Kevin Deegan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
"The Wants of the Times," J. C. Ryle (1816-1900)"that the professing Church of the nineteenth century is much damaged by laxity and indistinctness about matters of doctrine within, as much as by skeptics and unbelievers without. Myriads of professing Christians seem nowadays utterly unable to distinguish things that differ. Like people afflicted with colour blindness, they are incapable of discerning what is true and what is false, what is sound and what is unsound. Popery and Protestantism, an atonement or no atonement, a personal Holy Ghost or no Holy Ghost, future punishment or no future punishment . . . nothing comes amiss to them; they can swallow it all, if they cannot digest it! Carried away by a fancied liberality and charity they seem to think everybody is right and nobody is wrong . . . everybody is going to be saved and nobody is going to be lost. . . . They dislike distinctness and think all extreme and decided and positive views are very naughty and very wrong."
"These people live in a kind of mist or fog. They see nothing clearly and they do not know what they believe. They have not made up their minds about any great point of the Gospel and seem content to be honorary members of all schools of thought." Elsewhere he describes this "creed" as "Nothingarianism."
From the LIBERALITY which says everybody is right,
From the CHARITY which forbids us to say that anyone is wrong,
From the PEACE which is bought at the expense of truth--
May the good Lord deliver us.J C Ryle
http://www.banneroftruth.org/pages/articles/article_detail.php?239
In his paper of that title, Ryle explained that dogma is simply definite; ascertained truth. If there is no dogma there is no known truth. "Dogmatic theology is the statement of positive truths of religion." He draws attention to the difference between dogma in science and religion, In the former it is presumption, in the latter it is a positive duty. Science has no revealed truth, only induction; we ought therefore to be modest in our assertions. In religion, on the contrary, we start with an infallible Book to guide us. With the Bible in the minister's hands, there ought to be nothing faltering, hesitating and indefinite in his exhibition of the things necessary to salvation.
"It is not enough,to say simply, We believe the Bible. We must understand what the leading facts and doctrines of the Bible are, and that is exactly the point of creeds and confessions, and why they are useful."
"The victories of Christianity ... have been won by distinct doctrinal theology. Christianity without dogma is a powerless thing. No dogma, no fruits."
'let all honest, true-hearted churchmen ... stickto the old paths. Let no sneers, no secret desire to please, and conciliate the public, tempt us to leave the old paths. Let us beware of being foggy and hazy in our statements. Let us he specific in our doctrine. It was dogma in the apostolic age which emptied the heathen temples and shook Greece and Rome. It was dogma that awoke Christendom from its slumbers at the time of the Reformation and spoiled the pope of one third of his subjects. It was dogma which a hundred years ago revived the Church of England." "I desire," he said, "to raise a warning voice against the growing disposition to sacrifice dogma on the altar of so-called unity... . Peace may be bought too dear, and it is bought too dear if we keep back any portion of Gospel truth in order to exhibit to men a hollow semblance of agreement! Let us never compromise sound doctrine for the sake of pleasing anyone, whether he be Bishop or presbyter, Romanist or Infidel, Ritualist or Neologian, Churchman or Dissenter or Plymouth Brother. Let our principle be, amicus Socrates, amicus Plato sed magis amicus veritas!" "Well says Martin Luther: Accursed is that charity which is preserved by shipwreck of faith or truth, to which all things must give place, both charity, and apostle, or an angel from heaven." Well would it have been if those who professed to be evangelicals in the Church of England had heeded those words and eschewed involvement in ecumenical dialogue and engagement with other traditions, and had not been ashamed to be dogmatic.
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