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“Any stigma will beat a dogma”
I’ve been reading a collection of essays by Dorothy Sayers, novelist, playwright, and theologian. She was fond of chastising self-styled atheists for knowing little of the dogma they claim to reject, and self-assured Christians for knowing scarcely more than the atheists. In “Creed or Chaos?” she wrote:
“Apart from a possible one per cent of intelligent and instructed Christians, there are three kinds of people we have to deal with. There are the frank and open heathen, whose notions of Christianity are a dreadful jumble of rags and tags of Bible anecdote and clotted mythological nonsense. There are the ignorant Christians, who combine a mild gentle-Jesus sentimentality with vaguely humanistic ethics–most of these are Arian heretics. Finally, there are the more or less instructed church-goers, who know all the arguments about divorce and auricular confession and communion in two kinds, but are about as well equipped to do battle on fundamentals against a Marxian atheist or a Wellsian agnostic as a boy with a pea-shooter facing a fan-fire of machine-guns.”
It’s hard to accept Paul’s admonition against women speaking out in church after reading that. In “The Dogma is the Drama” Sayers offers the answers that a typical know-nothing might offer when quizzed about Christianity, from which, a sampling:
Q: What does the Church think of God the Father?
A: He is omnipotent and holy. He created the world and imposed on man conditions impossible of fulfilment; He is very angry if these are not carried out. He sometimes interferes by means of arbitrary judgments and miracles, distributed with a good deal of favouritism. He likes to be truckled to and is always ready to pounce on anybody who trips over a difficulty in the Law, or is having a bit of fun. He is rather like a dictator, only larger and more arbitrary.Q: What was Jesus Christ like in real life?
A: …He was meek and mild and preached a simple religion of love and pacifism…If we try to live like Him, God the Father will let us off being damned hereafter and only have us tortured in this life instead.Q: What does the Church think of God the Holy Ghost?
A: I don’t know exactly…There is a sin against Him which damns you for ever, but nobody knows what it is.Q: What is the doctrine of the Trinity?
A: The Father incomprehensible, the Son incomprehensible, and the whole thing incomprehensible.Q: What are the seven Christian virtues?
A: Respectability; childishness; mental timidity; dullness; sentimentality; censoriousness; and depression of spirits.
Writing in 1949, Sayers couldn’t access the Gospel of the Liberal Media — as revealed to Saints Limbaugh and O’Reilly — to explain away this sad impression of Christian dogma among the unchurched, and so she blamed the average Christian. He knows little better, was her contention, and behaves as if he believes far less than he knows.
This got me thinking about what other answers about dogma we might expect from the average man on the street. Here are some possibilities I came up with:
Q: What is the chief end of man?
A: To be a good boy.
Q: What must one do to be admitted to Heaven?
A: Not be homosexual. Also, don’t commit crimes, quit fornicating, and for good measure you’d best leave off most other physical pleasures as well. Stay away from pornography, go to church regularly, and avoid the really bad curse words. No gambling either, unless the lottery gets above $100 million, but then only if you’re prepared to tithe a full 10 percent of your winnings.
Q: What about gossip, slander, backbiting, and dissent?
A: They’re perfectly fine before and after the church service, but keep quiet during the sermon.
Q: Is every word in the Bible really the inerrant word of God, profitable for reproof and instruction?
A: Absolutely, depending on how you interpret the head covering section, and that bit about a wealthy man needing to give away his riches, which is, you need to understand, highly metaphorical, and applicable to that one individual.
Q: How should a Christian live?
A: Don’t sin, and keep track of your neighbor’s sin.
Q: What about that part in the Bible regarding the mote and the log?
A: It means don’t criticize Christians.
So I’m curious — what Qs and As would you add? Whether it’s the Biased Media or Christians themselves that cause it, what are some common misconceptions about Christian dogma?
back to top42 Comments to ““Any stigma will beat a dogma””
that knowledge is intellectual
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The post made me laugh … which is not good, because these are all so true . This is what we say, and what others say to us (esp. here on the blog).
By the way, I’m on a Dorothy Sayers kick right now. Is there a title for this essay collection? I’d like to read it.
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Kimberly,
It was originally compiled as Christian Letters to a Post-Christian World, and subsequently released as The Whimsical Christian.
