Chance or the Dance? A Critique of Modern Secularism

by Thomas Howard

Contrasting the Christian and secular worldviews, Howard refreshes our minds with the illuminated view of Christianity as it imbued the world in times past—showing that we cannot live meaningful lives without this Christian understanding of things. An inspiring apology for Christianity, and a stirring critique of secularism.

Genres: Philosophy, Religion, Nonfiction, Christian, Theology, Christianity, Catholic

150 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1969

About the author

Thomas Howard (b. 1935) is a highly acclaimed writer and scholar.

He was raised in a prominent Evangelical home (his sister is well-known author and former missionary Elisabeth Elliot), became Episcopalian in his mid-twenties, then entered the Catholic Church in 1985, at the age of fifty. At the time, his conversion shocked many in evangelical circles, and was the subject of a feature article in the leading evangelical periodical Christianity Today.

Dave Armstrong writes of Howard: "He cites the influence of great Catholic writers such as Newman, Knox, Chesterton, Guardini, Ratzinger, Karl Adam, Louis Bouyer, and St. Augustine on his final decision. Howard's always stylistically-excellent prose is especially noteworthy for its emphasis on the sacramental, incarnational and ‘transcendent’ aspects of Christianity."

Like C.S. Lewis, who he greatly admires and has written about often, Howard is an English professor (recently retired, after nearly forty years of teaching), who taught at Gordon College and then at St. John's Seminary. He is a highly acclaimed writer and scholar, noted for his studies of Inklings C.S. Lewis Narnia Beyond: A Guide to the Fiction of C.S. Lewis (2006, 1987) and Charles Williams The Novels of Charles Williams (1991), as well as books including Christ the Tiger (1967), Chance or the Dance (1969), Hallowed be This House (1976), Evangelical is Not Enough (1984), If Your Mind Wanders at Mass (1995), On Being Catholic (1997), and The Secret of New York Revealed.

Reviews

[C.H. Cobb · Rating 5 out of 5]

A garden of delight is the little book (136 pages) titled “Chance or the Dance, A Critique of Modern Secularism,” by Thomas Howard. Although the topic is serious, the writing is Lewis-like, almost whimsical, and very enjoyable.

The thesis of the author is that a new myth (“if you can’t measure it, it does not exist”) has replaced the old myth (angels, demons, gods, heaven, hell); and with that changing of myth has come a necessary alteration of significance. Under the old myth, everything means everything: the patterns and rhythms and images of everyday humdrum existence all point to an Ultimate Reality—they all mean something. Conversely, under the new myth nothing means anything: everything is the product of random chance, the fortuitous collocation of molecules and atoms and therefore the very concept of meaning or significance is an impossibility.

The book is not a philosophical tome by any means – the writer eschews jargon and uses garden-variety experiences and objects (wherein is the whimsy) – lunch, acorns, soup cans, dishrags – to assert his argument (lurking behind it all I sense he is drawing allusions to Plato’s forms). But it’s not a book to exhaust the reader with mental gymnastics – his points are simple. He also draws richly from the world of art, literature, movies, poetry, etc, to make his case.

Do not be fooled: this is not a book for skimming. He builds the wall of his argument a brick at a time and if you skim you’ll wind up missing bricks here and there. Pay close attention to the first two chapters where he lays out his ideas of the old/new myths, the notion of form and content, and imaging/imagination. These are matters Howard uses constantly throughout the book, and you’ll want to note well what he means by them.

Like Lewis, Tolkien, and Chesterton, Howard comes from the tradition of Anglo-Catholic philosopher/writers. If there’s a bone I have to pick with this excellent and clear-minded tradition it is the exaltation of reason to an excessive height, often putting God at the wrong end of the microscope and making Him the object upon which we exercise our rationality, rather than seeing God as the author of a rationality to which He himself is not subject. This tradition often overlooks the darkness which sin has imposed on our ability to think rationally. In any case, you’ll enjoy Howard’s exquisitely precise argument that comes wrapped in the clothes of everyday life.

