The Challenge of Dogma
“That the Church repeatedly seeks to secure a faith that is not vulnerable to judgement and to put cross and conversion behind it is manifest in every century of Christian history. But in so doing, it cuts itself off from the gift that lies beyond the void of the cross, and imprisons itself in the kind of self-understanding it can master or control. In such a perspective, the question about dogma becomes a question about how the Church retains a faithful sense of the accessibility of God’s promises; though the (obvious) paradox is that dogma has so often been understood as precisely the sign of the Church’s command of the data of revelation, the sign of something being ‘done with’ and settled rather than of a challenge left open. Because of this misperception of the function of dogma, the Church’s dogmatic activity, its attempts to structure its public and common language in such a way that the possibilities of judgement and renewal are not buried, must constantly be chastened by the awareness that it so acts in order to give place to the freedom of God—the freedom of God from the Church’s sense of itself and its power, and thus the freedom of God to renew and absolve. This is why dogmatic language becomes empty and even destructive of faith when it is isolated from a lively and converting worship and a spirituality that is not afraid of silence and powerlessness. The more God becomes function to the legitimizing either of ecclesiastical order or of private religiosities, the easier it is to talk of God; the easier it is to talk of God, the less such talk gives place to the freedom of God. And that suggests that there is an aspect of dogmatic utterance that has to do with making it harder to talk about God.”
—Rowan William, “Beginning with the Incarnation,” in On Christian Theology, p. 83–84.
23 October 2007 |
tags: Theological Ethics, Tradition
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As (aspiring) theologians, how do we act from this understanding of dogma without merely giving primacy to an academic or elite language? Or reverting to a sort of gnosticism?
I don’t think that these are necessary or logical effects of this understanding of dogma, but possible (and probable) ways of failing it.
It seems to me that the Archbishop has nipped the problems of elitism and gnosticism in the bud by indicating that dogma must always be tied to “lively and converting worship and a spirituality that is not afraid of silence and powerlessness.” Liturgy and spirituality, as concrete instances of openness to God’s freedom to “renew and absolve,” assume an importance which relativizes dogmatic language. Thus relativized, dogmatic language cannot form the basis of academic or gnostic elitism – it’s not the dogmas that save, but the Lord to whom they point.
I think that one promising way of actually getting this to work in practice is to acknowledge the priority of praxis over theory: we always have to be disciples before we can be theologians, and theology exists to help us be disciples. Academic theology is always a reflection on a liturgically formed living. This means that I am a worse theologian the less I participate in the liturgy, the less I pray, and the less I commit myself concretely to works of charity. Discipleship is the beginning and end of theology, and therefore of dogma. (Which all explains why I’m such a bad theologian.)