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I was once in a Bible study where all these types of things were being expressed, so I thought I’d mix it up by asking “What would the life of a really mature, effective Christian look like?” And the answers were: “Really into Bible studies, deep prayer life, controlled thought life, moving toward holiness” etc. To which I said “Great list. Could good works or serving the poor or evangelizing be part of that?”. And they said “Sure, if you want”. Totally secondary to having vague devotional feelings, of course.
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Oh, how true. I laughed, too, but only in self-recognition. Those are not especially my short-comings, but oh, I have plenty of others.
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When I started attending a fundamentalist church as a teenager (having grown up in a liberal Protestant church), I was somewhat surprised to find out that angels weren’t people who had died.
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“She was fond of chastising self-styled atheists for knowing little of the dogma they claim to reject …”
How much does a person have to know about magical sky fairies to figure out it’s all childish insane nonsense for gullible morons?
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Q: What must one do to be admitted to Heaven?
A: Not be homosexual. Also, don’t commit crimes, quit fornicating, and for good measure you’d best leave off most other physical pleasures as well. Stay away from pornography, go to church regularly, and avoid the really bad curse words. No gambling either, unless the lottery gets above $100 million, but then only if you’re prepared to tithe a full 10 percent of your winnings.
This is a rather cynical point of view. While orthodox Christians and Orthodox Jews are well aware of the dangers of Pharisaical legalism, they, also, know that God created a world of moral order that clearly declares, along with the worst sin of spiritual pride, the sins of polymorphously perverse sex including fornication, adultery, and homosexuality, thievery, lying, et al.
This is well understood by knowledgeable and devout Christians and Jews. Christ himself made clear that He came to fulfill the Talmudic and Torah Law not to abrogate it. Modern liberal mainline Christians in fact have caved to the romanticism and contemporary Pagan Revolution that tends to the violent, orgiastic, and hedonistic. One can’t put a round Judeo-Christian peg in a square romantic-pagan hole. Even the brilliant alleged lesbian, Dorothy Sayers, might not have understood this.
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This is well understood by knowledgeable and devout Christians and Jews. Christ himself made clear that He came to fulfill the Talmudic and Torah Law not to abrogate it.
But Peter, although the Law has not been abrogated, neither is it held up as the standard for all our behaviour, our primary motivation.
Read Galatians: the Law was only a primer, to prepare us for the day when Christ came to redeem us from the law unto grace, for the time when we, filled with the Holy Spirit, could act as motivated from within by the Spirit, instead of following the rigid law. Christianity is driven by love. (Incidentally, a proper kind of love will lead to the behaviour God outlines in the law; that does not make the law the proper motivation).
Note too that even Christians struggle with the top sins. Dante populates Purgatory with all sorts of redeemed people struggling with various vices–all vices among the big Seven Deadly Sins. It is Christian to struggle against sin and attempt to overcome it; it will never be entirely overcome while this world exists.
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“It’s hard to accept Paul’s admonition against women speaking out in church after reading that.”
Huh? What a non-sequitur.
If you’re looking for excuses to disobey unpopular but clear Scriptural commandments, you don’t have to go as far back as Dorothy Sayers to find one.
And if you’re looking for unpopular commands to disobey, how about “take up your cross and follow me”? What a downer that one is.
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Kimberly: But Peter, although the Law has not been abrogated, neither is it held up as the standard for all our behavior, our primary motivation.
The standard of God’s Law is clear enough both Biblically and rationally. The trouble is that we humans, as C.S, Lewis remarked in Mere Christianity, have serious difficulty trying to meet the standard, as any reading of a daily newspaper or an honest examination of our own hearts makes clear.
Given the predominance of the modern Pagan Sexual and other forms of secular Revolution, one can find all sorts of ways to evade what are crystal clear Judeo-Christian moral and ethical requirements.
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Relax, David. Nobody is advocating disobedience to Scripture here.
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I agree with Peter. The Law is not opposed to the Gospel but is in complete unison with it. How can we look to the cross for refuge if we never experience the fear and trembling of being required, on pain of death, to be perfect? As the requirements of the law are lifted or eased, the individual Christian no longer has the opportunity to look honestly at his guilt. “The law is just a recommendation,” he thinks. “Jesus died so that I can escape guilt. We live under grace now.” And his flesh says, “Let sin abound.”
From an experiential standpoint, we should be living in the present before God, not casting forward to a point in the future when the sin we’re presently committing will be forgiven.
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“Nobody is advocating disobedience to Scripture here.”
No, but are you winking at it?
You can say the same thing about obedience to Scripture, it seems to me. No one’s going to accuse you of advocating that, either.
