Page:Religion in the Making.djvu/134

 merely translating the words; you must also understand the system of thought to which it is relevant. To take a very obvious example, “The Fatherhood of God” is a phrase which would have a significance for a Roman citizen of the early Republic different from that which it has for a modern American — stern for the one, tender for the other.

In estimating the validity of a dogma, it must be projected against the alternatives to it within that sphere of thought. You cannot claim absolute finality for a dogma without claiming a commensurate finality for the sphere of thought within which it arose. If the dogmas of the Christian Church from the second to the sixth centuries express finally and sufficiently the truths concerning the topics about which they deal, then the Greek philosophy of that period had developed a system of ideas of equal finality. You cannot limit the inspiration to a narrow circle of creeds.

A dogma — in the sense of a precise statement — can never be final; it can only be ade-