I was watching a video of a lecture given by the Church of England apologist Alister McGrath to promote his new biography of C.S. Lewis. Towards the end of the video, McGrath answers a question from an audience member about the comparison between Chesterton and Lewis.
I found myself quite surprised and indignant at his response (it can be found about fifty minutes and thirty seconds into the video):
Lewis frequently emphasized how much he owed to G.K. Chesterton, especially his book The Everlasting Man. And, indeed, I would personally say that I’m sure Chesterton’s apologetic writings were a inspiration to Lewis. The real danger, I think, is, if you’ve read Lewis and then read G.K. Chesterton’s book, for example Orthodoxy or The Everlasting Man, you kind of feel you’re turning to something that’s not quite as good, and the real problem is that Chesterton actually is very good, it’s just that Lewis is better [audience laughs], and so that inevitably, in a way, we’ve kind of devalued Chesterton as a result, but Chesterton was very important for Lewis.
I find it hard to believe anyone would come to this conclusion. I love Lewis, and I love Chesterton, but Chesterton seems to me to be easily the more important talent and the deeper thinker of the two. For one thing, Chesterton defended and proclaimed Christianity on so many more fronts than Lewis did. Lewis made several important philosophical arguments, including the argument from reason-- that is, that a thoroughgoing naturalism can't explain how the conclusions of rational thought can be defended in the first place, since rational thought must simply a physical process like everything else. (The argument was not original to Lewis, nor did he pretend that it was. Chesterton had made the same argument himself, though he never developed it as fully.) Lewis also made important arguments from the field of textual analysis, which was his expertise. I myself am very struck by his argument that the gospels simply don't read like myth or legend-- that the Evangelists seem to have pre-empted novelistic writing by many centuries, with their use of incidental detail and matter-of-fact reportage.
But Chesterton did so much more. Chesterton's defence of Christianity takes in literary criticism, social comment, history, folklore, humour, politics, sociology, mythology, psychology, and pretty much every other field you can think of. He was so much more prolific than Lewis, writing his weekly Illustrated London News column alone for forty years, and even when he was not explicitly writing about religion, the link between his spiritual beliefs and any given argument he is making is always fairly obvious. Chesterton well and truly defended his claim that "nothing can be irrelevant to the proposition that Christianity is true".
Also, though Lewis could certainly be funny, Chesterton is much funnier.
It is true that Lewis was the more careful and analytical writer, and that his clinical prose can sometimes make Chesterton seem (by comparison) sloppy and slapdash. That is a point in his favour. But if Chesterton was sometimes careless, it was because he could afford to be. He was simply brimming over with ideas, inspiration and insight. In depth and breadth and brilliance, I think he outshines Lewis as the sun outshines the moon. Probably Lewis would have agreed.
P.S. Twice today, while reading about C.S. Lewis on the internet, I've come across the claim that Lewis became an atheist as a result of the carnage he witnessed in World War One. One of these claims was during this teaser trailer for a planned film about Lewis's conversion. (Unfortunately, the website to which the trailer directs the viewer is now "suspended". But there was a real studio behind the venture, since there are several articles about the project on the internet. I hope the idea hasn't been scrapped.)
But I wonder how they could make such a mistake? Lewis, of course, was an atheist before World War One, and also after it. He lost his faith in his teens and didn't regain it until he was thirty-two. The carnage of the trenches neither made him an atheist nor a believer. It devalues both his atheism and his conversion to attribute either to an emotional reaction.
Sunday, May 19, 2013
Saturday, May 18, 2013
A Gable Wall
Nothing is more beautiful than a gable wall.
For all the whirling splendour of a waterfall
Or a kaleidoscope, or dust motes dancing in air,
There is a splendour, too, in the sublimely bare;
The chastely, simply, humbly, gloriously bare.
What lies behind a gable wall? Life lies behind;
Life happening over and over and over, time out of mind;
Too many tales for the telling, in kitchen and bedroom and hall.
