Aug
14
2010
Swimming in a Sea of Self-Loathing
The always readable Carl Trueman has a great post on why criticism of polemics and polemicists often is a bit too much self-loathing in Reformed circles. He unpacks four reasons:
1. Polemic is no monopoly of the Reformed. Talk to Catholic, Orthodox, Anabaptist, and Episcopalian friends. They too have their struggles.
2. The criticism of polemics often comes from those who enjoy the space that polemics have carved out for them and the safety that polemics provides them.
3. Closely related to point 2 is the fact that, 99 times out of a 100, a nasty controversy only ever erupts because, at an earlier point in time somebody, somewhere took the easy way out and chose to turn a blind eye to a peccadillo, moral or theological.
4. Finally, I simply don’t recognise the pictures drawn by the Reformed evangelical critics of Reformed evangelical polemicists. The problem is they build grand cases about general types on very limited access to evidence.
Read the entire post to see how Trueman elaborates. It’s well worth the 5 minutes. Here’s his conclusion:
Let’s bin this sad, misguided self-loathing on the polemic front. We must repent where necessary, where we have crossed the line; but, just as necessary, we must fight where we see the truth is at stake. We should be grateful for the truth that polemics have preserved so that we have a gospel to proclaim; and we should not allow a misguided commitment to being nice to allow us, in effect, to dump huge problems on the next generation by running up a massive theological and moral deficit in the church of the present.
Polemics against polemics have a role to play in provoking self-reflection; and, let’s face it, they sound pretty cool and attractive in the current cultural climate; but they are, ironically, parasitic on polemic and polemicists; and, moreover, when they witness to, and help promote, self-loathing, they should be abandoned as serving no good purpose.