Saving Dogma
Magnificent post from Joel at the BHT.
“Forget the checklists. Dogma doesn’t get us in.
Dogma keep us away from the ditches. They are the chewed up skid marks along grassy shoulders and rubber- and blood-smeared concrete medians that mark places of past carnage. Dogma aren’t bad–they are truly beneficial to us as signs of where to steer away from danger–but we make a fundamental mistake when we make them the road itself. We make “right beliefs” the Sacraments of the Church. We actually do believe in the Real Presence…the Real Presence of Saving Dogma. Christ-likeness and holy living thus is mediated by our faculty of understanding and whatever native power our conceptual thinking may have. But even if correct, when I treat my doctrine as icons (I can redescribe the process of transposing the gospel to the register of dogma as this: the veneration of my ideas), even right belief about X becomes a barrier to knowing only Christ and him crucified. We make these logismoi the essence of the gospel kerygma and our spiritual life rather than the disciplined take-up-your-cross life Jesus embodied and taught, that the apostles continually call us to in the NT, and that the early Church fathers emphasized. What difference does my assent to Romans 1-11 and Galatians 1-5:12 make if Romans 12-16 and Galatians 5:13-6 isn’t the real fruit in my actions, passions, and will?
We are trying to understand God and figure out how he does what he does. We accept these logismoi as profitable substitutes to the life of prayer. And we convince ourselves that this is Christ-honoring because it has the appearance of piety. Instead of doing love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness, etc., i.e., walking by the Spirit, we think and analyze doctrine. If my thoughts about the truth of the atonement are of special concern to me, I must be exhibiting righteousness, right? So we convince ourselves that discernment is beneficial therapy for our souls. But it is nothing of the kind. It is talking about the cure rather than taking the medicine. Analysis and discernment is pseudo-therapeutic because it is content to read the prescription on the bottle rather than ingest its contents.
Creed by the seat of the pants
Make sure you read all the way to the end, to find the naughty parts:
Creed by the seat of the pants, or Mairnealach’s Creed
Ever since the early saints came up with the Apostle’s and Nicene creeds, various parties in the church have attempted to summarize biblical truth for various reasons. The longer history went on, the longer the creeds got. Here’s one of my own, done with no forethought whatsoever. It’s very long, because I’m so late in history.
Mairnéalach’s Creed
God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit are friends. They’re also one, which breaks several rules, but they do that sort of thing a lot.
One of their favorite things to do is make stuff. God thought up the universe and everything in it, including people. He let Jesus do all the building because Jesus enjoys building. This makes sense, because my little boy loves building and Jesus is God’s little boy. I get a kick out of watching my little boy build, so I imagine God gets a kick out of watching Jesus build.
It’s dumb to talk about God too much without mentioning Jesus, because it’s like waxing eloquent about your wife’s brain without mentioning the other bits you like about her. Besides, since they’re one, you can get to know God by getting to know Jesus, which is a handy arrangement. There’s no such thing as “pure God” without Jesus, but if there was, he’d be too boring to want to know anyway.
Jesus loves the universe and the people he made. A few of the cool things he made are octopuses, cattle, pill bugs, grapes, cypress trees, and red giants. Some of the cool people he made are grandmas, five year olds, wives, and that crocodile guy who sadly died…