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Given the predominance of the modern Pagan Sexual and other forms of secular Revolution, one can find all sorts of ways to evade what are crystal clear Judeo-Christian moral and ethical requirements.
I’m not trying to evade it, Peter. I’m just pointing out that for the Christian, the law is no longer needed (as in Paul’s example of a tutor: useful until the child reaches a certain age): Christians are ready to live by faith and love.
Now, of course “faith and love,” if genuine, will result in behaviour that matches up to the original law. And of course God still holds us accountable to a Christian standard of living (this is also in Galatians, and in James).
But the law is not the basis for my Christian faith: Christ, and love of Christ are.
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And his flesh says, “Let sin abound.”
See above point. “Law no longer applicable” does not mean “sin all you want.” It means “love God” and incidentally, “He who loves God keeps His commandments.”
Those commandments are merely moved from motivation to outcome, from the reason we do something to the result of our doings.
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Given the predominance of the modern Pagan Sexual and other forms of secular Revolution, one can find all sorts of ways to evade what are crystal clear Judeo-Christian moral and ethical requirements.
Again, as I mentioned to David above, we’re not trying to evade them. That’s not what it means to live under grace. Living under grace will in fact result in a more close obedience to the law, because love is the motivation and not force.
But do not minimize grace … it is the chief danger Paul warned about. We are under liberty and that must not be taken away.
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I wasn’t winking, David, I was telling a truth that some of us lesser Christians face, which is a mental conflict between what seems logical and what Scripture teaches. If it’s any consolation, a lot of Church fathers had similar struggles, and not all of them ended up heretics. But if you like, I can reaffirm the Nicene Creed each time I post. Or will you be requiring the Westminster Confession (long version, of course)?
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Kimberly, like Jonathan Edwards, that much maligned brilliant American theologian, I am well aware that we sinners are fundamentally upheld by the saving grace of God and our our Lord’s sacrifice, though none of this reduces our obligation to try as best we can to fulfill the moral law.
I would gladly concede that you might be a hell of a lot better at fulfilling the Law than I. I’m not sure that we’re really apart on this issue.
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Peter … I don’t think we’re apart either. And I need no concession that I’m somehow better at fulfilling the law, because I’m probably not.
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Relax, Tony. Nobody is calling you a heretic.
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Besides, what’s logical about your post? Like I said, it’s a non sequitur to jump from Dorothy Sayers’ essays to women speaking in church. They’re completely unrelated. Like egalitarians, you seem to think that the command for women to remain silent in church implies their ignorance or stupidity. But it doesn’t. There’s no logical conflict here.
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Nice post.
Despite some evangelicals’ efforts to play the “victim” card, much of the pagan culture’s misunderstanding of Christianity must fall at the feet of those who are more interested in preaching moralism than in preaching Christ.
Moreover, I would place some of the blame for that on Jonathan Edwards. It was Edwards, after all, who blended orthodox Protestantism with romantic notions of individual pietism and revivalism. In many ways, this admixing of Protestantism with modernism did much to pave the way for the kind of Christless pietism that was common in American Protestantism by the late 1800s.
Nevertheless, it’s important to see Edwards’ pietism as a departure from classic Reformed orthodoxy.
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Hm. I do like Ms. Sayers very much (thus far, mostly for her detective fiction), but I haven’t delved into her nonfiction extensively.
@Peter Leavitt: What do you mean by “alleged lesbian”? I have never read that about Ms. Sayers and I highly doubt its veracity.
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David,
Were I to have asserted that women should be allowed to preach because Ms. Sayers was a fine apologist, then I would be guilty of a non sequitur. But to say, as I did, that the feeling stirred up in me, upon reading her essays, is that it’s a shame she couldn’t preach, is simply an empirical reality, much the same as saying that the delicious smell of cheeseburgers makes it hard to fast. Of course the tastiness of the food has nothing to do with the exhortation to fast, but only a pedant would argue that expressing the aforementioned sentiment is a “non sequitur.”
Les Arbres,
I think the lesbian bit was thrown in to subtly discredit Sayers. It is, as David might recognize, a non sequitur.
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#7
Bob7Xs does make a valid point (although I wouldn’t make that point so colourfully). People reject all sorts of things that they don’t have a firm understanding of. Nothing new or special there.
But, to answer Tony’s question, I’m sure a question about the trinity would elicit some interesting responses from the average Joe on the street.
