From PEN to Necessary Inference: Where CENI Fits

Part 3 of a three-part series on the PEN Hermeneutic.

An interpretation has survived our study. We have tested it against other passages and found no contradiction. Are we now entitled to say that Scripture requires it?

Not yet. We may have shown that it can be true without showing that it must be true. That is the question left at the end of Part 2, “The PEN Hermeneutic: Letting Scripture Eliminate What Scripture Cannot Mean,” and it matters whenever we attach the word “necessary” to an inference.

If we tell someone that a conclusion carries biblical authority, we are claiming more than “This makes sense to me.” What has God actually established? Could everything Scripture has established still be true while our conclusion is false? Those questions reveal where PEN and CENI meet.

CENI stands for Command, Example, and Necessary Inference. These describe ways Scripture communicates what we are to believe and do. They are not three ways of making our preferences authoritative.

A Command gives an express instruction. An Example records conduct, but we must determine what Scripture approves and what that conduct establishes. A Necessary Inference is a conclusion required by revealed facts, even when it is not expressed in the identical words we use to state it. Denying that conclusion would contradict what Scripture establishes.

None of these gives us authority independent of Scripture. The PEN Hermeneutic archive connects the frameworks without making them competitors. Scripture Interprets Scripture is the governing foundation. PEN is the interpretive process within it. CENI helps us recognize how Scripture communicates authoritative conclusions.

Peter instructs those who speak to do so as speaking God’s words, within a passage about serving one another and glorifying God (1 Peter 4:10-11).¹ That is a responsibility, not permission to put God’s authority behind whatever we can argue.

“It is a command” does not finish the study. We still have to ask: Who received the command? What did it require? And does Scripture show that the same requirement applies to us?

Deuteronomy 17:18-20 required Israel’s king to make a copy of the law and read it throughout his life.² That command was real and binding—but it was given to Israel’s king. The passage teaches the importance of knowing God’s law, obeying it, and resisting pride. It does not require every Christian to perform the king’s exact duties.

Examples require the same care. Acts 17:10-11 commends the Bereans for receiving the message eagerly and examining the Scriptures daily.³ Luke makes clear that this was good. But the same account also tells us that Paul and Silas traveled by night and entered a synagogue. The fact that those things happened does not make them requirements for every Bible study.

So neither a command nor an example settles the question simply by appearing in Scripture. We still have to ask what the passage actually requires. PEN helps us test whether the obligation we are claiming is really established by Scripture—or whether we have added something the passage does not require.

The Sadducees denied the resurrection. Their question about a woman married successively to seven brothers assumed that marriage would continue in the resurrection. Jesus first corrected that assumption: those attaining that resurrection do not marry and cannot die again (Luke 20:34-36).⁴

Then He turned to Moses. At the bush, God identifies Himself as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Jesus explains that He is God of the living, and that all live to Him. He expressly says that Moses thereby showed that the dead are raised (Luke 20:37-38).

What did Jesus say Moses had shown? That the dead are raised. Could the Sadducees accept what Moses wrote and what Jesus explained, yet continue denying resurrection? No. The words at the bush did not state the conclusion in those exact terms, but Jesus did not leave it as an interesting possibility.

We should neither reduce this to a clever argument about an English verb tense nor claim that it settles every detail about resurrection. Follow Jesus’ complete reasoning. SIS’s Question about bodily resurrection considers this passage in its broader scriptural setting.

Our earlier study of Elimination distinguished Matthew’s explanation of Hosea from a connection we might notice for ourselves. The same caution applies here: Jesus’ explanation is itself authoritative Scripture. Ours is not. We can follow His reasoning without assuming that our own conclusions carry His authority simply because we call them inferences.

Paul begins 1 Corinthians 15 with the gospel facts: Christ died, was buried, was raised, and appeared to witnesses (verses 3-5).⁵ Yet some who accepted that message were saying the dead are not raised.

In verses 12-20, Paul follows their claim through. If the dead are not raised, Christ has not been raised. That would leave the apostolic testimony false and their faith futile. But Christ has been raised. The denial of resurrection cannot survive that fact.

Can Christ have been raised and there be no resurrection of the dead? Paul says no. Christ died and was raised. Denying resurrection would require denying that fact. This is more than choosing the explanation that seems most likely.

Those two claims cannot both be true. That is what Paul has established here. It does not, by itself, give us a complete timetable of final events. For that, we must keep reading what Paul reveals.

