The Importance of Dogma # 2

The Importance of Dogma # 2

I. My first proposition is this: A strong dislike to all "dogma" in religion is a most suspicious and growing sign of the times. Hence it arises the peculiar importance of holding and teaching it.

This dislike is a fact, I am bold to say, which needs realizing and recognizing. It does not receive the attention it deserves. We have been so much occupied of late years in resisting those who believe too much - that we have somewhat overlooked those who believe too little. Whether we like to hear it or not, there is a sore disease in the land, which is eating like a canker into the vitals of Christianity. It is a pestilence walking in darkness, which threatens to infect a large proportion of the rising generation.

The evidences of this dislike to "dogma" are so abundant that the only difficulty lies in selection. Unless we are men who having eyes see not, and having ears hear not - we may see them on every side.

(a.) I might ask any intelligent man, for example, to mark the vague tone of the great majority of newspapers, when they touch religious subjects. He will find that while they are generally willing to praise Christian morality - they too often ignore bitterness with which School Boards frequently speak of what they are pleased to call "theology," and how ready they are to shovel it all aside under the vague name of "sectarianism."

I might ask him to analyze the most popular fictions and novels of the last forty years, which profess to paint Christians, and to notice how the portrait almost invariably avoids everything like doctrine, and exhibits the model Christian like a cut flower at a flower show, a mere bloom without root.

I might ask him to look at the concern which liberal speakers are constantly showing, in addressing popular audiences, to sweep away all "denominational Christianity," and to throw aside Creeds and Confessions as old worn-out clothes, which only fetter the limbs of modern Englishmen.

In each of these cases let him note one common symptom: that is, a morbid, unreasoning desire to have the fruits of Christianity - without the roots; to have Christian morality - without Christian dogma. And then let him deny, if he can, that a dislike to "dogma" is a widespread evil of our times.

(b.) I will then ask any intelligent man to examine the opinions commonly expressed in the talk of private life. You have only got to bring up the subject of religion in society, and you will get further proofs still. In five houses out of six, where people have anything like real religion - you will fine that they make a regular idol of "earnestness." They do not pretend to know anything about controversies and disputed questions, or to have any opinion as to who is right and who is wrong. They only know that they admire "earnestness;" and they cannot think that earnest, hard-working men can be unsound in the faith.

Tell them that any "earnest" clergyman whom they name does not preach the Gospel - and they are downright offended. Impossible! Whatever doctrines an "earnest" man holds and teaches - they think it narrow and uncharitable and illiberal in you to distrust him. In vain you remind them that zeal and laboriousness are useless - if a minister does not teach God's truth; and that Pharisees and Jesuits had zeal enough to "compass sea and land." They know nothing about that; they do not profess to argue. All they know is that work is work; and that an earnest man must be a good man, and cannot be in the wrong whatever he teaches. And what does it all come to? They dislike "dogma", and will not make up their minds as to what is truth.

Hitherto we have seen the evil I am considering in its most common and diluted forms.

(c.) If we want to see it in its more solid and crystallized state, we have only to turn to the preaching and writings of the extreme Broad Churchmen of our days. I will not weary my readers with a catalogue of the strange and loose utterances which come incessantly from that quarter about inspiration, about the atonement, about the sacrifice and death of Christ, about the incarnation, about miracles, about satan, about the Holy Spirit, and about future punishment.

I will not pain them by recounting the astounding theories sometimes propounded about "the blood of Christ." Time would fall me if I tried to sketch the leading features of a misty system which appears to regard all religions as more or less true, and in which "tabernacles" seem to be wanted for Socrates, and Plato, and Pythagoras, and Seneca, and Confucius, and Mahomet - as well as for Christ, and Moses, and Elijah - all, forsooth, being true prophets, great masters, great teachers, great leaders of thought! [Awful!! These folks don't know dogma, don't know the Bible, don't know the Holy Spirit!! (added by me, the owner of this blog!]

~J. C. Ryle~

(continued with # 3)