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Actually, Tony, I searched the internet hoping to find some statements of Dorothy Sayers that opposed homosexuality. I could find none. There is a website, HerStory that focuses on lesbians in the arts. Its remark about Dorothy Sayers is as follows:
Dorothy Sayers was a lesbian (probably), poet, and author. She created the character Lord Peter Wimsey in her many detective novels. Her lesbian themed poetry was not published until later.
Note that in #8 I talked about the briliant alleged lesbian Dorothy Sayers…
While some of Ms. Sayers Christian apologetics, which I have read, and most of her Peter Wimsey mysteries are brilliant, one may question her view that that Christ … was meek and mild and preached a simple religion of love and pacifism…If we try to live like Him, God the Father will let us off being damned hereafter and only have us tortured in this life instead.
Christ understood Talmudic, Mosaic and Noahide law and was was far from a meek and mild man. He made it clear, after chastising the moralist Pharisees, that the adulteress should go and sin no more, Also, the Temple money changers hardly thought of Him as a meek and mild soul.
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Peter,
So let me get this straight. You:
1) Set up some kind of test of Sayers’s acceptability, based on whether she condemned homosexuality publicly;
2) Threw in an ad hominem slander based on some gal’s personal (and poorly done) Geocities website; and
3) Actually thought that the description of Christ I quoted above was Sayers’s personal belief, rather than — as I stated, and as a reading of her original essay makes clear — her characterization of what people who know little of Christianity think.
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Tony, I’ve actually admired Dorothy Sayers apologetics; when I searched the Internet for her views on homosexuality, I thought she might well be opposed to it as her contemporary C.S. Lewis was.
I regret in that post not explaining the internet source for it.
I did misread the context of her statement about Christ.
My objection to your view has to do with the facile and cynical assumption underneath your following statement:
Q: What must one do to be admitted to Heaven?
A: Not be homosexual. Also, don’t commit crimes, quit fornicating, and for good measure you’d best leave off most other physical pleasures as well. Stay away from pornography, go to church regularly, and avoid the really bad curse words. No gambling either, unless the lottery gets above $100 million, but then only if you’re prepared to tithe a full 10 percent of your winnings.
In general I find you all too willing to compromise with the secular pagan point of view on the subject of homosexuality. Should you really want to understand the orthodox Christian view on this subject, you might read the psychiatrist, Jeffrey Satinover’s Politics of Homosexual Truth.
Satinover, with an undergraduate degree from M.I.T. and graduate degrees from Harvard and Texas, has practiced psychiatry for twenty years, specializing in the compassionate treatment of homosexual people. He has been a a Fellow in Psychiatry at Yale and the William James Lecturer in Psychiatry and Religion at Harvard. His book brilliantly explains the tragedy of homosexual compulsion and its relation to what he terms-in a stunning chapter- The Pagan Revolution.
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If you read anything I’ve written about homosexuality, you’ll find that I in no way condone it. Nor do I condone, however, the decidedly unchristian manner in which many Christians view and treat homosexuals, or the unbiblical manner in which homosexuality is raised above other sins.
As for the statement you’re referencing in #29, following Sayers’s lead, I was offering some additional answers we might expect the non-Christian to give to questions of dogma. I placed “Don’t be homosexual” first because survey evidence shows that this is the predominant impression young non-Christians have of Christians, that we are anti-homosexual (as opposed to anti-homosexuality).
Of course, who knows where those wacky kids get their misguided impressions of us.
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Tony, I understand as well as you and Sayers do that sexual sins in themselves are among the minor category of religious sins, though St. Paul understood that homosexual compulsion, among other instinctive compulsions, led to the more serious sin of idolatry.
As to the wacky kids impression of Christianity, check out the Anscombe Society , a group of devout Christian students at Princeton, who summarize their beliefs as follows:
The Anscombe Society believes that the intact, stable family is the most fundamental unit of society. We hold that the intact family consists of a man and woman, bound together by marriage, along with whatever children they may have. We define marriage as the exclusive and monogamous union between a man and a woman grounded in a commitment to mutual love and aid, with the intent to remain so committed until death. In most societies, this commitment is recognized by the state and by social custom.
The Anscombe Society believes in the inherent dignity of every human person. We, furthermore, look to what sociology, psychology, medicine, philosophy, theology, and human experience agree works for the good and health of the person and for the common good and flourishing of society. In this way we have been led to take stated positions on the family, marriage, sexual ethics, chastity, and sexuality. We believe that these positions protect human dignity, the individual and common good, and the healthy and flourishing society, for which all people must endeavor.