Oh somehow, I cannot say how, I hear life's jubilant call
Never more clearly than when I look at a gable wall.
For all the whirling splendour of a waterfall
Or a kaleidoscope, or dust motes dancing in air,
There is a splendour, too, in the sublimely bare;
The chastely, simply, humbly, gloriously bare.
What lies behind a gable wall? Life lies behind;
Life happening over and over and over, time out of mind;
Too many tales for the telling, in kitchen and bedroom and hall.
Oh somehow, I cannot say how, I hear life's jubilant call
Never more clearly than when I look at a gable wall.
Friday, May 17, 2013
Another Wonderful Video by Father Robert Barron
Here, he discusses how modern culture finds it hard to "hear" the Catholic Church because modern culture has discarded the idea of formal and final causes.
Perhaps I shouldn't say this, but I think there are an awful lot of bad Catholic apologetics and bad Catholic commentary out there. Walk into Veritas books in Abbey Street and take any book from the shelf; most likely even a glance at the blurb will tell you that it's full of platitudes.
Father Barron is one of those commentators who avoids platitudes, and who strikes at the heart of a topic. Here, he addresses an important philosophical question that has profound implications on how Catholics (and their secular critics) view such matters as sex, the family, freedom, and human life-- and a lot more besides.
Perhaps I shouldn't say this, but I think there are an awful lot of bad Catholic apologetics and bad Catholic commentary out there. Walk into Veritas books in Abbey Street and take any book from the shelf; most likely even a glance at the blurb will tell you that it's full of platitudes.
Father Barron is one of those commentators who avoids platitudes, and who strikes at the heart of a topic. Here, he addresses an important philosophical question that has profound implications on how Catholics (and their secular critics) view such matters as sex, the family, freedom, and human life-- and a lot more besides.
Dialogue of Faith and Doubt Part One
FAITH: Sometimes I am filled with delight at the very existence of Christianity.
Let me put it this way. I can't imagine a situation where the universe didn't exist; I can conceptualize it, but I can't imagine it. But given that something does exist-- that the universe exists, along with the world, and life itself-- it seems to me all-too-imaginable that ultimate reality-- the bottom layer of existence, as it were-- would have been something deadly dull. In fact, it is something deadly dull for scientific materialists, for all their vapid rhetoric about wonder and awe. (Any wonder and awe a scientific materialist feels towards the universe must, by his own logic, simply be a quirk of brain chemistry; boredom and disgust would be equally legitimate reactions. It seems to me to be strangely inconsistent to accept the existence of the universe as a simple fact, requiring no further explanation, and yet to feel "wonder" towards it.)
But Christians believe that Christianity is the ultimate truth about everything. And Christianity is wildly exciting and romantic and beautiful. I honestly can't imagine a better way for Providence to have arranged matters. The history of Christianity is the ultimate ripping yarn! The apostles, filled with the fire of Pentecost, going forth into the world as lambs amongst wolves; the courage in persecution of the early Christians; the stories of missionaries, martyrs and saints, of miracles and visions and conversions; all are utterly brimming over with drama and incident and passion and colour.
I realize you could say the same thing about any other narrative thread in human history. The history of socialism, the history of feminism, the saga of the British Empire, even the development of science and technology all have their own human interest, their own saints and martyrs and Scripture (if you will). For instance, the story of the mathematician Sir William Rowan Hamilton carving the formula for quaternions (whatever they are) on the side of Broom Bridge in Cabra, Dublin, is rather similiar (insofar as it features a sudden flash of inspiration) to the story of the St. Paul's experience on the road to Damascus, or the moment where St. Augustine heard a child's voice say "Take and read", and, opening the Bible at random, came on a verse that made his vocation clear to him.
