In our political system there are only two opposing factions, Democrats verses Republicans, the Left Versus the Right, or Conservatives versus Liberals. If there were a number of almost equally strong factions all competing for power, the dialectic would not work nearly as well. The present day Democrats are more skilled in the use of the dialectic than the Republicans, and for this reason there is a good chance they will win this round of conflict over Obamacare and the partial government shut down. In other words, they are more skilled at telling lies than the Republicans..
"It is impossible but that offences will come: but woe unto him, through whom they come!" Luke 17: 1
Within the two party system, within the dialectic, Obama and the Democrats may be setting up things now for the coming to power of a conservative President and Congress, who will also bring the country farther along toward a highly controlled society. So many people will become turned off by the administration and the present day Democrats that they will at first accept a new conservative regime that will soon create even more controls over the people.The dialectic system involves putting a new regime in place which the majority of people like and support, which moves the country toward the goals of the elite. Then, that new regime, doing the will of the elite, goes against the wishes of the majority of people, and it then sets the stage for the people to accept a new regime, which at first the people, or most of them, support and like.
Georg Hegel's (1770-1831) theory of the dialectic consisted of a conflict between a thesis with an antithesis, leading to a synthesis of the two. In the simple dialectic described above the political party in power can be seen as the thesis, and then the opposing party which comes to power, because people are turned off on the party in power, is the antithesis, or anti-thesis. The result when the new party comes to power appears at first to be something good, but turns out to be bad. And the process runs over and over. In this simple political dialectic between only two factions what happens is the anti-thesis, the party that is not in power but wants to come to power conflicts with the thesis, the party in power. The outcome, or "synthesis" is more controls over the people. Its not really a compromise, but the idea of two opposing factions, the thesis and the anti-thesis works in this system.
In the dialectic process involving the opposition of the dialectic mind set to a mind set that says truth is absolute and morality is absolute, the faction holding to absolute truth can be seen as the thesis, and the faction in revolt against absolute truth is the anti-thesis. Here a synthesis can be seen to occur, step by step, as the dialectic process unfolds. With each step in the process, there may be some compromise made by the those holding to the absolute truth and morality position in the conflict with the dialectic attempt to change it. This step by step compromising can be seen as the synthesis in this form of the dialectic process.
This type of the dialectic was developed in the fifties, sixties and seventies of the 20th century by social psychologists first in the Group Dynamics movement, and then by clinical psychologists and others in the Encounter Group Movement. And this use of the dialectic was developed as an attitude, belief and behavior changing procedure in small face to face groups, which can also be used by the media for much larger groups which are not face to face.
Kurt Lewin was the social psychologist who began the Group
Dynamics movement, which, among other things, taught the importance of
group cohesiveness in changing human values, beliefs, attitudes and
behavior.
The Group Dynamics movement operated behind the appearance of being
science, that is, experimental social psychology, by guys like Leon Festinger,
Stanley Schachter, Kurt Back and other social psychologists of the forties and
fifties like J.C. Gilchrist at Wisconsin. But Group Dynamics fed into a knowledge
of how to create small groups to be cohesive, and an understanding that in order
to use small groups to change people's beliefs, attitudes and behavior, the group
must be cohesive. This knowledge was soon used in the encounter group
movement of the sixties and seventies, which got going first in California, but was
led by psychologists like Carl Rogers and William Coulson from the Midwest and the University of Wisconsin. William Coulson was under Carl Rogers at Wisconsin in the early sixties, and followed
Rogers to southern California where they and a number of other facilitators ran encounter groups
for the nuns of the Sacred Heart of Mary, and, as Coulson later admitted, they destroyed the
Sacred Heart of Mary with their ideology and dialectic procedure. Coulson became a repentant
psychologist, an unusual role. I talked with him on the phone a couple of years ago, and
he is aware of the influence of the Frankfurt School and how several American psychologists
became allied with the change agents of that group, including Carl Rogers.
"Small groups are the most effective way of closing the back door of your church." Rick Warren
Rick Warren has used small groups in something like the encounter group process to change attitudes and beliefs. But Warren is interested in changing attitudes and beliefs to conform to his meta-church movement. He must mean by saying small groups are the most effective way of closing the back door of churches that this small group process, using the dialectic as developed in encounter groups, changes people so they stick in the Rick Warren type huge congregations, and fewer drop out.
The political use of the dialectic coming from Hegel and Marx is a more simple process. But very few people understand it and are deceived by it all the time. There are more complex types of the dialectic in use, and the dialectic is in use in most institutions in this country, including in religion. It is used all the time on Christian forums where most posters have anonymity. Only rarely are in-depth studies of Bible topics posted to teach rather than to argue - and a more accurate word is to quarrel.
Here is more on the dialectic: "In the mid-19th century, the concept of "dialectic" was appropriated by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and retooled in a non-idealist manner, becoming a crucial notion in their philosophy of dialectical materialism. Thus this concept has played a prominent role on the world stage and in world history. In contemporary polemics, "dialectics" may also refer to an understanding of how we can or should perceive the world (epistemology)," This is from wikipedia.
The dialectic has come to mean an ideology and a method for the changing of attitudes, beliefs and behavior which opposes absolute truth and absolute morality. The dialectic then opposes the absolute nature of "it is written," the Word of God. As a method for the changing of beliefs and doctrines the dialectic seeks to change or diminish faith that scripture is absolute facts. In other words the dialectic is an argument against scripture. It wants to compromise the absolute nature of scripture.
John Darby said that the "Church has sought to settle itself here, but it has no place on the earth... [Though] making a most constructive parenthesis, it forms no part of the regular order of God's earthly plans, but is merely an interruption of them to give a fuller character and meaning to them..."
