Dogma

Legal nature of a dogma

The dogma is directly related to the concept of authority, according to the technical and critical Vocabulaire of philosophy of Lalande (PUF):

by its etymological origin : “political decision of a sovereign or an assembly”;
by its philosophical direction : “philosophical opinion recognized in a school” which can be interpreted as an allowed opinion between people who adhere to the same authority producing the same doctrines;
by its theological direction : “Doctrines recognized by the authority of a Church”.

By the definition of the “right faith” (orthodoxy) the dogma defines in reverse shot, the Hérésie which professes a different opinion on a discussed point, from the point of view of the authority which promulgates it. The Concile S of the first centuries ruled within this framework on questions of Christologie.

The legal nature of the dogma goes back to the crisis arienne. Previously, the councils are local: they are courts where the minority ones are judged, such that of Hiérapolis which had excluded Montan in 175. With the crisis arienne instead of being local (together with local consequences) the Council, by the will of the emperor, becomes oecumenical and the consequences extend to all the empire. The only exit for the heretic condemned is then the exile.

The emergence of Christianity as official religion of the State involved sometimes a double confusion:

Confusion between religion and social order: In a company where the religion is an element founder, a heresy constitutes a questioning of the social order. This led to the use of the dogma at legal ends, and a repression of the schismatic opinion.
Confusion between dogma and faith: The combat against the heresy resulted in requiring each one which it states publicly the dogmas of the Faith to prove its orthodoxy (what is at the origin of the introduction of the Credo into the Messe), making recitation of the dogma an explicit criterion of the faith.

Theology of the dogma in Catholicism

Dogma and faith

For the Catholicism, the question first to be posed vis-a-vis a dogma is what it means, or more exactly: in what the comprehension of what recovers this statement can it bring closer the believer to God?

From this point of view, which the religious systems must try to transmit through their dogmas is not a arbitrary Philosophie, but something whose legitimacy is justified by the experimental and collective fruit of thousands of years of Méditation S. For Catholicism, the faith is not a intellectual knowledge, but a advance towards God, where the dogmas play the part of means.

There exists an institutional link between our spiritual life and the dogmas. The dogmas are lights on the way of our faith, they light it and make it sure. Conversely, if our life is right, our intelligence and our heart will be open to accommodate the light of the dogmas of the faith| Catechism of the Catholic church, n° 89

Sometimes the institutional link between the Faith and the dogma results in confusing both in an approach (precisely denounced as dogmatic) for which the faith would consist in adhering to the truth dogmas. That would amount believing that it is the Connaissance which makes it possible to be saved, as believe it for example the gnostic . Such a design would be with the eyes of the majority of the Christians a Hérésie.

The dogma in catholic initiation

The comprehension of a dogma is pressed on a course Initiatique, which takes a personal work and time. It is the teaching reaffirmed by the Concile of the Vatican II: a dogma is not an arbitrary statement, but something which must find an echo in the personal life of the faithful one:

The catechumenate is not a simple talk of the dogmas and precepts, but a formation with the integral Christian life and a training by which the disciples are plain to Christ their Master. The catechumens must thus be initiated as one needs for the mystery safety and the practice of evangelic manners, and introduced, by rites crowned to celebrate at successive times, in the life of the faith, the liturgy and the charity of the people of God| Concile Vatican II - Decree AD gentes - n° 14

That which thinks of it by itself, and compares the result so that one said to him, ends up recognizing the concept which hid under the words. It is a Symbole, with the etymological direction: the dogma holds of the formula of recognition, it indicates to that which did not reach the initiatory stage yet that there is something beyond that, and it allows that which crossed it to know that he passed the good door. Thus Saint Augustin includes/understands it:

When a person of a cultivated spirit presents herself to you to be made inform, if it is given to embrace Christianity and ready to receive the baptism, it already has, according to any probability, asset extended an enough knowledge of our holy letters, and it has of another intention to only take part in the sacraments of the Church. These people, indeed, do not wait the moment to embrace the faith to inform themselves; they weigh their reasons before, and, each time they find a confidant, they discover their thoughts and their feelings to him. In this circumstance, it is necessary to be short; and, far from dwelling too long on the truths which they know, one owes the effleurer with tact, in their saying that our dogmas are such and such truth which is undoubtedly familiar for them. One exposes thus, in a fast enumeration, all the principles which it would be necessary to inculcate in simple and with the ignoramuses. Thanks to that method, an enlightened man is not seen teaching, as at the school of a Master, which it knows already; and, on the other hand, if he is unaware of something, he even learns it by the review as we seem to make his knowledge| St Augustin: Treaty of catechism

For a Catechumen, and even for the confirmed Christian who continues the deepening of his faith, the question is not to know if what a dogma states is true or not (one can discuss it only after having reached the corresponding stage), but if it included/understood or not what it means. Each one progresses at its rate/rhythm in the comprehension of the faith. It is normal and sizeable not to include/understand such or such teaching, and to raise questions about its significance.

