Dogma

Jim Bublitz over at Old Truth has posted a great quote from Horatius Bonar which truly refutes the idea of having a faith without doctrine.

Christianity, say many among us, is a life, not a dogma; and they reckon this the enunciation of a great and unappreciated truth. It is, however, a mere truism, or it is an unmeaning antithesis, or it is an absolute falsehood. It sounds oracular and great; it is only pompous.

Christianity is both a life and a dogma; quite as much the one as the other. But it is a dogma before it is a life; it cannot be the latter till it has been the former. It is out of the dogma that the life emerges; not the dogma out of the life; and the importance that is attached in Scripture to knowledge,--right knowledge,--should make us cautious in disparaging doctrine, as if it were harmless when wrong, and impotent or uninfluential when right. ... Remain ignorant of the doctrine, and you remain ignorant of the person [of Christ]; nay, that person becomes a mysterious shadow,--vague, unintelligible, and unlovable. --Horatius Bonar