I have always thought that every academic–or wannabe, like me–ought have one or two hypotheses that are held very loosely, are somewhat defensible but impossible to prove, and just fringe enough to make academic parties interesting.
One such hypothesis that I have occasionally advanced is that G.K. Chesterton’s Orthodoxy is the most important work of the twenty-first century, even though it was written in the twentieth.
Though Chesterton attained more fame during his life than C.S. Lewis—he was greeted by massive crowds on his trips around the world—by the beginning of World War II his position as chief apologist and defender of the faith had been taken over by Lewis. In particular, Chesterton’s influence on American evangelicalism has been relatively non-existent compared to Lewis’s.
And no wonder: Lewis’s Mere Christianity, which has influenced numerous evangelical leaders over the past few decades, is a masterfully written apologetic. The discovery of Lewis helped many evangelicals in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s realize the importance of having a faith that was as intellectual as it was spiritual.
Yet the situation within evangelicalism (and without) has now changed, and Mere Christianity is an apologetic suited to its time. While evangelicals have made strides in recovering the life of the mind, it is now en vogue to criticize evangelical Christianity as too propositional. The new generation of post-modern evangelicals is moved more by the story of Christianity than its ideas, and more prone to appeal to the imagination than the intellect.
Such critics would do well to consider Orthodoxy.
Though it was written just over 100 years ago, Chesterton’s finest work is still relevant. In a First Things‘ article, Ralph Wood writes:
Indeed, we might say that the last century belongs to Chesterton–for in that now one-hundred-year-old book, Orthodoxy, he remarkably prophesied the ailments of both modernism and postmodernism, while adeptly commending Christianity as their double cure.
Wood’s article highlights Chesterton’s criticism of the “twin insanities of hyper-rationalism and hyper-emotivism,” and Chesterton’s response to those insanities (imagination and the “Doctrine of Conditional Joy”). But while his analysis of Chesterton’s argument is exactly right, his treatment neglects Chesterton’s method. Chesterton’s poetic-prose articulates a vision of Christianity that is as artistic as it is analytic, and as such is a more effective antidote to the prevailing post-modern sensibilities than any other book I have found.
Before he considers the tenets of Christian theology, Chesterton defends four propositions: “I felt in my bones, first, that the world does not explain itself . . . The thing is magic, true or false. Second, I came to feel as if magic must have a meaning, and meaning must have some one to mean it . . . Third, I thought this purpose beautiful in its old design, in spite of its defects, such as dragons. Fourth, that the proper form of thanks to it is some form of humility and restraint: we should thank God for beer and Burgundy by not drinking too much of them.”
It is somewhat misleading to call these ideas propositions for Chesterton, or even ideas. Rather, he describes them as the “ultimate attitudes toward life, the soils for the seeds of doctrine.” Earlier, he speaks of the “sentiments of elf-land.”
Chesterton’s case for this ethic is surprisingly poetic—one might even call it artistic. He rejects sociology or even the principles of natural law and instead appeals to child’s experience of fairy stories as his justification. Yet beneath the apparent triviality is a surprisingly sophisticated aim (this dynamic frequently occurs in Chesterton): Chesterton understands that persuasion is as much sentimental as it is rational. By articulating the “Ethics of Elfland,” he lays the poetic foundation for his defense of Christianity, which will come in the following chapters. Chesterton wants to convince your mind—but he wants to woo your heart as well.
Chesterton’s Orthodoxy, then, differs from Lewis’ Mere Christianity precisely in its attempt to ground Christianity not in the propositions of natural law, but in the elemental human and artistic experiences that we begin to neglect as we grow old. It is an attempt, dare I say, to defend and engender a faith that exudes wonder and astonishment at the mystery of reality. But Chesterton had told us as much at the beginning. Orthodoxy is not a “series of deductions,” as he says at the outset, but an attempt “in a vague and personal way, in a set of mental pictures, to state the philosophy in which [he has] come to believe.”
It is this approach that I would argue is perfectly suited for our post-modern age. Chesterton is the anti-Nietsche—a poet-philosopher who understands that unless truth exists, the enterprises of art and beauty are rendered meaningless. What’s more, his method is consistent with his argument: he artistically defends the existence of the truth and grounds Christianity in the pre-rational experience of story without jeopardizing truth’s existence or fallaciously opposing reason and emotion.
In sum, though Orthodoxy has only recently turned 100 years old, it remains the single most effective articulation of a Christianity that is intellectually robust, artistically engaged, spiritually sensitive, and historically grounded that I have yet read.
[Note: Matthew Anderson also blogs at Mere Orthodoxy and Evangelical Outpost, where a slightly revised version of this post first appeared.]
March 2nd, 2010 | 11:25 am
Perhaps a more precise title for this post would be “the antidote to post-modernity”?
March 2nd, 2010 | 11:43 am
Seth,
I thought about that, but I’m pretty persuaded that post-modernity doesn’t actually escape modernity’s trappings, despite it’s pretensions otherwise.
But there’s a conversation to be had there, I’m sure.
Best,
Matt
March 2nd, 2010 | 8:59 pm
Modernism was the culture that began to emerge at the time of the European Renaissance.
It is essentially the “culture” created in the image of scientism–and Protestantism!
