Before You Throw the Punch…

Today I noticed someone trying to antagonize me by attacking what they apparently—and erroneously—think is a position I hold. This time, I didn’t take the bait. That’s beside the point, though, because the episode reminded me of an essay by Roger R. Nicole that I happened to revisit recently: “Polemic Theology: How to Deal with Those Who Differ from Us.” The timing could hardly be better. Nicole’s essay first appeared a quarter-century ago, can be found in Standing Forth: Collected Writings of Roger Nicole and was reprinted in the Winter 2005 issue of The Emmaus Journal, with a supplement written specifically for that publication.

Nicole (1915—2010) was hardly a lightweight. Born in Germany to French Swiss parents, he studied at Lausanne, the Sorbonne, Gordon Divinity School, and Harvard; he was a charter member of the Evangelical Theological Society in 1949, taught at Gordon-Conwell for forty-one years and Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando for another eleven, and served as a contributing editor to Christianity Today from its founding in 1956. In other words, this is not someone writing about theological controversy from the sidelines. He spent a lifetime watching Christians disagree—and, presumably, occasionally disagree badly.

What makes Nicole’s essay so useful is that he refuses to begin where most polemics begin. We usually ask, “How do I defeat this argument?” Nicole says we have three questions to ask, and in a very particular order: “What do I owe the person who differs from me? What can I learn from the person who differs from me? How can I cope with the person who differs from me?” That order matters. We owe the other person love, truthfulness, and the same basic fairness we would want extended to ourselves. That means actually understanding what he believes before criticizing it. Nicole even insists that if someone has written books or articles, we ought to read them carefully before launching sharp criticism. His illustration of Cornelius Van Til is wonderful: Van Til’s criticism of Karl Barth was fierce, but Nicole had seen Barth’s Kirchliche Dogmatik in Van Til’s office, its pages covered with underlining, annotations, exclamation points, and question marks. Van Til had done his homework. There is a lesson here for anyone who wants to play theologian on the internet: before you swing the hammer, make sure you have actually located the nail.

Nicole’s point becomes even more penetrating when he distinguishes between what someone says and what he means. People speak imprecisely. They use “always” when they mean “frequently,” and “never” when they mean “not nearly often enough.” Nicole illustrates this with his wife’s complaint that he “never” emptied the wastebasket. His wonderfully specific observation was that, in fact, he had emptied it on January 12, 1994. Technically, therefore, “never” was false. But insisting on the lexical precision of the word would have missed the point entirely. The same principle applies to theology. If someone uses an imperfect expression but the intended meaning is reasonably clear, correcting the wording can be useful; pretending the imperfect wording proves a position the person does not actually hold is something else entirely. Nicole warns that if we operate at the level of the opponent’s words while ignoring the level of his meaning, “there is no encounter.” And this is precisely where much contemporary theological polemic goes off the rails. We end up refuting sentences our opponent never intended to affirm, then congratulating ourselves for demolishing an argument that existed largely in our own heads—what I call chopping at trees your interlocutor didn't plant.

The problem gets worse when we confuse a position with an alleged implication of that position. Nicole is particularly blunt here: Christians have wasted enormous amounts of “ammunition” attacking positions where their opponents were not actually standing. There is a legitimate place for demonstrating that a doctrine has dangerous logical implications. But that is not the same thing as saying the person already believes those implications. The distinction is elementary, yet astonishingly easy to forget. “Your position logically tends toward X” is an argument. “You believe X” is a claim about what your interlocutor actually believes. Those propositions require different kinds of evidence. Nicole’s own example is especially relevant to Reformed-Arminian debates: he notes that some Arminians assume divine sovereignty entails the denial of meaningful human decision and responsibility, while Calvinists may wrongly assume that affirming human freedom means abandoning divine sovereignty. The proper response is not caricature but clarification—show the other side that the feared implication does not necessarily follow, and ask them to articulate their own position accurately.

Nicole also makes a point that serious theologians ought to find both obvious and uncomfortable: disagreement can be an intellectual gift. I may be wrong. My formulation may be correct as far as it goes but incomplete. My argument may leave an important biblical truth underemphasized. Or perhaps my presentation is simply ambiguous enough that reasonable people can misunderstand me. In each case, the person who objects may be doing me a service. Nicole describes the major truths of Christianity as “two-railed”: divine sovereignty and human responsibility, Christ’s deity and humanity, divine inspiration and human authorship of Scripture, justification and sanctification, individual and corporate responsibility. Remove one rail and the train does not become more elegant; it simply falls off the track. Even objections can therefore function as “garde-fous” (French “safeguards for the crazy”), fences that keep us from wandering over the edge of our own formulations. That is a remarkably healthy approach to theology. I want my theology to survive criticism, yes, but I also want criticism to make my theology more precise, more comprehensive, and more faithful to the whole counsel of God.

None of this means Nicole advocates theological mush. Quite the opposite. He explicitly maintains that Christians are called to “contend earnestly for the faith,” while carefully distinguishing contention for truth from being merely contentious. He insists that Scripture must be handled in context, that proof-texting can boomerang, that logic and history have legitimate roles, and that theological claims should be tested against the whole structure of revealed truth. And when disagreement becomes debate, he does not demand that Christians pretend there is no winner and loser. He even warns against “over-kill,” because humiliating an opponent can ruin an otherwise deserved victory. That balance is important. Christian charity does not require surrendering conviction, and theological conviction does not require intellectual dishonesty or personal hostility. We can say, “That position is wrong, and here is why,” without first inventing a position for someone else and then setting it ablaze.

Which brings me back to this morning. There is something almost comical about being attacked for a position you do not hold, but it is also a useful reminder of why Nicole’s old essay remains so timely. Before criticizing someone, read what he actually wrote. Before telling everyone what he believes, make sure you know what he believes. Before attacking the implications of his theology, distinguish those implications from his stated convictions. And before you start sharpening your rhetorical knives, ask whether your real goal is to glorify yourself as the person who won an argument or to bear faithful witness to the truth. Nicole ends with Paul’s admonition that the Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but kind, able to teach, and patient, gently instructing those who oppose him in the hope that God may grant repentance and knowledge of the truth. That is not theological weakness. It is theological discipline. And frankly, some of us would do well to spend less time looking for someone to dunk on and more time making sure we have understood the person standing across from us. You cannot faithfully refute a position you have not actually found.