Tag: doctrine

When classic rock makes me think of Chesterton

In a sane world Bon Jovi and Green Day would never be considered classic rock. But our culture jettisoned any pretense of sanity some time ago so now I must endure the aforementioned along with Bush, Poison, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers whenever I tune in to our classic rock station. The apocalypse is surely upon us.

But as one obscure pastor has said: Don’t waste your sorrows. Even the heart-breaking heterodoxy of 105.5 will prove redemptive as it further convinces me of an unalterable truth: definitions matter.

Now certainly some definitions are more important than others. Stretching the boundaries of classic rock so that Nirvana makes the playlist is delusional but in the long run it’s of little consequence. [even so, I’m considering a petition to the FCC]

Still, if a radio station’s misnomer can ruin your ride home (Pearl Jam?!?) it’s worth considering that a greater ruin hangs in the balance when the terms of our faith become too elastic.

On this point a passage from Chesterton is particularly poignant:

Last and most important, it is exactly this which explains what is so inexplicable to all the modern critics of the history of Christianity. I mean the monstrous wars about small points of theology, the earthquakes of emotion about a gesture or a word.

 

. . . if some small mistake were made in doctrine, huge blunders might be made in human happiness. A sentence phrased wrong about the nature of symbolism would have broken all the best statues in Europe.

 

. . . A slip in the definitions might stop all the dances; might wither all the Christmas trees or break all the Easter eggs. Doctrines had to be defined with strict limits, even in order that man might enjoy general human liberties. The Church had to be careful, if only that the world might be careless. [Orthodoxy]

Mind those definitions.

‘Bliss is not for sale’

We want, above all, to know what it felt like to be an early Protestant. . . . The experience is that of catastrophic conversion. The man who has passed through it feels like one who has waked from nightmare into ecstasy. Like an accepted lover, he feels that he has done nothing, and never could have done anything to deserve such astonishing happiness. Never again can he ‘crow from the dunghill of desert’. All the initiative has been on God’s side; all has been free unbounded grace. And all will continue to be free, unbounded grace. His own puny and ridiculous efforts would be as helpless to retain the joy as they would have been to achieve it in the first place. Fortunately they need not. Bliss is not for sale, cannot be earned. ‘Works’ have no ‘merit’, though of course faith, inevitably, even unconsciously, flows out into works of love at once. He is not saved because he does works of love: he does works of love because he is saved. It is faith alone that has saved him: faith bestowed by sheer gift. From this buoyant humility, this farewell to the self with all its good resolutions, anxiety, scruples, and motive-scratchings, all Protestant doctrines originally sprang.  –C.S. Lewis

Jellyfish Christianity

[Dislike of dogma] is an epidemic which is just now doing great harm, and especially among young people. . . . It produces what I must venture to call . . . a “jelly-fish” Christianity . . . a Christianity without bone, or muscle, or power. . . . Alas! It is a type of much of the religion of this day, of which the leading principle is, “no dogma, no distinct tenets, no positive doctrine.”

We have hundreds of “jellyfish” clergyman, who seem not to have a single bone in their body of divinity. They have no definite opinions . . . they are so afraid of “extreme views” that they have no views at all.

We have thousands of “jellyfish” sermons preached every year, sermons without an edge, or a point, or corner, smooth as billiard balls, awakening no sinner, and edifying no saint. . . .

And worst of all, we have myriads of “jellyfish” worshipers— respectable Church-going people, who have no distinct and definite views about any point in theology. They cannot discern things that differ, any more than colorblind people can distinguish colors. . . . They are “tossed to and fro, like children, by every wind of doctrine”; . . . ever ready for new things, because they have no firm grasp on the old.

–J. C. Ryle (1816-1900), Principles for Churchmen (London: William Hunt, 8 1084), 97–98. Quoted in J. I. Packer, Faithfulness and Holiness, 72–73.

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