However, there seems to me a qualitative difference between the story of the mathematician and the two other stories. The detail of the formula carved on the bridge is incidental to the mathematical breakthrough-- it is mere window-dressing. It wouldn't need to be mentioned in a history of mathematical thought. In the same way, the trial of Socrates have to be mentioned in a history of philosophy. And I think this point applies in general. Most of the ways of looking at the world and at human society-- economic, evolutionary, Marxist, anthropological, and so forth-- are, when it comes down to it, impersonal. But the Christian way of looking at the world is irreducibly personal. Christ was not simply a man or a prophet who was vouchsafed the definitive truth about reality. He himself is the way, the truth and the life. The saints were not just a sort of moral or spiritual Nobel Prize winners. We are encouraged to have a personal devotion to them, too.
This essentially personal nature of Christianity-- which, to a believing Christian, means that reality itself is essentially personal-- is only one of the reasons why Christianity seems such a gift to me. Along with that there is the profound sense of rootedness, of historical continuity. There is a sense of communion with Christians throughout the world. There is the refeshment and exultation we can take, especially in this utilitarian modern age, in the ritual and symbolism and poetry of the Church's life. And so on.
All of this-- this almost incredulous delight in the gift of our Christian faith-- makes the act of faith itself a kind of grateful tribute. We are happy to face the derision and hostility and challenges of the non-Christian world. Faith gives us something to do. We are like the young man who is desperately in love and dreams about saving his beloved from a fire, or fighting a duel for her honour. We are like the patriot who burns to stand true to his country in its hour of greatest trial. We accept that "we walk by faith, and not by sight", but we take pleasure in this, because it gives us the honour and joy of saying "Yes" to God. We feel that the most precious gift God could give us was leaving room for faith, by refusing to coerce our intellect into belief.
DOUBT: Very well said, and very moving. This is indeed the kind of thought to lift the heart on a bright summer's day, or a moonlit night, when you are well-fed and in good health and you have no very pressing anxieties.
It is easy to feel like this when you are kneeling in church, surrounded by reverential whispers and earnest faces. It is easy to feel like this in conversation with fellow Christians, or even with respectful agnostics, when the very name "Christ" is spoken with such halting earnestness. It is even easy to feel this when you are arguing with atheists, or enemies of Christianity. Christianity seems on the agenda at moments like that. It is like the silent question that hovers over everything.
But-- do you remember that depressing night you spent in that ugly, budget hotel? Do you remember when you settled down to your prayers, and decided to switch the light out, since the room was so ugly it would be difficult to pray while looking at it? Do you remember how utterly dark, how utterly silent it seemed? How your own mind seemed like a disembodied consciousness floating in the depths of space, and all of the life and laughter and controversy and discussion of the human race seemed to have simply flickered out of existence?
Do you remember how your prayers seemed to drop into an abyss, mere words and ideas, like the piteous toys of centuries-dead children dug up by some archaeologist?
Does your faith not shrivel in places where nobody is even thinking or talking about God or Christ or Christianity, for good or ill? Standing beside a motorway and looking at car after car after car hurtling by? Walking through an industrial estate and shuddering at the sheer size of those enormous factories and warehouses? Navigating the city centre on a Saturday night, looking at all the revellers and lost souls and drunkards wandering past the shuttered shop fronts, the remorseless and unflickering light of the street lamps making the scene all too solid and real? Or face to face with the vastness of nature, perhaps staring out into the sea and feeling a vague dread at the thought of all those miles upon miles upon miles of water? In moments like that, can you really believe that Christ is the answer to the riddle of life? Can you even feel that life is a riddle, and not just a....state?
Doesn't it all boil down to atmospherics, this matter of belief and unbelief? The expression on a face, the timbre of a voice, the mood of a gathering? Isn't religious faith simply like those high spirits that pep talks used to inspire in you, or that a rousing climax to a movie can still inspire in you? Think of all the times in your teens that you felt absolutely sure that you were suffering from some deadly disease, or that all you cared for in the whole world were the smiles of that girl who never noticed you and who you never think about today, or that the meaning of your life depended upon some particular achievement. Isn't religious faith just a case of-- getting worked into a tizzy?
