Dogma a bad idea?

I just rather liked this: it made me smile:-)

The real evidence is not practically speaking in scholarship but in how Jesus and the Christianity based on him manifest themselves in the lives of practising Christians. Their lives are the proofs of their beliefs. Lionel Blue

As a very head down sort of thinker, I find this little bit of wisdom from my favourite rabbi very challenging. We prove our truth by living it. Credal affirmation, theolgical orthodoxy - not as important as the living evidence of lives lived in Christ. I agree up to a point. But the "theology" we believe (and by that I don't mean what is written down in books by Rowan Williams et al) is what shapes, influences, inspires and defines our living. In others words, you cannot have a dogma free Christian faith. You live what you belive about Jesus - your Christology. Your committment to parish and denomination reflects your ecclesiology (theology of Church). If you are working to bring a Christian vision into being through your social action, that is a reflection of your eschatology - your vision of what the Kingdom is like.

The proof of our belief is certainly seeing the reality of transfigured lives, especially our own. But it is impossible to have a transfigured life without a theology. And I'd rather people have a reasoned, reflective one lest the lunatics take over the Christian asylum. So I'd argue that a scholarship approach informs the life lived for Christ and it is a fallacy to imagine we can skip it totally and just live as Christians. The ultimate proof of a life lived in Christ is a life that in thought word and deed reflects the living Christ - and that includes our brains.