Theology

So You Think Doctrine is Dull?

by J.W. Phillips
06/25/25
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So You Think Doctrine is Dull?

In one of the great rousing songs of the faith, we sing the words, “His truth goes marching on.” And indeed it does!

It marches past churches where the holy-moly rigmarole of ritual is prominent, and where bells and chimes replace solid, biblical teaching. 

It marches past churches where the sensational and spectacular are revered and emotions are revved sky-high.

It marches past churches where the pabulum of simple stories are regularly served and meaty teaching is completely omitted from the menu.

Truth is, many in the church aren’t exactly addicted to truth; they come to church for other reasons.

The glassy eyes of those who keep looking at their watch during a sermon is often triggered by the assumption that doctrine is dull—essential, no doubt, but nevertheless as dry as a concordance and as boring as a dictionary.

That anyone would ever think this way is very difficult to understand. In her book, A Matter of Eternity, Dorothy L. Sayers wrote:

... we may call Christian doctrine exhilarating or we may call it devastating; we may call it revelation or we may call it rubbish; but if we call it dull, then words have no meaning at all... Any journalist, hearing of it for the first time, would recognize it as news; those who did hear it for the first time actually called it news, and good news at that; though we are apt to forget that the word gospel ever meant anything so sensational.¹ 

G.K. Chesterton, possessing both an enormous intellect and a splendid imagination, could see the extraordinary fascination Christian doctrine engenders.

People have fallen into a foolish habit of speaking of orthodoxy as something heavy, humdrum, and safe. There was never anything so perilous or so exciting as orthodoxy... It... [has] the equilibrium of a man behind madly rushing horses, seeming to stoop this way and to sway that, yet in every attitude having the grace of statuary and the accuracy of arithmetic... To have fallen into any one of the fads from Gnosticism to Christian Science would indeed have been obvious and tame. But to have avoided them all has been one whirling adventure; and in my vision the heavenly chariot flies thundering through the ages, the dull heresies sprawling and prostrate, the wild truth reeling but erect.²

To be aware of church history is to be aware of constant assaults against the truth, and even its apparent demise. Thus, John Henry Jowett wrote:

It may seem at times as though truth is a frail and fragile creature, a tender presence in a tempestuous day, and men may take her, and scourge her, and crucify her, and bury her in a sealed and guarded grave; but, as surely as right is right and God is God, that buried frailty shall reappear in invincible majesty, and shall incontestably dominate and command the affairs of men.³

For a time, some new heresy gains a hearing and sponsors a crowd that scorns Scripture’s claims. But after the haughty tones, the raised eyebrows, and the turned backs have their ugly day, truth reemerges and error becomes a footnote.

How uncanny! Yet how constant! Oliver Wendell Holmes said, “Truth gets well if she is run over by a locomotive, while error dies if she scratches her finger.”⁴

Less reflective Christians have found themselves impatient with, if not very much wearied by, the care and exactitude theology requires—this due to the fact they haven’t sensed the daring and danger of this high wire act. Commenting on what is really at stake in a careful presentation of the gospel, G.K. Chesterton wrote about:

... what is so inexplicable to all the modern critics... I mean all the monstrous wars about small points of theology, the earthquakes of emotion about a gesture or a word. It was only a matter of an inch; but an inch is everything when you are balancing. The Church could not afford to swerve a hair’s breath on some things... if small mistakes were made in doctrine, huge blunders might be made in human happiness... A slip in the definitions might stop all the dances, might wither all the Christmas trees or break all the Easter eggs.⁵

Doctrine, as Chesterton points out, is not only intriguing but is also essential to our Christian life. With characteristic boldness, Dorothy Sayers declares:

It is a lie to say that dogma does not matter; it matters enormously. It is fatal to let people suppose that Christianity is only a mode of feeling; it is vitally necessary to insist that it is first and foremost a rational explanation of the universe... And it is fatal to imagine that everybody knows quite well what Christianity is and needs only a little encouragement to practice it. The brutal fact is that in this Christian country not one person in a hundred has the faintest notion what the church teaches about God or man or society or the person of Jesus Christ.⁶

Lamenting the low level of truth typically presented in many churches today, A.W. Tozer brought attention to those who “pull down the application of the gospel not to the standard of the one who is really thirsting after God, but to the one who is the most carnal, the cheapest saintling hanging on by the teeth anywhere in the kingdom of God!”

Tozer went on to say: “In many churches Christianity has been watered down until the solution is so weak that if it were poison it would not hurt anyone, and if it were medicine it would not cure anyone!”⁷

Truth, as Scripture presents it, is never dull. Our hearts may be, but truth isn’t.

Notes:

1. Dorothy L. Sayers, A Matter of Eternity, (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1973), p.24.

2. G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy, (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1959), p p.100,101

3. John Henry Jowett, Silver Lining: Messages of Cheer and Hope, Kindle Edition, 2010; Kindle locations: 815-817.

4. Ibid., Kindle locations: 830-831.

5. G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy, p.100

6. Dorothy L. Sayers, A Matter of Eternity, p.72.

7. A.W. Tozer, I Talk Aback to the Devil, (Harrisburg, PA., Christian Publications, 1972), p.36.