A Genuine Reformation is Underway

God Himself Is a Society

G. K Chesterton was a very perceptive theologian.  He was not always right by our lights, but time and time again he saw things far more clearly than many others.  That's why we return to him again and again.  

These days the doctrines of Islam have come far more into focus.  The West's response to the theological doctrines attending Islam has been one of condescension and ignorance.  This is not surprising, since the West views all religions--especially the Christian religion--as a hangover from a more ignorant, superstitious age.  Rather, the West--particularly the Commentariat and Western governments--have viewed Islam and Christianity through the prism of Marxist and neo-Marxist doctrines.  It's all to do with capital (property) and who has it and, therefore, who is exploiting whom.

To the Western mind there is little difference between Christianity and Islam, except that Christians don't go around slaughtering others, at least not now.  Once they did, during the time of the Crusades and so forth.

Chesterton perceived, however, that it is Islam's doctrine of its deity, Allah that makes it so antithetical to Christianity and to a free and just society.  In particular it is the Triune nature of God as He has revealed Himself to be. It turns out that the doctrine of the Trinity has vast implications for human society, just as the monist doctrine of Allah has vast implications for Islamic society--differences which we now see starkly illustrated every day.

Chesterton writes:

Wrong to Sit Upon a Chair

Evolutionary, Because Its Stupid

Over one hundred years ago, G. K. Chesterton saw plainly the connection between humanitarianism and human-hating Greenism (although Greenism did not exist formally as a cause back then).  He wrote:

We constantly hear a particularly cosmic creed from the modern humanitarians; I use the word humanitarian in the ordinary sense, as meaning one who upholds the claims of all creatures against those of humanity. . . . I am here only following the outlines of their argument, which consists in maintaining that man has been progressively more lenient, first to citizens, then to slaves, then to animals, and then (presumably) to plants.

I think it is wrong to sit on a man.  Soon, I shall think it wrong to sit on a horse.  Eventually (I suppose) I shall think it wrong to sit on a chair.  That is the drive of the argument.  And for this argument it can be said that it is possible to talk of it in terms of evolution or inevitable progress.  A perpetual tendency to touch fewer and fewer things might--one feels, be a mere brute unconscious tendency, like that of a species to produce fewer and fewer children.  This drift may be really evolutionary, because it is stupid.  [G. K. Chesterton, "The Eternal Revolution,"  Collected Works, Volume I (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1986), p. 316.]

And so it has come to be that the modern Greenist is profoundly anti-human and pro-crustacean.

Chesterton Explains How Unbelief Drove Him to Belief

The Absurdity of the Rationalist Mind

In a delightful essay entitled, "The Paradoxes of Christianity", G. K. Chesterton describes how he was provoked into becoming a Christian by reading the rationalist attacks upon it.

I read the scientific and sceptical literature of my time--all of it, at least, that I could find written in English and lying about; . . . .  I never read a line of Christian apologetics. I read as little as I can of them now. . . . Our grandmothers were quite right when they said that Tom Paine and the freethinkers unsettled the mind.  They do.  They unsettled mine horribly.  The rationalist made me question whether reason was of any use whatever; and when I had finished reading Herbert Spencer I had got as far as doubting (for the first time) whether evolution had occurred at all.  As I laid down the last of Colonel Ingersoll's atheistic lectures the dreadful thought  broke across my mind, "Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian."  I was in a dreadful way.  [G. K. Chesterton, "The Paradoxes of Christianity,"  Collected Works, Volume I (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1986), p. 288.]

Fearfully and Wonderfully Made, Or . . .

The Nothingness of Everything

Towards the end of the nineteenth century, G. K. Chesterton wrote the following perspicacious paragraph:

The real trouble with this world of ours is not that it is an unreasonable world, or even that it is a reasonable one.  The commonest kind of trouble is that it is nearly reasonable, but not quite.  Life is not an illogicality; yet it is a trap for logicians.  It looks just a little more mathematical and regular than it is; its exactitude is obvious, but its inexactitude is hidden; its wildness lies in wait. [G. K. Chesterton, "The Paradoxes of Christianity,"  Collected Works, Volume I (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1986), p. 285.] 

