“The modern world is filled with men who hold dogmas so strongly that they do not even know that they are dogmas. It may be said even that the modern world, as a corporate body, holds certain dogmas so strongly that it does not know that they are dogmas.”
–G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
In our time there are few words which draw so many hostile reactions as “dogma,” that unsightly cue which in Pavlovian fashion makes us instantly believe that all reasoning will stop. Dogma, we assume, means the end of a discussion and, in a sense, it is–that sense being that a discussion ends when it reaches its conclusion. But, as Chesterton notes, the world is filled with men who use dogmas without giving the first thought to the fact that they are, well, dogmas: “There are two kinds of people in the world, the conscious dogmatists and the unconscious dogmatists. I have always found myself that the unconscious dogmatists were by far the most dogmatic.”
Always one to look at the world in an unconventional manner, Chesterton exemplifies what I will call, for lack of a better word, a true freethinking Catholic. I will not claim to know all of the thoughts of every self-professed “skeptic,” nor will I claim that there are no true skeptics (I know a handful of skeptics who seem to me to be honest and genuine in their skepticism). There are those who really do strive to live a self-consistent life outside the Church: who call a thing absurd and then treat it as ridiculous, who will on occasion find themselves on the same side as the Church and will nevertheless retain their point of view, and who are occasionally able to live as if skeptical about everything unless and until it justifies itself.
Unfortunately, such people are a rare breed. Chesterton once remarked that, in a way, the Church made sense the the average person–even the non-believer–in many of her practices and rituals. Why, for example, should people not gather together to sing praises or anthems? What better representation of God’s infinite mercy than bread and wine: our staple food and the drink of merriment for time immemorial?
Yet, the man who would be unconsciously dogmatic does so in a far more dogmatic manner. He rejects the dogma of transubstantiation, yet defends to the last such dogma as the right to an education: a right which was not universally possible as recently as a few hundred years ago. He rejects the dogma of spiritual salvation, and yet holds rigidly to the dogma of economic or social salvation. He practically rejects the dogma of man, and yet insists upon the dogma that such a creature has rights without duties.
Most of the modern skeptics are tragically only selectively so. They are perpetually skeptical of the Church because she upholds her dogmas and doctrines, yet not for a moment do they stop to question their own. Be that as it may, it may be fairly said that there is no dogma so universal as the most settled of dogmas: which is the definition. This dogma is universal in the sense that, without definition, words cannot convey thoughts and communication is futile. The definition is the last words–the dogma–concerning a word and paradoxically, it is the first step which must be taken before that word can be used.
Another paradox: because a definition is so trivial, it is also widely accepted, but as a result it is also most dogmatic, in the sense often meant by that word. That sense–which is, I believe, a corruption–is the sense in which a dogma is accepted on authority without evidence or proof. What proof can you give that these words are black, or that “a” is the first letter in our alphabet? You can point to the definition of black, and note that the words on your screen fit this definition (unless you cheat and change the color settings). You can point to the alphabet and note that it begins with “a.” But this is only to assert that the statements are true because of their very definitions, in the same dogmatic sense of saying that 9 comes after 8.
I can be no more dogmatic than to say that a thing is true by it’s very definition, than to assert that facts are not false and that truth is not a lie. I can also be no more certainly correct than to assert this. I can say with the greatest certainty that black is blacker than red, that 0 is less than l is less than 2 is less than 3…, something is not nothing, and that nothing cannot contain something. These are all very dogmatic statements, and yet they are also axiomatic statements. I cannot begin to talk of addition and subtraction, or really any of mathematics without asserting first the truth that 1-1=0, and that 0+0=0. I cannot take the second step of using words, let alone the third step of using sentences, until I take the first step of agreeing that there are real words which convey real meanings. But this first step is one which must be taken on faith, because it begins with a conclusion.
Thus, a final paradox is demonstrated by the dogma of a definition, or of any axiom. It is the last step taken–it is the conclusion–concerning a word or statement or any simple thought. But that last step alone enables us to take any first steps. Without the most dogmatic of all dogmas, no other thinking, no reasoning, and certainly no sharing of our thoughts, can be done.
Man is unique in his making and using of dogma; it is the first tool we must use and even the foundation upon which all other conceptual knowledge rests. We may build on it using observation, experience, or reasoning–but we must begin here. As Chesterton notes in the concluding remarks of Orthodoxy,
“Man can hardly be defined, after the fashion of Carlyle, as an animal who makes tools; ants and beavers and many other animals make tools, in the sense that they make an apparatus. Man can be defined as an animal that makes dogmas. As he piles doctrine on doctrine and conclusion on conclusion in the formation of some tremendous scheme of philosophy and religion, he is, in the only legitimate sense of which the expression is capable, becoming more and more human.”
