VI

DOGMATIC RELIGION

HERE are two words which invariably stir the wrath of the "liberal thinker," the words dogma and asceticism. On the other hand, it is the mark of a Catholic thinker to be able to live comfortably with these words and what they stand for. The offence of dogma is that it imposes limits on speculation, that it asserts that certain truths are definitely ascertained. The claim of liberalism is that there are no fixed truths and that all statements of fact are eternally open to question and that certainty in any matter is impossible. This conception of truth reduces the Church, in the words of the Russian writer, Khomiakoff, to "a society of good men, differing in all their opinions, but earnestly seeking for truth, with a total certainty that it has not yet been found, and with no hope at all ever to find it.”

From this point of view the Christian Religion is a fluid system of opinions subject to constant change. If that were true we may be pretty

certain that the Christian Religion would have long ago ceased to exist. This is not a guess; the Christian centuries have seen the rise and fall of innumerable systems of thought — philosophies, religions, heresies the speculations of thinkers great and small. They rose and flourished and declined, but the Christian Religion went on. Many of them, in the hours of their triumph, proclaimed that Christianity was a thing of the past, a superstition which was fast losing its hold on the human mind. Most of these boasters have been long buried and their names forgotten; but Christianity goes on. There are those to-day who publish it abroad that they are watching by the death-bed of Christianity, but Christianity will see the grass growing on their graves as green as that upon the graves of their prede

cessors.

The Christian Religion survives and will survive precisely because it is not a system of speculative thought, but because it has fixed truth to offer. It is eternal because it is dogmatic. It is, of course, the only religion which can be dogmatic, because it alone is possessed of certainty. Natural religions are religions which man thinks out for himself. He considers the phenomena of nature and life and draws conclusions which he generalizes in a religious system. Such religious

systems are subject to constant change because the more man thinks about nature and life, the more he sees (or thinks he sees) into their meaning. His conclusions of to-day will be displaced by the new conclusions of to-morrow. But supernatural religion is God's communication of knowledge about Himself and the universe He has made, and of His abiding relation to it.

The opposition of the modern man to religious dogma is mysterious. In other departments of knowledge a dogmatic system is sought. Dogma, - I learned when a boy from somebody's book, and the definition has been unceasingly useful to me,- dogma "is positive truth positively expressed." I do not see that anyone can object to that unless they feel that they have no truth to express.

I know it will be said that "it is not the truth we object to, but the hard and fast, the stereotyped, expression of it. After all, the Christian Religion goes back to the New Testament, and there are no dogmas there." No doubt: the Christian Religion goes back even behind the New Testament to a body of knowledge and experience of which the New Testament is a partial expression. It is true that dogmatic statements do not characterize the New Testament; yet if dogmas are positive truths positively expressed there

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would seem to be a good many of them there. There are certain dogmas" concerning God, for instance: God is Light, God is spirit, God is love. These are quite positive statements. There are plenty of others. "Except a man be born again he cannot see the kingdom of God." "Except ye be converted and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven." This is my Body." "This is my Blood."

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"But these statements are not developed into a creed. It is one thing to say that God is love, and another to say that He is Trinity in Unity and Unity in Trinity. Why not be content with the first saying, God is Love? We can all agree on that." I am afraid we could not. I am afraid that we could all agree on it only on condition that we should none of us think about it. It is not at all true that all men are agreed as to the meaning of love; and we can only have the appearance of agreeing on condition that we stop thinking. Men who think, disagree; we may like it or not, but that is the fact. And we can hardly suppose that the opponents of dogma are the opponents of thought: on the contrary, they are the "thinkers" par excellence. The difference is that the undogmatic thinker does not regard his conclusions as certain; that is, he does

not so hold them in theory; in practice, there have been no greater dogmatists than these same undogmatic thinkers.

We may state the matter thus. The undogmatic thinker starts from premises that are hypothetical and reaches conclusions that are disputable. The dogmatic thinker starts from premises which he regards as fixed, and will submit his conclusions to the criticism of other truths which are equally fixed. He knows that his reasoning is erroneous if his conclusions bring him into opposition with the ascertained body of Christian dogma. The liberal, on the basis of his personal conclusions, has no hesitation in saying that the whole Christian past has been mistaken if it differs from him; the Christian dogmatist has no difficulty in saying that he is mistaken if his conclusions conflict with the Christian past.

The Creed, no doubt, is not explicitly in the Scriptures; it is not even derived from the Scriptures. It is the result of an attempt of the Christian consciousness to formulate its experience of our Lord. As such it can be checked up and verified by means of that other record of experience of our Lord which we call the New Testament. Ceaselessly thinking upon this experience and all that is implied in it, and gathering deeper experience as time went on, the Church was able