Howard only intimates but does not state the ultimate point of his book. He suggests rather than proclaims. As a reader who knows the Ultimate Reality behind the images, I found this to be a little frustrating, something like listening to a truncated rendition of a glorious piece of music. The conductor, coming to the finale of a bravura performance of a gorgeous symphony, waves the orchestra to silence and neglects the the final page. The music hangs in the air, begging for its crescendo. But that is just the sort of subtlety that defines all the pages of this little volume—Howard leaves the reader to connect the final, obvious dots. Perhaps, in the end, that is part of its appeal.

That resolution does come (in the edition that I read) in the afterword by Tyler Blanski. One might accuse Blanski of stating the obvious, but in four pages he does it well. Many readers of this book might be muddling about in darkness. Connecting the lines to the final dots might be asking too much. Blanski marks the path clearly for those wearing the opaque glasses of secularism.

Five stars to Howard’s Chance or the Dance; it is a relentlessly more powerful apologetic than citing facts, figures, and statistics.

[Steve · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great book in many ways. It's a kind of poetic. artistic critique of secularism. Secularism cannot account for the metaphorical, the deep meaning inherent in man, creation and our creativity.

Just 3 stars because the Biblical grounding is weak (and could have been strong). Great nonetheless and well worthwhile.

[Don Brooks · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is rare to read a book that is both simple and profound. A work that makes an argument and still inspires. Chance or the Dance is this and more.

This book is a critique of secularism. The author, Thomas Howard, structures the critique by describing the old myth, where everything means everything and the new myth (post Enlightenment) as nothing means anything. Old myth: everything is the ordered Dance. New myth: all is simply the result of Chance.

Howard then leads us to the profound by exploring the meaning of things seen through imagination. Image making. The majestic lion, the ceremony of eating, the noble Borzoi names a few examples. He shows us that everything we do imbues meaning into everything we do. A practice, according to the old myth, that points to the way things really are. And, according to the new myth it is just fancy taking us away from the way things really are—a mountain is just elevated strata, eating is just necessity and a handshake symbolizes nothing that is real or meaningful.

His final chapter, Bravo for the Humdrum is where his argument turns to inspiration. He reminds us that the stuff of the everyday is the very occasion of glory.To discover glory in the commonplace, practice and reflection are needed.

This critique of Secularism is an apologetic for the Christian worldview demonstrated through our everyday experience. A rare find reminiscent of Chesterton and Lewis. I have called this book simple and inspiring. It is both. But it is also a book of significant depth and insight. A read that will make you think hard and long.

[Carole · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one good book. Howard's a talented author, that's for sure. I'm not generally one for nonfiction, and if you'd told me the subject, I never would have read this one. Reads like the best class ever.

[Mrs. Angie Vogt · Rating 3 out of 5]

A young millennial reading the book with me was not clear on what Howard means by the "Old Myth" versus the "New Myth." Here is my explanation of what Howard is asserting.

Up until the Enlightenment, humans perceived and interacted with the world as a mix of material and supernatural reality. They lived, worked, played, and breathed as though everything had significance to the created cosmos, and as though everything had a spiritual consequence. They viewed ALL physical reality as having an objective invisible reality. They saw each sunrise as having universal significance. A king was a king because God Himself ordained it to be so and doing anything to defy it was an attack on the supernatural order of things.

The natural extension of this worldview led to the human imagination creating a myriad of superstitions and beliefs that governed daily life. As the scientific method and enlightenment ideas dismantled these superstitions, so began an overhaul and reshaping of the old paradigm (enter stage left, "The New Myth"). This new paradigm, the "New Myth," shifted man's focus away from the supernatural world (and its requisite concerns with eternal life and salvation from hell) to the purely material world of existence. Not only were superstitions and false beliefs debunked and dislodged from the "social imaginary" (RE: Carl Trueman and Charles Taylor), but so were the presumptions and a priori justifications for our existence as created beings owing our lives to an omniscient Creator. Now, such rules as the Divine Right of Kings and why the sun rose everyday were no longer supernatural realities ordained by the Creator, but they were just caused by material factors, easily explained.

