We saw in part one of this article that there is a biblical calling upon Christian men to be theologizers within their spheres of influence—to set forth from Scripture the knowledge of God in Christ, the meaning of human existence, and the path of life in Christ. In Paul’s command to Timothy in 2 Timothy 1:13-14, Paul’s understudy, Timothy receives the imperative to ‘guard’ and ‘retain’ the truths entrusted to him. Those verbs certainly infer that this young man will feel the pressure to soften the edges of the truth in order to make it more compatible with the values of his culture. In the Western world today, there is a concerted push to marginalize and ultimately silence the theologizer. In this article, we will explore the strategies being utilized by the powers of darkness to reduce the theologizer to an irrelevant, and ‘toxic pest’ (the apostle Paul was described as a real ‘pest’ in Acts 24:5). In our own culture, one of evil one’s strategies is to vilify the theologizer by labeling him, a dangerous patriarch.
The new tolerance is synthesis—which is actually the hatred of distinctions, and thus the hatred of God, the “distinction-Maker”
Dean Gotcher’s helpful article: “Two Roads: Didactic or Dialectic and their Praxis” defines the culture war battle line. It is between either “right and wrong” (absolute, objective truth) or “the tolerance of ambiguity” (relativism, subjective truth). (i) Either you have no tolerance of ambiguity, “right is right,” and “wrong is wrong,” or, you are tolerant of ambiguity, “there is no right or wrong answer.” The public school system today, which promotes a program which has no tolerance for “right and wrong (conscience),” and can only tolerate ambiguity (consensus), is producing a generation that has a paradigm of intolerance toward righteousness. There is a refusal to accept, associate with, and promote those who are doing what is right and abstain from, expose, and (if in a position of authority) judge that which is wrong. But, for a believer to tolerate any deviance from “right and wrong” is to embrace confusion (abandonment of antithesis). Biblical antithesis is a view of the world involving the identification of evil and the effort to eliminate—this view has become politically incorrect (Gotcher). Political correctness is a cloak for rebellion. The exterior of that cloak says that ‘ethical judgments are merely man’s opinions’. But, the replacement of God’s moral absolutes with human opinion, leaves nothing but human impulse as a compass. Is it any wonder that the moral relativism inherent in the new tolerance has led to ‘guilt-less’ promiscuity among our youth? (ii)
Your tolerance, or non-tolerance of moral ambiguity defines your paradigm. A non-tolerance of the ambiguity paradigm is a praxis (practice or system) of a patriarchal paradigm. In other words, the patriarchal, didactic paradigm is a “black-white,” “right-wrong” way of thinking (biblical antithesis). A tolerance of ambiguity paradigm is a praxis of a heresiarchal paradigm. Heresiarchal is the term for a heretical paradigm. These two paradigms (patriarchal or heresiarchal) are mutually exclusive. One can only be patriarch in paradigm (obey God) or heresiarch in paradigm (discover your “human” potential, with Satan's facilitation). You cannot be both patriarch and heresiarch. No matter how much the heresiarch would like you to believe otherwise, it is either one or the other. In the end, because this is God’s world, there is only a patriarch paradigm, all the rest is an illusion, founded on the paradigm of deception. (iii)
The heresiarch (founder or proponent of a heresy) would tell you the very opposite, that the patriarchal paradigm is the illusion. Notes Gotcher, if an informed conscience is the outcome of a “thesis-antithesis” environment, and if consensus is the outcome of an “emerging synthesis” environment, then a person with a conscience will be perceived as cacophonous (out of harmony) in an environment of consensus. That is precisely what we are witnessing in our culture: war upon antithesis—war declared upon mutually exclusive truth claims. The shrill sentiment is: “truth is found in the emerging synthesis” and “not found in the thesis nor the antithesis.”iv The deliberate ethical confusion may be expressed as follows. Since truth is not found in whether dad’s command is right or wrong, and truth is not found in any pre-determined “good-evil,” “right-wrong,” “obey or else” command, and since truth is not established without our “enlightened” consent, then it is everybody’s responsibility in the “village” to either convert the father, (help him see the error of his way and change), or remove him from his children (or remove his children from him). The first choice is to convert him: to neuter him; to sanitize him, his home, and “the village” of his patriarchal praxis, to make the village—its businesses, its government, its education system, its “churches,” etc.—socially healthy i.e. ‘germ free’. In this regard, Carl Rogers offers his two cents worth of heresiarch input: “Individuals move not from a fixity through change to a new fixity, though such a process is indeed possible. But [through a] continuum from fixity to changing-ness, from rigid structure to flow, from stasis to process.” (v)
According to dialectical reasoning, ‘truth’ is not found in thesis or antithesis, truth is found in the emerging synthesis
