Christians really boil my blood sometimes. And this time, it stems from one simply sentence: they always have to be right about everything.
And I’m not even talking heresy, here. In Christianity, our core doctrines (take, for instance, the Apostles creed) are pretty loose and limber.
Apostle’s Creed:
I believe in God, the Father Almighty,
the Creator of heaven and earth,
and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord:Who was conceived of the Holy Spirit,
born of the Virgin Mary,
suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, died, and was buried.He descended into the dead.
The third day He arose again.
He ascended into heaven
and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty,
whence He shall come to judge the living and the dead.I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy *catholic church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and life everlasting.Amen.
See? Lots of wiggle room. The problem is, hard denominationalism seems to liken people towards dogmas.
*Definition time* dogmas = denominational creeds - A particular interpretation of a doctrine. For example, the Church has always believed that our Lord is truly and really present in the Sacrament of the Altar. This is a doctrine. Transubstantiation, which is a explanation of how He is present, is a dogma. - www.theadvent.org/liturgy/glossary.htm
Dogmas tend to divide people – see the worship post from Saturday – and a divisive Christianity is a useless Christianity. Adherence to universal doctrine that the Church has been able to hold on to since the 4th Century AD/CE is what we need to shoot for, not the details. I think I disagree with the idea of RC transubstantiation vs. an easy symbolic communion but I will still embrace my Roman Catholic brother, because his community has an ethic of sin confession that my presbyterian background sorely lacks.
Now, it’s important to differentiate between hard denominational dogmatics and tradition. Tradition is great. Without tradition, we wouldn’t have our creeds, the deep meanings of Christian symbolism/liturgies, or even the realization of the Trinity! The Church Fathers are deep thinkers; check out Athanasius – cool guy. The problem is, people tend to throw out ‘tradition’ because they are pushing toward an ‘openness’, but they keep hard to the dogmas, which were the problem in the first place!
So. Conlclusion: Tradition = Good, Hard Denominational Dogmatics = Bad. Let us embrace tradition, while casting off our closed-ness to other dogmatics.
-WK
