Red:
Oh, my....
The above exchange illustrates why I mostly abstain from substantive theological discourse in venues like DP: I think it discursively dull and noisome in general to find myself engaged with folks who use, and/or refer to terms' meanings, yet they clearly don't know the terms' meanings. Elvira, your assertion that doctrine does not change illustrates that phenomenon.
Those two terms simply don't mean the same things; moreover, doctrine changes. I'm going to explain, using the Roman Catholic church's theology, doctrine and dogma -- mainly because that Christian faith has been around long enough and has the most easily accessible/findable body of doctrinal and dogmatic writings -- What you'll find more completely explicated at the above link, I shall below put in the most simplistic terms I can and that are also readily actionable,
i.e., it's what I'd say to explain the same ideas to ten-year-olds instead of adults (because the adults with whom I typically discuss religion, theology, doctrine and dogma and stuff related to those things, the discussants involved know the differences/similarities -- thus I don't therefore need to explain such things -- and their remarks apply/reflect their knowledge of the differences and similarities.)
- Theology --> "the study of religious faith, practice, and experience." "Theology" is a standard, a generic term. Pick a faith-based belief system and there's a theology accompanying it.
- Doctrine --> The teachings given by and flowing from a faith-based belief system's magisterium. In a broad sense, one can think of them as decisions. The Church isn't particularly flexible about these decisions, but it can and occasionally does tweak them a bit here and there, and sometimes, it'll reverse specific ones.
- Dogma --> A subset of doctrines which a faith-based belief system's magisterium definitively (and in the given system's own "mind," infallibly) declares as divinely revealed and which, according to that system, therefore (meaning "because that system thinks so and says so), divinely revealed. These too are decisions; they just have a different founding and greater degree of inflexibility, namely none. (AFAIK, the last ex cathedral statement/decision the Church made was in 1870.)
A key observation to take from the above is that all dogma is part of a given faith-based belief system's doctrine, but not all of that system's doctrine is dogma. Furthermore, the above highlights another key difference between doctrine and dogma: all of dogma is deemed infallible, whereas the only part of doctrine so deemed is doctrine that is not also dogma. From an the standpoint of dispassionate reason, aka logical and objective evaluation, all doctrine and dogma, no matter the denomination, are opinions.
You'll note I referred to the Roman Catholic Church. I did because I don't know that any other Christian denomination has both doctrine and dogma. I know the faith-based belief system I was raised with has no dogma because that system holds no doctrine as
infallible or
inerrant (see also:
Biblical inerrancy). (Please click on those links and read all you find there.) What are some doctrines and doctrinal changes the Roman Catholic Church has made over time?
- Doctrinal change: Homosexuality --> It once was a sin. Period. Now it's only sinful to be an unchaste homosexual.
- Doctrine: Priesthood
- Women cannot be priests. The linked document is a Papal bull, which is to say that as far as its author is concerned, the matter is settled; a later pontiff may alter it, but the current one won't, and he won't indulge entreaties to reconsider the matter. The statement's not ex cathedra; however, thus it's doctrine not dogma.
- Some married men cannot be priests; however, exceptions are made.
The other reason I used the Roman Catholic Church as an illustrative frame is because, except for Eastern Orthodox Christianity, all other Christian denominations are, one way or another, outgrowths of some stirpe of protest against (dissatisfaction with) something(s) in Roman Catholic catechism, hence the name "Protestant." Thus most Christian dogma and doctrine derives from Roman Catholicism.
In any case, doctrine changes. Dogma almost never does.
