What I think we sometimes lose sight of is the fact that what "goes on in the blogosphere" is something entirely new. The truth is the same kind of exchanges have been going on in Christendom for centuries. The difference being that until now they were conducted using letters, tracts, and innuendo, but believe me the exchanges during the 16th-19th centuries were every bit as heated and bitter and the name-calling if anything was worse. Opponents regularly became "sundry blasphemers" "barking dogs" "imbeciles" etc. The mistake is in assuming that human nature suddenly degenerated in the late 20th century and we went from high-minded civil and gentle exchanges to mud-slogging. For instance, I was just reading in Calvin's Treatise on Relics and was mused by his blog-worthy comment:
"The above-mentioned work is filled with fables still more extravagant than the one which I have related, and which entirely throw into the shade the celebrated tales of Munchausen. Jerome complained that many people, whom, in his Christian meekness, he calls Scyllean dogs, were laughing at the stories related in those works, and which he begins by invoking the assistance of the Holy Ghost. Was it then a wonder that a Christianity, defended by such wretched superstitions, was frequently abandoned by
individuals, who, comparing the Christian legends of the kind quoted above with the fictions of Pagan mythology, preferred the latter as being more poetical?"
There you have it, in one paragraph we have the great Jerome calling his opponents (who were correct in this case) Scyllean Dogs and invoking the Holy Spirit against them, Calvin tongue in cheek referring to this as his Christian meekness and then comparing the "wretched" work he defends to the tall tales of Munchausen.
What we need to do is get past the pious sounding hand-wringing over incivility which is either consciously or unconsciously used as a smoke-screen for bad theology, and get down to discussing the issues. The politics and discussion around Nicea was as nasty and dirty as it gets, and yet the council eventually produced a creed that has served the church better than any of the so-called love, peace, and granola filled "ecumenical" endeavors of the church in the last 200 years. The Apostolic church's dealings with the Judaizers and proto-gnostics was equally heated, difficult and uncivil.
Brothers, what do you expect? The World, the Flesh, and the Devil to play nice and above board when their tare planting, Synagogue of Satan creating operations are under attack? Or the proponents of the truth to be entirely perfect this side of glory? When has that EVER been the case? We should expect the process of responding to any serious error or heresy to be almost as awful in this fallen world of ours, our three great enemies will ensure it will be such, but that doesn't mean for a moment we should stop doing the right thing! Act with integrity, be gentle and winsome whenever you can, but for heaven's sake, "Watch ye, stand fast in the faith, quit you like MEN, be strong."
