Orthodoxy
Orthodoxy
By G.K. Chesterton
By G.K. Chesterton
"It is the purpose of the writer to attempt an explanation, not of whether the Christian Faith can be believed, but of how he personally has come to believe it. The book is therefore arranged upon the positive principle of a riddle and its answer. It deals first with all the writer's own solitary and sincere speculations and then with all the startling style in which they were all suddenly satisfied by the Christian Theology" (p.vii-viii).
Chesterton is a Catholic. His personality and his style make him like the Catholic equivalent of C.S. Lewis. Born in 1874, he was an English journalist, theologian, philosopher, playwright, and more... This book is Chesterton's defense of his Theology and his personal "romance" with it. It is also written to be a companion to a previous work by Chesterton called "Heretics", published in 1905.
Chesterton will use the word "Christian" when describing theology and faith, but I will assume the word "Catholic" in its place. I believe there is enough of a difference to require it.
"[I]n its pages [this book] I have attempted... to state the philosophy in which I have come to believe..." (p.1-2)
Chesterton imagines a fictional romance about "an English yachtsman who slightly miscalculated his course and discovered England under the impression that it was a new island in the South Seas" (p.2). He uses this illustration to describe the "problem" of philosophers: "This at least seems to me the main problem for philosophers, and is in a manner the main problem of this book. How can we contrive to be at once astonished a the world and yet at home in it?" (p.2). Herein he sets forth the "romance" of his Catholic faith. "[N]early all people I have ever met in this western society in which I live would agree to the general proposition that we need this life of practical romance; the combination of something that is strange with something that is secure" (p.3).
He goes on... "I am the man who with the utmost daring discovered what had been discovered before... for this book explains how I fancied I was the first to set foot in Brighton and then found I was the last... When I fancied that I stood alone I was really in the ridiculous position of being backed up by all Christendom... I gradually learnt from the truth of some stray legend or from the falsehood of some dominant philosophy, things that I might have learnt from my catechism" (p.4-5).
Finally, Chesterton says, "I add one purely pedantic note... These essays are concerned only to discuss the actual fact that the central Christian theology... is the best root of energy and sound ethics" (p.5).
And so the stage is set.
This chapter contains Chesterton's understanding and defense of his theology of original sin and its effects on the world and on the human psyche. "Thoroughly worldly people never understand even the world; they rely altogether on a few cynical maxims which are not true" (p.7). He will claim that the world does not, and cannot make sense to one who denies the fallenness of man. "Certain new theologians dispute original sin, which is the only part of Christian theology which can really be proved" (p.9).
Though the claim of original sin is diluted and even rejected by more and more people, Chesterton will say that, at least the claim of brokenness, or error, or "Hanwell", the insane asylum, as a central "problem" with humanity is embraced. And so he will build his defense from there.
"In this remarkable situation it is plainly not now possible (with any hope of universal appeal) to start, as our fathers did, with the fact of sin. This very fact which was to them (and is to me) as plain as a pikestaff, is the very fact that has been specially diluted or denied. But though moderns deny the existence of sin, I do not think that they have yet denied the existence of a lunatic asylum. We all agree still that there is a collapse of the intellect as unmistakable as the falling house. Men deny hell, but not, as yet, Hanwell. For the purpose of our primary argument the one may very well stand where the other stood. I mean that as all thoughts and theories were once judged by whether they tended to make a man lose his soul, so for our present purpose all modern thoughts and theories may be judged by whether they tend to make a man lose his wits" (p.9).
So, it is likely that worldly people will reject the claim of original sin, but they will embrace the claim of "brokenness", as I call it. They will embrace the claim of a universal "problem". "Let us begin, then, with the mad-house" (p.10).
Chesterton makes some fantastic remarks about logic and imagination in his exploration of "the philosophy of sanity". Ultimately, I think his claim is that living in our universe requires a man to relinquish any hopes of fully understanding it. The created universe will always hold with it a great deal of mystery that is beyond comprehension. In order to make any progress toward explaining our universe, it must be embraced that the universe cannot be fully explained. Chesterton says it like this...
"Now, if we are to glance at the philosophy of sanity, the first thing to do in the matter is to blot out one big and common mistake. There is a notion adrift everywhere that imagination, especially mystical imagination, is dangerous to man's mental balance" (p.10). This is true today as well. "Science" is hailed as the foundation of wisdom, while "religion" or "faith" is condemned as naive, ignorant and childish, even outrageous. I once saw a poster on the college campus that read "Believing is great, but thinking is better". It clearly condemned "faith" as inferior to "science". There was a picture of Jesus next to the word "believing". This notion that Chesterton identifies in his day is just as prevalent in mine today. The proud heart of man exalts his own understanding, and furiously hates the idea that there might be something above and beyond it, especially God to Whom he is accountable.
Chesterton goes on to say that it is not the poets that go mad, but the "chess-players and mathematicians". "Imagination does not breed insanity. Exactly what does breed insanity is reason" (p.10). Like I said, Chesterton makes some fantastic remarks. He goes on and says this, "To accept everything is an exercise, to understand everything a strain... The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits" (p.11). He later says in a similar vein, "The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason" (p.13). Consumed with trying to reason with everything, a man goes mad.
