Of top hats, omelettes, and Christian creeds

[V]olumes of angry controversy have been poured out about the Christian creeds, under the impression that they represent, not statements of fact, but arbitrary edicts. The conditions of salvation, for instance, are discussed as though they were conditions for membership of some fantastic club like the Red-Headed League. They do not purport to be anything of the kind. Rightly or wrongly, they purport to be necessary conditions based on the facts of human nature. We are accustomed to find conditions attached to human undertakings, some of which are arbitrary and some not. A regulation that allowed a cook to make omelettes only on condition of first putting on a top hat might conceivably be given the force of law, and penalties might be inflicted for disobedience; but the condition would remain arbitrary and irrational. The law that omelettes can only be made on condition that there shall be a preliminary breaking of eggs is one with which we are sadly familiar. The efforts of idealists to make omelettes without observing that condition are foredoomed to failure by the nature of things. The Christian creeds are too frequently assumed to be in the top-hat category; this is an error; they belong to the category of egg-breaking. Even that most notorious of damnatory clauses which provokes sensitive ecclesiastics to defy the rubric and banish the Athanasian creed from public recitation does not say that God will refuse to save unbelievers; it is at once less arbitrary and more alarming: "which except a man believe faithfully, he cannot be saved." It purports to be a statement of fact. The proper question to be asked about any creed is not, "Is it pleasant?" but, "is it true?" "Christianity has compelled the mind of man not because it is the most cheering view of man's existence but because it is truest to the facts."¹ It is unpleasant to be called sinners, and much nicer to think that we all have hearts of gold - but have we?²

1. Lord David Cecil  "True and False Values": The Fortnightly, March 1940.

2. The "Laws" of Nature and Opinion in The Mind of the Maker, Dorothy L. Sayers, HarperOne, 1987, pp. 15-16.

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