Only Fools Bark at Dogma

A Universe too Big for Knowledge?

John Burdon Sanderson Haldane (1892-1964) is sometimes quoted in support of this position. Haldane was a geneticist, a Marxist, and a prolific writer. In his 1940 paraphrasing of Shakespeare, the rest of us take the same lumps that Hamlet gave Horatio: “There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in any philosophy,” Haldane says. “My own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose. That is why I have no philosophy myself, and must be my excuse for dreaming.”

Sadly for people who want to use it as a cat’s paw for swipes at Christian dogma, Haldane’s demurral actually refutes itself: you cannot reject philosophy by making a philosophical claim, or denounce dogmatism without being dogmatic.

Earlier this month, columnist John Derbyshire of National Review Online referred sarcastically to Haldane’s quote while expressing disappointment over what the Mars Rover had and had not found, but Derbyshire never developed his criticism the way he could have. The weakness in “Haldane’s Law” becomes more apparent if you transpose his words into other contexts. This is possible because the limitations to which Haldane alluded are widely recognized even outside philosophy. For example, the rock music group Bread ran into the same “poor toolset” problem. At the heart of their popular 1971 ballad is a question: “If a picture paints a thousand words, then why can’t I paint you?” The answer, of course, is that “words will never show / the you I’ve come to know.”

A generation later, the Tony-award-winning musical, Big River acknowledged the same problem. Songwriter Roger Miller had Huckleberry Finn and his friend Jim pondering the moods of the river while their raft drifts downstream on a rainy night. The lyric that Jim sings to the waterway itself is blessed with insight that even Mark Twain might applaud: “But sometimes in a time of trouble / When you're out of hand / And your muddy bubbles roll across my floor / Carrying away the things I treasure / Hell, there ain’t no way to measure / Why I love you more than I did the day before.” Jim and Huck recognize that their love for the river is mysterious and paradoxical.

Both of these poetical expressions convey something that resonates deeply with all of us. There is more to what and who we love, more to our experience of loving, more to being, than what we can put into words. But we do not for that reason deny the reality of what and who we love, nor do we deny the reality of our response — and that our response is to real being — just because our words fall short. Where Haldane would exalt ignorance as a justification for passivity, poets are moved.

This musing has much to do with a peculiarly American response to Christianity. Many freedom-loving Americans are frustrated by Christianity. They stumble over dogma, not because anything in it is provably wrong, but because dogma is the public face of authority, and they do not comprehend the nature and purpose of authoritative teaching — particularly as expressed by the Catholic Church.

Dogmas: Coordinates on Freedom’s Map

Where pious people part company with thoughtful agnostics is not in thinking that truth and virtue sustain each other, but in articulating the implications that flow from that premise. As Thomas Aquinas wrote in answer to the first question of his Summa Theologica, “The entire salvation of man depends upon the knowledge of the truth.”

Note the lack of equivocation: this Doctor of the Church has confidence in our ability to comprehend enough of what is true to preserve both sanity and hope.

The Christian understanding of freedom has an equally impressive pedigree. It dates back to Judaism, and the prominent role that free will plays in the Garden of Eden. As Fr. James V. Schall writes: “No faith is worth anything at all if it is not rooted in freedom, freedom not for its own sake — as if there was nothing further than making our own choices — but freedom to seek and live by what is true and what is right.”

That ancient definition of freedom presents the first hint of trouble for modern sensibilities by refusing to stay neutral in the struggle between order and anarchy. Full-throttle discourse is rare in cultures where legitimate differences of opinion are scorned as impolitic. Ours has become such a culture. Unlike the sages who influenced the Founding Fathers, for example, we ignore questions about family and society to downshift into arguments over personal expression.

The Catholic Encyclopedia defines dogma as a truth of faith or morals, revealed by God, transmitted from the Apostles in scripture or through tradition, and proposed by the Church for the faithful to accept. Freedom and dogma coexist amicably when you understand that dogma makes it easier for us to comprehend certain aspects of God. Dogma clarifies belief and unites those who accept it because ideas have consequences. To misread this cause and effect as a threat to freedom makes no more sense than to protest the “injustice” of gravity.

Orienteering offers a useful metaphor for this discussion. Dogmas are analogous to fixed positions by which people may calibrate their individual compasses. For example, all Christians believe that Jesus is “of the same substance” as God the Father. The Greek word for that is “homoousion.” At the Council of Nicaea in 325, the early Church settled on that non-biblical word because it captures biblical teaching succinctly.

