Christianity = Not Either/Or, but Both: G.K. Chesterton

G.K. Chesterton is sometimes called the Catholic C.S. Lewis. That may be interpreted as either a true or back-handed compliment, but Chesterton would perhaps offer a third option, both.

In Chapter 6 of Orthodoxy, titled "The Paradoxes of Christianity", Chesterton opens:

THE real trouble with this world of ours is not that it is an unreasonable world, nor 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.

Chesterton then proceeds to give many insights and examples with the purpose of showing that "whenever we feel there is something odd in Christian theology, we shall generally find that there is something odd in the truth."

Chesterton asks the reader to consider why is Christianity attacked as being extreme in ways that seem to contradict each other? Why is Christianity criticized for being too optimistic and too pessimistic? Too meek and too violent? Too chaste and too fruitful? Too universal and too exclusive? Too austere and too artistic?

And then in a quiet hour a strange thought struck me like a still thunderbolt. There had suddenly come into my mind another explanation. Suppose we heard an unknown man spoken of by many men. Suppose we were puzzled to hear that some men said he was too tall and some too short; some objected to his fatness, some lamented his leanness; some thought him too dark, and some too fair. One explanation (as has been already admitted) would be that he might be an odd shape. But there is another explanation. He might be the right shape. Outrageously tall men might feel him to be short. Very short men might feel him to be tall. Old bucks who are growing stout might consider him insufficiently filled out; old beaux who were growing thin might feel that he expanded beyond the narrow lines of elegance. Perhaps Swedes (who have pale hair like tow) called him a dark man, while negroes considered him distinctly blonde. Perhaps (in short) this extraordinary thing is really the ordinary thing; at least the normal thing, the centre. Perhaps, after all, it is Christianity that is sane and all its critics that are mad -- in various ways.

But Chesterton does not end there. In fact, he argues against moderation as the ONLY answer:

Nevertheless it could not, I felt, be quite true that Christianity was merely sensible and stood in the middle. There was really an element in it of emphasis and even frenzy which had justified the secularists in their superficial criticism. It might be wise, I began more and more to think that it was wise, but it was not merely worldly wise; it was not merely temperate and respectable. Its fierce crusaders and meek saints might balance each other; still, the crusaders were very fierce and the saints were very meek, meek beyond all decency... [W]e want not an amalgam or compromise, but both things at the top of their energy; love and wrath both burning.

Chesterton writes by way of example, and illustrates the paradox of courage:

Paganism declared that virtue was in a balance; Christianity declared it was in a conflict: the collision of two passions apparently opposite. Of course they were not really inconsistent; but they were such that it was hard to hold simultaneously. Let us follow for a moment the clue of the martyr and the suicide; and take the case of courage. No quality has ever so much addled the brains and tangled the definitions of merely rational sages. Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of a readiness to die. "He that will lose his life, the same shall save it," is not a piece of mysticism for saints and heroes. It is a piece of everyday advice for sailors or mountaineers. It might be printed in an Alpine guide or a drill book. This paradox is the whole principle of courage; even of quite earthly or quite brutal courage. A man cut off by the sea may save his life if he will risk it on the precipice.

He can only get away from death by continually stepping within an inch of it. A soldier surrounded by enemies, if he is to cut his way out, needs to combine a strong desire for living with a strange carelessness about dying. He must not merely cling to life, for then he will be a coward, and will not escape. He must not merely wait for death, for then he will be a suicide, and will not escape. He must seek his life in a spirit of furious indifference to it; he must desire life like water and yet drink death like wine. No philosopher, I fancy, has ever expressed this romantic riddle with adequate lucidity, and I certainly have not done so. But Christianity has done more: it has marked the limits of it in the awful graves of the suicide and the hero, showing the distance between him who dies for the sake of living and him who dies for the sake of dying.

Moving on to unravel modesty and pride, Chesterton produces a memorable quote:

The Church was positive on both points. One can hardly think too little of one's self. One can hardly think too much of one's soul.

Chesterton's writing has it problems, particularly for Protestants, but I find this chapter a fascinating interpretation of Thomistic Aristotelianism.

A non-Christian (at least explicitly) application of dueling extremes is the tension between liberty and virtue. Man is not free without virtue, for without virtue he is a slave to animal instincts and desires. Only when man governs himself can he deserve and hope for a society built on liberty and freedom.