Introduction
“For among them are those who creep into households and capture weak women, burdened with sins and led astray by various passions, 7 always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth.”
2 Timothy 3:6-7
This passage describes a weak woman who is easily captured, that is, who is easy to mislead or deceive. It’s not only heretics who receive condemnation (2 Tim. 3:1-6) but those “weak” persons who are influenced by them. The description “weak women” is literally, “little women.” Calvin says that Paul “speaks of ‘women’ rather than men, because the former are more liable to be led astray in this manner.” Nevertheless, this is more than a generalization of women. It is a picture of a particular woman in a particular situation, the sort of situation that men may find themselves susceptible to as well. Indeed, in our modern times, effeminacy enters the household by cunning methods. A man who is duped by the latest incendiary podcaster embraces the kind of effeminacy that isn’t solved by a trip to the gun range.
Some false teachers creep into households under false pretenses. They are stealthy. They don’t wear a hoodie that says, “False Teacher!” across the chest. They are religious sneaks. These aren’t the false teachers who deliver their bad ideas from the pulpit. Paul is warning about the ones that bypass the authority of the church and spread their poison from house to house, just like the serpent crept into the household of Adam and taught Eve. Immature people give ready ears to imposters (Eph. 4:14) who promise solutions to those “burdened with sins” (vs. 6). It is the guilty and childish passions of the weak that turn them into Christian dilettantes, people who are “always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth.” They are always reading and listening. But for all their learning they are never anchored to Christ. There is no closure with Christ; no resolution to righteousness; no definitive doctrine. They try technique after technique to get all the puzzle pieces to fit together, but they never seem to match up.
Just like the magicians in Pharaoh’s court, Jannes and Jambres, countered Moses’ rod-turned-snake with their own, so too can false teachers present ostensibly true information that the weak learn and learn and learn (2 Tim. 3:8). But, just like the jiggery-pokery was plain to Moses, so too should the deceit of provocateurs be plain to all who are anchored in Christ. Consider the following characteristics of Christian dilettantes.
First, Christian dilettantes fixate on the marginal
Those who fixate on the marginal are lopsided people who take complicated fringe issues and pretend they are simple and central. In the process, they are tripped up by a thousand trivialities. Those who reject the virgin birth of Christ, because modern science can’t explain how the star guided the wise men (Mt. 2:1-12), have lost the point by fixating on the marginal. A parenting philosophy that high horses about pediatric dietary restrictions but doesn’t train children to have joy, obedience, and self-control, has fixated on the marginal. The rejection of classical Christian education based on the mere presence of ‘pagan’ literature reflects an undue fixation on marginal concerns.
A Christian dilettante doesn’t just make the marginal his object, but his ideal. This is unsustainable. If marginalism becomes the core, then ideas are in infinite alteration. Progress doesn’t stand still. To be sternly loyal to the fringe means the fringe cannot itself remain the fringe. Fringism is a struggle against the historical authority of the Christian creed. It is a conception of Christianity that is wholly oppositional and therefore profoundly irresponsible (1 Tim. 6:4). What is this if not a reaffirmation of the core premise of secular society, namely, the autonomous right of each person to choose their own conception of good and evil? If the person who is puffed up knows nothing (1 Tim. 6:4), then what is the person who is swelled with the subtleties of windy ostentation?
Second, Christian dilettantes hide their “learning” from their pastors
Christians are expected to grow in their discernment so they can perceive creeping theological error. Evil targets those who are always sampling new trends and never fixing their faith in anything secure (Prov. 14:6). What does that look like? If few others are reading it, or listening to it, or believing it, then it becomes the one essential thing to believe.
There is such a thing as the sober and sensible craving to learn. It is usually revealed by clear conclusions about useful things. One test to see if you are learning but never arriving is this: Do you talk to your pastor about your revolutionary idea? Do you try to understand why your pastor hasn’t been bewitched with your idea? Do you heed your pastor’s warnings and exhortations? Or, do you have itching ears that accumulate for yourself podcasters to suit your passions (1 Tim. 4:3)?
