Home » Posts tagged 'dialectics'
Tag Archives: dialectics
Dialectics, Triangulation, and Triage as a Pattern for Biblical Belief and Practice, pt. 2
Early in my life, I often heard the term “balance” to describe a superior way to live as a Christian. I think there is a biblical concept of balance, but also an unbiblical one. For instance, we don’t come to an interpretation of scripture or a biblical belief and practice by using balance. Advocates say that the truth, the right interpretation, the actual text of scripture lies in the middle somewhere in between the extremes.
The concept that I’ve described in part one and in this second part finds itself in history at least with the terminology of dialectics, triangulation, and triage. Philosophers and others used these words to communicate the way to determine what’s right or wrong and what to believe and practice or not. Theologians at one time crafted the English word, “syncretism,” which means synthesizing pagan religion with biblical worship.
Let’s see. The world likes worldly country music. Let’s mix that with Christian lyrics. People will like it more. It gives them a feeling. Let’s just say that’s the Holy Spirit. Syncretism occurred. This is dialectics, triangulation, and triage very often found in people who say they’re opposed to what I’m writing here.
John Frame writes that triangulation was the method of liberal Yale theological seminary when he attended in the mid-1960s. The school urged its students to triangulate. He said that fundamentalism and orthodox Protestant theology provided the antithesis, a reference to Hegelian dialectics. They encouraged students to “develop their own distinctive brands of theology. He expressed concern that this method now characterizes evangelical theology.
Another metaphor I’ve heard through my life is that you as a Christian need to decide what hill or hills you’re going to die on. Someone else told me, “Kent, you don’t want to burn all of your bridges.” Leave the bridge open to something you don’t believe and practice. If you burn all those bridges, you’ll be left with a much smaller coalition of allies or friends.
Should you refuse to die on a hill because of a biblical belief or practice? You want to live. Perhaps you’ll live longer if you reduce the number of things for which you might die. Jesus addressed this concept. He said, fear man more than God. Man can destroy your body. God can destroy both body and soul in hell forever.
I understand that Christians grow and churches grow. Not everyone stands at the same position. I’ve changed through the years, but I would call the old position unbiblical, whether it was more or less strict than the former belief or practice.
Many truths of the Bible are embarrassing for professing Christians to the world, especially now. Could believers do better with the world if they shaved off the more unpopular teachings of the Bible or reinterpreted them to move closer to the world? God knows that you’re doing it and He exalts His Word above His own name. He doesn’t accept this dialectic, triangulation, and triage approach to His teachings and practices. If it’s the truth, you don’t move from it, but if it isn’t, then you can and do.
The Regular History of Clever New Interpretations, Teachings, or Takes on and from Scripture: Socinianism
One way to get a Nobel prize in something, you’ve got to break some new ground or discover something no one has ever seen. In the world, the making of a printing press or light bulb changes everything. People still try to invent a better mousetrap. It happens. The phone replaced the telegraph and now our mobile devices, the phone.
Everyone can learn something new from scripture. You might even change or tweak a doctrine you’ve always believed. On the whole, you don’t want to teach from the Bible what no one has ever heard before. The goal is the original intent and understanding of the Author.
From the left comes progressivism. The U. S. Constitution, just over two hundred years old, means something different than when it was written. Loosely constructed, it has a flexible interpretation into which new meanings arise. Hegelian dialectics say a new thesis comes from synthesis of antithesis and a former thesis. Everything can be improved.
Early after the inspiration and then propagation of the Bible, men found new things no one ever saw in scripture. Many of these “finds” started a new movement. People have their fathers, the father of this or that teaching, contradictory to the other, causing division and new factions and denominations. Some of these changes become quite significant, a majority supplanting the constituents of the original teaching.
At the time of the Reformation, it was as if the world first found sole fide and sole scriptura. Men often call justification the Reformation doctrine of justification. This opened a large, proverbial can of worms. Many could read their own Bible in their own language. Others now dug into their own copy of the original languages of scripture. Skepticism grew. “If we didn’t know this before, what else did they not tell us?” It became a time ripe for religious shysters and this practice hasn’t stopped since then.