Every minute fraction of now-time Western culture is patterned by the paradigm of scientism, including all of what is promoted as religion–with no exceptions. Chesterton and C S Lewis included–especially Lewis.
It is the invisible cultural script in which we now all live, it is even patterned into our rigidified shallow breathing, non-feeling, bodies.
The Renaissance was the collapse of the “God”-civilization that precede it. The Civilization based on mythologized presumptions of what was traditionally conceived to be spatially and temporally behind and above the world. The Renaissance destroyed that earlier form of civilization
With the Renaissance, “God”-myth based civilization was replaced with human-based civilization, or ego-civilization—or the civilization based on the myth of the separate ego-”I”. That ego-civilization came to its essential end in the twentieth century.
Put in another way pre-Renaissance culture was based on the contemplation of the culturally created idea and images of The Divine.
Post-Renaissance culture was based on contemplation of the mortal meat-body human being in and of itself. And of the latent potential and possibilities of what it was to be a human being—and mostly that of white European males only.
It did not take long before the old culturally prescribed, and essentially archaic, god-ideas were found to be no longer necessary.
The Divine Light, and even the possibility of a Divine Life were effectively driven from the world.
There have been no Illuminated Saints in the West for many over 500 years.
Nietzsche was just stating the obvious via his famous “god is dead” declaration.
March 3rd, 2010 | 1:53 am
Philip Weingart of the Center for Biblical Literacy has the following to say about Chesterton’s Catholicism — a point not considered in your essay:
“The orthodoxy Chesterton defends is an old and ecumenical one, the doctrines articulated in the Apostles’ Creed. He claims to lack the space to address the question of where lies the seat of apostolic authority. However, there is herein a challenge to Protestants worth mentioning: Chesterton is Catholic, and his notion of orthodoxy includes not only the creeds but the Church which embodies them. He refers once to the Reformation as “the shattering of a religion.” He describes the Roman church as teetering between chasms of error on either side, but miraculously maintaining a precarious and dangerous balance. His defense of Romanism is faint, but present.
While Chesterton thus occasionally incites in Protestant readers a twinge of caution, he more often incites in them respect for traditional thought. There is nothing here of the “works righteousness” for which so many Protestants condemn the Roman church; there is only good sense and humility in the face of an eternal and wise God, and a sense of profound joy in His creation. This same sense permeates the works of the greatest Catholic writers (and Protestant ones as well), and one hopes that Chesterton may occasion more Protestants to esteem their Catholic brothers more highly.”
March 3rd, 2010 | 5:20 am
John,
What is most beautiful about your story is the way you tell it. Of course, the content doesn’t even seem plausibly true. Would you mind to offer some argument to backup the story? Since you have stepped into a largely “pre-Rennaisance” (your terminology) world by commenting here it will take more than what has thus been offered to convince us.
March 3rd, 2010 | 9:58 am
My hope was that this wouldn’t turn into a “Protestants are all that’s wrong” with the world thread. I realize that Chesterton has harsh words for Protestantism in Orthodoxy.
But it’s also worth pointing out that it was written nearly 15 years before he converted to RCism, and that his vision of Orthodoxy is (I think) one for the whole church. That makes me leery of reading RCism back into Orthodoxy proper.
March 3rd, 2010 | 12:23 pm
Matthew -
My comment was not made to bash Protestants — not in the least. And it is true that GK did not enter the Catholic Church officially until after Orthodoxy. I thought the absence of any mention at all of his RCism was a significant omission because it has real bearing on the point of your post. When you state, “it is an attempt, dare I say, to defend and engender a faith that exudes wonder and astonishment at the mystery of reality,” it is fair to say that this perspective owes much to a specifically Catholic way of thinking.
We are sometimes suspected by our Protestant brothers of idolatry or belief in magic. But when the pulpit replaces the altar as the focal point in worship, it should surprise no one that this “wonder and astonishment” is lost.
And Chesterton’s vision to recapture it is a Catholic impulse. Just thought it would be fair to give the Church her props : ) – and acknowledge she may have been on to something, after all.
March 3rd, 2010 | 3:08 pm
Yes, in the way that post-structuralism is more a modification of structuralism than a whole new animal. Peter Leithart’s *Solomon Among the Postmoderns* is good on this.
Another thought: Leithart draws a useful distinction between the -ity and -ism suffixes. “postmodernity” is commonly used to signify “an objectively factual social and political condition,” while “‘postmodernism’…usually denotes trends in theory, philosophy, and culture.” With this terminology, the only antidote to modernity would be a time machine.
March 3rd, 2010 | 3:56 pm
I love “Orthodoxy.” Fantastic book.
John, your view of Western history is imaginative but bizarre. Chesterton has a lot to say about the pre-Christian West, the Christian West, and the non-Christian East. You might want to think about reading it.
March 4th, 2010 | 10:07 am
[...] First Things on G.K. Chesterton’s Orthodoxy as an anti-dote to modernity. [...]
March 4th, 2010 | 11:13 pm
[...] insanities of hyper-rationalism and hyper-emotivism.” Matthew Lee Anderson in a blog at First Thoughts says, “Chesterton’s poetic-prose articulates a vision of Christianity that is as artistic [...]
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