Dogma as art...

...[A] classical education presents the right way, not with the intention of stifling future inquiry, but as a necessary starting point for dialogue.  In this sense, dogma can resemble art: it confronts man with some truth about himself, a kind of truth that might have taken him a lifetime of error and misdirection to arrive at for himself, but ultimately, a truth he must test in his own experience of life if he is to appropriate it for himself and benefit from the confrontation.
~David Hicks, Norms and Nobility: A Treatise on Education, p.19