According to dialectical “reasoning,” truth is not found in God’s commands, but instead is found in the emerging synthesis, (how a person feels and what he or she thinks concerning felt needs). (vi) Since truth (according to dialectical reasoning) is found in the experience (praxis) of seeking and discovering common ground, and since truth is actualized through discourse and not found in any unchangeable laws, then we are left with a disastrous conclusion: every effort should be made to facilitate the patriarch’s conversion through the praxis of consensus-building. But, if the patriarch refuses to convert to a dialectical praxis, he is identified as a resister to change and must be neutralized. This is achieved by getting everybody’s input, including his own, in making a decision, making laws flexible to the “times,”
“Laws ...must change as ... the people change”(Karl Marx). (vii) This frees others from his rigid patriarchal paradigm, and begins the praxis of circumvention. Marxist law is based on the assumption that a transcendent Lawgiver does not exist, therefore there is no absolute moral code or law grounded in authority outside of man. Thus, without the fixity of God’s transcendent law, ethics may be shaped to serve social facts and goals. Under this philosophy, public confidence in law wanes because law is not considered sacred and binding; man can recreate law (through consensus) to suit his selfish needs. This is precisely what we are witnessing today in the new tolerance. For, there is a palpable disregard for ‘man-made law’ which results in adopting an arbitrary, situational attitude in ethics—group consensus eclipses ‘ought-ness’. (viii)
Either we live in God’s world and are beholden to Him—accountable to His laws, or we live in a universe in which the concept of moral absolutes is meaningless. Dialectical reasoning (consensus) is attractive because it seeks to blunt the force of God’s moral laws. But, that does not change the fact that when we choose to disobey His laws, we feel a deep discomfort because we have violated clear and weighty moral rules. Ethical pain makes us aware that we have done something wrong and deserve punishment. Real moral guilt produces the dread and exposure of having to answer for our misdeed. Apart from divine forgiveness, the pain never disappears entirely. God’s laws have moral force because His authority operates within its legitimate jurisdiction. God enforces His laws and will mete out perfect justice (Rom 2:1-11). His character has determined an absolute standard of goodness that is not up for discussion. (ix)
While Scriptures of a strong patriarchal nature are now being marked as statements of “hate,” people using them in some lands are being reprimanded. But, those of the dialectical paradigm can express their hate of those with a patriarchal paradigm, calling them “homophobes” and “intolerant bigots” without being reprimanded. Freedom of speech in a dialectical world always censors didactic speech, in the name of tolerance. Even those who expose such abnormality of thinking are in danger of being expurgated by those who supposedly resent censorship (Gotcher). This begs the question: is truth with the crowd, and error with the individual? If so, it is the tyranny of the majority. Morality is reduced to mere power of the majority (the paradigm of consensus). The moral heroes of history opposed the majority and fought for reform. Relativism makes this concept incoherent. Alan Bloom, notes that the moral relativism of the college student is manifested in the idea that the condition of a free society is “Not to correct the mistakes and really be right; it is rather not to think you are right at all.” (x)
The patriarch is viewed as a threat to the environment of consensus
In the environment of consensus man is freed from the environment of “domination” of the “non-sensuousness” of the patriarchal paradigm. From the dialectical perspective, “To deny rights to ‘democratic’ leadership [dialectical ‘felt’ needs] in influencing the course of current change is, in effect, to sell-out control of required changes to non-democratic leadership [i.e. to patriarchal Christian leadership].” “Democratic method attempts to achieve an intelligent and un-coerced consensus.”xi The abdication/takeover of education follows this shift from didactic to dialectic. The latter (dialectic) can only take over as the former (didactic) abdicates— the instructor moves from proclaiming truth to “discovering” truth through the consensus process. The key to their ‘success’ is the creating of an environment, through the use of a facilitator, to pressure the didactic-patriarch into abdication. “If the school does not claim the authority to distinguish between science and religion, it loses control of the curriculum [the paradigm used to shape the next generation] and surrenders it to the will of the electorate.” (xii) This is Kenneth Benne’s view of society as educator in which God’s moral absolutes must be fully segregated from education, and shown to have no meaningful contact with ‘science’.
It is up to the village to purge the community of patriarchal elements so the next generation can be raised in a “healthy community,” a “healthy school” (“drug free zone” is in fact an ‘opiate-free’ zone which means “a patriarch-free zone”) and a “healthy church.”
