Thursday, May 2, 2013

Dead dogma and the living Word of God


“Any stigma,” said a witty tongue, “will do to beat a dogma”; and the flails of ridicule have been brandished with such energy of late on the threshing-floor of controversy that the true seed of the Word has become well-nigh lost amid the whirling of chaff. Christ, in His Divine innocence, said to the Woman of Samaria, “Ye worship ye know not what”—being apparently under the impression that it might be desirable, on the whole, to know what one was worshipping.” (Dorothy L. Sayers, “The Dogma is the Drama,” Strong Meat)

Dorothy Sayers wrote the above quote in June of 1939 in a small booklet meant to preface her essay, The Greatest Drama Ever Staged. I immediately thought of what Sayers wrote when I discovered that a PC (U.S.A.) teaching elder had noted the same gathering I wrote about in my last posting, “A dialogue: “Is Jesus the Way?”, the discernment dialogue in Los Ranchos Presbytery that brought together Laird Stuart, Jack Haberer and Dana Allin. The teaching elder in his posting, “When Dogma Dies,” had written:
 
Dogmatic religion is not interesting.   Many of us are moving away from exclusive claims ("Jesus is the only way") and literalism ("bodily resurrection") at light speed.   It will take a long time before official documents reflect the changes, but what these three guys are debating is akin to the number of angels dancing on a pin head.
Sayers, after her opening statement, went on to explain that some young men who had watched her play, “The Zeal of Thy House,” thought that she had invented all of those parts which made the play so interesting, as she puts it:
 
That the Church believed Christ to be in any real sense God, or that the Eternal Word was suppose to be associated in any way with the work of Creation; that Christ was held to be at the same time Man in any real sense of the word; that the doctrine of the Trinity could be considered to have any relationship to fact or bearing on psychological truth; that the Church considered pride to be sinful, or indeed took notice of any sin beyond the more disreputable sins of the flesh:--all these things were looked upon as astonishing and revolutionary novelties, imported into the Faith by the feverish imagination of a playwright. (Italics the author’s)
One is hampered when reading great literature without a foundation in both the biblical text and the dogma that arises from it. I still remember my excitement when reading a short story by the Southern writer Robert Penn Warren entitled “Black Berry Winter.” Embedded within the story is the fall of humanity, their ruin and depravity. It is all so familiar and yet all metaphor. But that is a story pulled, as Flannery O'Connor put it, from the Christ haunted landscape of the south, and it is biblical knowledge of human fallenness, eschalogical teaching on sin and helplessness and death that opens the meaning of the story.

And what of O’Connor’s short story, which I have written about in another place, “Parker’s Back.” The Incarnation and the dogma of the event shines clearly at the end, as Parker’s wife screams at him  and his tattoo of Jesus’ face on his back. She screams that "God don’t look like that"—he is a spirit, as she denies the Incarnation. The story is about a man who lives carelessly and has too many tattoos but it is also about the Incarnation. It is dogma, an absolute, Christ is both God and man, hidden in a story. Uninteresting? Dead? Hardly!

Every anti-Christian word written, is written because the dogma, the drama, the absolutes are interesting enough to capture generations. As a character from a Charles Williams' novel puts it, “What else is there to talk about?” And another replies, “What indeed!”

At the end of her small essay, in which Sayers chastises Christians not pagans, she writes:

It is the dogma that is the drama—not beautiful phrases, nor comforting sentiments, nor vague aspirations to loving-kindness and uplift, nor the promise of something nice after death—but the terrifying assertion that the same God who made the world lived in the world and passed through the grave and gate of death. Show that to the heathen, and they may not believe it; but at least they may realize that here is something a man might be glad to believe.

Picture by Ron Andersen
   

11 comments:

Obi-Mac BakDon said...

My past association with the PCUSA afford me some inside view and then an outsiders view the last 20 years. If it did not involve many lives the statement "Many of us are moving away from exclusive claims ("Jesus is the only way") and literalism ("bodily resurrection") at light speed." would be truly amusing as only those who believe such find real escape at the speed of Light and those who do not end up with a bunch of empty buildings not because the "rapture" has happened but simply because all they have to offer is dead religiosity, the shuffling of paper, and capitulation to whatever causes need a light mystical sprinkle. From what I have heard, church after church has simply yanked themselves from the denomination and not simply over social issues, with more on the way. This "exodus" is the living part of the denomination "jumping to light speed", leaving the slow, cumbersome, religious hulk in space that cannot.
"Dogma" is a boring word and we need a better one since that one will always carry with it associations that now make it unusable. It's just a word. "Sound teaching" is just as good, and sidesteps what unthinking reactionaries start frothing about when they hear "dogma" IMO.

Viola Larson said...

Aha, I thought that was you. Love the name. Thanks for the comment. This thought of yours, "only those who believe such find real escape at the speed of light," fantastic. And that escape can be had while staying in place or leaving.

I don't know about getting rid of the word dogma it seems to me we keep ditching too many words. But you might be right.
Thanks Mac

Neil D. Cowling said...

