Mortal Remains
"Dialogue" & Chaos
Dr. Geoffrey Kirk notes on his blogsite Ignatius, His Conclave (October 31, 2019):
Seldom have orthodox Christians called the bluff of the liberals. They have been prepared to acknowledge that the innovations were church-dividing issues; but they have—with few exceptions—stopped short of dividing the Church.
Step forward the evangelical [Anglican] Archbishop of Sydney, Dr. Glen Davies, who called for gay marriage supporters to leave the church, provoking from liberals the expected response: "he seems to want to exclude people rather than to engage with them."
What liberals want is endless conversation, dialogue without terminus. . . .
An End in Itself
I had never thought about this tactic in exactly those terms, for it seemed that liberals' characteristic and continual calls for "dialogue" and "further study," and their proposals for setting up task forces and commissions charged with reporting on issues that were already simple and clear, had a point—a goal. These moves, it appeared, were deliberately aimed at keeping their opponents off-balance, taking advantage of the vacillators among them and of those so ignorant of the Bible that they, for example, think "inclusion" is godly and "exclusion" is not, until they were able to dominate the power structures of their target churches—whereupon, predictably, all "dialogue" would cease and their gullible adversaries would be thrown out on their silly ears—because this indeed has been the progressives' modus operandi: proposed "dialogue" as a means to a definite church-political end. With liberals, we weren't dealing with the inquiries of Socrates, inspired by the honest curiosity of ignorance, but with something more like the Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact of 1939, a temporizing scheme forged in guile. It had not occurred to me until reading Dr. Kirk's comment that "endless conversation, dialogue without terminus" is a form of devilry that is a satisfactory end in itself.
I had forgotten my Milton, where, upon being thrown out of heaven, one of the first acts of the ejected demons in Pandaemonium was to establish a theological academy to dialogue on free will and predestination—in the nature of the case interminable and futile—the pointlessness that in hell is just the point.
I should also have paid closer attention to C. S. Lewis's account of demonic activity in Perelandra where his character was driven nearly mad on his way to help his friend Ransom by what he was deceived into believing were his own thoughts—thoughts that were actually a barrage of demon voices attempting to discourage him from fulfilling his mission of reaching Ransom.
"The barrage?—I don't understand."
"I was thinking you would have met some difficulties in getting here."
"Oh, that!" said I. "You mean it wasn't just my nerves? There really was something in the way?"
"Yes. They didn't want you to get here. I was afraid something of the sort might happen but there was no time to do anything about it. I was pretty sure you'd get through somehow."
"By they you mean the others—our own eldila?"
"Of course. They've got wind of what's on hand . . ."
I interrupted him. "To tell you the truth, Ransom," I said, "I'm getting more worried every day about the whole business. It came into my head as I was on my way here . . ."
"Oh, they'll put all sorts of things into your head if you let them," said Ransom lightly. "The best plan is to take no notice and keep straight on. Don't try to answer them. They like drawing you into an interminable argument."
Destruction via Confusion
As with Milton's devils, the medium, so to speak, is the message: the confusion, the disorder, the futility, is an end in itself to the devilish mind, even when the shaft doesn't go completely home. The demons are immortals; they can wait, and one generation of newly minted saps to work upon is as good as the last.
When in former days the loyal toast was "Confusion to the King's Enemies," their confusion meant their destruction, as those who raised it were very likely to know. Perhaps in past times it was more common than it is now to have lifted rocks and logs to witness what effect the inrush of light had upon the creatures of darkness beneath, so there was more analogical material at hand to recognize that being drawn into "endless conversation, dialogue without terminus" is Confusion, itself a victory for those who successfully encourage it upon their enemies.
S. M. Hutchens is a senior editor and longtime writer for Touchstone.
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