There is a certain kind of dogmatic personality that is incapable of admitting error. Most all of us have an acquaintance or relative or two that fits the category. Everything is spun, everything is fashioned, everything turns out in such a way as to confirm what he was saying all along. In biblical terms, the problem is called having a stiff neck. A stiff neck will not bend, not even under the authority of God Himself. Such a man does not believe in his own fallibility. His problem is that he will not admit the possibility of error.
But there is another kind of person, a person who in this era of the postmodern blurries is frequently accused of being the first kind of person. The reason he is accused of not believing in the possibility of his own error is that he actually believes it is possible to get something right. Really right. Something defensible. And moreover, having gotten a good grip on that something, he intends to defend it. In short, in this era of relativistic compromises his real sin is not that of claiming to be right about everything all the time, but rather the sin of claiming to be right about something, anything, in particular.
But then comes the irony. Relativists (and the Christians who imitate them) like to accuse the “dogmatic” person of never admitting he is wrong, when his only crime was that of sometimes believing himself to be really right. He believes that truth about the world (and not just “perspectives” or “feelings”) is attainable. But the people who make such charges never question themselves in this process of accusation. These relativists are absolutely sure of themselves whenever they are cutting an “absolutist” absolutely no slack. I have had many opportunities to view conversations in which the one all hot for “epistemic humility” was as intransigent as a slab of asphalt, and in which the one who was accused of “never admitting error” had admitted various errors and faults in that conversation. Something really weird is going on in such Mad Hatter conversations, and in my view (though I could be wrong!), the culprit is a sentimental view of the self on the part of the accuser. St. Paul tells us that those who measure themselves with themselves are not wise. This is their folly. Holding to objective truth outside the self is assumed to be hubris, so it is abandoned. Having done so, the only measuring rod left is subjective. Adrift in the rowboat of self, and having lost sight of fixed land, the only reference points have to be various aspects of the rowboat.
The absolutist and the relativist do share something in common. Both of them have something that they do not question. The absolutist does not question the truth that is outside him, the truth which would have been true had he never been born. The relativist must let the truth go by the way, by definition, but one thing is still fixed — his own opinion of his right to his own opinions. That cannot be questioned. Sentio ergo damno. I feel, therefore I judge.