The phrase good and necessary consequence was used more commonly several centuries ago to express the idea which would today fall under the general heading of

logic Logic is the study of correct reasoning. It includes both formal and informal logic. Formal logic is the science of deductively valid inferences or of logical truths. It is a formal science investigating how conclusions follow from premise ...

; that is, to reason validly by logical deduction or better, deductive reasoning. Even more particularly, it would be understood in terms of

term logic In philosophy, term logic, also known as traditional logic, syllogistic logic or Aristotelian logic, is a loose name for an approach to formal logic that began with Aristotle and was developed further in ancient history mostly by his followers, ...

, also known as traditional logic. Many today would also consider good and necessary consequence to be part of formal logic, which deals with the ''form'' (or

logical form In logic, logical form of a statement is a precisely-specified semantic version of that statement in a formal system. Informally, the logical form attempts to formalize a possibly ambiguous statement into a statement with a precise, unambiguou ...

) of arguments as to which are valid or invalid. In this context, one may better understand the word "good" in the phrase "good and necessary consequence" more technically as intending a "valid argument form." One of the best recognized articulations of the authoritative and morally binding use of good and necessary consequence to make deductions from

Scripture Religious texts, including scripture, are texts which various religions consider to be of central importance to their religious tradition. They differ from literature by being a compilation or discussion of beliefs, mythologies, ritual pra ...

appears in probably the most famous of

Protestant Protestantism is a branch of Christianity that follows the theological tenets of the Protestant Reformation, a movement that began seeking to reform the Catholic Church from within in the 16th century against what its followers perceived to b ...

confessions of faith A creed, also known as a confession of faith, a symbol, or a statement of faith, is a statement of the shared beliefs of a community (often a religious community) in a form which is structured by subjects which summarize its core tenets. The ea ...

, the

Westminster Confession of Faith The Westminster Confession of Faith is a Reformed confession of faith. Drawn up by the 1646 Westminster Assembly as part of the Westminster Standards to be a confession of the Church of England, it became and remains the "subordinate standard" ...

(1646), Chapter 1, sec. 6, as well as in others, including the Heidelberg Catechism, and the Belgic Confession.

References

* Carlos Bovell, ''By Good and Necessary Consequence: A Preliminary Genealogy of Biblicist Foundationalism'' (WIPF and Stock), 2009. Term logic Deductive reasoning {{Christian-theology-stub