FAITH: That's a good question. Let me think about my answer.
Let me put it this way. I can't imagine a situation where the universe didn't exist; I can conceptualize it, but I can't imagine it. But given that something does exist-- that the universe exists, along with the world, and life itself-- it seems to me all-too-imaginable that ultimate reality-- the bottom layer of existence, as it were-- would have been something deadly dull. In fact, it is something deadly dull for scientific materialists, for all their vapid rhetoric about wonder and awe. (Any wonder and awe a scientific materialist feels towards the universe must, by his own logic, simply be a quirk of brain chemistry; boredom and disgust would be equally legitimate reactions. It seems to me to be strangely inconsistent to accept the existence of the universe as a simple fact, requiring no further explanation, and yet to feel "wonder" towards it.)
But Christians believe that Christianity is the ultimate truth about everything. And Christianity is wildly exciting and romantic and beautiful. I honestly can't imagine a better way for Providence to have arranged matters. The history of Christianity is the ultimate ripping yarn! The apostles, filled with the fire of Pentecost, going forth into the world as lambs amongst wolves; the courage in persecution of the early Christians; the stories of missionaries, martyrs and saints, of miracles and visions and conversions; all are utterly brimming over with drama and incident and passion and colour.
I realize you could say the same thing about any other narrative thread in human history. The history of socialism, the history of feminism, the saga of the British Empire, even the development of science and technology all have their own human interest, their own saints and martyrs and Scripture (if you will). For instance, the story of the mathematician Sir William Rowan Hamilton carving the formula for quaternions (whatever they are) on the side of Broom Bridge in Cabra, Dublin, is rather similiar (insofar as it features a sudden flash of inspiration) to the story of the St. Paul's experience on the road to Damascus, or the moment where St. Augustine heard a child's voice say "Take and read", and, opening the Bible at random, came on a verse that made his vocation clear to him.
However, there seems to me a qualitative difference between the story of the mathematician and the two other stories. The detail of the formula carved on the bridge is incidental to the mathematical breakthrough-- it is mere window-dressing. It wouldn't need to be mentioned in a history of mathematical thought. In the same way, the trial of Socrates have to be mentioned in a history of philosophy. And I think this point applies in general. Most of the ways of looking at the world and at human society-- economic, evolutionary, Marxist, anthropological, and so forth-- are, when it comes down to it, impersonal. But the Christian way of looking at the world is irreducibly personal. Christ was not simply a man or a prophet who was vouchsafed the definitive truth about reality. He himself is the way, the truth and the life. The saints were not just a sort of moral or spiritual Nobel Prize winners. We are encouraged to have a personal devotion to them, too.
This essentially personal nature of Christianity-- which, to a believing Christian, means that reality itself is essentially personal-- is only one of the reasons why Christianity seems such a gift to me. Along with that there is the profound sense of rootedness, of historical continuity. There is a sense of communion with Christians throughout the world. There is the refeshment and exultation we can take, especially in this utilitarian modern age, in the ritual and symbolism and poetry of the Church's life. And so on.
All of this-- this almost incredulous delight in the gift of our Christian faith-- makes the act of faith itself a kind of grateful tribute. We are happy to face the derision and hostility and challenges of the non-Christian world. Faith gives us something to do. We are like the young man who is desperately in love and dreams about saving his beloved from a fire, or fighting a duel for her honour. We are like the patriot who burns to stand true to his country in its hour of greatest trial. We accept that "we walk by faith, and not by sight", but we take pleasure in this, because it gives us the honour and joy of saying "Yes" to God. We feel that the most precious gift God could give us was leaving room for faith, by refusing to coerce our intellect into belief.
DOUBT: Very well said, and very moving. This is indeed the kind of thought to lift the heart on a bright summer's day, or a moonlit night, when you are well-fed and in good health and you have no very pressing anxieties.
