Call a spade a spade - 16 October 2010 |
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Modern evangelicalism has lost the art of robust argument. At least, that’s what a friend remarked to me a few days ago. And I think he may be right.
Perhaps part of the problem is that we have become unskilled at rigorous thought and careful analysis, and many promising conversations therefore end up at cross purposes. It’s hard to speak clearly if we don’t know how to think.
I wonder, however, whether there might be another problem: We no longer know how to argue strongly against someone’s beliefs while at the same time maintaining respect for them as a human being. We struggle to distinguish between who the other guy is and what the other guy is saying. So we either say nothing at all (even to good friends with whom we disagree strongly) for fear of causing personal offence, or we allow our disagreement with someone’s views to spill over into contempt for them as a person. We don’t know how to say, “I think you’re wrong, and here’s why,” while smiling over a couple of pints of real ale.
I was flicking through Martin Luther’s Bondage of the Will, and discovered that this well-known beer-swiller has much to teach us here. Luther wrote in response to Desiderius Erasmus’ Diatribe on Free Will, and spoke of Erasmus in the warmest terms. He addressed his work “to the venerable D. Erasmus of Rotterdam, wishing grace and peace in Christ.” He held Erasmus in high esteem, declaring, “you … far surpass me in the powers of eloquence, and in genius” (introduction), and repeatedly throughout his work Luther addressed Erasmus as “friend.”
Yet at the same time Luther disagreed strongly with Erasmus’s views; indeed, he was concerned that “the truth of the Christian doctrine is endangered in the hearts of many.” Luther wasn’t afraid to call a spade a spade: “Your book is, in my estimation, so mean and vile, that I greatly feel for your having defiled your most beautiful and ingenious language with such vile trash” (introduction). Fruity. Far from allowing his friend’s ideas to rest unchallenged, he declared,”In this book, therefore … I hope I shall so push you (Christ willing) as to make you heartily repent that you ever published your Diatribe” (section 8).
We will know that modern evangelicalism is growing up when we find ourselves capable of speaking like this. Your real friends are not those who are too frightened to say anything for fear of upsetting you, nor those who decide that your infralapsarianism has rendered you worthy of excommunication. They’re the men and women who sit down, face to face, to address head-on the issues that, in their view, you’ve got wrong.
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Posted by Steve Jeffery · Topics: Minister's Blog