We discuss the first two chapters of GK Chesterton's apologetical classic "Orthodoxy." In Defense of Everything Else, and The Maniac -- in which Chesterton lays out the scope of his work, and begins his survey of what is wrong with modern thought.
Listen online to part 1 [here]!
Listen online to part 2 [here]!
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Adult Faith Formation Series – Spring 2021 – Orthodoxy
by GK Chesterton
January 19th – Chapters 1&2 –
In Defense of Everything Else & The Maniac
The Christian ideal has not been tried and found
wanting.
It has been found difficult; and left untried. - GK
Chesterton
I. Review
1. Orthodoxy as a good
introduction to all of GK Chesterton.
2. Written while Chesterton was
still Anglican, describing his intellectual journey back to traditional
Christianity.
3. Written as a follow up to
Heretics, in which he criticized the heresies against reason of his day.
4. Some of the people Chesterton
frequently mentions in Orthodoxy: Shaw, Tolstoy, Nietzsche, Wells.
II. Chapter 1: In Defense of
Everything Else
A. “I will not call it my
philosophy; for I did not make it. God and humanity made it; and it made me.”
How Chesterton discovered the Christian Creed, and how it made sense of the
world.
B. Orthodoxy “is not an
ecclesiastical treatise” and not a study of the development of doctrine, nor
even a consideration of which church is the true Church. Rather, Chesterton shows that the Christian
Creed “is the best root of energy and sound ethics” – that it resonates with
the nature of man, that it touches reality.
III. Chapter 2: The Maniac
A. Chapters 2 and 3 offer a
review of what is wrong with modern thought and philosophy – essentially, that
it is a denial of objective truth that ends in the denial of thought.
B. On fairy tales and modern
novels: “The old fairy tale makes the hero a normal human boy; it is his
adventures that are startling; they startle him because he is normal. But in
the modern psychological novel the hero is abnormal; the centre is not
central.”
C. Who is the maniac? The one who
tries to understand everything, and who manages to account for everything, but
with too small a theory. “The lunatic’s theory explains a large number of things,
but it does not explain them in a large way.”
Here we see Chesterton’s emphasis
on reason and imagination – recapturing the sense of wonder.
D. The modern thinkers are mostly
maniacs. Materialism does explain, but
in such a small and dry way. And even
worse, the radical sceptic who denies the existence of the external world can
explain everything, but he explains it away.
E. But the religious man is a
mystic, and allows the paradox of the Cross to shed light on all reality.
IV. Looking ahead, Chapters
3&4
A. The Suicide of Thought: Notice
how Chesterton speaks of religion as defending reason and safeguarding freedom
and thought, while modern skepticism destroys thought.
B. The Ethics of Elfland:
Father’s favorite chapter! Elfland is
our world, seen with wonder!
