Orthodoxy
By: G.K.
Chesterton
Chapter 9
Review: Authority and the Adventurer
I.
Introduction in Defense of Everything
II.
The Maniac
III.
The Suicide of Thought
IV.
The Ethics of Elfland
V.
The Flag of the World
VI.
The Paradoxes of Christianity
VII.
The Eternal Revolution
VIII.
The Romance of Orthodoxy
IX.
Authority
and the Adventurer
Authority and the Adventurer
The purpose of this
chapter is to argue that Christianity is not only conducive to social progress
and reform but also true. The chapter takes the form of an extended answer to
the question: Why not just accept the moral and social teaching without all the
metaphysical doctrine?
"The
last chapter has been concerned with the contention that orthodoxy is not only
(as is often urged) the only safe-guardian of morality or order, but is also
the only logical guardian of liberty, innovation and advance.... A reasonable
agnostic, if he has happened to agree with me so far, may justly turn round and
say, `You have found a practical philosophy in the doctrine of the Fall; very
well. You have found a side of democracy now dangerously neglected wisely
asserted in Original Sin; all right. You have found a truth in the doctrine of
hell; I congratulate you. You are convinced that worshippers of a personal God
look outwards and are progressive; I congratulate them. But even supposing that
those doctrines do include those truths, why cannot you take the truths and
leave the doctrines? ...' This is the real question; this is the last question;
and it is a pleasure to try to answer it" (pp. 148-149).
The ultimate answer is
that (i) GKC has found the arguments against Christianity to be based on
`facts' that are not really facts at all, and that (ii) he has come to the
general conclusion that the Church which teaches these doctrines is a
truth-telling thing. The argument itself can be divided as follows:
1. Rationality and the arguments against
Christianity
I,
says GKC, like the agnostic, have no demonstration of my position but only an
"enormous accumulation of small but unanimous facts." But the
agnostic's `facts' turned out not to be facts. For instance, it is not the case
that man is just another animal, that religion arose in ignorance and fear, or
that the Catholic religion is full of doom and gloom:
"Thus
these three facts of experience, such facts as go to make an agnostic, are, in
this view, totally turned around. I am left saying, `Give me an explanation,
first, of the towering eccentricity of man among the brutes; second, of the
vast human tradition of some ancient happiness; third, of the partial
perpetuation of such pagan joy in the countries of the Catholic Church.' One
explanation, at any rate, covers all three: the theory that twice was the
natural order interrupted by some explosion or revelation such as people now
call `psychic'. Once Heaven came upon the earth with a power or seal called the
image of God, whereby man took command of Nature; and once again (when in
empire after empire men had been found wanting) Heaven came to save mankind in
the awful shape of a man. This would explain why the mass of men always look
backwards; and why the only corner where they in any sense look forwards is the
little continent where Christ has His Church" (p. 152).
Again,
it is not the case that Jesus was a gentle creature, that Christianity
flourished only in the dark ages of ignorance, or that strongly religious
people like the Irish are week, unpractical, and behind the times.
"The
sceptic is too credulous; he believes in newspapers and encyclopedias. Again
the three questions left me with three very antagonistic questions. The average
sceptic wanted to know how I explained the namby-pamby note in the Gospel, the
connection of the creed with mediaeval darkness and the political
impracticability of the Celtic Christians. But I wanted to ask, and to ask with
an earnestness amounting to urgency, `What is this incomparable energy which
appears first in one walking the earth like a living judgment and this energy
which can die with a dying civilization and yet force it to a resurrection from
the dead; this energy which last of all can inflame a bankrupt peasantry with
so fixed a faith in justice that they get what they ask, while others go empty
away; so that the most helpless island of the Empire can actually help itself?'
"There
is an answer; it is an answer to say that the energy is truly from outside the
world.... It is no injustice...to say that only modern Europe has exhibited
incessantly a power of self-renewal recurring often at the shortest intervals
and descending to the smallest facts of building or costume. All other
societies die finally and with dignity. We die daily. We are always being born
again with almost indecent obstetrics.... For our civilization ought to have
died, by all parallels, by all sociological probability, in the Ragnorak of the
end of Rome. That is the weird inspiration of our estate: you and I have no
business being here at all. We are all revenants; all living Christians are
dead pagans walking about. Just as Europe was about to be gathered in silence
to Assyria and Babylon, something entered into its body. And Europe has had a
strange life--it is not too much to say that it has had the jumps--ever
since" (pp. 155-156).
