Thread by @joe_rigney

So a few quick items on these two response to the empathy/sympathy discussion from @JoelMcDurmon. lambsreign.com/blog/canceling… lambsreign.com/blog/the-dange…

1) I appreciate Dr. McDurmon's attempt to substantively engage with arguments. As I've said before, after 2+ years, I couldn't point to a single public response to my work on empathy that actually engaged with my arguments and position (I have had fruitful private conversations).

Instead, online criticisms (whether on Twitter or in other forms) have misrepresented the actual claims I've made and attacked strawmen with my face on it. (There have been a few exceptions on Twitter). So it's good that someone took the time to attempt making arguments.

2) It's clear that McDurmon is mainly concerned with @DrOakley1689. I'll let Dr. White speak for himself about whether he thinks empathy is always an unqualified sin. For what it's worth, I don't. I think empathy (read: emotion-sharing) is a natural good that can be corrupted.

3) Though McDurmon mainly sets his sights on Dr. White, he repeatedly ropes in others ("White and co") and refers specifically to @douglaswils and me, as though his critique applies to us. He even links to one of my articles on empathy: desiringgod.org/articles/do-yo…

3. The irony here is that that article contains this section. So if McDurmon's main line of criticism is against those who believe emotion-sharing is always & everywhere a sin, then it doesn't apply to me, & insofar as he attributes such a position to me, he's gotten it wrong.

4) McDurmon's linguistic analysis of empathy (and its roots) belies the claim that there is a common agreed-upon understanding of the term. There are different meanings depending on era, context, academic discipline, etc.

5) McDurmon's major objection seems to be to the novel understanding of empathy as a total surrender of one's mind and emotions to the emotions of another. He thinks such an understanding is absurd, and insofar as we're talking about dictionaries, he's probably right.

But my approach to this subject is built on two principles:
1) Vices frequently hide in virtues. Sin frequently masquerades as a good thing.
2) When it does so, it's a legitimate rhetorical approach to attack the sin under its assumed name.

I suspect McDurmon would agree with the first, & perhaps challenge the second. In other words, it's the rhetorical issue that McDurmon (& others) are objecting to. So here are a few examples of similar rhetorical moves which attack sinful patterns under their assumed (good) name.

A). D.A. Carson wrote a book called "The Intolerance of Tolerance" amazon.com/Intolerance-To… I doubt that anyone accused him of contradicting himself or of disparaging all forms of tolerance.

B) C.S. Lewis repeatedly criticized "Unselfishness" because of the patterns of behavior that hid beneath it. I unpack Lewis on this in a footnote to my article.

C) Lewis actually criticizes the emotional manipulation / untethered empathy in The Great Divorce. He criticizes it under the term Pity. Now pity is (or at least was) a virtue. But Lewis distinguished the Action of Pity from the Passion of Pity:

Note that Lewis describes the passion of pity in entirely negative terms, even though (I suspect) he would acknowledge that even the passion of pity, rightly governed by reason and the will, has its value in this life.

D) Aimee Byrd has written a book called "Recovering From Biblical Manhood and Womanhood." Regardless of where you stand on the merits of her argument: Does that title demand that she view *all* forms of biblical manhood & womanhood as something to reject and recover from?

Or is the provocative title meant to draw attention to the destructive patterns that she believes hide beneath that positive phrase? Do those who object to "The Sin of Empathy" on rhetorical grounds have the same problem with Byrd's book? I suspect not.

E) To add a few hypothetical examples: I can easily imagine a sermon called "The Sin of Obedience" or "When Obedience is Sinful" on Matthew 23 in which Jesus rebukes the Pharisees for tithing from the spice rack while neglecting the weightier matters of the law.

Or a sermon called "The Sin of Peace" on Jeremiah 4:14: "They have healed the wound of my people lightly, saying, ‘Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace."
Or "The Sin of Speaking Truth" which highlighted the necessity of doing so *in love*.

In each of these cases, the provocative title would both arrest attention ("What in the world does he mean by that?") and perhaps provoke a reaction. The key would be whether the subsequent exposition & arguments clarified the title.

My point in giving these examples is that I think that most of us are able to comprehend the rhetorical strategy of attacking a sin under the good name that it hides beneath *when they both recognize the sin as sin & recognize where it likes to hide*.

But for some people, they aren't able to do this when it comes to empathy. And I think that's illuminating.

To conclude with Dr. McDurmon's articles, perhaps his arguments apply to @DrOakley1689 (again Dr. White can respond if he chooses). But they don't apply to me. I suspect there may be a semantic difference & perhaps a rhetorical difference between us.

But I agreed with the substance of both of his articles, and could point to multiple passages in my article that paralleled claims in his. So there may be further substantive disagreements between us. But as far as I can tell, he hasn't identified them yet.

An addendum: Looks like only one of the articles was by McDurmon. The other was by John Reasnor. I probably should have simply tagged @LambsReign since that's the site that hosted both.