It’s been a while.
After rereading Part 4, however, I realized I’ve been talking more to myself than to you. I needed to step back. With this reset, my tonedeafness ends. At least, that’s my hope.
Some of you get what I’m doing; for others, though, it’s not “landing.” I’m serving up ideas I’ve worked on for decades, but they’re not connecting. So, I’m going to encapsulate what I’m up to here, but without dreaming out loud.
My citing of sources moved too quickly, inconsiderately so, from Dialectic to Foundations. In expounding my understanding of Bernard Lonergan’s Method in Theology, I was answering questions none of you were asking. Remember how I began Part 4?
It’s a challenge to write about dialectic without engaging in it, that is, without evaluating examples of dialectic from one’s position. It’s a challenge because dialectic presupposes experiences or documents that one has interpreted and historically contextualized, and the ability to engage in such activities varies from person to person.
But then I proceeded cluelessly, oblivious to the difficulty I had just described. I soon found myself in the predicament of the centipede who couldn’t walk because he was too busy counting his feet.
So, on what foundation did I resolve to survey dialectical strife and derive my positions (or doctrines)?
Scripture. All of Scripture and only Scripture is not only necessary but is also sufficient for Christians living in the present Dispensation of Grace, that is, in the time since the end of the Apostolic age marked by Acts 28:28. Scripture alone is the source of apostolic teaching.[1]
For those who interpret Scripture generally along the lines of Otis Q. Sellers, that sets Christian Individualists apart not only from Catholicism and Orthodoxy, but also most of what flies under the banner of Protestantism.
That foundation unites all those who affirm Sola Scriptura, be they Evangelical, Calvinist, Lutheran, and so forth. From any one of their exponents, I am prepared to see my position exploded based on the exegesis of Scripture, whether or not they return my openness to correction.
With respect to the doctrines (opinions, positions) underivable from Scripture, my thinking is in dialectical tension.
What do I mean?
In this Dispensation of the Grace of God (Ephesians 3:2), the unifying One of Scripture—God’s speaking, breathed out in writing (2 Timothy 3:16)—offers no escape from the Many, the maddening plurality of incompatible doctrines allegedly derived from Scripture. When I affirm something—as I did in the previous sentence!—many of you will bristle or moan or shout in protest with a counter-assertion.
My slight advantage? I’m conscious of engaging in dialectic and letting that tension inform my understanding of what I’m doing. But I won’t suspend judgment until my formulations are perfect.
This means that while I argue for the correctness of my position without compromise, I pursue it aware of the unpleasant possibility that some brother or sister in the Lord may disabuse me of my error just because I moved off that foundation. What moves the needle is always consistent exegesis.
With those who don’t share my foundation, I can only engage in dialogue, apologetics, or polemics. I laid out the basis for how I go about that in Philosophy after Christ: Thinking God’s Thoughts after Him. That’s where my dialectic settled (except where it generates dialectical strife anew for me). It settled on the worldview that invites development instead of reversal:
. . . the worldview expressed on the pages of Scripture uniquely makes sense, not only of sense-making, but also of worldview-making and worldview-evaluating. Philosophy after Christ, page 46
The first Christian Individualist book was Gabriel Monheim’s The Bible versus the Churches (self-published, 1977). I would reword most of what he said there, but nothing sums up the spirit of Christian Individualism better than that title. Many of you, I’m sure, have a problem with “individualism,” and I think I understand why, but I intend to defend it as the stance from which has come every good thing that believers in the Lord Jesus Christ have produced in two thousand years.
The “social atomism” that many Bible-believing Christians identify as the root of all social evil is a label that’s slapped on too easily. Odd, but the villains of this narrative never embrace the “social atomism” imputed to them, but that doesn’t inhibit their accusers from deploying this physics-derived metaphor. Atoms do bond, after all, and no Christian Individualist I know devalues social bonding.
The Christian Individualists who grace my life are there for each other; whatever gifts they may lack are not lacking in any greater degree than in those who insist on “church membership.” We simply don’t believe in the Protestants’ “divine ordinances” any more than in the Catholics’ “sacraments.” I don’t know that many of us get together to sing churchy songs, but if some do, that’s all right with me.
I would apply the contrasting label, “Christian Collectivist,” to some churches, but sparingly, and not with a broad brush. Why the caution? Because we cannot predict who, when the coming evil descends on us all in this dispensation’s last days (2 Timothy 3), will crack under pressure, and who will persevere. Neither the cracking nor the persevering will be a function of “church membership.”
We are to treasure, not mock, whatever Christians have created in their worship of God if it fortifies them against the assault of wickedness emanating from high places. There is, however, no apostolic authority behind any historically contingent fortification, and therefore no one in this dispensation has the authority to command others to submit to them. Our principle is that we must worship God in spirit and in truth (John 4:24); Scriptural exegesis settles the matter of truth.
To Be Continued
Note
[1] I’m following with great interest the dialectic between Sola Scriptura and its Catholic critics, but that is not the focus of this publication, which is dialectic as such and its relation to theological foundations on the basis of which one conducts one’s participation in this or that dialectical struggle. I’m especially enjoying the discussion of Christopher Cloos’s well-developed Attribute Inscripturation Thesis, namely, that God’s exemplar causality transmits to the Scriptures certain of His attributes (thereby closing the logical gap between Scripture’s being breathed out and its normative sufficiency for guiding Christians in all matters of God’s truth). See Cloos’s Substack publication The Protestant Review.