11. How to treat your opponents

OK everyone: gather in. Shut down facebook, switch off your phone. I'm getting serious now. This is a biggie, I think.

Here it is:

You need to treat your opponents with charity and respect.

Yep - that's right: in your essay you need to give your opponents a fair hearing - as fair a hearing as you possibly can.

I know you've signed up for theological study because you think there is a right and a wrong, and because you are passionately comitted with all your being to the truth of the gospel and the authority of the Bible. I know you've probably been inspired by preachers in your life who painted things in black and white terms, and who pointed to the false teachers out there and told you to beware.

BUT: it is a) a matter of basic ethics and b) a matter of academic good practice to treat those with whom you disagree as fairly as possible.

Ethics? That's right. You need to treat people as you would want to be treated. You are not a tabloid journalist. You would hate it if:

a) your views were heard at second hand and no-one ever asked you what you thought in person in your own words
b) it was assumed that you were trying to decieve people and acting in bad faith
c) it was assumed that you trying to avoid the clear statements of the Bible
d) a caricature of your views were offered, then dismissed in a glib sentence

But - can I say this? - that is how many theological college students treat their opponents in their essays. It is actually a matter not only for changing techniques, but for repentance in my view. It is that serious.

Now hear me right: I am not saying 'go soft on naughty liberals' or something. It is in fact the opposite: if ideas are influential and credible then to respond to them properly so that the people of God are well served we ought to take great care to treat them ethically. It is the seriousness of the matter that in fact demands that we don't resort to cheap shots, polemics and over-heated rhetoric.

Don't put these in your essay.

And it is actually bad academic practice. It makes your argument look weak if you do this. I once read a sheaf of essays on Karl Barth most of which did not show any attempt to engage with him at first hand. Most of them used an essay by Roger Nicole to summarise Barth's arguments, and then, surprise suprise, dismissed Barth in the terms Nicole did. Now, Nicole was a fine scholar: but Barth is a major thinker whose writing you need to deal with AT FIRST HAND or not at all. Sure, you can read Nicole. But not to read Barth in this case? Fail.

If you put up a caricature of your opponent, and then argue the caricature down, what have you demonstrated? Precisely nothing. In addition, you need to ask: is there nothing that can be learnt from this person? Barth himself was a great critic of the 19th century theologian Fredrich Schleiermacher. But he once said something along the lines of 'you cannot hate here until you have loved'. It was precisely because Barth knew Schleiermacher at first hand and could appreciate what he was trying to do that made him such a devastating critic of Schleiermacher's work. That's a model worth aspiring to - your future congregations deserve no less.

This flaw of lack of charity also reveals an often unwarranted overconfidence in your own position. The person who is dismissive of the other person 'because the Bible clearly teaches otherwise' usually hasn't done the hard work to establish that the Bible does in fact teach what they think it does. Have they actually heard the case for the other side? Often not, I am afraid.