With this new paradigm came a movement from understanding the world in a natural and logical sense to its natural extension, namely, that man can reshape nature and the material world to suit his own ambitions and whims. With the Modern Era (located around the same time as the early Industrial Revolution of the 1860s) the new paradigm began to move quickly from belief in the power and sanctity of the invisible world to an optimistic view that these things easily explained can be also be easily manipulated to serve the ambitions of man. Disease can now be cured and removed as a threat to existence (discovery of the germ, antibiotics, vaccines, and the cell). The problem is that this new paradigm began a chain reaction of presumptions and the New Myth quickly formed into a myriad of superstitions and false belief networks on par with the that of the Dark Age and Middle Ages.

So, in the same way that we manipulate genetic material to eradicate diseases, we can also create new plant species and new breeds of dogs. That seems harmless enough. Having successfully created new plant species and dog breeds, we now decide that through sheer will and intent, we can determine our sex simply by deciding we're a different sex than that of which we were born. We can redefine family to be any group of interested persons over any period of time and this formation is just as significant as the Old Myth's definition of family, which was based on generations of natural relationships, yielding a genetic line that extended through the centuries. The significance of family according to the Old Myth is that each and every human being is connected to a pre-existence through the natural means of reproduction. Each human being is the result of literally millions, if not billions of interactions over several centuries.

The Old Myth saw motherhood as necessary because nature tells us this. The New Myth says motherhood is not necessary nor significant--it's just a random name given to a natural process that, in itself, only has meaning if the concerned entities FEEL it has meaning. This is what Howard means when he says the Old Myth believed that everything had significance, while the New Myth says anything (or nothing) can basically mean anything (or nothing). The new myth places the powers of creation in the hands of man, without also acknowledging the sober and grave consequences of living as though each of us were our own gods.

It seems easy enough in our world to base our beliefs on a cacophony of presumptions and assumptions because we've dismantled the Old Myth, and as a result, have untethered ourselves from any supernatural meaning. Either we are the Creators of the natural world or we must submit to the reality that we are NOT the Creators, and therefore submit to the laws set in place by the one or several who are the Creators.

The problem with proclaiming ourselves as creators of nature is that the concept of self-evident truth remains stubbornly in place, in spite of our attempts to reshape it. The natural law, as stamped by the Creator of the natural order, is a law of order. Man's attempt to place nature under his command will not only fail, but it is at the heart of our self-destruction and eternal damnation. It is nothing more than vanity...a perennial and fateful return to Eden where we seem hell bent on re-convincing ourselves of the very first lie; the lie that we can make our own rules of right and wrong, that we can move heaven and earth to suit ourselves because we prefer to listen to the original lie....."Surely, you will not die!"

[Kevin Estabrook · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had heard this book mentioned in a lecture by Dr. Peter Kreeft. I was suprised to stumble upon a copy at a Jesuit Retreat House while on seminary retreat. I found this book extremely stimulating.

[David Alexander · Rating 4 out of 5]

By Thomas Howard

Chance of the Dance is a compelling statement t odds with modern tendency to dismiss God, poetry, and ceremony in the name of a meaningless world which science, it is supposed, has discovered is the case.
He is focusing on aspects of humanity that elemental, but that the modern tries to do without: the imagination, ceremony, privacy… I reminded of Darwin's loss of pleasure in poetry and frankly surmise it is a morality tale about materialistic reductionism and its defacement of the human person.
Howard defends the imagination against the moderns derogation and dismissiveness of it. It is the faculty by which we synthesize and refuse to accept experience as mere random clutter. The modern has exalted the analytic and neglected the synthetic. The imagination's tendency is to harmonize and is toward the concrete, not vice versa. .
One take away from the book is that we ought to attend to our imaginations and dignify their usage and provide for their proper use.
Howard explains how our ritual simultaneously imposes upon and draws from our experience its significance. Applied to gender and sexuality, modern gender theorists treat gender as purely something we impose on our experience. We do not draw from our experience of biological sex significance but purely impose. This is an exaggeration which leads people to damage their apprehension of reality.