John. N. Darby, 'The Character of Office in The Present Dispensation'
Collected Writings., Eccl. I, Vol. I, p. 94.
"Them" are all physical Israel. The church, for Darby exists to "give
fuller character and meaning to all physical Israel." Darby thought that the purpose of the
Christian church, the ekklesia as a meeting, assembly or congregation
of Israel reborn in Christ as a spiritual house (I Peter 2:5-9), the Israel of God, made into The Body of Christ like the Catholic capital C Church, was to honor all physical
Israel.
Suppose that a Christian who wants to follow scripture instead of man
made theology points out that Jesus Christ in John 10: 16, teaches as
fact that "And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them
also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be
one fold and one shepherd."
The Christian who has a love for the truth of God's word instead of
man made theology might also cite Paul in Romans 12: 4, I Corinthians
10: 17, Galatians 3: 28, Ephesians 2:14-16, and Ephesians 4: 4 all of
which say there is one group of God's people, the elect, not two or more groups.
Then what Paul says in Romans 2:17-29, Romans 9:6-8 and Galatians 4:25-26
about physical Israel obviously makes John Darby's theology false.
The dialectic begins when facts such as John 10: 16 conflict with the man made theology
that a person has accepted. The dialectic type of dialogue then tries to argue against
the absolute truth of scripture, such as John 10: 16, to overthrow that absolute truth and replace it with compromise, and with man made false doctrines. The person who, for example, follows
John Darby's doctrine that Christianity's purpose is to honor physical Israel, and that God now has two peoples, physical Israel and the church, has invested emotion, feelings and heart in this following of Darby. To defend that relationship of feeling he then enters into the dialectic process of quarreling with those who hold to the truth of scripture.
And the dialectic also begins when, among those who are not in the truth of scripture and oppose the absolute nature of scripture, have very different doctrines. They clash because each has a love affair with their own denomination's doctrines.
What is the difference between a debate, an argument, a quarrel and bickering? When the topic is Bible doctrine, this difference becomes important. Paul's doctrine in Romans 1:28-28 in which he lists the Greek word eris, as a trait of those with a reprobate mind is not overthrown by substitution of the English word strife for debate in the new versions. There are at least four other places where Paul states this doctrine in more general terms.
Read these verses: I Corinthians 1: 11, where Paul says there were contentions among those in this ekklesia. Read Romans 2: 8 , where he says "..unto them that are contentious, but do not obey the truth...indignation and wrath." See I Corinthians 11: 16, where he says "If any man be contentious, we have no such custom." And look at II Corinthians 12: 20. Here Paul says he fears that when he comes back to his people at Corinth that he will find them in debates, envyings, wraths, strifes, backbitings, whisperings, swellings, tumults." The NIV has quarreling for the Greek word eris. This is one of a few places where the NIV supports a doctrine that some other recent versions diminish.
The dialectic mind deals in relationships of feeling, with emotions
and opinions, and opposition to absolutes to defend those feelings and opinions.
Remember that the self psychologists, especially Carl Rogers, were not interesting in
cognition, in how accurate a person's perception is, but only in what he feels. Rogers only asked,
"How do you feel?"
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 or quarrels 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.
And those who use the dialectic often do not start an attack directly against the doctrine they are opposing. Instead, they often attack the doctrine from the side. They start an argument against some one small part of the doctrine, or a related doctrine, thinking that in so doing they can somehow, by a kind of witchcraft, defeat the entire doctrine of truth they oppose. The person who habitually has trouble refraining from use of the dialectic in carrying on a dialogue over issues of disagreement often misrepresents the position of the opponent. Sometimes the misrepresentation is obvious and at other times more subtle.
The dialectic can easily become a dishonest process of argument. This aspect of the dialectic is widespread in politics, in government and in other areas at the present time, and if it were not so widespread could be seen as a manifestation of the psychopathic personality disorder.
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, sometimes a more contentious argument which becomes a quarrel, 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. Some of the encounters that Christ had with the Pharisees,such as in John 8 reveal that the Pharisees were using a form of the dialectic in arguing against the absolute truth of God standing before them.
It is important for a Christian who wants to have a knowledge of the truth and to be in sound doctrine to understand the dialectic as used by those who claim to be Christians. Knowing what the dialectic is and being able to identify it when it occurs as an argument against scripture helps in staying in the truth and not being lured off of the truth by dialectic arguments. Getting into prolonged arguments with those who use the dialectic can itself lure a person off into that mindset.
The dialectic as the language of Lucifer, seen in Revelation 13: 11, practiced by Satan in Genesis 3: 1-6, and in some encounters between Christ and the Pharisees - in John 8: 13-59, for example - undermines faith in the Word of God, "It is written." Man's dialectic arguments against the Word of God cannot change the absolute truth of that Word. The Word is absolute because it comes from God. But somehow dialectic man believes he can change that Word to fit his own purposes and flesh, which loves relationships more than absolute truth in scripture. Dialectic man in his delusion somehow thinks that if he can change the interpretation of the Word, that magically he has changed the absolute nature of the Word. But whatever scripture he is trying to change, remains standing in its absolute truth no matter how much dialectic argument is brought against it and no matter how many people are arguing against it.
Notice that in John 8: 13-59 where the Pharisees used dialectic arguments against what Christ as teaching there, that they could not defeat him and his truth. In the end they tried to resort to the flesh, to violence against him, having the spirit of Death in them. John 8: 59 says "Then took they up stones to cast at him: but Jesus hid himself, and went out of the temple, going through the midst of them, and so passed by."