2. Rationality and belief in the supernatural
Chesterton
then summarizes the point that his own acceptance of miracles and the
"objective occurrence of the supernatural" is more based on evidence
than his opponents' rejection of these things. This is in effect his argument
against Hume's ad hominem against the ignorant masses who are the source of most
miracle stories:
"Somehow
or other the extraordinary idea has arisen that the disbelievers in miracles
consider them coldly and fairly, while believers in miracles accept them only
in connection with some dogma. The fact is quite the other way. The believers
in miracles accept them (rightly or wrongly) because they have evidence for
them. The disbelievers in miracles deny them (rightly or wrongly) because they
have a doctrine against them. The open, obvious, democratic thing is to believe
an old apple-woman when she bears testimony to a miracle, just as you believe
an old apple-woman when she bears testimony to a murder. The plain, popular
course is to trust the peasant's word about the ghost exactly as far as you
trust the peasant's word about the landlord. Being a peasant he will probably
have a great deal of healthy agnosticism about both. Still you could fill the
British Museum with evidence uttered by the peasant, and given in favour of the
ghost. If it comes to human testimony there is a choking cataract of human
testimony in favour of the supernatural. If you reject it, you can only mean
one of two things. You reject the peasant's story about the ghost either
because the man is a peasant or because the story is a ghost story. That is,
you either deny the main principle of democracy, or you affirm the main
principle of materialism--the abstract impossibility of miracle. You have a
perfect right to do so; but in that case you are a dogmatist. It is we
Christians who accept all actual evidence--it is you rationalists who refuse
actual evidence being constrained to do so by your creed. But I am not
constrained by any creed in the matter, and looking impartially into certain
miracles of mediaeval and modern times, I have come to the conclusion that they
occurred" (pp. 157-158).
3. Rationality and the truth of Christianity
Given
this belief in the supernatural, he then must choose among the competing claims
as to the nature of the supernatural, and to distinguish good spirits from bad
ones.
"It
is not enough to find the gods; they are obvious; we must find God, the real
chief of the gods. We must have a long historic experience in supernatural
phenomena--in order to discover which are really natural. In this light I find
the history of Christianity, and even of its Hebrew origins, quite practical
and clear. It does not trouble me to be told that the Hebrew god was one among
many. I know he was, without any research to tell me so. Jehovah and Baal
looked equally important, just as the sun and the moon looked the same size. It
is only slowly that we learn that the sun is immeasurably our master, and the
small moon only our satellite. Believing that there is a world of spirits, I
shall walk in it as I do in the world of men, looking for the thing that I like
and think good" (pp. 160-161).
So the main strategy is to argue that once the
question becomes one of choosing a particular account of the world, an account
which includes a recognition of the supernatural--both the good supernatural
and the bad supernatural--Christianity and particularly Catholicism looks
really good.
"I
have now said enough to show (to any one to whom such an explanation is
essential) that I have in the ordinary arena of apologetics, a ground of
belief. In pure records of experiment (if these be taken democratically without
contempt or favour) there is evidence, first, that miracles happen, and second
that the nobler miracles belong to our tradition. But I will not pretend that
this curt discussion is my real reason for accepting Christianity instead of
taking the moral good of Christianity as I should take it out of Confucianism.
"I
have another far more solid and central ground for submitting to it as a faith,
instead of merely picking up hints from it as a scheme. And that is this: that
the Christian Church in its practical relation to my soul is a living teacher,
not a dead one. It not only certainly taught me yesterday, but will almost
certainly teach me tomorrow. Once I saw suddenly the meaning of the shape of
the cross; some day I may see suddenly the meaning of the shape of the mitre.
One fine morning I saw why windows were pointed; some fine morning I may see
why priests were shaven. Plato has told you a truth; but Plato is dead.
Shakespeare has startled you with an image; but Shakespeare will not startle
you with any more. But imagine what it would be to live with such men still
living, to know that Plato might break out with an original lecture tomorrow,
or that at any moment Shakespeare might shatter everything with a single song. The
man who lives in contact with what he believes to be a living Church is a man
always expecting to meet Plato and Shakespeare tomorrow at breakfast. He is
always expecting to see some truth that he has never seen before. There is one
only parallel to this position; and that is the parallel of the life in which
we all began. When your father told you, walking about the garden, that bees
stung or that roses smelt sweet, you did not talk of taking the best out of his
philosophy. When the bees stung you, you did not call it an entertaining
coincidence. When the rose smelt sweet you did not say `My father is a rude,
barbaric symbol, enshrining (perhaps unconsciously) the deep delicate truth
that flowers smell.' No: you believed your father, because you had found him
to be a living fountain of facts, a thing that really knew more than you; a
thing that would tell you the truth tomorrow as well as today. And if this
was true of your father, it was even truer of your mother; at least it
was true of mine, to whom this book is dedicated...
"I
give one instance out of a hundred; I have not myself any instinctive kinship
with that enthusiasm for physical virginity, which has certainly been a note of
historic Christianity. But when I look not at myself but at the world, I
perceive that this enthusiasm is not only a note of Christianity, but a note of
Paganism, a note of high human nature in many spheres.... With all this human
experience allied with the Christian authority, I simply conclude that I am
wrong, and the Church right; or rather that I am defective, while the church is
universal. It takes all sorts to make a church; she does not ask me to be
celibate. But the fact that I have no appreciation of the celibates, I accept
like the fact that I have no ear for music. The best human experience is
against me, as it is on the subject of Bach. Celibacy is one flower in my
father's garden, of which I have not been told the sweet or terrible name. But
I may be told it any day.
