TEXAS FAITH: Does faith in God differ from dogma and morality? | Texas Faith Blog on Astini News
HOWARD COHEN, Lecturer in Jewish/Christian Relations and member of Congregation Shearith Israel and Congregation Beth Torah, Dallas
This is a difficult question for me as a Jew to answer. Jews have no dogma, i.e. a formal list of tenets that is authorized by some central, religious authority. We have no creed of belief, or set of beliefs, to which everyone must adhere, thus defining us as Jews. We don't have a set of universally accepted principles to which we must agree or, for those lacking that agreement, excludes them from the Jewish people. Our only dogma may be that we don't have one.
In Judaism, actions are far more important than beliefs. Paying lip service to a creed, a dogma, a doctrine without consequent actions in the world is of little value. We fully understand the charge that dogma can become an idol of its own. People worship the tenets of their faith, not the God who is behind it.
Jews and Christians will recognize the above as the theme of the Jewish prophets who screamed out against the empty gesture of following the rituals without the consequent change in behavior, behavior that would in turn repair the world.
Similarly, faith is difficult to define in Jewish terms. There have been principles of faith listed in our history, but their significance was based on the respect engendered by the authors of the list of principles. Although attempts have been made over the centuries to organize a list of principles of faith, all such lists have lacked the central, universally recognized, binding authority required to make them central to the definition of a Jew.
DEAL HUDSON, President, Catholic Advocate, Washington D.C.
Is there a distinction between faith in God and dogma and morality?
Let's see: faith is a virtue of the will informed by the intellect; dogma is a set of propositions embraced by faith; morality is a standard for human action. Yes, there are differences, yet they necessarily intertwine. Faith must be about something; dogma must serve a human end; and morality contains elements of both belief and prescriptions.
Can these interrelated parts be disconnected? Of course -- trace the long history of fanaticism, heresy or the occult -- study Gnosticism and Catharism. All the precursors of modern Puritanism and the New Age are there.
MATTHEW WILSON, Assistant Professor of Political Science, Southern Methodist University
Of course there is a difference between faith and dogma. A religious belief that is entirely about rule, ritual, and taboo, without any experience of the living, loving God, is hollow and spiritually deadening.
Jesus himself emphasized this distinction two millennia ago, condemning the Pharisees for whom the scrupulous, public observance of ritual and law had taken the place of a real love for God and man. In contemporary culture, the "pinched sourpuss" moralist (about whom there will usually be revelations of stunning hypocrisy) has become a stock character in literature, film, and television. I think we have all been duly cautioned about excesses in this direction.
At the same time, however, it is important to remember that ours is a generally relativistic age, and that the much greater danger to people of faith today is error in the opposite direction: the complete abandonment of objective doctrine and morality.
We have to remember that, while faith and dogma are not the same thing, they are not enemies either. Are Orthodox Jews, who live by a very strong code of dogma, ritual, and morality, necessarily devoid of "real" faith for this reason? What about Muslims or Catholics who are careful to follow all of the prescriptions and injunctions of their traditions? Are these people all like the Pharisees, missing out on "true" spirituality? I would submit that the answer is obviously "no," and that dismissing the more orthodox, seriously observant members of our traditions as mere Pharisees can be a convenient way to justify our own intellectual and spiritual laxity in the practice of our faith.
Speaking from the standpoint of my own Catholic tradition, for every one believer whose faith may be hampered by excessive dogmatism and moralizing, there are five more who are poorly catechized, ignorant of some of the core teachings (or "dogmas," if you will) of their own faith, and inclined to draw their moral code as much from the surrounding secular culture as from Scripture and tradition.
Can dogmatism and moralism in some cases be an impediment to deeper, more vibrant faith? Absolutely. At their best, however, dogma and morality are real helps to the faith, giving form and structure to an otherwise inchoate yearning for God.
Any person of faith necessarily asks two fundamental questions: What is the nature of God, and what does God want for and from me? Dogma and morality seek to answer these questions, and to do so with the collective wisdom, reasoning, and revelation of millennia of human experience. The individual believer is not alone in his quest for answers to those basic questions, and should use the dogmatic and moral teachings of his faith as guideposts in a genuine journey toward closer union with God.
