[Continued from Part 1, Part 2]

In reading what a number of respected Christian authors have said over the years about polemics and theological controversy, I have distilled a few “rules.” These rules, I believe, will help us neither avoid polemics nor engage in them in a spiritually destructive way. Almost every rule is mentioned in some ways by multiple authors, but when a writer has put a principle in a particularly strong or apt way, I’ve put his name on the rule.
 

Perhaps Alexander’s most interesting rule however, was this. “Attribute to an antagonist no opinion he does not own, though it be a necessary consequence.” (Calhoun, p.92). In other words, even if you believe that Mr A’s belief X could or will lead others who hold that position to belief Y, do not accuse Mr A of holding to belief Y himself, if he disowns it. You may consider him inconsistent, but it is one thing to say that and another thing to tar him with belief Y by implying or insisting that he actually holds it when he does not. A similar move happens when you imply or argue that, if Mr A quotes a particular author favorably at any point, then Mr A must hold to all the views that the author holds at other points. If you, through guilt-by-association, hint or insist that Mr A must hold other beliefs of that particular author, then you are violating Alexander’s Rule and, indeed, Murray’s Rule. You are misrepresenting your opponent.
 

George Herbert was an early 17th century Anglican priest and English poet. Charles Spurgeon, the great Baptist preacher, once said, “I love George Herbert with my very soul.” C.S. Lewis, in his atheist days, found George Herbert unnerving. He wrote about him, “Here was a man who seemed to me to excel all the authors I had read in conveying the very quality of life as we live it…but the wretched fellow…insisted on mediating it through what I would have called ‘Christian mythology.’”