Socinus
The Italian, Laelius Socinus, was born in 1525 into a distinguished family of lawyers. Early his attention turned from law to scripture research. He doubted the teachings of Roman Catholicism. Socinus moved in 1548 to Zurich to study Greek and Hebrew. He still questioned established doctrine and challenged the Reformers. Laelius wrote his own confession of faith, which introduced different, conflicting beliefs. They took hold of his nephew, Faustus Socinus, born in 1539.
Faustus rejected orthodox Roman Catholic doctrines. The Inquisition denounced him in 1559, so he fled to Zurich in 1562. There he acquired his uncle’s writings. His doubt of Catholicism turned anti-Trinitarian. The Reformation did not go far enough for Socinus. His first published work in 1562 on the prologue of John rejected the essential deity of Jesus Christ.
Socinus’s journeys ended in Poland, where he became leader of the Minor Reformed Church, the Polish Brethren. His writings in the form of the Racovian Catechism survived through the press of the Racovian Academy of Rakow, Poland. His beliefs took the name, Socinianism, now also a catch-all for any type of dissenting doctrine.
Socinianism held that Jesus did not exist until his physical conception. God adopted Him as Son at His conception and became Son of God when the Holy Spirit conceived Him in Mary, a Gnostic view called “adoptionism.” It rejected the doctrine of original sin.
Socianism denied the omniscience of God. It introduced the first well developed concept of “open theism,” which said that man couldn’t have free will under a traditional (and scriptural) understanding of omniscience.
Socinianism also taught the moral example theory of atonement, teaching that Jesus sacrificed himself to motivate people to repent and believe. His death gave men the ability to be saved by their own works, who weren’t sinners by nature anyway.
Unitarians
The work of Socinus lived on in the belief of early English Unitarians, Henry Hedworth and John Biddle. Socinian belief was helped along also by its position of conscientious objection, a practice of refusing to perform military service. This principle was very popular with many and made Socinianism much more attractive to potential adherents. The First Unitarian Church, which followed Socianism as passed down through its leaders in England, was started in 1774 on Essex Street in London, where British Unitarian headquarters are still today.
As the Puritans of colonial America apostatized through various means, Unitarianism, a modern iteration of Socinianism took hold in the Congregational Church in America. After 1820, Congregationalists took Unitarianism as their established doctrine. The doctrine of Christ diminished to Jesus a good man and perhaps a prophet of God and in a sense the Son of God, but not God Himself.
Spirit of Skepticism
I write as an example of the diversity in the history of Christian doctrine and why it takes place. When you read the beliefs of Socinians, you easily see them in modern liberal Christianity. They influence on religious cults that deny the deity of Jesus Christ.
A limited amount of skepticism wards away the acceptance of false doctrine. Better is a Berean attitude (Acts 17:11), searching the scripture to see if these things are so, and what Paul wrote in 1 Thessalonians 5:21, proving all things, holding fast to that which is good.
As I grew up among fundamentalists and independent Baptists, I witnessed regular desire to find something new in the Bible. Many sermons espoused interpretations I had never heard and didn’t see in the text. A preacher often said, “God gave it to me.” You should know God used the man because no one had seen such insights into scripture.
The same spirit of doctrinal novelty continues today in many evangelical churches. The same practice led Joseph Smith in his founding of Mormonism. Many cults arose in 19th century America under the same spirit of skepticism of established historical doctrines.
The Temptation of Novel Teaching
The temptation of novel teaching preys on anyone. Faustus Socinus accepted many orthodox doctrines of his day. He rejected Christ as fully God and fully human because it was contrary to sound reason (ratio sana). This steered Socinians toward Enlightenment thinking, where human reason took the highest role as arbiter of truth.
Warren Wiersbe wrote that H.A. Ironside, longtime pastor of Chicago’s Moody Church, said, “If it’s new, it’s not true, and if it’s true, it’s not new.” Elsewhere I read that Spurgeon first said that. I don’t know. Clever new interpretations, teachings, and takes on and from scripture corrupt and overturn scriptural, saving doctrines in the hearts of men. They condemn them through all eternity.
Recent Comments