Dogma

The following Chesterton quote came up for discussion at pub night while I was in Florida. I won't know until Thursday how it turned out, but no parties were hospitalised, for which we may all be thankful. There was puzzlement about what exactly GKC was driving at. 

 “Truths turn into dogmas the instant that they are disputed. Thus every man who utters a doubt defines a religion. And the scepticism of our time does not really destroy the beliefs, rather it creates them; gives them their limits and their plain and defiant shape. We who are Liberals once held Liberalism lightly as a truism. Now it has been disputed, and we hold it fiercely as a faith. We who believe in patriotism once thought patriotism to be reasonable, and thought little more about it. Now we know it to be unreasonable, and know it to be right. We who are Christians never knew the great philosophic common sense which inheres in that mystery until the anti-Christian writers pointed it out to us. The great march of mental destruction will go on. Everything will be denied. Everything will become a creed. It is a reasonable position to deny the stones in the street; it will be a religious dogma to assert them. It is a rational thesis that we are all in a dream; it will be a mystical sanity to say that we are all awake. Fires will be kindled to testify that two and two make four. Swords will be drawn to prove that leaves are green in summer. We shall be left defending, not only the incredible virtues and sanities of human life, but something more incredible still, this huge impossible universe which stares us in the face. We shall fight for visible prodigies as if they were invisible. We shall look on the impossible grass and the skies with a strange courage. We shall be of those who have seen and yet have believed.”

I have an advantage here because I have read CS Lewis's discussion of the matter, which is greatly clarifying. Chesterton fans will tell you that everything of Lewis is in Chesterton first. While that may be true, the Chesterton version is often less clear, at least to me. 

One aspect (only one) of the above quote comes in those discussions of "the real meaning of Christmas (or Easter, Passover.)" Chocolate eggs and Jesus risen sang one little child, quite appropriately. Only when this is challenged does dogma start to be defined. "Well, Johnny, the chocolate eggs aren't strictly necessary and might even be a distraction. It's the Jesus risen part that's important." Once the distinction has been made we see that we could have Easter without chocolate eggs, but we couldn't have it without Jesus risen. We might not have apprehended that before. As things are taken away we see the core more clearly. The challenge has defined the doctrine. I wrote at greater length and I hope more poetically fifteen years ago in Festival Worship. Food and music are mentioned prominently.

We see that while we have gained something in terms of clarity in our religion, we have lost a great deal of fun and involvement when we separate out the (usually pagan) bits. The secular members of a post-religious society may want to keep the foods, the music, and the decorations and thus create new "real meanings" of Christmas or Passover.  It's about family. It's about heritage. It's about Peace - meaning either pretty quietness or a political version of the term, not a biblical one. It's about giving. It's about poverty and refugees. These dogmas define a new and different religion because the tree ornaments can't do that. They define nothing, only celebrate it.

I don't say the new religions are entirely unrelated to the old one. They are usually clearly descended from it, taking one of the many doctrinal bits and making it central. That is where the clarity of dogma comes in.  We wouldn't see - indeed we largely haven't seen - that a new religion has emerged if we focused only on the cookies and Santa songs. Memorial Day was about those who had died in battle, now it is about all who have died. Fourth of July and Veterans Day now join it in Generic Patriotic Day with Military Emphasis I-III. The celebrations alone cannot hold the holiday together, dogma is necessary or it erodes. 

Yet put simply, dogma isn't as much fun, at least at first. We can't just enjoy the holiday anymore, we have to believe in it now that unbelief has become a possibility. Failing that, we have to find a new belief, a new dogma to attach to the celebration.