 |
| Not the edition I read; this book is in the public domain and is available in many forms, including e-book |
How
can I possibly epitomize this wonderful book in a short blog-entry
review? Better men than I have summarized it to varying lengths and
effect, none of which except where they directly quote the author
capture a smidgen of the magic, wit, and – above all – wisdom
that is the hallmark of this giant of early 20th
-century thought. Such attempts to provide a short aide-mémoire
may be useful, and I did consult them (three in particular, by A.
Freddoso [LINK],
J. Grabowski [LINK],
and K. D. Rapinchuk [LINK]),
but I can't say they really helped me process what I read. Really, I
can't say I have truly processed
it at all, despite what I figure at this point must be from two to
four readings through – two visual, and two aural via a wonderful
audio version on Podiobooks, read by David “Grizzly” Smith [LINK]
(whose voice is perfectly suited to the material although he sounds
nothing like Chesterton himself [LINK]);
I have read and reread, listened to and relistened to parts multiple
times, and “two to four” is just a wild guess. I feel like I
have barely started to grasp what Chesterton has to offer. Sure,
I've been charmed by his wit and audacity – and astonished at how
many passages and turns of phrase sound vaguely familiar simply
because they have contributed quotations and turns of phrase that I
have heard in the past but never in context (I previously [LINK]
cited my memory of hearing tradition described as “the democracy of
the dead” without being aware it was Chesterton) – but I am
absolutely inadequate to taking on the task of distilling his
arguments into a short essay. In different ways, the three attempts
I linked above do it much better than could I, with Rapinchuk's being
the most readable prose summary; Grabowski's being the most
analytical, virtually an expanded outline; and Freddoso's
incorporating extensive quotations. All I can do is state baldly how
life-changing I consider my belated “discovery” of Chesterton to
be (I previously described [LINK]
my earlier flirtations with his writings), make a couple of
observations, and then offer my feeble best.
One
barrier to “understanding” Chesterton is that we are now more
than a century removed from his writing Orthodoxy.
Chesterton was above anything else a journalist and commentator on
the Edwardian world of the early 20th
century, and his writing is perfused with topical references that
have little or no meaning to any modern reader who is not a
specialist in that period. I am not a specialist in that period.
Chesterton's own prose sweeps the reader past much of what might with
a lesser writer leave the reader floundering in quicksand, and
context helps the gist of his arguments not to suffer as much as they
might, but this is a book that demands
a thorough scholarly annotation. Part of what retarded my progress
through – and ultimately my processing of – Orthodoxy
was my compulsion to jump out of it and into the Internet to track
down just who were figures such as “Mr. G. S. Street” and “Mr.
R. B. Suthers.” That effort itself had its own rewards, of course,
but I know future rereadings will yield deeper and deeper
understanding.
Perhaps
it's because I am myself Roman Catholic, but it is crystal clear to
me that the Christian “orthodoxy” that G. K. Chesterton describes
is thoroughly Catholic though some fourteen years would pass before
he formally entered the Church in 1922. I did not not know until
fairly recently that he was so late in coming home. I always thought
of him as the great Catholic apologist, and in fact was surprised
when I learned subsequent to experiencing the prominence that he
gives Our Lady as a virtual Crusader in 1911's The Ballad
of the White Horse that he was
not Catholic even then. One lesson of this is that, however
Chesterton might proclaim near the beginning of Orthodoxy
that “[w]hen the word 'orthodoxy' is used here it means
the Apostles' Creed, as understood by everybody calling himself
Christian until a very short time ago”
rather than the creed of any particular church (chap. 1,
“Introduction in Defence of Everything Else”),
whatever is true – orthodox
– in the belief of any Christian is indeed what is taught
by the Catholic
Church, and that it is possible to be
Catholic without admitting it,
perhaps even to oneself. Although my own “kicking against the
goads” did not last so long, my own conversion to Catholicism was
marked by fairly early internal conviction of the truth met by
considerable emotional resistance to the idea of conversion before I
finally came home to the fullness of the Christian faith [LINK]. However
long – and whatever was the source of – Chesterton's prolonged
resistance (and I'm slowly making my way through Maisie Ward's early
biography of him, published 1942, and presumably toward a clearer
historical understanding of the spiritual journey that is outlined
here), it is clear that long before 1922 Chesterton was a practical
Roman Catholic.