Faith and reason

The rejection of dogmatism in the name of the Rationalisme is justified there by the idea that the Religion is a source of arbitrary and irrational authority. In fact, the dogma is not immediately accessible to the reason: it seems often an arbitrary statement, even incomprehensible, for that which discovers it. By its nature, indeed, a dogma is not immediately comprehensible - if not it would be only one banal scientific truth. The Church however only asserts to be that an academy of wisdom and spiritual experiment: the transmission of the dogmas is not an act of authority, but a service due to the Truth.

… the Church cannot bind to any philosophical system, whose reign lasts little of time; but the expressions which, during several centuries, were established common assent of the catholic Doctors to arrive at some intelligence of the dogma, do not rest undoubtedly on a so fragile base. They rest, indeed, on principles and notions deduced from the true knowledge of the things created; in the deduction of this knowledge, the revealed truth clarified like a star the human spirit, by the means of the Church. This is why there is not to be not only astonished so some by these concepts were employed in the ecumenical Councils, but received such a sanction from it that it is not allowed to move away some|Jean-Paul II - Fides and ratio

Traditionally, the truth is seen like an almond enclosed in its shell of words: the bark should be broken. To reject as forgery what was not included/understood amounts throwing the baby with the water of the bath: it is simply that one did not succeed in breaking the shell to reach almond. The attitude open vis-a-vis the dogma consists in putting the idea on side (" that, I do not know only that signifie"), and to progress internally , until the day when one realizes that one can break the shell (" it was thus that… ").

Dogma in the Christian religions

For the catholics , only teaching should be only the word of God, since there is no possible human teaching (Thomas d' Aquin, De Magistro , Of veritate ).

For the Churches resulting from the Reform ,

when they are fundamentalist, the design inerrantist is indisputably dogmatic. Only the source of the dogma differs; instead of the tradition, the Scriptures (the Bible) are the sovereign authority . For Christianity evangelic, from a principal dogma the authority and the verbal inherency of the Bible rise all the others which are famous scripturaires . In the churches congregationnalists, Pasteur and, generally, the old ones, train magistère in fact if not right.
If any preaching, any doctrinal decision, must subject to interpretation writings, the variety of the theological schools led, in the other churches that quoted above, the free examination is the dominant tendency, as indicated in the column of right-hand side of the table above. No magistère is competent to interpret in an exclusive or final way, the biblical text.

Philosophy

History of dogmatism

Dogmatism is a philosophy of the knowledge which considers that the man with the possibility of reaching an absolute truth by means of the reason, even in research metaphysics. With important nuances, it makes the bottom of the doctrines of Plato, Aristote, of the Stoïciens and the Néo-platoniciens. On the contrary, the dogmas are rejected by philosophical schools like the Rationalisme and the Scepticisme.

Later, it is found at Descartes, Leibnitz and Spinoza. In the history of philosophy, he is usually opposed to the Scepticisme. However, as of antiquity, an intermediate solution that one calls the Probabilisme, was proposed by Carnéade.

The debate of knowledge is still between dogmatism, skepticism and probabilism. Under the influence of the criticism of Kant and Positivism, many thinkers dispute indeed the absolute value of metaphysics " rationnelles" , but believe possible to carry out an increasing approximation of the truth, even in metaphysics.

The Dogma from the point of view of religious Sciences

In the table which follows, one uses the distinction established by Louis-Auguste Sabatier between Religions of authority and Religion of the spirit, either of the Libre examination, or the Orthopraxie S. Indeed, all the religions do not have dogmas (doctrines attracting a more or less obligatory adhesion); it is a Christian speciality. In the Christian confessions where the dogma is " obligatoire" , the faith is confused with the beliefs. In the others confession S and more largely the others abrahamic Religion S, the faith is considered to come from God or of the gods and does not have a bond with the beliefs.

Critical of the dogma

The Science does not admit any dogma owing to the fact that all scientific Théorie is prone to criticism, the Axiome S starting which can be called into question. In theory, a scientific theory does not comprise a value judgment and rests on facts duly observed and checked. It is the Interprétation of these facts which can be of doubtful validity, even if their scientific authors admit, sometimes with difficulty, the questioning of their discoveries.

The dogmatism of the Catholic church was highly criticized by the scientists and the philosophers of the Lumières, particularly the attitude of certain theologists at the 17th century about the business Galileo and of his judgment for the Dialog on the two great systems of the world (1633). The Révolution copernician was carried out XVIe at the 18th century in reaction to the Obscurantisme. The philosophers of the Lights, in particular Rousseau in the Social Contract end to the system of equations according to:

Church--> heteronomy

State --> autonomy

Marcel Gauchet remarks “the Revolution is brought to remake for its account the way of thought leading of the political subordination of the religion to the metaphysical assertion of autonomy. ” (the religion in the Democracy, page 70)

Bonds and references

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