“The most exciting drama that ever staggered the imagination of man”

Dorothy Sayers in Letters to a Diminished Church: Passionate Arguments for the Relevance of Christian Doctrine :

Official Christianity, of late years has been having what is known as a bad press.  We are constantly assured that the churches are empty because preachers insist too much on doctrine – -dull dogma as people call it.  The fact is the precise opposite.  It is the neglect of dogma that makes for dullness.  The Christian faith is the most exciting drama that ever staggered the imagination of man – – and the dogma is the drama. . .

Now, we may call that doctrine exhilarating, or we may call it devastating; we may call it revelation, or we may call it rubbish; but if we call it dull, then words have no meaning at all.  That God should play the tyrant over man is a dismal story of unrelieved oppression; that man should play the tyrant over man is the usual dreary record of human futility; but that man should play the tyrant over God and find him a better man than himself is an astonishing drama indeed.  Any journalist, hearing of it for the first time, would recognize it as news; those who did hear it for the first time actually called it news, and good news at that; though we are likely to forget that the word Gospel ever meant anything so sensational.

Perhaps the drama is played out now, and Jesus is safely dead and buried.  Perhaps.  It is ironical and entertaining to consider that at least once in the world’s history those words might have been spoken with complete conviction, and that was upon the eve of the Resurrection.

For more on Dorothy Sayers, see this recent post.  Notice the question I asked in the comments.