Here's a thought. Does the path into error always involve a straight line departure from the truth, or can it be more like a spiralling away, circling but gradually growing more and more distant from the circle of orthodoxy?
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The trajectory of error.
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Depends on one's Spiritual condition.
Repentance is the changing of one's mind. If one never changes their mind and turns away from a particular sin for example the " sin/confess" model, then it is circular, a state of spiritual stagnation or a repetitive cycle of sin and confession without true transformation. In contrast if one truly repents, which is only achievable through the power of His Holy Spirit, then it is a straight line. As Jesus Christ of Nazareth said:
"Enter by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it. Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it."
Matthew 7:13–14
Be blessed.
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NewLifeInChristJesus
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If we assume that God corrects His children when they go astray in their thinking (as in Hebrews 12), then it is hard to understand how His children can spiral away from Him since refusing to be corrected (or despising correction) is always directed away from God's correction. If a person is not a child of God, and therefore does not experience His correction, then the path he takes could easily be seen as a crooked path.
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The most common theological error that I come across is called theological category error were a truth from one biblical context is incorrectly applied to another. This is a linear error.
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The church I grew up in, has a confession of faith with parts that I cannot agree with. There's a non-subsribing breakaway from the parent denomination, but it tends to be more liberal than I would like, and I agree with a good bit of the confession of faith but not all. This denomination used to allow for more dissent, but in recent years its moved more towards fundamentalism. I don't disagree in principle with doctrinal standards. But as I have studied I have grown increasingly uncomfortable with certain teachings.
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Like a path that leads to truth, a path into error can take on various winding convolutions. However, I have yet to meet that person who arrives at error via a reversed hermeneutical spiral. It just doesn't work that way due to the nature of Hermeneutics and Philosophy. So, a more varied exit from truth takes on a jumbled mass of emotional turns more than it does discovering some hidden truths that deny previously held ideas as true.
An example of that which I speak? Just look at all of the various Ex-Christian Deconstructionist youtubers and other folks who are now epistemically parted from the Christian faith. They are all over the place, tending toward either Nihilism or their subjective existentialism.
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I took a turn towards Derrida rather ignorantly and unpreparedly. His thought still troubles me. It wasn't very easy to find someone who knew what I was talking about to get help, so I struggled on alone, trying to pray my way out of the philosophical mess I was in. No one should be smug about it, error can be very easy to slip into, hidden presuppositions in what one is reading are not always apparent. Whoosh, ones worldview has shifted, and its not even clear how it happened.
I have come back a bit from that, I hope. For one thing speech over writing. Its seems to me a talk, I mean from a good speaker, who can put the right emphasis and pathos etc. into his speech, who knows what he is talking about - it is easier to get what he is saying than reading a transcript of his speech. I used to read CS Lewis and think there was a lot of humour in what he was writing, but that was just me as I was at the time. I am now more inclined to think he is really quite serious. Lewis had to change his broadcast talks a little when he published them in print as Mere Christianity.
But I have still some distance to go I think to get back to where I was epistemically.
I have come back a bit from that, I hope. For one thing speech over writing. Its seems to me a talk, I mean from a good speaker, who can put the right emphasis and pathos etc. into his speech, who knows what he is talking about - it is easier to get what he is saying than reading a transcript of his speech. I used to read CS Lewis and think there was a lot of humour in what he was writing, but that was just me as I was at the time. I am now more inclined to think he is really quite serious. Lewis had to change his broadcast talks a little when he published them in print as Mere Christianity.
But I have still some distance to go I think to get back to where I was epistemically.
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Yes, Derrida and Richard Rorty can be a challenge for those who are not prepared for their anti-realist thought ahead of time.
Just take one step at a time as you move along on your own journey. That's all any of us can do.
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Y'know, there's another 'Heideggarian' tangent you can go on that is, I think, more conducive to faith than that of the hard Post-modern Anti-Realists: that of the Critical Realists and Philosophical Hermeneuticists. They too come out of that 20th century Germanic epistemic tradition, but on the side of Realism rather than Anti-Realism.
Then again, you might check out yet another Theo-epistemic line of thought like that of Dru Johnson. His is more of a epistemological study that combines Jewish sensibility with Philosophical Theology, and is related to the epistemology of Michael Polanyi.
Both of these lines might offer some help as you step along your current path.
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Yeah Michael Polanyi can be helpful. Read a bit of him, not much though and quite a while ago.
Actually its writers like Karl Stern I find helpful at the moment. His intellectual portraits of Descartes, Kierkegaard, Sartre etc. have more meat on them than one would get in say Francis Schaeffer's sweep through intellectual history. Though I still like Schaeffer too. CS Lewis also I like. I bought nearly everything of CS Lewis I could lay my hands on, not quite his entire works, but a good few of his books and collections.
Actually its writers like Karl Stern I find helpful at the moment. His intellectual portraits of Descartes, Kierkegaard, Sartre etc. have more meat on them than one would get in say Francis Schaeffer's sweep through intellectual history. Though I still like Schaeffer too. CS Lewis also I like. I bought nearly everything of CS Lewis I could lay my hands on, not quite his entire works, but a good few of his books and collections.
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If Karl Stern and C.S. Lewis are lighting the way for you, then go with them. But Dru Johnson is worth a read, too, I think.
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