The
first half of so of the book aims more to demonstrate how all other
faiths and philosophies are wanting than to argue specifically for
Christianity, and as such is a somewhat more generalized treatment of
the same themes covered with greater specificity (taking names and
kicking arse – not a Chestertonian turn of phrase, but it's what he was doing) in the various shorter essays that make up his earlier
book, Heretics – to
which this book is explicitly a follow-up, demanded by a contemporary
essayist who challenged Chesterton, having argued against
various creeds, to put forth his statement for
his own.
For
me, the heart of the book comes in chapter six, “The
Paradoxes of Christianity,”
where Chesterton masterfully demolishes, by showing the internal
contradictions inherent in, the world's criticisms of the Faith.
Christianity is at once charged with being too pessimistic and too optimistic; too
pacifistic and too martial; too divisive and too universal; both
against and for the family, women, sexuality, and so forth – in
all, too humble and too proud. Really, he saw, it was the world
which did not know what to make of Christianity rather than
Christianity not know what to make of the world. Or, as I would put
it, the “paradoxes” of Christianity are a sign of fallen,
opportunistic critics who care less for their own consistency or the
integrity of their own arguments than scoring a point against their
opponents or simply following through with their own assumptions. A
pertinent example actually comes from the final chapter and sticks
with me: “Upon th[e] point [of miracles] there is a
simple logical fact that only requires to be stated and cleared up.
Somehow or other an extraordinary idea has arision 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 (righly or wrongly) because they have evidence for them. The
disbelievers in miracles deny them (rightly or wrongly) because they
have a doctrine against them”
(chap. 9, “Authority and the Adventurer”).
Then,
in chapter eight, “The Romance of Orthodoxy,”
Chesterton demonstrates the superiority of specific Christian
doctrines against others, including a raft of fashionable
contemporary “isms,” ramping up to an awesomely profound
statement regarding the incarnate divinity of Christ and its
consequences:
“[I]f
the divinity [of Christ] is true it is certainly revolutionary. That
a good man may have his back to the wall is no more than we knew
already, but that God could have His back to the wall is a boast for
all insurgents forever. Christianity is the only religion on earth
that has felt that omnipotence made God incomplete. Christianity
alone felt that God, to be wholly God, must have been a rebel as well
as a king. Alone of all creeds, Christianity has added courage to the
virtues of the Creator. For the only courage worth calling courage
must necessarily mean that the soul passes a breaking point -- and
does not break. In this indeed I approach a matter more dark and
awful than it is easy to discuss; and I apologize in advance if any
of my phrases fall wrong or seem irreverent touching a matter which
the greatest saints and thinkers have justly feared to approach. But
in the terrific tale of the Passion there is a distinct emotional
suggestion that the author of all things (in some unthinkable way)
went not only through agony, but through doubt. It is written, 'Thou
shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.' No; but the Lord thy God may tempt
Himself; and it seems as if this was what happened in Gethsemane. In
a garden Satan tempted man: and in a garden God tempted God. He
passed in some superhuman manner through our human horror of
pessimism. When the world shook and the sun was wiped out of heaven,
it was not at the crucifixion, but at the cry from the cross: the cry
which confessed that God was forsaken of God. And now let the
revolutionists choose a creed from all the creeds and a god from all
the gods of the world, carefully weighing all the gods of inevitable
recurrence and of unalterable power. They will not find another god
who has himself been in revolt. Nay (the matter grows too difficult
for human speech), but let the atheists themselves choose a god.
They will find only one divinity who ever uttered their isolation;
only one religion in which God seemed for an instant to be an
atheist”
(chap. 8).
Ponder
that.
The
final chapter – nine, “Authority
and the Adventurer”
– dispenses with any idea that one might rationally accept the
moral and social teachings of Christianity without accepting the
doctrines – “the
religion and not merely the scattered and secular truths out of the
religion.”
Against all other philosophies, “[Christianity]
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....”
(chap. 9).
At
one point in my struggle to write something doing justice to this
great book, I considered taking the easy road and making this post
simply a compilation/discussion of those quotations and passages that
struck me, whether for their wit or for their profundity (almost
every one of them for both); a few made it into the essay above.
There are many, many more. In trying to extract passages of note
from Orthodoxy,
however, the problem is that there
are so many
– where to stop? Better, I think, simply to refer the reader to
the bank contributed by users of Goodreads.com,
which although unordered is fairly comprehensive [LINK].
Best yet, dive into Chesterton for yourself. You will
be the better for it.
Cheers!,
and Thanks for reading!
No comments:
Post a Comment