbi explained that he was referring not simply to cheesemakers but signified all dairy workers in general.

Calvinists are the most frequent users of the fallacy, followed by Barthian idealists.