Even before reading your post and noticing only the title I remembered two remarks that I think may be pertinent. The first one comes from Jaroslav Pelikan, my teacher of many years ago. It appears early in the first volume his magnum opus, The Christian Tradition: "Tradition is the living faith of the dead; traditionalism is the dead faith of the living."

The second quote is one I ran across recently while reading Kevin Vanhoozer’s The Drama of Doctrine and may be even more pertinent by means of its cautionary assertion: “Biblical scholars should not be too surprised if, having cast out the ‘evil spirit’ of dogmatic theology, seven others, more wicked still, rush in to take its place.” (20)

If nothing else the image is priceless.

Viola Larson said...

Neil,
Of course if you read my post I'm not suggesting that dogma is dead or uninteresting, I believe with Sayers that it is the very drama of our faith.

But on the other hand traditionalism can be deadly, but not always. Jesus accused the Pharisees of exchanging their traditions for the commandments of God. And Paul commends the Corinthians because they hold to the traditions, also, undoubtedly meaning the word of God.

Whether it is God's word or our own made up way of doing and being I think makes the difference.

Neil said...

I did read your post. I was reacting positively, I thought.

Viola Larson said...

Yes, you were. Sorry if I made it sound different.

Obi-Mac BakDon said...

On the "usefulness" of words, I have found that almost any truly biblical word, not matter how mangled by culture, can somehow be retrieved, set apart from what was attached to it wrongly and then used again in fresh way. Sometimes this can be done really swiftly with people and even helps (as in "did you know that 'holiness' simply means at the core 'set apart' for relationship with God and that means everyone?"...things like that). Words and phrases outside of that lexicon and merely related like "dogma" and even (I have been pondering this lately "systematic theology") may get so bound up with dead weight as to become useless or worse (derailing the conversation into an argument about dogma instead of about deeper issues) Personally, I would rather jettison the vehicle that has two flat tires, is one fire and is nearly out of gas reaizing that it had its time and place but was just that...a vehicle. That goes for the type of apologetics I use to do. I find that 80% of what I am really good at that way is utterly superfluous in the current context. It would be silly to insist on arguing THOSE points just because I am good at it. What is nice is that the 20% remaining (Canonicity, Relativism, and Contextualization) are much needed and used regularly. IMO I'd remove their target (dogma) altogther, and shift simply to the wide platform of overall biblical truth. Then at any and all places the real issue comes to bear. Whereas presently they can attach a "dogma" and paint it as evil. Better (IMO) to make opponents come right out and attack and deny scripture.

By the way, dear friend, I have been actually employing this in real situations online with "progressives" and despite my reputation for political liberalism (which is no longer true...I am non-political) there is absolutely nothing liberal about me biblically. The result after months of respectful encounters is that have simply fled.

Viola Larson said...

Well, I remember some where, Bonhoeffer asking if the church needed to have its own separate language-he never answered his own question, but I think perhaps he was on to something.

However, the person who wrote that dogma was uninteresting denies all christian beliefs so I don't think I want to drop the word for him.

On the other hand it isn't the word that he is angry with, it is the 'stuff' that fills the word with meaning so perhaps your idea of dropping the word and only talking about the 'stuff' might be helpful.

will spotts said...

I don't rightly know what to do about the 'baggage' words carry. I have often thought we needed a new vocabulary. But I have noticed that if we start to change them - if we're afraid of them - we'll always be chasing words.

For someone who abhors the content of the words, it is an easy way to make conversation impossible.

You cut off things historically written using those words. By doing that you cut people off from thoughts from the past that were insightful and valuable. There is a tendency to become 'fashion conscious' and overly 'current' in our thinking.

Worse still, most of the time, the fear of words is the fear of the insult carried by them. We make the change because we don't want to be "those people" ... people we ourselves associate with the words. This is very easily skewed into elitism and cowardice.

My point here is that that approach simply gets us off track and doesn't solve the problem. Half the time, words are used to demonize specific people or groups in ways that simply aren't true - and if we play the game, we feed into that slander.

will spotts said...

I don't rightly know what to do about the 'baggage' words carry. I have often thought we needed a new vocabulary. But I have noticed that if we start to change them - if we're afraid of them - we'll always be chasing words.

For someone who abhors the content of the words, it is an easy way to make conversation impossible.

You cut off things historically written using those words. By doing that you cut people off from thoughts from the past that were insightful and valuable. There is a tendency to become 'fashion conscious' and overly 'current' in our thinking.

Worse still, most of the time, the fear of words is the fear of the insult carried by them. We make the change because we don't want to be "those people" ... people we ourselves associate with the words. This is very easily skewed into elitism and cowardice.

My point here is that that approach simply gets us off track and doesn't solve the problem. Half the time, words are used to demonize specific people or groups in ways that simply aren't true - and if we play the game, we feed into that slander.

Viola Larson said...

Will,
I agree with you on every point. Some who are evangelical, or not, want to get rid of that identity without really understanding what it has stood for in the past. There are so many words that we keep losing.