Orthodoxy

Chesterton, G. K., John Lane Company, 1908. Reprinted Ignatius Press, 1995.

Described as a "timeless argument for the simple plausibility of traditional Christianity."

Preface

Describes this book as a companion to "Heretics". He was criticized for heretics in that he described what is wrong but not what is right. He sets about to do that in this book.

1. Introduction in Defense of Everything Else

p Describes this effort as partly autobiographical in the sense that he attempts to describe how he came to the kind of faith he calls "orthodox".

2. The Maniac

Does a rather thorough job of describing what it is like to be a maniac. Rather than exciting, it is dull because the maniac takes his reasoning to be completely sound and rejects all attempts to change it. Can't get the maniac to change because he has constructed a self-consistent description of a small universe and can't get outside it. It seemed to be too thorough a description of the mainiac until you see that he is building up to arguing that a full materialist is something like a maniac in that he can't admit the possibility of anything beyond his material universe. He finally turns the full guns of his considerable intellect against materialism on p29.

p 29 "Spiritual doctrines do not actually liimit the mind as do materialistic denials. Even if I believe in immortality I need not think about it. But if I disbelieve in immortality I must not think about it. In the first case the road is open and I can go as far as I like; in the second the road is shut. But the case is even stronger, and the parallel with madness is yet more strange. For it was our case against the exhaustive and logical theory of the lunatic that, right or wrong, it gradually destroyed his humanity. Now it is the charge against the main deductions of materialist that, right or wrong, they gradually destroy his humanity; I do not mean only kindness, I mean hope, courage, poetry, initiative, all that is human. For instance, when materialism leads men to complete fatalism (as it generally does), it is quite idle to pretend that it is in any sense a liberating force. It is absurd to say that you are especially advancing freedom when you only use free thought to destroy free will. The determinists come to bind, not to loose. They may well call their law the 'chain' of causation. It is the worst chain that ever fettered a human being. "

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3. The Suicide of Thought

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4. The Ethics of Elfland

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5. The Flag of the World

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6. The Paradoxes of Christianity

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7. The Eternal Revolution

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8. The Romance of Orthodoxy

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9. Authority and the Adventurer

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