Chesterton
BW3 (and the fact that I use that epithet...where did I first see it...is a sign of respect...there's only one BW3) notes on his blog (someplace) that Chesterton discusses other world religions in Orthodoxy. I remember that book, and Chesterton. The "Riddle of the Gospel" chapter in Everlasting Man was an important part of my own discovery of Christ. The gospels are in fact historical and literary riddles with enormous answers lurking in their pages; questions which must be answered one way or another, but not quickly dismissed.
I was very critical of other parts of Chesterton in the past. I felt then he was something of what I have discovered Emerson to be last year: a verbal wizard without inductive argumentative force. Perhaps I distrusted the way Chesteron simplifies things, or his casual attitude towards mental illness or anthropology. Oddly, reading him, like reading Lewis (who openly drew on Chesterton) makes me feel too safe, too like Mole in Badger's house. Inside Chesterton I feel that all things really will be okay for those who believe (is this not the central theme of the NT); it's a safe and relaxed feeling like I get from reading Winnie the Pooh. (This last is not meant to disparage; I'm a fan of the 100 acre wood). Why do I distrust that feeling of security and closure, of rest and safety?
For looking at Chesterton again HERE, reading page on page as I sit in my office, my sci. fi. students writing their final, my bronchitis drawing strength and my body aching with it, I find more than I used to find. I want to read all of Orthodoxy this week (or this month, whatever); I don't know that I ever read all of it before, and I will try to look past the limitations in the writing derived mostly from its time and place: the insane asylum is not the refuge of the self-elevating ubermenche; it's Wall Street and oh yes acadaemia. Chesteron may not have understood his world with 21st century precision, but at the same time some of the things he says are quite profound. Unlike Emerson, whose force fades each minute I am off his page, Chesterton sticks.
I take so much of modern materialism for granted I cling to faith by a slender thread and think that's the only way to have faith nowawdays. Chesterton, in contrast, takes deep strikes into materialism. A couple quotes for fun:
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 out at Gower Street.
Or, in reference to a particular materialist philosopher:
Somehow his scheme, like the lucid scheme of the madman, seems unconscious of the alien energies and the large indifference of the earth; it is not thinking of the real things of the earth, of fighting peoples or proud mothers, or first love or fear upon the sea.
So I think GKC deserves another chance.
Will he argue for a Fall? Sure. The book is called Orthodoxy. Does the Fall derive from Genesis (according to source theory, in the J and E strands)? Yes, but not just from there. We can see the conflict in every person: a moral code not one of use can meet let alone transcend; the daily need to resist powerful instincts which acted on we know would destroy those nearest us. And even if evolutionary process is true (and Chesterton has no problem with it in this book; the evidence seems very strong for shared ancestry to me) no one was there to observe its every process, to see if mankind was not at one time in the distant past united to the Creator in a more profound way. Eden may be a myth, but there are explicit echoes of it in Hinduism, Confucianism, Platonism, conventional Greek religion...I wonder how many others. In short, since we are talking about deeply ancient pre-history, there is as much evidence for a fall as there is that one never happened; we may have simply evolved to be morally conscious yet simultaneously immperfectly moral, or we may have descended from something that was once better.
But I'm drifting off topic. I'll sit back and let Chesterton do the work for a while this week, between essays, perhaps sipping hot tea.
Peace to all.
I was very critical of other parts of Chesterton in the past. I felt then he was something of what I have discovered Emerson to be last year: a verbal wizard without inductive argumentative force. Perhaps I distrusted the way Chesteron simplifies things, or his casual attitude towards mental illness or anthropology. Oddly, reading him, like reading Lewis (who openly drew on Chesterton) makes me feel too safe, too like Mole in Badger's house. Inside Chesterton I feel that all things really will be okay for those who believe (is this not the central theme of the NT); it's a safe and relaxed feeling like I get from reading Winnie the Pooh. (This last is not meant to disparage; I'm a fan of the 100 acre wood). Why do I distrust that feeling of security and closure, of rest and safety?
For looking at Chesterton again HERE, reading page on page as I sit in my office, my sci. fi. students writing their final, my bronchitis drawing strength and my body aching with it, I find more than I used to find. I want to read all of Orthodoxy this week (or this month, whatever); I don't know that I ever read all of it before, and I will try to look past the limitations in the writing derived mostly from its time and place: the insane asylum is not the refuge of the self-elevating ubermenche; it's Wall Street and oh yes acadaemia. Chesteron may not have understood his world with 21st century precision, but at the same time some of the things he says are quite profound. Unlike Emerson, whose force fades each minute I am off his page, Chesterton sticks.
I take so much of modern materialism for granted I cling to faith by a slender thread and think that's the only way to have faith nowawdays. Chesterton, in contrast, takes deep strikes into materialism. A couple quotes for fun:
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 out at Gower Street.
Or, in reference to a particular materialist philosopher:
Somehow his scheme, like the lucid scheme of the madman, seems unconscious of the alien energies and the large indifference of the earth; it is not thinking of the real things of the earth, of fighting peoples or proud mothers, or first love or fear upon the sea.
So I think GKC deserves another chance.
Will he argue for a Fall? Sure. The book is called Orthodoxy. Does the Fall derive from Genesis (according to source theory, in the J and E strands)? Yes, but not just from there. We can see the conflict in every person: a moral code not one of use can meet let alone transcend; the daily need to resist powerful instincts which acted on we know would destroy those nearest us. And even if evolutionary process is true (and Chesterton has no problem with it in this book; the evidence seems very strong for shared ancestry to me) no one was there to observe its every process, to see if mankind was not at one time in the distant past united to the Creator in a more profound way. Eden may be a myth, but there are explicit echoes of it in Hinduism, Confucianism, Platonism, conventional Greek religion...I wonder how many others. In short, since we are talking about deeply ancient pre-history, there is as much evidence for a fall as there is that one never happened; we may have simply evolved to be morally conscious yet simultaneously immperfectly moral, or we may have descended from something that was once better.
But I'm drifting off topic. I'll sit back and let Chesterton do the work for a while this week, between essays, perhaps sipping hot tea.
Peace to all.
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