One of the hurtful misapprehensions of modern church life is to, as Horace Bushnell said, “burst the bonds of church authority” and erect “the individual mind into a tribunal of judgment within itself.”[1] It’s particularly disastrous when those who tout the objectivity of the covenant function as a mere collection of units. There is something wrong when church life is conceived in theory but not in practice. When church members cover themselves with the latest download of their favorite self-chosen leader, they stare at their pastor in strange conceit, neglecting the form of organic relation God has established in the church. It’s phrenic antinomianism to resist all the prohibitions and institutions that get in the way of an autonomous collection of beliefs. Free and responsible Christians are guided by the wisdom of pastoral counsel rather than the theories of theology that obey any caprice, as long as its audacious.
Third, Christian dilettantes have no firm boundaries
The purpose of boundaries is to stretch out and guard the frontier. A man without boundaries is a man with squishy first principles, which is like a blind man exploring an elephant and confusing the tail for the trunk. With the wrong starting point, it becomes difficult to fit all the anatomical facts together.
Calvin explains the problem of no anchors as, “That fluctuation between various desires … is when, having nothing solid in themselves, they are tossed about in all directions. They ‘learn,’ he says, as people do who are under the influence of curiosity, and with a restless mind, but in such a manner as never to arrive at any certainty or truth. It is ill-conducted study, and widely different from knowledge. And yet such persons think themselves prodigiously wise; but what they know is nothing, so long as they do not hold the truth, which is the foundation of all knowledge.”[2]
Fourth, Christian dilettantes feed on the intellectual thrill of novelty
It’s almost a matter of course to look around the internet for something new. There is a latest and greatest idea somewhere, there is a theory that will solve our problems, and there is an interpretation that will put me near the front. If nothing else, it will be fun to play with a new idea (Acts 17:21).
This is how an endless series of lessons can be confused with godly knowledge. There is a knowledge that loves God, which is different from the knowledge that loves self-indulgence (John 5:44). In this case, the intellectual appetite for newness is not an intellectual problem, but a moral one. The mind can become hardened (2 Cor. 3:14) and depraved (1 Tim. 6:5). Thinking can become futile, darkened, and foolish (Rom. 1:18-21). Unrighteousness morally compromises the capacity to think (2 Tim. 3:8; 4:2-4).
There is a certain intellectual milieu that looks askance at the quiet grandeur of Christian faithfulness. A new idea hypnotizes the brain and the mouth spouts forth in amazement, “I’ve never heard anyone say that before.” The person is dragged by a deadly fascination into the new idea simply because it is new, failing to see, as Chesterton once said, that the ingenious explanation is a little too ingenious.[3]
Conclusion
Christians should continue to strive for further transformation and development. The goal is not to be done with thinking. It’s not that the conventional wisdom is always right. It is possible to discover new things. There is a natural human desire for variety and new experiences. This is how we get inventions, industry, and ingenuity. But for the pursuit of knowledge to reach its noble apex there must be a crucial connection between knowledge pursued and knowledge discerned. Paul said, “Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong” (1 Cor. 16:13). This is faith without illusions, a faith joyfully lived within the concrete range of theological possibilities.
The intellectual appetite should remain. So, what should someone with a capacious curiosity do? Read the Bible and by all means, read good theology. Mix in some Edgar Allen Poe.[4] And don’t just pontificate to your spouse and friends. Talk it through with your pastor. And don’t forget that continuity is the only approach to passing down the faith to the next generation. It’s tempting to live by the modern ethos of novelty and think you are special and unique. You are going to change the world! You are going to set a new path! But novelty of this kind can’t fulfill the promise of covenant succession. If the next generation learns the pleasure of infinite novelty, then they will never learn the pleasure of honoring their ancestors. Thus, novelty is the revolutionary approach to life and continuity is the covenantal approach (Ex. 15:2).
[1] Horace Bushnell, Christian Nurture (1847, rev. ed. 1861), s.v. “The Organic Unity of the Family.”
[2] https://ccel.org/ccel/c/calvin/calcom43/cache/calcom43.pdf
[3] G.K. Chesterton, In Defense of Sanity: The Best Essays of G.K. Chesterton (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2011), 150.
[4] https://mattcarpenter.podbean.com/e/looking-into-the-cosmos-with-edgar-allan-poe-dr-harry-poe/
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