RamistThomist
Puritanboard Assessor
Sayers, Dorothy L. Creed or Chaos. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1949.
For Sayers, the church is perceived as irrelevant not because of too much doctrine, but too little. The Creeds are not boring; rather, they are dramatic narratives. Because the church has missed this, the laymen and skeptic has (quite rightly) been unimpressed, or more accurately, “bored,” with her watered-down exhortations for good living.
I suspect that if all Worldview™ books were burned and only this book remained, the church would be better off. It is a good Worldview™ book precisely because it does not see itself as a Worldview™ book. Worldview™ answers are not wrong, but they are simply answers to questions that have themselves been abstracted from the Christian drama. Worldview™ analyses are often irrelevant to “the man on the street” because the latter does not see himself within some unique story. The Creed, encapsulating what Scripture teaches, tells that Story.
Sayers tells her message in such a way to “shock” the average man. For example, “Whatever game He is playing with his creation, He has kept His own rules and played fair…When He was a man, He played the man. He was born in poverty and died in disgrace and thought it well worth the while” (Sayers 4).
Restating one of St Anselm’s key arguments, she writes: If He was God and nothing else, His immortality means nothing to us. If He was man and no more, His death is no more important than yours or mine (7).
“If we disbelieve…then we must take the consequences in a world ruled by cause and effect” (7).
Revisiting her old “Creed or Chaos” essay, she hears the liberal preacher (and today’s seeker sensitive strategists) argue “We only want simple worship, no dogma.” But there is a problem: it is hard to arouse any enthusiasm for nothing in particular (20). That is one reason why your church is dead.
Conclusion
I can only praise this book. If we judged it for prose style, we would rank it among the classics of 20th century Christian (or secular) literature. If we judged it for Worldview™ analysis, we would rank it only slightly behind CS Lewis. Fortunately, we can judge it on both counts.
For Sayers, the church is perceived as irrelevant not because of too much doctrine, but too little. The Creeds are not boring; rather, they are dramatic narratives. Because the church has missed this, the laymen and skeptic has (quite rightly) been unimpressed, or more accurately, “bored,” with her watered-down exhortations for good living.
I suspect that if all Worldview™ books were burned and only this book remained, the church would be better off. It is a good Worldview™ book precisely because it does not see itself as a Worldview™ book. Worldview™ answers are not wrong, but they are simply answers to questions that have themselves been abstracted from the Christian drama. Worldview™ analyses are often irrelevant to “the man on the street” because the latter does not see himself within some unique story. The Creed, encapsulating what Scripture teaches, tells that Story.
Sayers tells her message in such a way to “shock” the average man. For example, “Whatever game He is playing with his creation, He has kept His own rules and played fair…When He was a man, He played the man. He was born in poverty and died in disgrace and thought it well worth the while” (Sayers 4).
Restating one of St Anselm’s key arguments, she writes: If He was God and nothing else, His immortality means nothing to us. If He was man and no more, His death is no more important than yours or mine (7).
“If we disbelieve…then we must take the consequences in a world ruled by cause and effect” (7).
Revisiting her old “Creed or Chaos” essay, she hears the liberal preacher (and today’s seeker sensitive strategists) argue “We only want simple worship, no dogma.” But there is a problem: it is hard to arouse any enthusiasm for nothing in particular (20). That is one reason why your church is dead.
Conclusion
I can only praise this book. If we judged it for prose style, we would rank it among the classics of 20th century Christian (or secular) literature. If we judged it for Worldview™ analysis, we would rank it only slightly behind CS Lewis. Fortunately, we can judge it on both counts.