Then the common “good” of the human race “can be actualized.” The man of faith has to resist this trend, he cannot praxis (practice) the dialectic paradigm. He will instead be willing to be profiled as causing dissention, and be labeled, “divisive.” But, his stand can come with serious consequences: he will be neutralized, then marginalized, and if necessary (in many developing nations) killed, for the ‘good of the village’. For in accordance with dialectical reasoning, the perception necessary for ‘peace’ is uninterrupted evolution. The dialectical approach reasons as follows: the changes in one’s environment produce the necessity to stay alive, which then justifies physical, mental, and social change, and change in a person’s paradigm—all based upon the eyes, ears, and understanding of man (Gotcher). Thus, the Holy Scriptures properly describe the dialectical man in this manner: “There is no fear of God before their eyes” (Rom 3:18).
This sought-after synthesis, born out of a dialectical view of truth, is actually preparation for a spiritual holocaust
The “culture war” is between the patriarchal children of a didactical praxis (local culture—church and family) and the heresiarchal children of a dialectical praxis (global culture, i.e. anti-culture). The heresiarchal children of change now have a major influence over international, national, state, county, and local law and policy making, whether it be in business, education, labor, government, and even the church. We are witnessing the rotten fruit of a feminized, sensual, anti-God culture. We are in the midst of a socially engineered avalanche, “a mass of unstable people moving in the same general direction.” The problem is, providing one survives the downward flow of civilization, the solidifying of the mass at the bottom of the hill will be fatal. If one is not outside the final synchronous event (the actualization of New World Order), in other words is non-synchronous, then spiritual death and destruction is imminent (Gotcher). The push of the progressive left is to do away with the old order and the moral traditions of society in order to usher in a new social order. Humanist sociologists are the least tolerant of the traditional biblical family (because family is the place of moral instruction). Some have even suggested that heterosexual monogamous marriage is an example of social slavery. There is an open disdain for Christian culture. The public school classroom is now at the heart of this agenda, and is being used to promote activism in support of this new social order. (xiii)
The dialectical generation will only recognize the patriarchal parent as an object of ridicule. This is how every person who praxis (practices) a patriarchal paradigm is to be treated in a facilitated meeting, training the next generation how to recognize, neutralize, marginalize, and annihilate this paradigm from the face of the earth. Television sitcoms in the 1960’s still retained an element of moral wisdom, championed by parents in the home. The comedic themes frequently featured an adolescent son or daughter who encountered trouble, but only found the solution via dad’s wisdom. But, now the theme has flipped. The father is clueless, weak, a two-dimensional cardboard figure who stands for little, and is quick to appease wife and children. It is the children who have the wisdom and the solutions to life’s problems. The tragedy is that we find these plots humorous because they are so close to what we see in American homes today.
Dear theologizer, mark well that the greatest obstacle to globalism is the individual with his strong conscience, the result of a patriarchal home, with a patriarchal faith. The “circumvention,” “the bypassing. . . of top-down decision making” is Satan’s paradigm—the use of discourse to liberate opinions of negative patriarchal elements for the sake of self-actualization, as done in the Garden in Eden. It is clear to see the cause of the problems of our culture, including the “contemporary” church. It is the road, the pathway of pleasure (the group approval) it has chosen. It has chosen the pathway of questioning authority—evaluating authority’s commands, God’s Word, through group feelings: how others feel, and what they think about God and his Word while seeking to maintain personal Eros and actualize the pleasure of group approval (Jn 5:44; 12:43).
If man is ever to find “freedom”—Marcuse believed that the absence of authoritarian domination, judgment, and repression must be actualized in both the individual and society, where both subject (man, children) and object (God, parents) must build relationship through the use of discourse (anti-revelation, anti-Christ), where differing parties must focus on the identification of common “felt” needs, desires, and attributes and common means of “actualizing” them. “. . . the autonomy of the subject is to have an ‘effect’ in the objective reality, and the ends that the subject sets for itself must be real [attainable by all, i.e. carnal].”
This very praxis negates any voice as worthy of consideration if it speaks outside the naturally attainable desires, “felt” needs, of the moment. In other words it must be apprehendable by natural man and cannot be above his discursive abilities in the moment. This effectively negates divine revelation. Any “authority figure” who does not, or cannot participate in this discourse (willingness to change, to see it differently, to perceive it outside God’s and the parent’s, position) must be regarded as irrational, unreal, and therefore irrelevant. He and his laws (commands) would therefore become negated. This would not only free the “church” from an “autocratic” God, as perceived by a dialectical minister, but also His autocratic law, freeing man from both the divine Patriarch (that which is above, exerting external repression of Eros) and his own conscience (that which is below, producing internal repression of Eros), freeing all from what is authoritarian above. The implementation of the above strategy to neutralize the didactic patriarch is racing at warp speed in our culture (1 Tim 4:1-3; 2 Tim 3:1-5; Jude 8).
