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On the Dialectic and the Dialectic Mind In Christianity
Posted : 29 Aug, 2013 06:02 PM
On the Dialectic and the Dialectic Mind In Christianity
"For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who was preached among you by
us, even by me and Silvanus and Timotheus, was not yea and nay, but in
him was yea. For all the promises of God in him are yea, and in him
Amen, unto the glory of God by us." II Corinthians 1:19-20
In Jesus Christ there are no shades of grey, no double mindedness,
only absolutes. The dialectic
mind, on the other hand, operates on shades of grey and doublemindedness.
The dialectic mind deals in relationships of feeling, with feelings
and opinions,
and argues against absolutes to defend those feelings and opinions.
Remember that
the self psychologists, especially Carl Rogers, was not interesting in
cognition, in how accurate
a person's perception is, but only in what he feels. He only asked,
"How do you feel?"
"But above all things, my brethren, swear not, neither by heaven,
neither by the earth, neither by any other oath: but let your yea be
yea; and your nay, nay; lest ye fall into condemnation." James 5: 12
The dialectic mind does not believe in the absolute truth of the Word
of God. It wants to argue
against that absolute truth, and tries to compromise it in some way -
by a dialogue with those who are presenting the truth.
The dialectic mind starts from a position that there are no
absolute truths or absolute morals. It is a mind that
accepts yea and nay about doctrines taught in the scripture. Those who
use dialectic
arguments against the facts of scripture are always looking for
loopholes, shades
of grey, contradictions and verses where the meanings and implications
are not spelled out in great detail to hit at with their rejection of
the absolute.
Scripture often teaches important doctrines by scattering
verses on a doctrine in different books of the Bible, here a little
and there a little. "For precept must be upon precept, precept upon
precept; line upon line, line upon line; here a little, and there a
little:" Isaiah 28: 10
And scripture does not spoon feed, that is, spell out in great detail
many implications of a statement. The reader is left to find the
understanding that the Spirit intends. And so, since important
doctrines are not usually summarized in one short chapter in the
Bible, but are given in pieces at different places and doctrines are
not usually spelled out in their implications, this is where man made
theology often steps in and takes over. And the dialectic procedure
of argument or quarreling promotes and defends these false doctrines.
Those who operate with the dialectic - which is now almost everyone in
our culture -
try to justify themselves before men (Luke 16: 1).
The dialectic as an argument, a way of changing the absolute truth
that one's opponent holds to, historically has come out of a system of
thought which teaches that there is no God.. It comes out of Hegel
and Marx. But before Hegel and Marx it came out of the second beast of
Revelation 13: 11, who has two horns like a lamb but speaks as a
dragon, and from the dragon himself whose use of the dialectic was on
Eve in Genesis 3 to fix her obedience to the absolute authority of God over her.
The dialectic as an attitude and belief changing procedure was
perfected and developed in small face to face groups first in the
Group Dynamics movement in social psychology, and soon in encounter
groups run by clinicians. The ideological foundation for the change
agents in psychology and psychiatry was laid in this country by
refugees from Nazi Germany, those of the Transformational Marxist
Frankfurt School, who first mixed Marx with Freud and later mingled
Marx with American Personality, Self Psychology, Social Psychology and
aspects of clinical psychology The dialectic not only shifts the way
people argue, but it changes the way they think. And it spread to
Christianity some decades ago.
The dialectic as an argument tries to compromise absolute
truth or a absolute morality in some way - in order to preserve relationships
of feeling with one's man made doctrines, his denomination, church and
religious friends..
And the dialectic deals with dialogue as argument and as quarrels
between those who hold different opinions within the dialectic world
of non-absolutes. In addition, those who hold to false man made
doctrines tend to use a dialectic type of argument to promote and
defend their doctrines against scripture. The dialectic type of
quarrel can be found in Genesis 3: 1-6 where Satan fixed Eve's
obedience to God, and in some exchanges between the Pharisees and
Christ, as in John 8. However, Christ did not dialogue - as having a
quarrel - with individual Pharisees. He preached and taught, and the
Pharisees responded with dialectic arguments against his absolute
truths.
The world has, during the period the falling away of II Thessalonians
2: 3-4 has gone on and the leavening of the church has been in
progress (Luke 13: 21), shifted its paradigm. The West of Northern
Europe and North America shifted from a mostly absolute truth to
shades of grey, to opinion, to how do you feel about it, what do you
think?
The church, being part of the world has also shifted its way
of viewing absolute truth, though it has to teach scripture to some
extent to preserve its standing as a religious institution.
The basis of faith is trust that the word of God has been preserved, and
that it is absolute truth and facts, not opinions, and not just
emotions. When the dialectic, coming down from Hegel and Marx, takes
over the thinking process, then faith is weakened because the
dialectic challenges the absolute nature of the word of God as his
patriarchal authority. And the dialectic is behind movements in
society since the early fifties such as the counterculture, feminism,
the homosexual and lesbian movements, pornography and other attacks
upon the Father figure and upon the strong family to overthrow
patriarchal authority.
Patriarchal authority was replaced to some extent by matriarchal
authority, for example. in the feminist movement associated originally
with the counterculture, and soon
we got heresiarchal authority in Christianity, which was not new, but
was given a new look as the 20th century went on and turned into the
21st century
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