Whole Reason

Resur­gence is quickly becom­ing one of my favorite blogs, due to the depth of thought and the spirit of the site.  And this week, they pub­lished On The Ethics of Con­tro­versy, a really nice exam­i­na­tion of why, regret­tably, con­tro­versy is nec­es­sary when you are han­dling truth, but that acri­mony is NOT nec­es­sary.  I have sum­ma­rized his arti­cle below, but left out his many good exam­ples, so it is really very much worth a full read.

INTRO:  Con­tro­versy, or debate and dis­cus­sion, are the MEANS to unity and truth

We are unlikely to make progress with­out controversy.…We do not sim­ply hope for the day in which all will be absolutely in one accord. No, we seek by means to bring “every thought cap­tive to the obe­di­ence of Christ” (2 Cor. 10:5).…

What is needed is … a way
to carry on con­tro­versy with a min­i­mum amount of dam­age to his oppo­nent
and to the inter­ested bystander and the max­i­mum amount of good to the
cause of God and truth.

WHAT TO DO

1. Show Respect for the Per­sons with Whom You Differ

[Chris­tians of dif­fer­ing the­o­log­i­cal bents] should treat each other more like broth­ers in Christ and less like adver­saries or even heretics.

Of course, such respect should also be extended to non-Christians with whom we are argu­ing.  But be sure to see the bal­ance in “What NOT to do” in Part II of this essay.

2. Give Your Oppo­nent Accu­rate Def­i­n­i­tions of Your Key Ideas

It may be laid down as a rule, with tol­er­a­ble con­fi­dence, that the
absence of accu­rate def­i­n­i­tions is the very life of reli­gious
con­tro­versy. If men would only define with pre­ci­sion the the­o­log­i­cal
terms which they use, many dis­putes would die. (Bishop J.C. Ryle)

The author astutely notes that in com­mu­ni­ca­tion, we are also hin­dered by two other human fac­tors — our fini­tude (we have lim­its on our abil­ity to under­stand and empathize), and our sin­ful­ness (which clouds our judg­ment and motives).

3. When in Doubt, Put an Ortho­dox Con­struc­tion on Your Opponent’s Words

If you think about what another has said, you may often real­ize that it
is not objec­tion­able after all. To put it another way, our first
impres­sions of oth­ers’ lan­guage, like our first impres­sion of oth­ers’
per­sons, is often inaccurate.

4. Never Attribute to Your Oppo­nent More Than He Asserts

We think we see where his state­ment is bound to take him, to decide
that he has already come to these appar­ently log­i­cal con­clu­sions. You
know the kind of thing we say: “If he believes “A,” then he must
believe “B” and “C” also.” But we must sternly dis­ci­pline our­selves to
avoid draw­ing con­clu­sions about what our oppo­nent must believe. This
point has been put force­fully by Andrew Fuller, the nineteenth-century
Bap­tist theologian:

[P]rinciples and their con­se­quences are so sud­denly
asso­ci­ated in the mind, that when we hear a per­son avow the for­mer, we
can scarcely for­bear imme­di­ately attribut­ing to him the lat­ter. If a
prin­ci­ple be pro­posed to us for accep­tance, it is right to
weigh the con­se­quences; but when form­ing our judg­ment of the per­son who
holds it, we should attach noth­ing to him but what he per­ceives and
avows.

5. Sus­pect a Man’s Judg­ment Before You Sus­pect His Sincerity

To have unclear judg­ment is an intel­lec­tual prob­lem to which no
guilt nec­es­sar­ily attaches (though it may). But to dis­trust someone’s
sin­cer­ity is to strike at the heart of his moral char­ac­ter. Yet noth­ing
is more com­mon in con­tro­versy than for oppo­nents to dis­par­age each
other’s integrity. This is a sin against char­ity at the very least,
unless the grounds upon which it is done are beyond question.

It is no small thing, of course, to throw doubt on a man’s abil­ity

hon­est con­tro­versy is about. Our errors of logic are fre­quent and “very
per­ni­cious,” to bor­row Jonathan Edwards’s phrase in the quo­ta­tion
above. We do one another a lov­ing ser­vice when we are able to point out
such fallacies.

This reminds me of one of my favorite aphorisms:

Never attribute to mal­ice what can be accounted for by ignorance.

I think that Jesus showed this type of kind­ness in the extreme, when on the cross He said, “For­give them father, for they know not what they do.”  Amazing.

6. Be Ready to Believe That the Truth Is Larger Than You Have Under­stood It to Be

Some­where years ago I ran across the fol­low­ing state­ment: “You are
more likely to be right in what you assert than in what you deny.“
Sta­tis­ti­cally I don’t know whether the author of that state­ment was
right or wrong, but even­tu­ally it opened up a new world to my pinched
pow­ers of rea­son. It brought me to the con­vic­tion that heads this
sec­tion. The truth on any sub­ject is likely to be larger than I had
imag­ined it could be.

The deter­mi­na­tion not to learn from oth­ers often accom­pa­nies the cer­tainty that we are right.

In Part II, I will review the author’s con­clu­sions about the lim­its of the prin­ci­ples above, and what NOT to con­clude or think these things mean.