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by dragonwriter
1828 days ago
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> And practically all denominations have a specific alignment on every theological issue you can imagine. That's...not particularly true, especially for the denominations that are both large and institutionally old, or are newer but less centrally authoritarian. The Roman Catholic Church (for an example in the former category) for instance, has a small number of declared-as-infallible dogmas, a larger number of doctrines that arr understood to be certain or argued to have been infallibly declared, a wide space of broadly accepted doctrine about which there is still debate which is recognized as legitimate and not dissent, and plenty of open theological questions, more of which are added all the time, because changing circumstances raise new questions not previously considered, and change the factual context of previous considerations so that, even for doctrines that are solid, what piece of the prior articulation is the actual doctrine and what piece reflects the limitations of the context considered at the earlier time must be discerned, and is often actively debated. |
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There's rather more to it in general but the concept of dogma is one of the reasons that many Christian denominations exist - in protest of the notion of dogma.
For example: Papal Infallibility. The dogma of Papal Infallibility is that God created the post of Pope and inaugurated St Peter as the first one. God created the papacy for His purposes therefore holders of that role cannot be fallible. However, the Pope is a man (why can't Papa be Mum?) and I'm pretty sure that involves being a sinner. It takes some pretty fancy footwork to elevate a bloke who was a mere automatically sinning Cardinal into an Infallible Pope.
For me the whole crux (if you like) of Christianity is that the ultimate divine being became a person and suffered as such - if you like: They experienced Their creation first hand. I don't think you should go around elevating people into little or demi Gods - that's a form of polytheism. Funnily enough I'm declaring my own form of dogma: People are not infallible: Pope, Queen, nor gerdesj.
I do understand the Catholic concept of dogma and even why it still exists. It is not my point to belittle it either but there is quite a good reason why: "practically all denominations have a specific alignment." Those people find the concept of dogma and the like ... sometimes unsatisfactory.