Can the facts Scripture gives us remain true while the proposed conclusion is false?

That is a question we can bring to our own study. If denying the conclusion requires denying something Scripture establishes, then the conclusion is required. But what are we starting with? Something the passage actually says, or something we have assumed? We must show the difference.

“It could be true,” “It is probably true,” and “It must be true” are three different claims. We may have good reasons to prefer one explanation. But can the relevant Scripture still be true if that explanation is wrong? If so, we have not established Necessity. These distinctions do not add more stages to PEN; they keep us honest about what our study has shown.

Can the relevant passages remain true without the conclusion being proposed? If they can, that conclusion has not been shown to be necessary. If denying it contradicts what those passages establish, that is different—and the contradiction should be demonstrable.

This is often where we find something we have assumed. We have put two facts together, but does one actually require the other? Or have we disproved the weakest competing explanation and acted as though no others remain? Neither establishes Necessity. Scripture need not state our conclusion in identical words, but we still have to show why it must follow.

Tradition, respected teachers, widespread agreement, and a large collection of supporting references do not repair that gap. Nor does saying another reading “seems unlikely.” The question is whether Scripture permits the alternative, not whether we prefer it.

Of course, another explanation must fit Scripture. It cannot ignore a statement, change what a word means halfway through the argument, or depend on something Scripture contradicts. But if it accounts for the evidence, we cannot dismiss it merely because it is not the answer we expected.

This is why the warning about Scripture weighting matters here. We cannot establish Necessity by excluding the passage that challenges our conclusion. All relevant Scripture must be allowed to constrain it.

The first Editorial asked how we move from “might mean” to “must mean.” Its examples of antichrist and Priscilla help us ask another question here: how much have we actually proved? Return briefly to John’s statements about antichrist. John says that many antichrists had already come (1 John 2:18).⁶ That rules out the idea that “antichrist” refers only to one individual who exists sometime in our future. If many antichrists had already come in John’s day, then “antichrist” cannot mean “only one, not yet.”

Does that identify every figure in Revelation? No. Those added claims need their own scriptural demonstration; they do not acquire certainty by being attached to a necessary conclusion.

Likewise, Priscilla and Aquila explained the way of God to Apollos (Acts 18:26).⁷ Their joint participation is recorded. It does not tell us who knew more or spoke more.

We do not have to infer that they both participated; the account tells us. But does that tell us how much each contributed? No. What Luke records remains true without settling those details.

State the conclusion at the size Scripture gives it.

A firm answer to one question does not settle every question beside it.

A proposed inference begins at Possibility. Elimination tests both the conclusion and the reasons we offer for it against the whole counsel of God. Necessity is reached when the revealed facts require the conclusion—not simply when we have run out of objections to our preferred answer.

PEN is the pathway to legitimate necessary inference. It is not a new source of authority, and completing a study does not confer authority on its result. The conclusion is binding because of what God has revealed, not because we have given our reasoning a name.

PEN is not a method for making more necessary inferences. It is a method for preventing possible inferences from being mislabeled as necessary ones.

That safeguard matters when teaching others. “I think this is the best explanation” and “God requires you to accept this” are different claims. We must not slide from the first to the second without establishing what requires the move. At the same time, where Scripture really does require a conclusion, calling it merely a personal preference would also fail to respect its authority.

Paul tells Timothy to retain the pattern of sound words he received (2 Timothy 1:13-14).⁸ We are to remain with the revealed teaching—not loosen it where it binds, or enlarge it where our argument outruns the evidence.

This series began with “This passage might mean that”—and the question of what happened between might and must. The answer is not to abandon reasoning. Jesus and Paul show us why. Nor is it to turn a favored method into another authority alongside God’s word.

Scripture Interprets Scripture keeps the authority where it belongs. PEN describes the testing of our interpretations against that authority. CENI recognizes commands, approved examples, and conclusions necessarily communicated by what Scripture reveals.

We are free to investigate what a passage might mean. We are obligated to let Scripture show what it cannot mean. And we should say must mean only where Scripture has made the conclusion necessary. That is the movement from Possibility, through Elimination, to Necessity—not a promise that every study will reach the same destination.

Sometimes the honest result is “possible.” Sometimes it is “not that.” Sometimes it is “this must follow.” The purpose is not to leave every study sounding equally certain. It is to let God’s word determine both what we conclude and how firmly we are entitled to say it.