Your view that you make Christianity more palatable to young people than those who take a firm stand against the depredations of the pagan sexual revolution is in my view rather a conceit.
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Peter, do you actually read what you are responding to?
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Tony, probably as much and as little as you do.
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Seriously, re-read what I said in #30, and consider how your response in #31, which is to produce evidence that some kids understand conservatism, and to claim, without a shred of evidence, that I have a view (or aim, or intention) of making Christianity more palatable to young people, has anything to do with what I wrote.
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Tony, the problem here might be that I am a conservative orthodox Christian with little patience or concern for the unchurched including their views about Christian dogma or stigma. My own children and grandchildren-so far- are strong in the faith that has been in our New England family without interruption since 1635. I appreciate your concern to reach out to the young people and unchurched folk but am skeptical whether it will have much affect given the corrosive skepticism of most of our secular culture.
I’ve read most of the significant modern apologetics including Lewis and Sayers; lately I read the most impressive contemporary Christian American apologist, Tim Keller’s book, The Reason for Faith: Belief in Age of Skepticism.
Keller who came to New York City as a missionary, mainly to young professionals, has built the Redeemer Presbyterian to a congregation of 6,000 on the basis of orthodox Christianity with no guitar strumming or other pizazz. His two most formative Chrisitan mentors are C,S. Lewis and-gasp-Jonathan Edwards.
I am aware that you might find this another maddening evasion of the issues you are concerned about. I’ll try in the future to be more attentive to your concerns.
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As greatly humorous as I find it to see Tony being accused of being willing to compromise with non-Christian concepts regarding homosexuality, I’ll pass on engaging in that thread and try to focus on Tony’s request for some “dogma” (sorry ahead of time for the absence of Q&A format).
How about:
(1) Hate the sin but not the sinner.
(2) Judge not lest ye be judged (unless, of course, it’s a matter about which you have a fundamnetal disagreement).
(3) I don’t do it if it’s not in the Bible. (Wait a second while I take a sip from my unscriptural cappuccino).
(4) All sins are equal.
(5) Humans were granted dominion over the earth, so therefore we can do anything with it that we like.
(6) Catholics are wrong when they ask the Saints to intercede with God on their behalves because we all know that there is only one mediator between God and man. (And, hey, brother, while you’re in a religious-feeling mood would you pray for my friend who is in the hospital?)
(7) The measure of a preacher’s success is the size of his congregation (unless, of course, his interpretation of the Bible disagrees with mine).
(8) That part of the Bible (e.g. head coverings?) was intended only for [fill in the blank].
Have a GREAT weekend, all.
Jonny
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#35
Peter Leavitt,
I would hope that you don’t mean what you say about having “little patience or concern for the unchurched” quite the way it sounds. How in the world can Christians share the good news of Jesus Christ with people they have “little patience or concern for”?
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Tony,
“a mental conflict between what seems logical and what Scripture teaches. If it’s any consolation, a lot of Church fathers had similar struggles, and not all of them ended up heretics”
How many of these were burned at the stake?
We were talking at home the other day about Calvin having someone burned at the stake for turning his theology the wrong direction. I wonder what was Calvin’s Biblical rational (heaven forbid a prooftext) for burning people at the stake? I haven’t heard a sermon of that par tof Calvin.
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22-
An author, Donald Joy, wrote about this issue regarding women being quiet in the church. It is not to missed. The book is Two Become One
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23-
“Nevertheless, it’s important to see Edwards’ pietism as a departure from classic Reformed orthodoxy.”
Yes, let’s make sure that we don’t fall down from this high place, the high place of classic reformed orthodoxy…the wounds are too great a risk if we fall
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and as for brilliance, Sayers’ or anyone else’s for that matter, what good is it without love, and how do we experience the love at a distance when those brilliant ones we admire so are stuck on a pedastal of our own making?
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On Sayers’ orthodoxy–
Peter, I know this point is late, but it’d be wrong to take Sayers’ theology from her Wimsey books.
Wimsey himself is non-religious (although he makes some interesting philosophical points regarding relgion) … this is actually in one of the short stories (I unfortunately don’t remember which one) as a statement from his lordship.
Sayers is quite obviously religious, thus her theology and faith is not Wimsey’s. Probably–although not assuredly–she merely had no interest in making her stories “Christian” stories and just wrote good stories.
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