Question: Error works itself into the Church in all manner of ways. Are there predictable stages, or developments, through which error will progress, that it might be more easily recognized?
Answer: Though I don’t pretend to be any kind of plumber, I’ve heard it said (and even know by a little experience) that if there’s a way in, water will find it; i.e., if the seals aren’t tight and the cracks aren’t sealed, water will work its way in. So with error. However, as one Charles Porterfield Krauth (a confessional Lutheran pastor of the latter 19th century) well observed, error often will make progressions in stages–in three stages. Namely, it will ask to be tolerated; it will assert equal rights; then, it will demand supremacy. Krauth…
But the practical result of this principle is one on which there is no need of speculating; it works in one unvarying way. When error is admitted into the Church, it will be found that the stages of its progress are always three. It begins by asking toleration. Its friends say to the majority: You need not be afraid of us; we are few, and weak; only let us alone; we shall not disturb the faith of the others. The Church has her standards of doctrine; of course we shall never interfere with them; we only ask for ourselves to be spared interference with our private opinions.
Indulged in this for a time, error goes on to assert equal rights. Truth and error are two balancing forces. The Church shall do nothing which looks like deciding between them; that would be partiality. It is bigotry to assert any superior right for the truth. We are to agree to differ, and any favoring of the truth, because it is truth, is partisanship. What the friends of truth and error hold in common is fundamental. Anything on which they differ is ipso facto non-essential. Anybody who makes account of such a thing is a disturber of the peace of the church. Truth and error are two co-ordinate powers, and the great secret of church-statesmanship is to preserve the balance between them.
From this point error soon goes on to its natural end, which is to assert supremacy. Truth started with tolerating; it comes to be merely tolerated, and that only for a time.(C.P. Krauth, The Conservative Reformation and Its Theology, 1872)