I enjoyed this excerpt in particular:
"Suppose, for instance, it were the first case that I took as typical; suppose it were the case of a man who accused everybody of conspiring against him. If we could express our deepest feeling of protest and appeal against this obsession, I suppose we should say something like this: 'Oh, I admit that you have your case and have it by heart, and that many things do fit into other things as you say. I admit that your explanation explains a great deal; but what a great deal it leaves out! Are there no other stories in the wold except yours; and are all men busy with your business? Suppose we grant the details; perhaps when the man in the street did not seem to see you it was only his cunning; perhaps when the policeman asked you your name it was only because he knew it already. But how much happier you would be if you only knew that these people cared nothing about you! How much larger your life would be in you self could become smaller in it; if you could really look at other men with common curiosity and pleasure; if you could see them walking as they are in their sunny selfishness and their virile indifference! You would begin to be interested in them, because they were not interested in you. You would break out of this tiny and tawdry theatre in which your own little plot is always being played, and you would find yourself under a freer sky, in a street full of splendid strangers'" (p.14-15).
Essentially, to liberate a madman from his madness is to remove him from the center of his universe.
The problem of Hanwell is not solved by science, but by theology. "A man cannot think himself out of mental evil; for it is actually the organ of thought that has become diseased, ungovernable, and, as it were, independent. He can only be saved by will or faith. The moment his mere reason moves, it moves in the old circular rut; he will go round and round his logical circle, just as a man in a third-class carriage on the Inner Circle will go round and round the Inner Circle unless he performs the voluntary, vigorous, and mystical act of getting our at Gower Street... Curing a madman is not arguing with a philosopher; it is casting out a devil" (p.16). The corresponding Christian doctrine is that of Total Depravity: the carnal mind is enslaved to its carnality and can only be rescued by God's sovereign work of grace in regeneration.
A few more comments from Chesterton will help capture the main idea of the chapter:
"The Christian admits that the universe is manifold and even miscellaneous, just as the sane man known that he is complex... Spiritual doctrines do not actually limit the mind as do materialistic denials" (p.19).
"This chapter is purely practical and is concerned with what actually is the chief mark and element of insanity; we may say in summary that it is reason used without root, reason in the void. The man who begins to think without the proper first principles goes mad; he begins to think at the wrong end. And for the rest of these pages we have to try and discover what is the right end. But we may ask in conclusion, if this be what drives men mad, what it is that keeps them sane? By the end of this book i hope to give a definite, some will think a far too definite, answer. But for the moment it is possible in the same solely practical manner to give a general answer touching what in actual human history keeps men sane. Mysticism keeps men sane. As long as you have mystery you have health; when you destroy mystery you create morbidity... It is exactly this balance of apparent contradictions that has been the whole buoyancy of the healthy man. The whole secret of mysticism is this: that man can understand everything by the help of what he does not understand" (p.22-23).
"As we have taken the circle as the symbol of reason and madness, we may very well take the cross as the symbol at once of mystery and of health. Buddhism is centripetal, but Christianity is centrifugal: it breaks out. For the circle is perfect and infinite is its nature; but it is fixed for ever in its size; it can never be larger or smaller. But the cross, though it has at its heart a collision and a contradiction, can extend its four arms for ever without altering its shape. Because it has a paradox in its center it can grow without changing. The circle returns upon itself and is bound. The cross opens up its arms to the four winds; it is a signpost for free travelers."
"Symbols alone are of even a cloudy value in speaking of this deep matter; and another symbol from physical nature will express sufficiently well the real place of mysticism before mankind. The one created thing which we cannot look at is the one thing in the light of which we look at everything. Like the sun at noonday, mysticism explains everything else by the blaze of its own victorious invisibility..." (p.23-24)
I wonder at this point if Chesterton inspired Lewis or if Lewis inspired Chesterton, because Lewis is quoted as having said nearly the exact same thing about Christianity: "I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else".
I believe the essential conclusion that Chesterton is defending, and will even explain further, is that Christianity, with its apparent paradox and mysticism, is the best explanation for the created universe.
"It is exactly this intellectual helplessness which is our second problem" (p.28).
Chesterton continues to build the case for his theology as he observed the modern world. In this chapter, he describes how the human intellect - the way we think about things - is deteriorated. He describes it as "intellectual helplessness". "We are on the road to producing a race of men too mentally modest to believe in the multiplication table" (p.28). This mental modesty is a product of what he calls "the dislocation of humility", where "The modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad. The virtues have gone mad because they have been isolated from each other and are wandering alone" (p.26).
"But what we suffer from today is humility in the wrong place. Modestly has moved from the organ of ambition. Modesty has settled upon the organ of conviction; where it was never meant to be. A man was meant to be doubtful about himself, but undoubting about the truth; this has been exactly reversed. Nowadays the part of a man that a man does assert is exactly the part he ought not to assert - himself. The part he doubts is exactly the part he ought not to doubt - the Divine Reason" (p.27).
"The last chapter has been concerned only with a fact of observation: that what peril of morbidity there is for man comes rather from his reason that his imagination. It was not meant to attack the authority of reason; rather it is the ultimate purpose to defend it. For it needs defense. The whole modern world is at war with reason; and the tower already reels" (p.28, emphasis added). Chesterton seems to say that this intellectual helplessness, resulting in "the suicide of thought" is the war against the authority of reason; the war of man against any and all authority but his own.
Chesterton will then "run rapidly through the chief modern fashions of thought which have this effect of stopping thought itself" (p.30). He begins with materialism.
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"Akin to these is the false theory of progress, which maintains that we alter the test instead of trying to pass the test" (p.31). Chesterton's evaluation of the popular idea of progress is masterful. "If the standard changes, how can there be improvement, which implies a standard?... How can you overtake Jones if you walk in the other direction? You cannot discuss whether one people has succeeded more in being miserable than another succeeded in being happy... Progress itself cannot progress" (p.31-32).
"This bald summary of the thought-destroying forces of our time would not be complete without some reference to pragmatism