QOTD: Dorothy L. Sayers on the Crisis of Doctrine

Here's English playwright Dorothy L. Sayers, from her work Creed or Chaos? Why Christians Must Choose Either Dogma or Disaster:

It it is worse than useless for Christians to talk about the importance of Christian morality, unless they are prepared to take their stand upon the fundamentals of Christian theology. It is a lie to say that dogma does not matter; it matters enormously. It is fatal to let people suppose that Christianity is only a mode of feeling; it is vitally necessary to insist that it is first and foremost a rational explanation of the universe. It is hopeless to offer Christianity as a vaguely idealistic aspiration of a simple and consoling kind; it is, on the contrary, a hard, tough, exacting, and complex doctrine, steeped in a drastic and uncompromising realism. And it is fatal to imagine that everybody knows quite well what Christianity is and needs only a little encouragement to practice it. The brutal fact is that in this Christian country not one person in a hundred has the faintest notion what the Church teaches about God or man or society or the person of Jesus Christ ... Theologically this country is at present is in a state of utter chaos established in the name of religious toleration and rapidly degenerating into flight from reason and the death of hope.

Emphasis added. (HT: The White Horse Inn)

Neuhaus' Law and the Forthcoming Intolerance

I just read this Presbyterian Outlook article by Barbara G. Wheeler and John Wilkinson, pleading with orthodox Presbyterians to stick with the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) in the face of the likely removal of biblical fidelity and chastity standards from the denomination's ordination standards.

The article immediately brought to mind something Richard John Neuhaus wrote several years ago. At that time, Neuhaus addressed what happens to orthodoxy when it's made optional. Lo and behold, Neuhaus' words were reprinted in the latest issue of First Things magazine. What a happy coincidence.

I've found "Neuhaus' Law" to be very helpful in interpreting the times of my own denomination (PCUSA) and other mainline denominations:

Where orthodoxy is optional, orthodoxy will sooner or later be proscribed ... Orthodoxy suggests that there is a right and a wrong, a true and a false, about things. When orthodoxy is optional, it is admitted under a rule of liberal tolerance that cannot help but be intolerant of talk about right and wrong, true and false. It is therefore a conditional admission, depending upon orthodoxy’s good behavior. The orthodox may be permitted to believe this or that and to do this or that as a matter of sufferance, allowing them to indulge their inclination, preference, or personal taste. But it is an intolerable violation of the etiquette by which one is tolerated if one has the effrontery to propose that this or that is normative for others. [Emphasis added.]

Despite all the protestations to the contrary, proscription of orthodoxy is precisely what will happen if the revisionists succeed, as they almost certainly will, in altering with the denomination's deminished ordination standards. All will be well, until that first person ordained under the diminished standards gets called to a predominantly orthodox presbytery.

Needed: "Intimacy Hedges"

Douglas Wilson is the pastor of Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho.  He's a wonderful writer and thinker, and he has gifted us this New Year with a very insightful blog post entitled "Priests with Spears."  In summary, this is a post contra the culture's tendency toward what Wilson calls, rightly, "Oprahfication."  Wilson argues that unhindered "sharing" actually destroys trust and inhibits healthy communication amongst the faithful. What's the solution? Here's an excerpt:

This standard could be called an intimacy hedge. Outsiders are not privileged to share in certain things that do not belong to them. The same standard, adjusted in accordance with the situation, applied to our kids growing up. Outside the family, you just don't talk about certain things. I am not talking about a hypocrisy wall; I am talking about an intimacy hedge. A family full of sin that "keeps up appearances" is no good either. This realm of intimacy means that you protect something in order to give to your wife and family, and it is known by them to be precious because you refuse to share it with anybody else. When the walls of the vineyard are broken down, the wild boars cannot be wished away (Ps. 80:12-13). If you lament the state of your vineyard, one thing to check would be the fences.

All pastors and parishioners should read the whole thing.

The Big Issues - How Can the Church Prepare?

via thegospelcoalition.org

Tim Keller has penned an excellent analysis of what the church ought to be doing to address the huge challenges it currently faces. One of his recommendations stands out in my mind - a renewal of apologetics in the church. Keller believes that the contemporary church's laxity in this area reflects a larger hole in western thinking. Keller cites two primary reasons for renewed Christian apologetics:

First, Christians in the West will finally be facing what missionaries around the world have faced for years — how to communicate the gospel to Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, and adherents of various folk religions. All young church leaders should take courses in and read the texts of the other major world religions. They should also study the gospel presentations written by missionaries engaging those religions. Loving community will be extremely important, as it always is, to reach out to neighbors of other faiths, but if they are going to come into the church, they will have many questions that church leaders today need to be able to answer.

Second, there a real vacuum in western secular thought. When Derrida died I was surprised how many of his former students admitted that High Theory (what evangelicals call ‘post-modernism’) is seen as a dead end, mainly because it is so relativistic that it provides no basis for political action. And a leading British intellectual like Terry Eagleton in recent lectures at Yale (published as Religion, Faith, and Revolution by Yale Press) savaged the older scientific atheism of Dawkins and Hitchens as equally bankrupt. Eagleton points out that the Enlightenment’s optimism about science and human progress is dead. Serious western thought is not going back to that, no matter how popular Dawkins’ books get. But postmodernism cannot produce a basis for human rights or justice either.

Emphasis added.  I think this analysis is spot-on. If you are interested in apologetics, I can recommend a wonderful starter book called the Holman QuickSource Guide to Christian Apologetics by Doug Powell.

Please note that if you elect to purchase the book through the above link, I will receive a small percentage of the sale price.

Posted via web from The Central Point