What's So Bad About Dogma?

I recently finished a book by Rick Richardson called Reimagining Evangelism. Essentially, Richardson wants to challenge laypeople, who have previously been weary of evangelism, to view the endeavor as an invitation to a spiritual journey. He rightly appeals to the distaste many have for the salesman feel evangelism has taken on in many quarters. He desires that the church put away its propositional and dogmatic view of the Gospel and contextualize it to a post-Christian, postmodern society. He suggests that we need to move away from Gospel as dogma to Gospel as story, from individual focus to community focus, and event orientation to journey orientation.

While much of what he had to say is so valuable in regard to how we relate Jesus to a society that thinks they know all there is to know about him, I fear that many are taking these views too far. I’m disheartened by many authors’ apparent desire to cast off propositional truth as a relic of a bygone modernist era. The very word dogma in our culture carries an overwhelmingly negative connotation. To be dogmatic is to be inflexible, arrogant, and intolerant. But, what if dogma (meaning sets of truths and proposition by which we form a worldview) still has a vital role to play in the life and witness of the church?

That’s not to say that dogma isn’t frequently wielded in order to gain power or maintain self-righteousness. Such uses are wrong, unbiblical, and probably the source of all the stigma surrounding the concept. We should all recognize, Christian and non-Christian, that no one has a monopoly on truth, and we should humbly confess that we too are on a spiritual journey to continually discover that truth. But, Christians should proclaim that there are certain things about God, humanity, and Christ that we can hold on to as right. We need to reject the ungraciousness and arrogance while at the same time lift up the uniqueness of Christ as the way to God. Is that possible, or are these two things mutually exclusive?

To be fair, I don’t think that Richardson would necessarily disagree with me. His desire simply is to encourage the church to contextualize the Gospel to a culture that doesn’t put much stock in propositions. In that respect, what he has to say is very valuable. But, many take this call for contextualization as a call for the rejection of all things “dogmatic”. Such a complete rejection doesn’t view the post-Christian culture critically and will end up making the same mistake that post-modern Christians claim modernist Christians have made. Plus, dogma when used correctly plays a vital role in centering the church on the truth of Jesus Christ.