Ko-Ko, the Chief Dufflepud & Their Kin
There is a phenomenon I have come upon often in theological writing that needs a precise name, if someone hasn't given it one already. I encountered it most recently in a review whose writer criticized an author—a very learned and sophisticated theologian with pretensions to orthodoxy—of advocating a heresy. What the reviewer did is vicious but not uncommon, and might be called "teleological weighting," that is, identifying thought by where the critic thinks it must lead, rather than by what is actually expressed.
In my judgment, the reviewed author had not in fact committed the heresy of which he was accused, but the reviewer took certain of his statements as evidence of it because if the author continued to think along those lines, he would most certainly follow the logic (imposed on it by the reviewer) into heresy. So not committing heresy became, in the end (teleologically), tantamount to committing it. What had actually been written was weighted by the reviewer in accordance with where he thought it would take the author if he pursued it. Thus, the review was in fact an exercise in false
witness.
The Elemental Dishonesty of Kokoism
Now, the reviewer might have been right in his conclusions about where the author's trajectory would eventually take his reader. But if so, that is all the critic could say (which would seem rather pointless), since the line between orthodoxy and heterodoxy—which customarily involves an at least de facto denial of something that orthodoxy affirms, such as Arianism affirming the humanity of Christ while denying his deity—had not in fact been crossed. It is good that readers be warned against sly theologians (and they are legion) who write tendentiously with the deliberate intent to provoke the orthodox and encourage heterodoxy. I have read some very long books that were in sum a reason to disbelieve something to which Christians ought to hold, their error subtly obscured by their length and complexity.
THIS ARTICLE ONLY AVAILABLE TO SUBSCRIBERS.
FOR QUICK ACCESS:
S. M. Hutchens is a Touchstone senior editor.
Get six issues (one year) of Touchstone PLUS full online access including pdf downloads for only $39.95. That's only $3.34 per month!
Get a one-year full-access subscription to the Touchstone online archives for only $19.95. That's only $1.66 per month!
bulk subscriptions
Order Touchstone subscriptions in bulk and save $10 per sub! Each subscription includes 6 issues of Touchstone plus full online access to touchstonemag.com—including archives, videos, and pdf downloads of recent issues for only $29.95 each! Great for churches or study groups.
Transactions will be processed on a secure server.
more on culture from the online archives
34.1—January/February 2021
What the World Needs Now It Hardly Knows by Anthony Esolen
32.2—March/April 2019
Reality Shows, Even in a Popular TV Series by C. E. Smith
33.1—January/February 2020
Do You Know Your Child’s Doctor?
The Politicization of Pediatrics in America by Alexander F. C. Webster
more from the online archives
28.3—May/June 2015
Of Bicycles, Sex, & Natural Law
Describing Human Ends & Our Limitations Is Neither Futile Nor Unloving by R. V. Young
32.6—November/December 2019
An Open Letter to Christian Readers of Jordan Peterson & Roger Scruton by James Bryson
24.3—May/June 2011
The Making & Endurance of the King James Bible, 1611-2011 by Barton Swaim
calling all readers
Please Donate
"There are magazines worth reading but few worth saving . . . Touchstone is just such a magazine."
—Alice von Hildebrand
"Here we do not concede one square millimeter of territory to falsehood, folly, contemporary sentimentality, or fashion. We speak the truth, and let God be our judge. . . . Touchstone is the one committedly Christian conservative journal."
—Anthony Esolen, Touchstone senior editor
