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Orthodoxy
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Themes
Christianity as a Synthesis of Paradoxes and Contradictions
Chesterton is known, perhaps more than any other author of the last two centuries, as an author who employs and delights in paradox. While this is likely thanks to his own style and rhetorical proclivities, it is at least equally due to the fact that Christianity itself is a religion of paradoxes. Chesterton continually points this fact out and uses it to great effect in countless circumstances. The very first paradox he employs is the image of the cross in Chapter 2 when he compares the religions of Buddhism and Christianity. Speaking of the respective symbols of the two religions—the circle for Buddhism and the cross for Christianity—he sees the cross as an image that embodies paradox since it is two lines that intersect at perpendicular angles.
Since the cross is such a shape, it is intrinsically universal: “The cross, though it has at its heart a collision and a contradiction, can extend its four arms forever without altering its shape. […] The cross opens its arms to the four winds; it is a signpost for free travellers” (42). Since the very symbol of Christianity is itself paradoxical, Chesterton views the presence of paradox within the faith as completely expected and reasonable.
Another paradox that illustrates the tensions within the Christian worldview is that between the optimism one has about a thing (or person or place) and the pessimism one has for the exact same thing. Chesterton views the optimist and the pessimist as equally pushed to an extreme that is not virtuous; seeing only the good or only the bad is a tendency that needs to be excised. The Christian worldview—being transcendent and viewing all things in light of eternity—allows one to see both the good and the bad at the same time, a necessary quality for those who love a place or a person, for instance, and yet want to ensure that it changes for the better. Love allows one to be critical—“The devotee is entirely free to criticize,” as he says (105)—since it is love that allows constructive criticism to flow from a place of veneration and devotion.
As a whole, however, Chesterton sees Christianity as full of contradictions that point to its ultimate truthfulness. As he points out, Christianity is often accused of quite opposite errors: asking priests to be celibate yet making marriage a sacrament or speaking about how the poor are ultimately blessed yet building extravagant churches. He approaches these criticisms head-on, writing, “The very people who reproached Christianity with the meekness and non-resistance of the monasteries were the very people who reproached it also with the violence and valour of the Crusades” (129).
Chesterton’s point in using these examples (and many others) is that one can either view the Christian Church as completely hopeless and inextricably caught up in contradiction or view it as the only institution that is able to hold competing values together in one coherent whole. Chesterton proposes that the latter view is the correct one.
Christian Orthodoxy as Exciting in Comparison to Heterodoxy
Chesterton enjoys showing how conventional wisdom is not so wise when one attempts to dive deeper into it. The common view, as he touches upon, is that religious orthodoxy is something boring, cramped, and restrictive. Heterodoxy, by comparison, would be an attitude of openness and creativity, the result of free thinking and an adventurous spirit. Chesterton claims that the exact opposite is actually the case, writing, “The orthodox Church never took the tame course or accepted the conventions; the orthodox Church was never respectable” (147).
Taking the Arian crisis as a prime example, Chesterton points out how, during the fifth century, most of the Christian clergy held to an Arian understanding of the person of Jesus Christ. Arianism is the claim that Jesus was not fully divine but was the highest of all creatures who was united to God in a unique way. However, the institutional Church, in a series of councils, eventually declared that this position was impermissible for Christians to hold and declared Arianism a heresy, claiming instead that Christian teaching demanded an understanding of Jesus Christ as a fully divine person. At the time, however, this was a difficult teaching to propose and defend as the truth since the majority of Christian bishops considered themselves Arians, as did the emperor at the time.
Chesterton takes the desirability of orthodoxy so seriously that an entire chapter is devoted to the concept of orthodoxy’s romanticism. Far from being a rigid system that one must adhere to without wavering, as though it were a prison cell, orthodoxy—as Chesterton proclaims it—is the one true means of ensuring freedom and joy in the world. The philosophy current at the time of his writing Orthodoxy is truly stifling, he says, referring to those who deny the faith claims of Christians. “The Catholic Church believed that man and God both had a sort of spiritual freedom,” he says. “Calvinism took away the freedom from man, but left it to God. Scientific materialism binds the Creator Himself […] It leaves nothing free in the universe” (188-89). He thus demonstrates how binding materialism can be in comparison to his religion, which can open intellectual and spiritual boundaries in a more appealing way.
The claim here is that orthodoxy—holding to the truth of reality no matter the circumstances—is what allows for genuine freedom and a consistent human experience throughout every era of human history. Orthodoxy is a commitment to what is true, and human beings can only flourish in an environment that values and encourages truth telling.
The Christian Attitude Toward Death
One of the most explicit ways that Christianity embraces the paradoxical nature of its teaching is its attitude toward life and death. The world, Chesterton notes, is afraid of death and resists any sustained reflection on it: “The new scientific society definitely discourages men from thinking about death; it is a fact, but it is considered a morbid fact” (33). The most obvious and common experience shared by human beings aside from being born, death is hidden and ignored by the modern world; it is an unavoidable reality that is best not mentioned in polite company.
The Christian approach to death, however, is both antithetical to the approach to the world that the rest of the world takes and at the same time echoes it. What the Christian faith holds in common with the vast majority of other traditions is that death is horrible. The Book of Genesis, from which Christians (among others) draw much of their understanding of life and death, asserts that death was not part of the original plan for human beings. Death, instead, is seen to be a curse that was triggered by the sin of Adam and Eve, the first parents of the human race. The fact that death is a curse contributes to the idea that death is both natural and unnatural. Another paradox, death is a natural part of the human aging process, and yet Christianity holds that death is a kind of violent imposition on the human experience.
This is part of the reason why Christians can view death as a curse and a horror and, at the same time, as something to be conquered and faced with an unnatural levity. Chesterton says, “Historic Christianity was accused, not entirely without reason, of carrying martyrdom and asceticism to a point, desolate and pessimistic. The early Christian martyrs talked of death with a horrible happiness” (108). The martyrs saw how important the world was, and they saw most importantly how the best things in life were to be loved. On this account, they were willing to give up their own lives for a thing they thought even better than life: the love of God. Chesterton speaks of “Christian courage, which is a disdain of death” (137), and so the paradox is that the Christian can view death as both a terrible event and, at the same time, a thing to be faced with courage and hope since death will not be the last event in the life of the individual.
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