Twin Dangers

Carson and Woodbridge give us some good ground rules in their Preface to Scripture and Truth, they write:

Twin dangers confront the Christian concerned with defining and
promulgating biblical truth. The first is pugnaciousness.... A Christian can almost unknowingly develop a boisterous rhetoric and a caustic spirit, neither of which are helpful for the advance of the kingdom. The evangelical community suffers when its embers lack humility and grace.
The second danger is less easy to recognize, but is not less insidious. It is a kind of arrogant apathy that bolsters a mindset less interested in the truth than in its pursuit. It involves a fine balancing of all opinions in such a way that a person is somehow impolite to insist that one opinion has the ring of truth, and, conversely, the others are to that degree false.

Before we even get started I admit that I have a tendency to drift toward the first danger rather than the second. I've avoided starting a blog in the past because it seems that it often provides a caustic campground for those who love to argue over all-things-debatable in Christendom, yet there is undoubtedly something at stake now. Unfortunately the second danger is currently winning the day, only a handful of bloggers have had anything to say about the Revisions to the Statement of Faith and those blogs have been brief and relatively unengaged.

As the debate unfolds let’s keep the Spirit in spirited debates. In other words, we want to challenge one another to think, but let's do so in a loving way rather than verbally abusing each other. When we present our cases let’s do it in a way that is honest. In other words, churchmen are invited to participate but please don’t bring any straw men to the discussion. Finally, when any of us fail in these areas let’s be mature enough to own up to our mistakes and then move on.

For the church...