"This, therefore, is, in conclusion, my reason for accepting
the religion and not merely the scattered and secular truths out of the
religion. I do it because the thing has not merely told this truth or that
truth, but has revealed itself as a truth-telling thing. All other philosophers
say the things that plainly seem to be true; only this philosophy has again and
again said the thing that does not seem to be true, but is true. Alone of all
the creeds it is convincing where it is not attractive; it turns out to be
right, like my father in the garden" (pp. 161-164).
And Chesterton believes that this philosophy has obvious advantages over the superficially more liberal, but in truth enslaving, philosophies of the modernist:
"The
outer ring of Christianity is a rigid guard of ethical abnegations and professional
priests; but inside that inhuman guard you will find the old human life dancing
like children, and drinking wine like men; for Christianity is the only frame
for pagan freedom. But in the modern philosophy the case is opposite; it is its
outer ring that is obviously artistic and emancipated; its despair is within.
"And
its despair is this, that it does not really believe that there is any meaning
in the universe; therefore it cannot hope to find any romance; its romances
will have no plots. A man cannot expect any adventures in the land of anarchy.
But a man can expect any number of adventures if he goes travelling in the land
of authority. One can find no meanings in a jungle of scepticism; but the man
will find more and more meanings who walks through a forest of doctrine and
design" (pp. 164-165).
And
finally:
"All
the real argument about religion turns on the question of whether a man who was
born upside down can tell when he comes right way up. The primary paradox of
Christianity is that the ordinary condition of man is not his sane or sensible
condition; that the normal itself is an abnormality.... It is only since I have
known orthodoxy that I have known mental emancipation" (p. 165).
"And
when rationalists say that the ancient world was more enlightened than the
Christian, from their point of view they are right. For when they say
`enlightened' they mean darkened with incurable despair. It is profoundly true
that the ancient world was more modern than the Christian. The common bond is
in the fact that ancients and moderns have both been miserable about existence,
about everything, while mediaevals were happy about that at least. I freely
grant that the pagans, like the moderns, were only miserable about
everything--they were quite jolly about everything else. I concede that the
Christians of the Middle Ages were only at peace about everything--they were at
war about everything else. But if the question turn on the primary pivot of the
cosmos, then there was more cosmic contentment in the narrow and bloody streets
of Florence than in the theatre of Athens or the open garden of Epicurus.
Giotto lived in a gloomier town than Euripides, but he lived in a gayer
universe.... Man is more himself, man is more manlike, when joy is the
fundamental thing in him, and grief the superficial" (p. 166).
Chapter 9: Authority and the
Adventurer ---“Fresh like water, comforting life fire.”
1.
What is
the main point of this chapter?
There is every reason in the
world to be a Christian. Not only do the facts support the Faith,
but the Faith fulfills like nothing else.
2. What are the battlefields in this chapter?
a. Christianity
vs. Its Critics
The critic may grant that there
are some good things about Christianity, but his last argument against it is:
why not just take the good things in it and leave out the dogmas?
Chesterton’s answer:
“because the dogmas are true.”
Why does he believe this?
i.
Because of the evidence. All the reasons that the “intelligent
agnostic” disbelieves in Christianity are the same reasons Chesterton believes
in it:
1. Science
has proved Christianity to be false. It
hasn’t
2. Miracles
don’t happen. They do
3. The
Church is dark and cruel and barbaric.
It isn’t.
ii.
The moral atmosphere of the Incarnation is
common sense; the arguments against the Incarnation are common nonsense.
iii.
Because the Christian dogma provides deeper joy
and greater satisfaction than
b. Christianity
vs. Paganism
The pagans (and the moderns)
were miserable about everything, but jolly about everything else. The Christians (especially of the middle
ages) were at peace about everything, but at war about everything else. Melancholy should be an interlude, praise the
permanent pulsation of the soul. Joy,
the small publicity of the pagan, is the gigantic secret of the Christian. Even, according to Chesterton, the gigantic
secret of Christ Himself.
4.
Where
in the chapter does Chesterton give away the entire thesis of The Everlasting Man?
Once
Heaven came upon the earth with a power or seal called the image of God,
whereby man took command of nature; and once again (when in empire after empire
men had been found wanting) Heaven came to save mankind in the awful shape of a
man.”
The last time: What is paradox?
· “the
normal itself is an abnormality.”
· “This
is the primary paradox of our religion: something that we have never in any
full sense known, is not only better than ourselves, but even more natural to
us than ourselves.”
· The
thing that does not seem to be true, is true.
Now what is the main point of
the book? (from week one)
Purpose of
Book: We need to be happy in the world
without being comfortable. This achievement
of his creed that he pursues by writing the book. POINT
OF BOOK: what keeps us sane is right
first principles. What is the
“right end” is the point of the book.
Orthodoxy means “straight truth” He
believes Christianity is that right straight truth
Paradox means “the truth that goes against
expectation”
For
Chesterton orthodoxy is paradox
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