WITHOUT DOGMA

New Zealand Listener, Volume 31, Issue 782, 16 July 1954, Page 5

WITHOUT DOGMA

Sir,-I agree with James Baxter that the points we have raised are hefty ones, but hope that we will not therefore stray from the main path of the argument, which is whether or not its refusal to formulate a creed to which individual members are asked to. subscribe has led the Society of Friends into confused thinking. I maintain that this very refusal is a consistent. and integral part of its essential doctrine of the Inner Light that lighteneth every man, James Baxter’s liberal and catholic exposition of the wording I questioned in the Apostles’ Creed gives added point to my contention that any joint credal statement about God is necessarily symbolic and obscure. It seems a very grave departure from truth and respect for integrity to require the plain-speaking man-in-the-street Christian to subscribe with an "I believe" to an esoteric metaphor. I regret I have not yet read the book he reviewed in which Quakerism is said to have become largely a religion of social welfare, but I am aware that this is a common criticism. I would be sorry if it were truly so, But as one who has come to the Society of Friends because I regard its position as the only logical and consistent outcome of the Protestant belief in the priesthood of all believers, I shudder from the implications of a formulated creed. ' We must beware of any splitting of the personality into mind and body, thought and action. Confused thinking must mean confused action, and unity of thought unity of action. The creed of Friends derived from the silent communion of saints in worship is expressed in social action which, for all except the highly literate few, is possibly a safer

and saner way than words. Words can divide us, but the spirit which unites is the only true test of faith.

JEAN

IRVINE

(Rawene).