These can be called the essentials of the old orthodoxy, of which the
chief merit is that it is the natural fountain of revolution and reform; and of which the chief defect is that it is obviously only an abstract
assertion. Its main advantage is that it is the most adventurous and manly of all theologies. Its chief disadvantage is simply that it is a theology.
It can always be urged against it that it is in its nature arbitrary and in the air. But it is not so high in the air but that great archers spend
their whole lives in shooting arrows at it—yes, and their last arrows; there are men who will ruin themselves and ruin their civilization if they
may ruin also this old fantastic tale. This is the last and most astounding fact about this faith; that its enemies will use any weapon
against it, the swords that cut their own fingers, and the firebrands that burn their own homes. Men who begin to fight the Church for the sake of
freedom and humanity end by flinging away freedom and humanity if only they may fight the Church.
This is no exaggeration; I could fill a book
with the instances of it. Mr. Blatchford set out, as an ordinary Bible-smasher, to prove that Adam was guiltless of sin against God; in
manœuvring so as to maintain this he admitted, as a mere side issue, that all the tyrants, from Nero to King Leopold, were guiltless of any sin against humanity. I know a man who has such a passion for proving that he will have no personal existence after death
that he falls back on the position that he has no personal existence now. He invokes Buddhism and says that all souls fade into each other; in order
to prove that he cannot go to heaven he proves that he cannot go to Hartlepool. I have known people who protested against religious education
with arguments against any education, saying that the child’s mind must grow freely or that the old must not teach the young. I have known people
who showed that there could be no divine judgment by showing that there can be no human judgment, even for practical purposes. They burned their
own corn to set fire to the church; they smashed their own tools to smash it; any stick was good enough to beat it with, though it were the last
stick of their own dismembered furniture. We do not admire, we hardly excuse, the fanatic who wrecks this world for love of the other. But what
are we to say of the fanatic who wrecks this world out of hatred of the other? He sacrifices the very existence of humanity to the non-existence
of God. He offers his victims not to the altar, but merely to assert the idleness of the altar and the emptiness of the throne. He is ready to ruin
even that primary ethic by which all things live, for his strange and eternal vengeance upon some one who never lived at all.
And yet the thing hangs in the heavens unhurt. Its opponents only succeed in destroying all that they themselves justly hold dear. They do not
destroy orthodoxy; they only destroy political and common courage sense. They do not prove that Adam was not
responsible to God; how could they prove it? They only prove (from their premises) that the Czar is not responsible to Russia. They do not prove
that Adam should not have been punished by God; they only prove that the nearest sweater should not be punished by men. With their oriental doubts
about personality they do not make certain that we shall have no personal life hereafter; they only make certain that we shall not have a very jolly
or complete one here. With their paralyzing hints of all conclusions coming out wrong they do not tear the book of the Recording Angel; they
only make it a little harder to keep the books of Marshall & Snelgrove. Not only is the faith the mother of all worldly energies, but
its foes are the fathers of all worldly energies, but its foes are the fathers of all worldly confusion. The secularists have not wrecked divine
things; but the secularists have wrecked secular things, if that is any comfort to them. The Titans did not scale heaven; but they laid waste the
world.
Orthodoxy, first published in 1908, by G. K. Chesterton, is in the public domain, and available from Project Gutenberg. The previous post in this series is here. Thanks for reading! Read Chesterton.
Musings on science, the Bible, and fantastic literature (and sometimes basketball and other stuff).
God speaks to us through the Bible and the findings of science, and we should listen to both types of revelation.
The title is from Psalm 84:11.
The Wikipedia is usually a pretty good reference. I mostly use the World English Bible (WEB), because it is public domain. I am grateful.
License
I have written an e-book, Does the Bible Really Say That?, which is free to anyone. To download that book, in several formats, go here.
The posts in this blog are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. You can copy and use this material, as long as you aren't making money from it. If you give me credit, thanks. If not, OK.
The posts in this blog are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. You can copy and use this material, as long as you aren't making money from it. If you give me credit, thanks. If not, OK.
Sunday, February 14, 2016
Excerpts from Orthodoxy, by G. K. Chesterton, 60
Labels:
atheism,
Chesterton,
Christianity,
G. K. Chesterton,
Orthodoxy
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