By serving as a base for common understanding, “homoousion” helped keep early Christians from being fooled by alternative phrases that robbed Jesus of His rightful divinity. The dogmatic proclamation of this understanding alleviated confusion among faithful Christians.

Another example: Catholic clerics are called “priests” rather than “ministers” because although he ministers to people, a priest’s main duty is to offer sacrifice. Custom reflects theology (the idea that Mass is a sacrifice), which in turn is anchored by dogma (that when Jesus said of blessed bread, “this is My body,” and of blessed wine, “this is My blood,” He was speaking literally rather than metaphorically). Each element complements the others, and all are meant to illuminate rather than obscure the work of God. To dismiss this chain of reasoning as an unwieldy superstructure welded to some simpler faith is to deny the capacity for making logical inferences, and to miss the organic relationship of each element to the others.

Have you seen the bumper sticker that seeks to emphasize the importance of knowing Jesus by declaring that “Christianity is not a religion, it’s a relationship”? This is misleading, because Christianity is both religion and relationship. In fact, it’s a religion founded on a relationship. Without dogma, however, I would not be free to articulate such thoughts, because I wouldn’t have the requisite vocabulary.

Haldane Fails the Test

Given the examples above and similar ones, some people admit that dogma can be useful, but still consider it a kind of a straitjacket. This idea wilts under even a cursory look at papal writings on freedom and dignity, much less an examination of that civilization formerly known as Christendom.

The accomplishments of Christians through the ages do not reflect the impoverishment of being “shackled” by dogma. Instead we find an inspiring mosaic of achievement and a bewildering array of localized devotional practices. Catholic Christianity has midwifed an embarrassment of riches into the world, not least among them the idea of individual worth.

Challenged by logic and by the historical record, Haldane’s position devolves into misguided pride. Certainly the universe is “queerer than we can suppose,” but knowing that we can never get our arms around the whole thing is no excuse for agnosticism. On the contrary, Christians acclaim God as Creator of heaven and earth — and whatever else you can say about reality, it isn’t queerer than God can suppose.

In the part of his statement that makes sense, Haldane says that we don’t and can’t know enough about the cosmos to have created it ourselves. Christians agree. Where Haldane falls down is in his botched follow-through to the judgment that we therefore cannot say for certain anything about it. It is not necessary for us to know enough to have made the universe if we are not its authors but its stewards. Nor do we have to know everything there is to know about God to worship Him.

As G.K. Chesterton observed, “It is quite an error to suppose that the absence of definite convictions gives the mind freedom and agility. A man who believes something is ready and witty, because he has all his weapons about him. He can apply his test in an instant.”

To revisit the Shakespeare with which Haldane got himself into trouble: When Hamlet tells Horatio that “there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy,” he’s pointing poetically to the limitations of being human, not questioning the worth of philosophy or suggesting — by the curious means of a dogmatic statement — that dogma should be abandoned.

The weakness of Haldane’s argument may not matter to anyone afraid of dogma. Per the early Christian bishop Ambrose, it was not by means of logic that God chose to save His people. Faith needs grace. More problematically for many people, Christianity is comfortable with paradox. This is a faith, remember, that recalls the death of its founder on “Good” Friday, and that paradox of strength through weakness colors this discussion as well. On the one hand, as Paul wrote to the Corinthians, we are not our own because we belong to Christ. On the other hand, we believe that Christ makes us free.

To accept freedom as paradoxical is to make room for dogma and to become a sign of contradiction. Human nature being what it is, counterfeit notions of independence will always seem more attractive to some people than the radical interdependence that informs Catholic talk about the Body of Christ and the Communion of Saints. This does not mean that recognizing the philosophical problems with Haldane’s brand of “open-mindedness” will automatically put someone on the path to deism or theism, let alone Christianity.

The Christian proposition is that anyone who looks up from the smorgasbord of earthbound philosophies undone by their own hubris risks a life-changing encounter with the crucified carpenter who claimed to be “the Way, the Truth, and the Life.” Truth-seekers who miss that experience can still follow Pascal’s brilliant example and bet on God. But to endorse ignorance on the grounds that thinking big thoughts is a waste of time is to indulge the subhuman, and we all deserve better.

That a whimsical remark made by one Marxist would appeal to many libertarians suggests that Christians must do a better job of demonstrating why it is dogma, rather than appetite, that gives necessary form to freedom.

© Copyright 2004 Catholic Exchange

Patrick O'Hannigan is a technical writer and self-described “paragraph farmer” in California. His commentary has appeared in LewRockwell.com, CanticaNova.com, New Oxford Review, and New Times (San Luis Obispo), among other places.

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