CYNTHIA RIGBY, W.C. Brown Professor of Theology, Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary
I put my trust in God, not in dogma. God, I believe, is a steadfast and loving Subject, the one who claimed me before the foundation of the world, the One to whom I belong in life and in death.
Dogma is not an acting subject; it does not love; I don't belong to it. When I invest in dogma as though it is the object of my worship or the organizing principle of my life, I have committed the sin of idolatry. Religious tenets become false gods, I fear, way more often then we realize - gods we can "piously" hide under or self-righteously wield as weapons against those who do not subscribe in exactly the way we do.
Protestants hold that all believers are called to study, learn from, and even contribute to the shaping of the dogmas (or "doctrines," or "teachings") of the church. This idea brings me great joy and a sense of purpose: that the Holy Spirit works through the community of faith (the "priesthood of all believers") as we together engage in prayerful and diligent reflection on Scripture and on life, striving to bear witness to who God is and how God is present in this world.
In my theological tradition - Reformed Protestantism, following in the trajectory of John Calvin (16th c) and Karl Barth (20th c) - we like to remind ourselves that all doctrines are subject to the authority of the living God, who continuously works to make all things new. We are "Reformed and always reforming," we like to say, "according to the Word of God." Functionally, therefore, our "Book of Confessions" (that part of our constitution which articulates Christian doctrine as we understand it) is "open." This means that our confessions may be corrected or added to as the church - through the power of the Spirit - sees fit.
Our "always reforming . . . according to the Word of God" position on doctrine is intended continuously to redirect us toward the One we trust implicitly - the One who loves us unconditionally, the One from whom nothing can separate us, the One who invites us into ever-deeper understanding
DARRELL BOCK, Research Professor of New Testament Studies, Dallas Theological Seminary
This question is complex because for many faiths, dogma involves descriptions of God that are defined by revelation, so although faith in God and dogma are distinct categories, what one believes about God is tied to dogma.
Islam, for example, has a God to whom one primarily is to be submissive, but is not defined in very personal relational terms, while for Judaism and Christianity the idea of God as relational and tied to covenant connections is more prominent. This impacts morality, which as behavior is yet a third but related category.
Morality is rooted in how one applies categories like love, justice, forgiveness, compassion, righteousness, accountability and who counts as a being to be treated with respect. Morality by some is said to apply only to insiders, while for other groups morality applies to all groups.
So perhaps more important than these distinctions is how one sees the moral obligation. The Christian tradition, when it is at its best, has spoken of a broad moral commitment to love one's neighbor (including one's enemy) and respect all as beings created in God's image and worthy of moral treatment. Thus the scope of the moral commitment may be more important than the distinction in these categories.
DANIEL KANTER, Senior Minister, First Unitarian Church of Dallas
What is wrong with values?
In a world where both belief in God and the following of dogma sometimes supplants values-based behavior, I wonder who is it that is creating this hierarchy of importance.
My Unitarian Universalist faith is a non-dogmatic creed-free tradition. What unifies us is neither a definition of God we all must accept nor a dogma, but rather shared values that start with the dignity and worth of all human beings and end with an awareness of our ultimate interdependence. When religious faith is so focused on either a God or a dogma that it draws us away from understanding this core value of faith and creates actions that treat some with dignity and all of us as independent of each other, we all lose.
LARRY BETHUNE, Senior Pastor, University Baptist Church, Austin
We may distinguish between relationship with God and our beliefs about God or derived rules of behavior, but only for purposes of discussion. Just as "spirit" and "flesh" may be distinguished but never actually separated, faith and dogma/morality are never separated in Christian theology. One always leads to the other.
"Spirituality" includes whatever has to do with the human spirit, the engagement of our deepest, whole self, collectively or individually. In the religious sense, spirituality is the relationship between the human spirit and the Divine Spirit. In the Jewish and Christian Scriptures, healthy relationship between the human spirit ("righteousness") and healthy relationship between human spirits ("justice") are inseparable and equal.
Thus, the Ten Commandments include both human/Divine and human/human relationship. "Righteousness" and "Justice" are consistently paired by the Hebrew prophets, who illustrate Israel's spiritual failure in relationship to God by pointing to the society's disregard for and exploitation of the poor. In Matthew, when asked to name the "greatest commandment," Jesus quotes two Hebrew scriptures: "'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.' This is the first and greatest commandment. The second is the same thing: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.'"
