Comments on: Three Cheers For Dogmatism

By: Mario Del Giudice

Mario Del Giudice — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 06:05:34 +0000

I love being a dogmatic, narrow-minded, fundamentalist Born Again Christian!!

Mario Del Giudice

By: John Thomas

John Thomas — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 10:12:43 +0000

Harry Blamires’s Defence of Dogmatism (1965, 1967) is also very good (like all Blamires’s books; he was defending orthodoxy at the time it was least fashionable).
John Thomas, UK

By: Bill Muehlenberg

Bill Muehlenberg — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 05:58:04 +0000

Thanks for those Julian.

Bill Muehlenberg, CultureWatch

By: Julian Coelho

Julian Coelho — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 04:26:47 +0000

Here is Chesterton again, as well as another favorite quote on dogma:

Whether the human mind can advance or not, is a question too little discussed, for nothing can be more dangerous than to found our social philosophy on any theory which is debatable but has not been debated. But if we assume, for the sake of argument, that there has been in the past, or will be in the future, such a thing as a growth or improvement of the human mind itself, there still remains a very sharp objection to be raised against the modern version of that improvement. The vice of the modern notion of mental progress is that it is always something concerned with the breaking of bonds, the effacing of boundaries, the casting away of dogmas. But if there be such a thing as mental growth, it must mean the growth into more and more definite convictions, into more and more dogmas. The human brain is a machine for coming to conclusions; if it cannot come to conclusions it is rusty. When we hear of a man too clever to believe, we are hearing of something having almost the character of a contradiction in terms. It is like hearing of a nail that was too good to hold down a carpet; or a bolt that was too strong to keep a door shut. Man can hardly be defined, after the fashion of Carlyle, as an animal who makes tools; ants and beavers and many other animals make tools, in the sense that they make an apparatus. Man can be defined as an animal that makes dogmas. As he piles doctrine on doctrine and conclusion on conclusion in the formation of some tremendous scheme of philosophy and religion, he is, in the only legitimate sense of which the expression is capable, becoming more and more human. When he drops one doctrine after another in a refined scepticism, when he declines to tie himself to a system, when he says that he has outgrown definitions, when he says that he disbelieves in finality, when, in his own imagination, he sits as God, holding no form of creed but contemplating all, then he is by that very process sinking slowly backwards into the vagueness of the vagrant animals and the unconsciousness of the grass. Trees have no dogmas. Turnips are singularly broad-minded.

-Heretics by Chesterton

“From the age of fifteen, dogma has been the fundamental principle of my religion: I know no other religion; I cannot enter into the idea of any other sort of religion; religion, as a mere sentiment, is to me a dream and a mockery.”
-John Henry Cardinal Newman

Julian Coelho

By: Ursula Bennett

Ursula Bennett — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 01:39:36 +0000

Thank you for that first G.K. Chesterton quote, it helps me understand a lot of things.
Because we are dealing with unseen things when we share and explain the gospel, it is even more important to have clearly defined “dogma”. If I talk about an apple that is in my hand, people can understand I am talking about an apple and not about a pear. Though even a mushy pear can be taken for an apple, if you go just by the shape and not by its other identifying features such as colour and taste. I think what is really important though that we be more witness and arbiter. The truth can always defend it – himself. I believe what unbelievers are often looking for, the ones that are looking for something that is, not the ones that are already so convinced of what they are doing and who won’t turn, no matter what happens. But the ones who are looking, whether they know it or not, but they are looking for something better than they have, for something worthy of leaving everything they have known or held dear behind. It is “dogma” for sure, in the sense of something unchanging, something that holds true no matter what, but they are also looking for the strength that is in the joy only believers can have, the calm assurance, the one that can smile through the fiercest argument, knowing that the truth will come out on top in the end. Hard to explain, but I remember what it took to convince me, apart from the work of the Holy Spirit of course. Sadly, as a Christian, I have often acted a far cry from that quality which initially attracted me to the people of God. Phil 2 Let your gentleness be evident to all, the Lord is near. 2 pet 3…but do it with gentleness and respect. That is hard in the face of the destructive foolishness all about us, but there goes the challenge. Eph 4:13, “speaking the truth in love”. Can’t think of anything that is harder to do. But with God’s help, nothing is impossible.
Many blessings
Ursula Bennett

By: John Symons

John Symons — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 10:47:11 +0000

“But as Chesterton said elsewhere: “In truth, there are only two kinds of people; those who accept dogma and know it, and those who accept dogma and don’t know it.” ”

Right. Some people I’ve come across who criticise others for being dogmatic are rather dogmatic about it…

John Symons