Chp 1- The old myth traveled upward and outward; the new myth travels downward and inward. The imagination is our faculty by which we establish correspondences between things. It is viewed negatively as a flight from actuality by the modern mind. An important example of this (which he discusses on pg. 6) is how in the old faith, fatherhood is to be expected because there is a Father who set things up and this notion of fatherness is in the stuff of things. In contrast, the modern mind (Fichte?) in the new myth says we project our experiences of our father onto the cosmos, and the Father exists strictly as the extension of your own situation [The Father] means [your father]. What are the implications of this with regard to feminist hostility to fatherhood? Note that the scope is shrunk into what is thought to be a more accurate reality in the later myth. The new myth derogates imagination as flight into fancy; the old myth exalts the imagination as flight toward actuality.

-Comparison of the sensibility behind Vermeer's realism versus the sensibility behind Andy Warhol's art. Comparison of the Enlightenment creation myth to the Biblical narrative of creation. The metaphysical ring in the comments of most 20th century painters, a metaphysical stance marked by experimentation. At the heart of the difference between Warhol and Vermeer is the question whether the world is meaningful.


Pgs. 30-31 - We disposes our experience ritually. We subject the common functions of life to an ordering that does not always serve the idea of mere efficiency. This passage in Howard's book I think is particularly significant with relation to liturgical theology and philosophy. What is wrong with modern approaches to this aspect of our nature? How can we embrace it and steward it without abusing it?
-When thinking about ritual, I sometimes think of what Jesus said when he showed his disciples how to pray in the Sermon on the Mount. He warned against vain repetition… What are the implications for a theology of liturgy?
-Howard notes that our tendency toward ritual derives from "the inclination in us to get some sort of detachment from experience so that we can grasp it and articulate it, and not just undergo it" (pg. 31). In relation to this I think of Robert Spaemann's definition of transcendence as being 'in the first place, a graduated enlargement of the horizon of intentionality by conceptual abstraction. The highest level of abstraction is the type of thought we call philosophy,' i.e.. 'conceptual analysis.' Seen in this light, philosophy is not merely a sequestered, academic subject but is an endeavor to perfect a capacity common in varying degrees to all humanity.
T.S. Eliot remarked we are going to criticize so it is better to do it well. Similarly, derogating our capacity for conceptual abstraction, we undermine what we are going to do anyway, setting ourselves up for poor performance of it

Pg. 40 "…poetic language tends toward the way things are, not away from it."

Pg. 72- The "analytic Word of the Enlightenment" and the materialist winter.
-There's a lack of aesthetic beauty that summons the soul to participate in the world. The world is to be subjected, rather.

Pg. 75 The metaphysical task of artists is impossibly heavy. The world no longer viewed as an image of the eternal. Condescension toward this view as primitive hopefulness.
Constant experiment and exploration in art. The same sort of thing is happening with sex.


“The re-created world, formed according to the analytic Word, is a world without form, and void, and darkness is upon the face of the Enlightenment, and it is only the sinister pterodactyl and not the Holy Ghost that broods over the deep.”
-Thomas Howard