Dogma and morality - the articulated experience of faith - are essential elements of spirituality. Spirituality which divorces itself from dogma and morality becomes narcissistic and ignores the divine imperative to relate rightly to other people in community and society. Spirituality which focuses exclusively on dogma and morality is reduced to a mere cognitive and legalistic idolatry and becomes coldly mechanistic.
Even the deepest contemplatives discover a healthy relationship with God always turns one's eyes toward relationship with others to proclaim the faith and act out of the Divine desire for healthy relationship in the human community, including all persons, especially whom Jesus called "the least of these."
MIKE GHOUSE, President, Foundation for Pluralism, Dallas
The first few thoughts that jumped out at me were the story of Prophet Muhammad (pbuh), the destruction of abortion clinics and denigrating other religions as cults.
Faith in God is personal; it's been around from the inception of religion. There never was a singular belief in God, even while Judaism flourished, there was the Zoroastrian religion in their neighborhood and other native traditions in Egypt and Africa, and farther out in China, India, and the Americas they had their own perceptions of God.
Today in America, we have more beliefs than one could imagine. We have different thumb prints, eye prints, DNA and taste buds; if we can learn to accept the uniqueness of each one's "religion bud" be it theist or atheist, and respect the God given uniqueness of each one of us, then conflicts fade and solutions emerge.
Dogma is born out of arrogance and insecurities. We seek the short cuts to false satisfaction and believe that our rightness hinges on others' wrongness. Dogma does not bring joy to anyone, including the believer; we are in eternal tension of righting others rather than living our own lives. It is the religious, cultural and social dogma that has created frictions and a generator of conflicts. Humans are born to be free, dogma wants to chain and humans will resist it.
Morality is a product of co-existence and survivability; it is the prism that can be laid out on all societies to find their own balance. Religion has added substantially to the morality as a mass media, but it is not the sole source, Morality was alive when the first men had to fight for limited resources and develop a system of trust for them to live in peace and leave their children and women behind when they went hunting.
My understanding of Prophet Muhammad's story goes something like this: He found out that some of his associates and disciples were planning on painting his portraits out of reverence for him. Prophet asked them to stop it immediately, and cautioned them neither to paint his pictures nor make his busts and place it on the street corners. The wisdom behind the idea was that someday, the picture will become the object of worship and he will become the idol. He said, God alone is worthy of worship, I am a mortal being like you and do not worship me, worship the God, the one and only creator.
Thank God Muslims did not make a God out of the Prophet, nor do they worship him.
However his sane advice to keep people focused on God has become the dogma for a few. A handful of Muslims took to the streets, murdered Van Gogh the cartoonist, burned the Belgium Embassy in Syria, and set cars to fire in Pakistan. This violence goes completely against the teachings of the prophet and Muslims around the globe have condemned it. Indeed, it is the protests that challenged the cartoonist to draw more aggravating cartoons. This is a classic example of advice becoming a dogma.
In our own backyard, the advice of God to save a life becomes a violent dogma to the point of murdering doctors who perform abortions, passing laws against fellow citizens and declaring others to be cults. Dictating who can and cannot marry each other.
Exchanges and discussions like this will bring awareness and freedom, true salvation to those who are entrenched in dogma. As a society it is our individual and collective responsibility to share the wisdom and learn to live and let live.
AMY MARTIN, Executive director, Earth Rhythms; Writer/editor, Moonlady Media
Dogma came to humanity via the written word, yet spirituality well precedes language. Dogma is about as necessary for a relationship with the divine as broccoli is to a good bowl of cereal.
Taoism is the rare religion without dogma. Lao Tze spoke sternly about rote words and actions as a substitute for a personal connection to the divine:
When Tao is lost, compassion becomes doctrine.
When compassion is lost, justice becomes doctrine.
When justice is lost, ritual becomes doctrine.
Ritual is the slow loss of loyalty, the beginning of unprincipled confusion.
It brings to mind studies done on traffic in crowded, busy, urban Europe. The more instructional and warning signs were erected, the more that accidents, especially deadly car-pedestrian encounters, increased. When the signage was greatly reduced, drivers had to think for themselves what the right action should be. Accident levels greatly declined.
It's all in the balance.
