Thoughts on Chesterton's Orthodoxy

Chesterton’s Orthodoxy is an important piece of Christian apologetics, but also of literature.  The language sparkles as is normal in Chesterton, who typically writes more quotable remarks in a few pages than most people do over a life time.

I see Orthodoxy as a more lyrical version of C. S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity, laid out in a very different way but both with the aim to lead men home to their true home.  (Lewis was, after all, converted by Chesterton’s The Everlasting Man.) Lewis aims to make a logical case for Christianity being reasonable.  Chesterton does so too---but after making an aesthetic and cosmological case first  Neither attempt to prove logically that Christianity is true.  Very little can really be proved by logic beyond mathematics and some rules about logical forms.  However, many things can be shown to be plausible by logic, to be truly desirable by logic.  He shows the adventure of faith and so prepares the reader to be willing to do the hard work of reconsidering his life.

As part of his argument, Chesterton, shows that t trying to be logical in inappropriate places is a form of insanity.  

“Perhaps the nearest we can get to expressing it is to say this: that his mind moves in a perfect but narrow circle. A small circle is quite as infinite as a large circle; but, though it is quite as infinite, it is not so large. In the same way the insane explanation is quite as complete as the sane one, but it is not so large.”

It constricts ones world to something much smaller and less interesting.  It also harms the intellect, by trying to do the impossible.

“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.”

Reason is a good instrument.  However, it is only an instrument.  It is not God. All finite goods that are treated as more than they are, as quasi-divine beings become idols and false gods.  False gods may have a shining face but when followed they eventually show their true face as a Fury (who punishes and drives to madness) or at least a Dionysius (who temporarily maddens his devotees while they pursue his rites and leads them to commit unspeakably evil acts under the “divine madness”).  This is true whether one pursues Apollo and rationality or Venus and sexuality.  Both pursuits lead to their opposites---not to a healthy rationality or sexuality but to diseased minds and bodies (with syphilis being an  example).   Not only does their worship pervert the whole course of a person life, it even diseases that which is worshiped.  The worship of reason and science has the tendency to lead highly intelligent people to believe that belief in a Creator is “irrational superstition”, while belief in an infinite number of universities (the multiverse hypothesis) as an alternative is quite plausible.  They reject the belief in God, a belief that is attested to in every civilization, in favor of an untestable hypothesis. Similarly, those who deify sex move from a healthy sexuality which leads to a bonding of the sexes and the procreation of children to deliberately sterile sexuality which drives the sexes apart.  The irrationality of those who worship other gods is not a logical argument that Christianity is true, but it is an argument that it is plausible---more plausible than its opponents.

Chesterton argues that the enemies of Christianity attack her for opposite errors --- and both of the “errors” are based on misunderstandings by the critics.  Christianity frequently does not attempt a mean between extremes---but accepts the extremes and refuses the mean.

“It is true that the Church told some men to fight and others not to fight; and it is true that those who fought were like thunderbolts and those who did not fight were like statues. All this simply means that the Church preferred to use its Supermen and to use its Tolstoyans. There must be some good in the life of battle, for so many good men have enjoyed being soldiers. There must be some good in the idea of non-resistance, for so many good men seem to enjoy being Quakers. All that the Church did (so far as that goes) was to prevent either of these good things from ousting the other. They existed side by side. The Tolstoyans, having all the scruples of monks, simply became monks. The Quakers became a club instead of becoming a sect. Monks said all that Tolstoy says; they poured out lucid lamentations about the cruelty of battles and the vanity of revenge. But the Tolstoyans are not quite right enough to run the whole world; and in the ages of faith they were not allowed to run it. The world did not lose the last charge of Sir James Douglas or the banner of Joan the Maid. And sometimes this pure gentleness and this pure fierceness met and justified their juncture; the paradox of all the prophets was fulfilled, and, in the soul of St. Louis, the lion lay down with the lamb. But remember that this text is too lightly interpreted. It is constantly assured, especially in our Tolstoyan tendencies, that when the lion lies down with the lamb the lion becomes lamb-like. But that is brutal annexation and imperialism on the part of the lamb. That is simply the lamb absorbing the lion instead of the lion eating the lamb. The real problem is—Can the lion lie down with the lamb and still retain his royal ferocity? That is the problem the Church attempted; that is the miracle she achieved.”

One can be part of a far bigger world than any of the heresies allow, whether scientism or anything else---a world with room for beauty and love and real wonder, a world where apparently contradictory things can stand together in a kind of harmony.