[Also on Substack. See Part 1, Part 2]
I was not always dispensationally conscious, or even worldview-conscious. Becoming so required me to reorient and regiment my thinking, to trade in (or up) the pretension of human autonomy in philosophy for “heteronomy,” the “hetero” ( “other”) being God as He is revealed in Scripture.
Dialectic (from διαλέγειν, dialegein; “to speak across”) is a situation before it is an approach to it.
If positions are both topically related and opposed to each other, then they imply a dialectic. The position-holders need not be aware of this. Each side is presumed to be oriented toward truth, however imperfectly, even if they sinfully suppress and distort the truth (which, of course, depends on some grasp of the truth).
What I call the “metaproblem” of dialectic is a problem insofar as ignoring this fact of life hampers the opposed sides in their efforts to resolve their disputes. That is, it’s not a first-order problem, one they set out to tackle. It’s a second-order problem that “comes with the territory” of being human this side of the Kingdom. Continue reading “Christian Individualism and Dialectic, Part 3: The Task Rendered Manageable (with more than a little help from Bernard Lonergan)”