Valson Thampu

A fortnight ago, I wrote about the perils of truth-speaking. This time we take a brief look at what the inhibition of truth entails. It may look a smart thing to do, but there is a terrible price to pay.

In this regard I can do no better than quote the words of Frederick the Great (King of Prussia, 1740-1786) who commanded respect not by flexing muscles or inflating his chest but by the splendour of his enlightenment. In a letter to Voltaire he wrote –

Philosophy had plenty of room to flourish among the Greeks and Romans because pagan religion had no dogmas, but today dogmas destroy everything. Authors must set to work with a circumspection that puts constraint on the truth. The clerical rabble takes revenge on the smallest violation of orthodoxy; people do not dare to exhibit the unveiled truth.

Dogmas embody an ambivalence. On the one hand, we need certain fixed points to be safe from the anarchy. On the other hand, while they help in this respect, they hurt in other respects. To understand this let us take a little help from the Buddha. He likened existence to a wheel. Its centre is fixed. Its periphery moves. Fixity and fluidity make the forward movement possible. What if we are, in relation to life, only the fixed point? Or, only the moving circumference? In the first instance, we stay paralyzed. In the second, we thrash about, but don’t make any progress.

Dogmas are necessary. The problem, as Frederick the Great implies, is not with dogmas per se. It is with how dogmas are used. We may do this dynamically or dogmatically. It is a terrible mistake, which, according to the great king, the priestly class are apt to make, to be dogmatic about dogmas. Dogmas are meant to safeguard the dynamism of life, not its fixity. If so, it should be dogmatic with us to relate to dogmas dynamically. Otherwise our dogmatism, unlike the essence of the dogmas, will destroy everything; says, Frederick.

The pagan religions in the Greco-Roman period Frederic refers to were free from dogmas, but they were not free from dogmatism. Just one example suffices to support this. Why was Socrates murdered judicially? Because he was didn’t conform to the religious ways of the times. He was accused of introducing strange gods to Athenians. Why were Christians persecuted in Rome prior to Constantine? Again, for the same reason: they did not conform to the state religion. So, the dogmatic spirit is inseparable from religion. But religions and religious epochs vary in the severity of their dogmatism.

Again, the problem is not with limits per se. Problems arise when limits are (a) imposed rather than accepted or embraced, based on informed choices, (b) imposed by those who do not accept the limits themselves, which is the essence of hypocrisy and (c) imposed negatively, rather than proactively. Consider a mechanical example to see this a bit more clearly.

The carburettor in an automobile engine is dogmatic in a ‘proactive’ sense, somewhat. It is dogmatic about how much fuel it lets into the combustion cylinders.

Today we have a good illustration in this regard. The resurrection of the body is a creedal dogma for all Christians. Based on this, cremation was deemed anathema for Christians. But, in the wake of the pandemic, cremation has been legitimised. A key dogma has changed in response to the times. But this raises further questions. What happens, in that case, to the theology that presumably undergirded the dogma? Is ‘the resurrection of the body’ a revealed truth? Is a ‘revealed truth fixed and formulated for all times to time?’ Should it, or shouldn’t it, change over time; given that revelations are indexed to the human predicament in the given historical context. How do we reckon the difference as we move from the Old Testament to the New Testament? Has revelation exhausted itself? Has God stopped responding to the human condition?

We must heed the interface between dogma and seeking. Dogma is not the end, but the means. The end is the truth of life. Truth needs to be sought, not taken for granted. Nothing that hinders us from relating progressively and proactively to the truth of life should be acceptable to a follower of Jesus Christ; for Jesus is the Truth (Jn.14:6).

Frederick’s words must be heeded by priests in particular. He is a bit harsh on them. But he is quite right in resenting the unthinking deployment of ‘fear’ by them in defending orthodoxy. Jesus says, ‘Fear not!’ How can we, priests, say ‘Fear’? Fear –which is invoked in the service of coercion- should have nothing to do with religion. Fear and truth are polar opposites. It is a diabolic thing to play fear against truth; for, as Jesus said, Satan is the Thief. This Thief of all thieves does not rob us of our material valuables. He robs us of our capacity to seek and stand by the truth.