The wildness of the world lies in wait.  Pagan Deism flowered in a world which told itself that everything operated with mechanical precision.  An impersonal deity had wound up the clock and walked away, leaving the clock to tick along with exact mathematical precision.  Of course there are aspects of the universe that are remarkably precise and regular--atomic clocks, for example.   And then quantum mechanics "came along".  Suddenly the inexactitude of the material world at its most basic (i.e. smallest components) became startlingly apparent.  This led Einstein, who disliked quantum mechanics and its negative implications for Deism, to grumble that he did not believe god played dice with the universe.

The Suicide of the Human Mind

The Suicide of Thought

G. K. Chesterton ran the numbers on how the modern world has sought to dance with numerous partners--all of which have destroyed the dance itself.  There are hypotheses which end up destroying the very possibility of thought and reason.  Here is Chesterton's list of rationalist suicides, destroying the very possibility of thought:

Evolutionism

The Suicide of Thought

G. K. Chesterton

Evolution is a good example of that modern intelligence which, if it destroys anything, destroys itself.  Evolution is either an innocent scientific description of how certain earthly things came about; or, if it is anything more than this, is an attack upon thought itself.  If evolution destroys anything, it does not destroy religion but rationalism. . . . It means there is no such thing as a thing.  At best, there is only one thing, and that is a flux of everything and anything.  This is an attack not upon faith, but upon the mind; you cannot think if there are no things to think about.  You cannot think is you are not separate from the subject of thought.

Descartes said, "I think; therefore I am."  The philosophic evolutionist reverses and negatives the epigram.  He says, "I am not; therefore I cannot think."  [G. K. Chesterton, Collected Works. Volume I: Heretics, Orthodoxy, The Blatchford Controversies.  (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1986), p. 239f.]

Nineteenth Century Polemics

A Proposition Which Kills Itself in Three Sentences

G. K. Chesterton once engaged in a series of written debates with Mr Blatchford, a committed rationalist.  The exchange was irenic, but pointed.  Blatchford had written a book, entitled God and My Neighbour in which he argued that Christianity was guilty of terrible crimes of violence and oppression and bloodshed. 

Chesterton's response was to acknowledge that indeed some Christians had indeed done evil things.  He wrote:

It is not enough to say "Christians persecuted; down with Christianity," any more that it is enough to say, "A Confucian stole my hair-brush; down with Confucianism."  We want to know whether the reason for which the Confucian stole the hair-brush was a reason peculiar to the Confucians, or a reason common to many other men.  [G. K. Chesterton, "The Eternal Heroism of the Slums,"  Collected Works, Volume I (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1986), p. 390.]

He goes on to deny that such evil is uniquely or intrinsically Christian in any sense:

And Can It Be . . .

The Essence of Christendom

G. K. Chesterton

You say grace before meals. All right. But I say grace before the concert and the opera, and grace before the play and pantomime, and grace before I open a book, and grace before sketching, painting, swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing and grace before I dip the pen in the ink.

Christendom will become reified in a nation when the overwhelming majority of citizens believe and act as Chesterton describes. Ah, it will never happen, says the cynic--which means that the Unbeliever cannot accept that God's redeeming power, sovereign grace, and ability to cause the population of an entire nation to be born again is either real or adequate.

Yet that is exactly what the prophet tells us to anticipate.  Behold, the ultimate and final manifestation of Christendom.

Isaiah 65:17-25  English Standard Version (ESV)

New Heavens and a New Earth

“For behold, I create new heavens
    and a new earth,
and the former things shall not be remembered
    or come into mind.
But be glad and rejoice forever
    in that which I create;
for behold, I create Jerusalem to be a joy,
    and her people to be a gladness.
I will rejoice in Jerusalem
    and be glad in my people;
no more shall be heard in it the sound of weeping
    and the cry of distress.
No more shall there be in it
    an infant who lives but a few days,
    or an old man who does not fill out his days,
for the young man shall die a hundred years old,
    and the sinner a hundred years old shall be accursed.
They shall build houses and inhabit them;
    they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit.
They shall not build and another inhabit;
    they shall not plant and another eat;
for like the days of a tree shall the days of my people be,
    and my chosen shall long enjoy^[a] the work of their hands.
They shall not labor in vain
    or bear children for calamity,^[b]
for they shall be the offspring of the blessed of the Lord,
    and their descendants with them.
Before they call I will answer;
    while they are yet speaking I will hear.
The wolf and the lamb shall graze together;
    the lion shall eat straw like the ox,
    and dust shall be the serpent's food.
They shall not hurt or destroy
    in all my holy mountain,”
says the Lord.