Both the feminist (matriarchal paradigm) and the homosexual (heresiarchal paradigm) praxis is an attack upon the patriarchal paradigm and a direct rejection of obedience to God, if not an outright rejection of Him. In yet another front upon which the didactic patriarch is being marginalized, the following quote from a French sociologist is breathtaking. For, the author insists that a patriarchal-led society’s depreciation of femininity is the root cause of the oppression of homosexuals. “I insist on maintaining that the homosexual cannot and must not be seen as a separate problem, and that the liberation of the homosexual must not be seen as the egoistic demand of a minority. Homosexuality is just a particular form, a variation, of sexuality and must be considered in the broadest context. The prejudice with which this mode of behavior is besmirched derives, in large part, from patriarchal society’s depreciation of femininity, considered as inferior. Seen in this way, the cause of the homosexual is the cause of woman.” (xiv) We must not miss what this pro-homosexual author is proposing, namely that the sharp antithesis between truth and error asserted by the patriarch contributes to the societal oppression of homosexuals. Thankfully, the theologizer is able to see through this ruse. He knows that once morality is reduced to personal tastes, people exchange the moral question, “What is good?” for “What feels good?” Those who operate by their desires attempt to rationalize them with moral language. This is thinly veiled self-interest—pleasure as ethics— pleasure defining morality. Self-interest rules. Without moral truth, respect and dignity are eroded away. Without moral truth, obligation and self-sacrifice on behalf of others dry up. (xv)
The combined process of dialectic and praxis is a highly speculative way of behaving, thinking, and acting. It depends on an attitude of compromise by all participants on a general social issue producing tolerance toward (moral) ambiguity. It seeks a collaborative effort in overcoming differences in an effort to find agreement on personal-social relationship needs (group consensus). It regards the resolution of personal-social relationship needs through the use of human-reasoning skills as most important. It pursues what it regards as the “best” or “most rational” solution to personal-social relationship needs. This does not mean that the solution agreed upon should be [absolute] “fact” or “truth,” only that it is acceptable to all as a possible solution that could, or should be tried (feelings are regarded as substantive, and facts as ambiguous).xvi Imagine how out of touch and out of place the didactic patriarch is supposed to feel in such a dialectical environment—like a man who has brought a bowling ball to a chess match. While this present author was sharing the gospel with some Chaldean immigrants who had set up a business in America, one woman replied, “I would never attempt to place my views upon someone else.” She said this as if her statement were evidence that she occupied the ethical high ground. My didactic response to her was brief, “Jesus did.” A hush fell over the group.
The process of dialectical praxis is not successful until no one can escape. Hegel knew a social crisis was necessary before the process could shift people’s paradigm from “this is the way we have always done it,” to “what does the village or group think.” He believed that, “a real state and a real government only develop when there is a difference of classes, when riches and poverty become very large and a situation arises where a great number of people can no longer satisfy its needs in the accustomed way.” This statement, and others like it, is where Karl Marx obtained his justification for communism. The famous Italian Marxist, Antonio Gramsci realized the importance of crisis if there is to be a paradigm shift or a change in the way people think. He stated, “The eclipse of a way of thinking cannot take place without a crisis.” (xvii) The dialectic paradigm rejects the Word of God as the final authority. It turns to fables and to the opinions of men (2 Tim 4:3-4).xviii Relativism is dangerous, at Auschwitz Hitler declared, “I freed Germany from the stupid and degrading fallacies of conscience and morality. . . . We will train young people before whom the world will tremble.” There are only two choices: morality is absolute, objective, and universal, or morality is personal and subjective, mere opinion. The conclusion has radical consequences for how we see the world. (xix)
Cultural relativism is the process of emasculation
The key to dialectic thinking is the right to question, mock, and ridicule the traditional, didactic, patriarch authority paradigm. The facilitator’s agenda is to create and sustain such an environment. The very right to question the role of traditional authority has an effect on all participating in such surroundings. All but the strongest in faith are drawn by “the feeling of group belongingness” to trust and follow the facilitator. All who surrender to the “group feel” will harass those who question the facilitator’s “authority.” Persecution is being harassed for holding to a position. The experience can be quite heated. (xx) In exhorting Timothy to remain strong, the apostle Paul utilized imperatives such as: fight the fight of faith, take pains, pay close attention, show yourself an example, take hold, retain, guard, be strong in grace, suffer hardship, remind, be diligent, do not be ashamed, preach, reprove, rebuke, exhort. Without a doubt, great courage is required to fulfill the role of a didactic patriarch. For, his ability to stay true to his calling amid the pressure of the majority requires nothing less than supernatural strength from on high. Paul regularly prayed for this kind of boldness (Eph 6:18-20; Phil 4:13).
