Dogma & Death
Most modern churches of my acquaintance have during my lifetime undergone the highly significant change of delivering their message, whatever it is, by affective means, designed—yes, designed—principally to make Christianity attractive to an audience of predetermined character, rather than to preach and teach a universal and unchanging gospel without consideration of how or whether it might strike a congregation of every mind and estate, leaving its application to a transaction of God and man carried on in the inner chambers of the heart, invisible and inaccessible to those who wish to address a certain kind of audience (e.g., to certain ethnicities, classes, or attitudes).
One of the things lost in this softening is doctrinal preaching, for it is inevitably true that “doctrine divides.” The modern religious mind is interested only in what brings together (“inclusivity”), and advertises this as an unquestionable virtue, in light of which preaching dogma as truth is a vice, and a brutal one at that. Truth is reduced to a generous attitude, and the listener who is seeking it unobscured is left to his own ignorant devices to sort things out.
For this seeker I recommend avoiding the typical church (even if it has a reputation for being “conservative”) and seeking out those that make their teaching on everything (and what they therefore oppose) unmistakable in plain language, without regard to its attractiveness. When this is done, a church’s doctrine may be compared to differing or opposing doctrines and to the Scriptures themselves, and one may find considerable path-clearing in the quest for truth, attractive or not.
For we all know instinctively that a sign of truth is that it will oppose us in many ways, and we will not love it until it changes us. It beckons us to “come and be killed.” But the child of God, hungry for liberty, will run toward this death with all haste.
S. M. Hutchens is a Touchstone senior editor.
Get six issues (one year) of Touchstone PLUS full online access including pdf downloads for only $39.95. That's only $3.34 per month!
Get a one-year full-access subscription to the Touchstone online archives for only $19.95. That's only $1.66 per month!
bulk subscriptions
Order Touchstone subscriptions in bulk and save $10 per sub! Each subscription includes 6 issues of Touchstone plus full online access to touchstonemag.com—including archives, videos, and pdf downloads of recent issues for only $29.95 each! Great for churches or study groups.
Transactions will be processed on a secure server.
more on Christianity from the online archives
27.5—Sept/Oct 2014
on Growing Vegetables as a Primer in Moral Philosophy by Rachel Lu
30.3—May/June 2017
Insider Attempts to Disorient the Orthodox by Alexander F. C. Webster
more from the online archives
31.4—July/August 2018
The Difficulty of Apologetics for Dead Souls in the Real World by R. J. Snell
27.2—March/April 2014
Higher Education Should Advance the Glorious Liberty of the Sons of God by Anthony Esolen
17.6—July/August 2004
Old Science Confronts a Formidable Challenge in the Scientific ID Movement by Jay W. Richards
calling all readers
Please Donate
"There are magazines worth reading but few worth saving . . . Touchstone is just such a magazine."
—Alice von Hildebrand
"Here we do not concede one square millimeter of territory to falsehood, folly, contemporary sentimentality, or fashion. We speak the truth, and let God be our judge. . . . Touchstone is the one committedly Christian conservative journal."
—Anthony Esolen, Touchstone senior editor