It is easy to feel like this when you are kneeling in church, surrounded by reverential whispers and earnest faces. It is easy to feel like this in conversation with fellow Christians, or even with respectful agnostics, when the very name "Christ" is spoken with such halting earnestness. It is even easy to feel this when you are arguing with atheists, or enemies of Christianity. Christianity seems on the agenda at moments like that. It is like the silent question that hovers over everything.
But-- do you remember that depressing night you spent in that ugly, budget hotel? Do you remember when you settled down to your prayers, and decided to switch the light out, since the room was so ugly it would be difficult to pray while looking at it? Do you remember how utterly dark, how utterly silent it seemed? How your own mind seemed like a disembodied consciousness floating in the depths of space, and all of the life and laughter and controversy and discussion of the human race seemed to have simply flickered out of existence?
Do you remember how your prayers seemed to drop into an abyss, mere words and ideas, like the piteous toys of centuries-dead children dug up by some archaeologist?
Does your faith not shrivel in places where nobody is even thinking or talking about God or Christ or Christianity, for good or ill? Standing beside a motorway and looking at car after car after car hurtling by? Walking through an industrial estate and shuddering at the sheer size of those enormous factories and warehouses? Navigating the city centre on a Saturday night, looking at all the revellers and lost souls and drunkards wandering past the shuttered shop fronts, the remorseless and unflickering light of the street lamps making the scene all too solid and real? Or face to face with the vastness of nature, perhaps staring out into the sea and feeling a vague dread at the thought of all those miles upon miles upon miles of water? In moments like that, can you really believe that Christ is the answer to the riddle of life? Can you even feel that life is a riddle, and not just a....state?
Doesn't it all boil down to atmospherics, this matter of belief and unbelief? The expression on a face, the timbre of a voice, the mood of a gathering? Isn't religious faith simply like those high spirits that pep talks used to inspire in you, or that a rousing climax to a movie can still inspire in you? Think of all the times in your teens that you felt absolutely sure that you were suffering from some deadly disease, or that all you cared for in the whole world were the smiles of that girl who never noticed you and who you never think about today, or that the meaning of your life depended upon some particular achievement. Isn't religious faith just a case of-- getting worked into a tizzy?
FAITH: That's a good question. Let me think about my answer.
Wednesday, May 15, 2013
Prayers Please
Please pray for my fianceé Michelle, who is facing into a gruelling ordeal tomorrow.
UPDATE: My heartfelt thanks for your prayers. She is through the ordeal now and it went as well as could be hoped for. Thank the Lord!
UPDATE: My heartfelt thanks for your prayers. She is through the ordeal now and it went as well as could be hoped for. Thank the Lord!
Tuesday, May 14, 2013
The BBC Website Makes a Joke Out Of Hell
The facts are sufficiently solid, but the tone is one of barely-concealed facetiousness.
If you believe there is any chance at all that your immortal soul might not attain the fulfilment it was created for-- the only thing that ultimately matters-- how could you be flippant about it?
Even before I was a believing Christian, I could never enjoy horror stories where somebody's immortal soul was at stake.
"In modern times Christians have become increasingly sceptical about Hell", the article informs us. How much is unsaid in such a simple sentence!
If you believe there is any chance at all that your immortal soul might not attain the fulfilment it was created for-- the only thing that ultimately matters-- how could you be flippant about it?
Even before I was a believing Christian, I could never enjoy horror stories where somebody's immortal soul was at stake.
"In modern times Christians have become increasingly sceptical about Hell", the article informs us. How much is unsaid in such a simple sentence!
A New Irish Catholic Blog!
There's a new Irish Catholic blog in town! And goodness knows we need all the orthodox voices we can get with all the anti-Catholic venom out there in cyberspace, especially Hibernian cyberspace. (You doubt me? Take a look at Politics.ie, Broadsheet.ie, Indymedia.ie, or the comments on the online version of The Irish Times.)
Welcome, Cor Jesu Sacratissimum!
Welcome, Cor Jesu Sacratissimum!
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