Theologizers, take note—cultural relativism is the process of emasculation. We are being told that we cannot divide people by asserting biblical values (absolute moral truth). By rejecting God’s universals, the citizens of our culture are suffering from severe fragmentation. This leads to obsession with isolated parts (i.e. today’s neo-Marxism, political correctness, social justice causes, and a host of special interest groups).xxi Here is the warning, Christian men will continue to fall prey to the agenda of dialectical praxis if they do not commit themselves to ‘theologizing’ (Ps 78:1-8). The feminized church is being magnetically drawn to the sensate, the experiential, and the emotional. Felt needs have a carnal immediacy about them. Now contrast this to the reality of God’s transcendent holiness—the truths of God’s moral majesty knock us off balance, take us off of self, and place our pride in the dust. They don’t attract consumers because they scribe an exclamation mark upon God’s sovereignty and our utter dependency.
The Old Testament prophets spent much of their time seeking the face of their transcendent God. As a result, they were bold in carrying out His will, even when opposed by an entire community. The prophet Jeremiah was threatened with death because the divine message he preached was considered destructive to the morale of the populace and the army. “Then the officials said to the king, ‘Now let this man be put to death, inasmuch as he is discouraging the men of war who are left in this city and all the people, by speaking such words to them; for this man is not seeking the well-being of this people but rather their harm’” (Jer 38:4). The charges Jeremiah faced 2500 years ago, the didactic patriarch will also meet in one form or another. For the holiness God requires is a massive stumbling block to the reprobate. The theologizer is a messenger, proclaiming Christ as King over God’s moral government. This is why God’s messengers have ridiculed and slain through the ages (Mt 23:34-35).
For the time being, the powers of darkness appear to be effortlessly animating the political left in an effort to craft a new social order in which the church and Christian family will be irrelevant. But this is but for a short season; for our glorious King will soon return as Savior of His people, and Judge of all the earth (Rev 22:10-25). God’s story is bigger than we can possibly imagine—it will someday fill the cosmos. No matter how bleak the world around us appears at present, God is at work. He is calling men and women to ‘lean in’ to what He is doing, so that the mission of God becomes the purpose of a person’s life. You will be eternally glad that you did. Take heart, for the believer who fears, trusts, loves, and obeys God, the Lord’s supernatural help will accompany him, enabling him, if necessary, to be a ‘majority of one’ (Is 41:10; Deut 31:8; Jn 16:33). As John Knox said nearly four centuries ago, “The man who stands with God is always in the majority.”
End Notes:
i Dean Gotcher, “Two Roads: Didactic or Dialectic and their Praxis,” www.authorityresearch.com
ii David, Noebel, Understanding the Times, pp. 96-97
iii Dean Gotcher, “Two Roads. . .
iv Martin Luther King, Jr., Strength to Love
v Carl Rogers in Dean Gotcher, Carl Rogers on Becoming a Person
vi M. L. King in Gotcher
vii Karl Marx, Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, in Dean Gotcher
viii David, Noebel, Understanding the Times, pp. 243, 247, 260
ix Francis Beckwith and Greg Koukl, Relativism; both Feet firmly planted in Mid-air, pp. 165-170
x Ibid, pp. 52-53
xi Kenneth Benne, Society as Educator in an Age of Transition, Ed. Kenneth Benne, Eighty-sixth Year of the National Society for the Study of Education, Chicago Press. Ill. 1987, p. 259, in Gotcher
xii Ibid.
xiii Noebel, pp. 204-205
xiv Daniel Guérin, ‘La répression de l’homosexualité en France’, p.1, in Gotcher
xv Beckwith, Koukl, p. 21
xvi Dean Gotcher, Dialectic and Praxis: Diaprax and the End of the Ages; Vol I).
xvii Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, p. 242, in Gotcher’s, Diapraxis and the End of the Ages, Vol II, 7
xviii Gotcher, Two Roads. . ., p. 10
xix Beckwith, Koukl, pp. 154-155
xx Ibid, p. 12
xxi Richard Weaver, Ideas have Consequences, p. 59