The Freedom of Dogma

Karen Armstrong, a prolific author of theological books, left the convent because she could not pray.  It seems to me that she failed at the formula, and was freed into the presence of God beyond its restrictions.  She finds God, she says, in study, much as Jewish scholars do during long hours of relationship to text.  On many mornings instead of sitting down at my keyboard to write, I put on layers of warm clothes and go out into the eternity of air and space and silence in the wintry dark.  And as I am consoled by the beautiful, challenging, curving roads that give my feet ways to walk, I give my mind similar trails by listening to good books.  For several days I listened to Karen Armstrong read her book The Case for God.  I deeply enjoyed her thinking, and one particular idea opened a door, freeing me into the presence of God not by leaving my church, but by entering it more deeply.  The Door was marked DOGMA.

Her statement was elegant: simple and clear.  Dogmas like the Trinity and the Virgin Birth and the Resurrection are at worst tests of fidelity, mental shibboleths that justify our exclusion or annihilation of anyone who cannot pronounce them as certainly true.  But at best, Dogmas are mysteries that take us into a silence beyond words.

To de-fine God literally means to set his limits, de fine the Latin words for “to the end”.  The Jesuits refer to God as the Magis, the “more”.  Like Armstrong, Ignatius invites us not to the restriction of words and definitions, but to the beyondness of God, to an initiation that is not the cloak of some secret society, but an initial step into a new open, fresh and freshening world.  By climbing into dogma, we do not enter a cave, but the world in its entirety, its endlessness.  In a world without walls, God is found in every direction.