Dogma & Death
Most modern churches of my acquaintance have during my lifetime undergone the highly significant change of delivering their message, whatever it is, by affective means, designed—yes, designed—principally to make Christianity attractive to an audience of predetermined character, rather than to preach and teach a universal and unchanging gospel without consideration of how or whether it might strike a congregation of every mind and estate, leaving its application to a transaction of God and man carried on in the inner chambers of the heart, invisible and inaccessible to those who wish to address a certain kind of audience (e.g., to certain ethnicities, classes, or attitudes).
One of the things lost in this softening is doctrinal preaching, for it is inevitably true that “doctrine divides.” The modern religious mind is interested only in what brings together (“inclusivity”), and advertises this as an unquestionable virtue, in light of which preaching dogma as truth is a vice, and a brutal one at that. Truth is reduced to a generous attitude, and the listener who is seeking it unobscured is left to his own ignorant devices to sort things out.
For this seeker I recommend avoiding the typical church (even if it has a reputation for being “conservative”) and seeking out those that make their teaching on everything (and what they therefore oppose) unmistakable in plain language, without regard to its attractiveness. When this is done, a church’s doctrine may be compared to differing or opposing doctrines and to the Scriptures themselves, and one may find considerable path-clearing in the quest for truth, attractive or not.
For we all know instinctively that a sign of truth is that it will oppose us in many ways, and we will not love it until it changes us. It beckons us to “come and be killed.” But the child of God, hungry for liberty, will run toward this death with all haste.
S. M. Hutchens is a senior editor and longtime writer for Touchstone.
A Journal of Mere Christianity—Delivered to Your Door
- Essays on theology, culture, and the Church
- Contributors from across the Christian traditions
Six print issues (one year) of Touchstone, plus full online access and PDF downloads for only $39.95.
Get a one-year full-access subscription to the Touchstone online archives for only $19.95.
bulk subscriptions
Order Touchstone subscriptions in bulk and save $10 per sub! Each subscription includes 6 issues of Touchstone plus full online access to touchstonemag.com—including archives, videos, and pdf downloads of recent issues for only $29.95 each! Great for churches or study groups.
Transactions will be processed on a secure server.
more on Christianity from the online archives
22.6—July/August 2009
on the Integration of Anger into the Virtuous Life by Leon J. Podles
30.6—Nov/Dec 2017
on Benedict XVI on the Fairest of the Sons of Men by Michael Martin De Sapio
more from the online archives
16.5—June 2003
on the Importance of Fathers to Churchgoing by Robbie Low
24.1—January/February 2011
Ruminations on the Monstrous Envy of the Soul-Devouring State by Anthony Esolen
calling all readers
Please Donate
"There are magazines worth reading but few worth saving . . . Touchstone is just such a magazine."
—Alice von Hildebrand
"Here we do not concede one square millimeter of territory to falsehood, folly, contemporary sentimentality, or fashion. We speak the truth, and let God be our judge. . . . Touchstone is the one committedly Christian conservative journal."
—Anthony Esolen, Touchstone senior editor
