No Friend of Dichotomies

I’m obviously no theological heavyweight who’s spent decades contemplating the inner recesses of truth so I state this with a few grains of salt, but it appears to me that as a general rule, Christian theology is no friend of dichotomies — or rather, good Christian theology is no friend of dichotomies as you’ll find plenty of them in flawed theologies.  My proof of this is entirely anecdotal and based solely upon the stuff I’ve happen to ponder for the last 5 years or so but it seems like every theological dichotomy I’ve encountered has turned out to be a false one.  Among other things, Peter Leithart’s Against Christianity almost reads as a treatise against false dichotomies that currently plague your average evangelical’s assumptions.  But I recently set out to consider why this may be.  Why do so many of the theological dichotomies we construct turn out to be false?

It then hit me that it may be because the foundation of all theology, the Triune God, is comprised not of dichotomies, but of paradoxes.  And paradoxes almost seem to be the complete opposite of dichotomies.  Think about it.  A dichotomy takes two elements which, on the surface, seem to be mutually exclusive and then systematizes their exclusivity, abstracting the concreteness of their opposition into a maxim.  A paradox, on the other hand, looks upon those two seemingly exclusive elements and embraces them both, proclaiming both to be not only true in part, but necessary for truth together.  Paradoxes then accept and celebrate the mystery of how the compatibility actually works out.  So, you’d be reasonable to suppose that a rather bullet-proof dichotomy exists between God and man, but then the Incarnation happens.  You’d be reasonable to suppose that there’s a dichotomy between God being one and God being Three, but God is Triune.  If we put our heads together, we could probably keep thinking of more examples for awhile.  The point is that paradox, not dichotomy, seems to characterize the objects of theological inquiry and therefore theological inquiry itself provided that it is in alignment with the objects thereof.

Bringing this down to the practical, I have found that I usually approach theological dichotomies with suspicion, a guilty-until-proven-innocent attitude.  And if a certain theological house seems to be constructed with a lot of dichotomies, well, I have a hard time feeling safe inside if you know what I mean.  So, as an example, let’s consider a false dichotomy, kids!  Robin Phillips already addressed this quote from PCA pastor Ligon Duncan sufficiently, so I’m just going to add a few thoughts of my own.  The quote from Duncan in reference to Eastern Orthodoxy goes like this:

There are only two systems of salvation in Christian history: the sacerdotal system which depends upon the dispensation of the sacraments by the Church and there’s the evangelical system which acknowledges the work of the Holy Spirit in the life of the sinner, drawing that sinner to Christ, uniting him to Christ by faith.

So what you have here is a proposed dichotomy between the “evangelical system” and the “sacerdotal system” with the former being that which depends upon the Holy Spirit for salvation and the latter being that which depends upon the sacraments for salvation.  In other words, it’s either salvation by the Holy Spirit, or salvation by sacraments; take your pick.  And under this definition, I would most surely be one of those wretched “sacerdotalists”.  But Duncan presents this dichotomy as if it’s a general feature of theology describing them later as “the two main alternatives” in Christian history implying that his distinction is self-evident and would be agreed upon as accurate by both sacerdotalists and evangelicals.  Unfortunately, it’s not general at all; in fact, the distinction itself is a product of the evangelical system.  The fact is that no one labeled as a “sacerdotalist” under Duncan’s definition would ever say that, “Yep, evangelicals trust the Holy Spirit for salvation and we sacerdotalists trust our sacraments.” and its incredibly careless/ignorant to even suggest that.  Both sacerdotalists and evangelicals believe that salvation comes from the Holy Spirit’s activity, the difference pertains to the nature of that activity.  So, if Duncan said that the sacerdotal system believes that salvation comes from the Holy Spirit’s work through the sacraments of the Church and the evangelical system believes that salvation comes from the Holy Spirit’s work through absolutely nothing, then that would be a fair distinction.  But Duncan’s caricature of sacerdotalism does nothing more than showcase his evangelical lens as he has already assented to the premise that grace and salvation cannot be mediated through physical means or institutions.  Therefore, when he looks upon the “sacerdotal” churches who have the sacraments at the center of their ecclesial lives, he then concludes that they must not trust the Holy Spirit for salvation since “trusting the Holy Spirit” means that one places no efficacious significance to sacraments or the Church.  But again, that is not a universally accepted definition of how the Holy Spirit operates in salvation and thus, Duncan’s dichotomy is basically worthless except for its accurate description of the evangelical system (which, since it was given in the presence of evangelicals, wouldn’t have been needed in the first place.)

It is because of dichotomies like these that are constructed according to evangelical assumptions that I have eschewed the label.  I am not an evangelical precisely because being one leads to conceptions of important matters like salvation described by Ligon Duncan above.  I go for paradox instead, the paradox that God became man, Body becomes bread, Blood becomes wine, and Water becomes regeneration.  And I guess that makes me a sacerdotalist.

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