‘Orthodoxy’: A Spirited Defence of Christianity
A review of ‘Orthodoxy’, by G.K. Chesterton, Hodder & Stoughton, 1996.
In Heretics, G.K. Chesterton rebuts the ruling secular views of his age and defends Christian orthodoxy in a series of essays. In Orthodoxy, which he considered a companion piece to Heretics, he attempts ‘an explanation, not of whether the Christian faith can be believed, but of how [he] personally [has] come to believe in it’. It is a response to an attack by G.S. Street on Heretics, and highly original. Chesterton explained that Street was ‘not going to bother about his theology until I had really stated mine’. In other words, Chesterton was under pressure not just to condemn those with whom he disagreed, but to state his own beliefs.
Orthodoxy traces Chesterton’s own journey to embracing the Christian worldview. He explains that Christianity met the needs both of his reason and imagination. These and other human needs do not necessarily sit easily alongside one another. Indeed, Chesterton argues in the first chapter that human needs are in conflict. Life is full of paradox. So is Christianity. But this is not proof of error. As Simone Weil tells us, ‘Contradiction is the criterion of the real’. Christianity balances seemingly opposite truths, such as justice and mercy.
Simone Weil tells us, ‘Contradiction is the criterion of the real’.
That is the theme of a chapter titled ‘The Paradoxes of Christianity’ Each chapter tackles a distinct theme. ‘The Maniac’ explores the dangers of pure rationalism. ‘The Ethics of Elfland’ celebrates the mystery and magic of Christianity. But the theme of contrast: logic against madness, modernity against tradition, scepticism against belief, runs throughout. Christianity is humble and bold. It calls the faithful to say they are sinners but act like saints. And the chief contrast, which, upon reflection is revealed to be harmony, is faith and reason. The Christian worldview, writes Chesterton, is both rational and poetic. It satisfies the mind’s need for truth and the heart’s need for beauty. Materialism, he writes, is much too narrow: it stripes life of wonder. Christianity allows for mystery and joy without devaluing truth.
This will trouble readers who find it to indulge the possibility that the world belongs equally to the scientist and the philosopher. The Mona Lisa is pigment on canvas and a woman with a cryptic smile. We are primates subject to causality and human persons endowed with free will. Love is neurochemistry and a sacred feeling worth of respect. For Iain McGilchrist, these two ways of looking correspond to the different sides of the brain: the left sees a world of static parts; the right, a flowing whole. Bergson saw time as a series of instances (temps) and a single unbroken flow, like a river (durée). The Buddhists speak of the conventional and the absolute: the world of everyday objects, and the real world, which is an undifferentiated Gestalt. The Christian faith, for Chesterton, helps us to reconcile ourselves with this duality.
But Orthodoxy is dense. Every sentence is charged with meaning. There is wit, wordplay, numerous citations. Chesterton is a good writer, but also highly creative, and highly creative people have a tendency to jump between topics, often speaking in subclauses and subclauses within subclauses. Consequently the arguments Chesterton mounts can feel indirect, even chaotic. He leans heavily on analogy and metaphor, which may frustrate those among you who seek firm, clear ideas and explanations. Not that Chesterton would care: he was a cheerful, grateful, playful sort of character. His optimism and joy shine through the book, even when he is attacking what he perceives as the serious errors in modern thinking.
The arguments Chesterton mounts can feel indirect, even chaotic.
This is part of what makes Orthodoxy work so beautifully: it mixed reason with the almost childlike wonder that faith nourishes. And this is partly why Chesterton was so compelling: he was both philosopher and theologian, thinker and storyteller. There is none of the dryness and solemnity we have to come to expect from academics and intellectuals, even as we are asked to consider the purpose of life, the role of wonder in our world, and the coherence of our own particular Weltanschaaung.
The book will of course be rewarding if you have some historical context, or if you are already interested in the centuries-long back-and-forth – at times tedious, but mostly interesting – about reason, faith, and whether any kind of reconciliation is possible. But you might still like it if you tick neither of those boxes.