Footnotes:

1. Isaiah 65:22 Hebrew shall wear out
2. Isaiah 65:23 Or for sudden terror

Thanksgiving

G.K. Chesterton on Thanksgiving

Justin Taylor
November 28, 2013

“I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought, and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.”—G. K. Chesterton

“The aim of life is appreciation; there is no sense in not appreciating things; and there is no sense in having more of them if you have less appreciation of them.”—G. K. Chesterton

“When it comes to life the critical thing is whether you take things for granted or take them with gratitude.”—G. K. Chesterton

“You say grace before meals. All right. But I say grace before the concert and the opera, and grace before the play and pantomime, and grace before I open a book, and grace before sketching, painting, swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing and grace before I dip the pen in the ink.”—G. K. Chesterton

“When we were children we were grateful to those who filled our stockings at Christmas time. Why are we not grateful to God for filling our stockings with legs?”—G. K. Chesterton

Douglas Wilson's Letter From America

Jabba the Hutt With a Thyroid Condition

Wednesday, June 26, 2013

Douglas Wilson

Chesterton observed — and why wouldn’t he? — that we drastically misunderstand the nature of our sin and rebellion. We like to flatter ourselves in our discontent, saying that the spirit of rebellion rises up within us because of all the things that are wrong. But the reality is the other way — things go wrong because rebellion has risen up within us.

Satan did not revolt against God because of the grim conditions of Hell. Hell is the result of him revolting against the delightful conditions of Heaven. Adam did not rebel against God because he was tired of living in a slum. No, his children live in slums because he grew tired of living in Paradise. Thus far Chesterton.

Now that history is mixed — good and evil mingled together — we have multiple opportunities to make our confusion on this point more plausible. There are evils present, and so we may readily point at them, but our revolt is actually against the good things that are present. That’s our story, and we continue on our way, sinners in search of plausible deniability.

This is the fundamental difference between radicals and reformers.

Darwin Versus Chesterton

 Just the Facts, Ma'am

There is an interesting essay by Denyse O'Leary in the book God and Evolution, edited by Jay Richards.  The book represents a collection of essays which give a defence for Intelligent Design"ism"--by which we mean the argument that Intelligent Design offers a reasonable, if not a better, explanation for the beginning and existence of the world than Darwinian evolution theories.  The essay is entitled "Everything Old is New Again: The Older Catholic Apologists' Responses to Darwin." 

The author puzzles over why the Roman Catholic church cuddles up to Darwinism.  She observes that the media, including Roman Catholic media, defer to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences as representing the official church position.

And the Academy, for its part, assures us that Darwinism (survival of the fittest, without evidence of design) is the best way to interpret the creation of the Lamb of God who was crucified to take away the sins of the world. Denyse O'Leary, "Everything Old Is New Again", God and Evolution, p.167.

She notes that this was not always the case.  A century ago Darwinism was being vigorously denounced by such English writers and intellectuals as G. K. Chesterton, Hilaire Belloc, and St. George Jackson Mivart.  These protagonists, she tells us, rejected Darwinism on rational grounds--including its striking absence of key evidence for Darwin's beliefs.  But absence of evidence--which she assures us continues to this day--has not stopped Darwinism triumphing in the West to the point where it has become virtually the established religion.  This historical development was not what Chesterton and his colleagues expected at all.

Chrestomathy

The Credulity of Unbelief

When people cease to believe in God they do not believe in nothing; they begin to believe in everything.

G. K. Chesterton

Easter Poem

For those of you who enjoy poetry and in view of the season, ContraCelsum is republishing this wonderfully ironic, yet hopeful piece.

THE DONKEY

When fishes flew and forests walked
And figs grew upon thorn,
Some moment when the moon was blood
Then surely I was born;

With monstrous head and sickening cry
And ears like errant wings,
The devil's walking parody
On all four-footed things.

The tattered outlaw of the earth,
Of ancient crooked will;
Starve, scourge, deride me: I am dumb,
I keep my secret still.

Fools! For I also had my hour;
One far fierce hour and sweet:
There was a shout about my ears,
And palms before my feet.

G.K. Chesterton