What I've been struck by as I've read this book is how countercultural Chesterton's views were. He was writing in the midst of the height of modernity. The "Myth of Progress" was in full swing
and yet Chesterton says, "I freely confess all the idiotic ambitions of the end of the nineteenth century. I did, like all other solemn little boys, try to be in advance of the age. Like them I tried to be some ten minutes in advance of the truth. And I found that I was eighteen hundred years behind it..." (Chesterton 4). What modern Englishman would ever call the enlightenment ambitions "idiotic"?He almost sounds like a postmodernist!
While he doesn't reject reason and logic outright he says that they need to be balanced by mysticism. “Mysticism keeps men sane. As long as you have mystery you have health; when you destroy mystery you create morbidity” (Chesterton 23).
Orthodoxy is Chesterton's call for Christians to regain the mystery and adventure of Christianity. Stories say that Chesterton, a big fat jolly man, walked everywhere with a sword-cane (a walking stick with a sword hidden in the handle) just in case he ran into an adventure!
Do we as Christians need to regain our sense of adventure?
... of mystery?
What might that look like?
1 comment:
Yes, most definitely we need our sense of adventure back. And come to think of it, a sword-cane is not a bad place to start.
Tim S.
Post a Comment