Dogmatists Against Dogma

The following excerpt is from James Walker’s The Theology and Theologians of Scotland, which we have just typeset and republished in a clothbound edition. Walker is here responding to the criticism of Scottish Christianity which faults it for being too doctrinal:

‘Then, again, I think the idea has taken possession of many in our day, that Scotch religion is a religion of speculative dogma, with little in it of the personal Christ. Now it seems to me there is a great deal said at present about Doctrine or Dogma which means nothing. How can you act in regard to or feel about a thing, save as you have some conception and some opinion concerning it? You must have some opinion about the person of Christ, if He is to be an element in your practical life. How can He act on you otherwise? And, therefore, as you are Trinitarian, or Arian, or Unitarian, or Humanitarian, or something else, so will be the effect on you. And, in fact, the man who abuses dogmas is as much a dealer in dogmas as his neighbours. What is it but a dogma—generally asserted, indeed, with a fierce and contemptuous fanaticism, and carried out with a remorseless logic—that there should be no dogmas? Like scepticism, this sort of thing kills itself. Say what men will, all action, all organization, all religious or irreligious fellowship, is based upon a Credo.

In regard to many who bring the accusation most readily about Scottish doctrinalism, I assert that there are none more doctrinal than themselves. The Broad Churchman maintains the doctrine of the Divine Fatherhood; puts that doctrine into definite conception; argues on the basis of that doctrine to immense conclusions, which make illusive a large amount of the deepest and most powerful experiences of Christian history. The Unitarian maintains the doctrine of the Divine Unity, and evolves therefrom proposition after proposition, overthrowing, as he thinks, all the life-giving Christian beliefs.

The real truth is that orthodoxy is chary of the speculative. Mystery is one of its fundamental ideas. The Theosophic¹Presumably here the idea intended is that the knowledge of God can be achieved through direct intuition. belongs far more to heterodox Alexandrianism than orthodox Augustinianism. I do not think that it can be affirmed of Calvin, that he was as supreme in the metaphysical or speculative as in all else. Certainly our Scottish theology is not in any proper sense a metaphysical system, though there has been often a cloud or a halo of metaphysics about it, but the product in the main of an honest study of the Bible and a practical religious experience. The doctrines which have been prominently taught among us, such as the atonement of Christ, justification, the new birth, the indwelling of the Holy Ghost, are not in any sense speculative human reasonings, but transcendent facts,—mysteries which, according to all experience, tell with prodigious power on the human soul, and take hold of the deepest convictions of the least philosophical and cultured.

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Featured Picture (visible when article shared online): Alexander Nasmyth, 1758–1840, View of the City of Edinburgh, ca. 1822, Oil on canvas, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection, B1974.3.21.