.
Modern Art and the Modern Body

In past ages, things were seen as images of the eternal. It was God's world, "a pattern of appearances organized and shaped by the eternal Word to exhibit the pattern of the eternal." Artists would create works of art which exhibit this pattern. In the modern age, this older view came to be condescended toward as one of primitive hopefulness. The grim truth was thought to be in a 'disenchanted world." But the urge to aesthetic repose remained a constant in the human soul. The artist responding to it, however, now had to admit he was animated by the same energy as his predecessors but he could declare his independence from belief in the truth of what they believed. Because "there was no real connection between his imagination and the real nature of the world, he could turn the activities of his imagination toward the exploration of new and independent bases of aesthetic satisfaction." This created a tremendous aesthetic weight for the modern artist trying to find some source other than this fortunate correspondence. The result was an overwhelming sense of experiment and exploration in modern painting and sculpture.
The same overwhelming sense of experiment and exploration now has been happening in human sexuality as happened in modern art, like a successive metaphysical wave- or perhaps that is a misstatement of the chronology. The body used to be fraught with meaning. Now it is treated as if it has no moral meaning at all and meaning and significance are sought in the wilds of lust and experimentation. We now write all over the body and we write the body out of the definition of marriage so that the essence of marriage at present is the number 2, with no reference to baggage such as human biology and children's claims to their natural parents, although in the climate of experiment and search, there is no compelling reason to suppose that particular number will hold, other than tradition, thousands of years of which were just discarded to make way for the deracinated number 2. (This is a particularly bizarre episode of Sesame Street).
There seems a perverse principle at work in the rejection of the world and the body as meaningful. Now it is almost "everything but" them.

(reflecting from pgs. 74-75 of Chance or the Dance? A Critique of Modern Secularism by Thomas Howard)

[Brother Gregory Rice, SOLT · Rating 5 out of 5]

A book that, while being read, affirms again and again that there are levels to everything - including thinking and writing, specifically palpable in the distance between this writer’s capacity for articulation and anything I am capable of. I was awed by the wit, imagination, comprehension, vision, etc., etc., of every page of this. I feel I’d have to be a thousand years old, of perfect health of mind and body, having read constantly and lived richly, to see things as penetratingly and easily as Mr. Howard. It is essentially an argument for the perceptibility of order in creation, applied in a myriad of ways, most especially to human living, and demonstrated seemingly impeccably.

[Peter Mahaffey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Easily one of the best books I've ever read. Your heart will be fed as you ponder the depth and width of meaning that is in our every day experiences.

[Joe Donaldson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book has already shaped how I view the world in profound ways. Carrying on the literary tradition of CS Lewis and Tolkien, Howard is in many ways a dinosaur like them. Some of my favorite writing of this book finds the author going after contemporary art and film in Warhol specifically. I find this book to be helpful and to be shelved according to similar critiques we are finding in a wonderless world where everything is reduced to materialist and there is no longer enchantment, such as Charles Taylor. Where Howard shines however is in his delightful writing style and his unique ways of looking at everything. HIs chapter on boredom is a particular highlight. All of our actions are symbolic and all of the world is too of a much deeper reality, the way things truly are, the way we will experience them someday. Almost made me want to be a Catholic again.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant. An attack on the nihilism that is prevalent. This book reminded me a bit of two of the greatest things that I've read: Orthodoxy and The Abolition of Man.

At a minimum, the loss of the divine has led to anxiety, depression and misery.

“The myth sovereign in the old age was that everything means everything. The myth sovereign in the new age is that nothing means anything. “

“When the exorcism had driven the last of the horrors away and when the iconography of hell and of souls in torment and of judgments and sacrifices and wrath was no longer felt to be relevant, there came an iconography of ennui and disgust and anguish.”

“Your freedom in the Dance is to be able to execute your steps with power and grace, not to decide what you feel like doing. The point, to that mind, was there is, like it or no, a Dance going on and one may join or not.”


“When are we wasting time - at the desk or at the beach? What was man made for, when the chips are down?”

“One May discover if he visits his psychiatrist enough that there is an unsettling ratio betas person’s unhappiness and his concentration on himself.”

Howard sets this forth in a thoughtful and entertaining way. He does not preach. He is a Catholic but does not push Catholicism. I believe that he doesn't even push Christianity although he admits what he believes.

This is a book that I must read again in a few months.

[Ed Lang · Rating 5 out of 5]

Essential reading. I don't know anything else quite like Howard in his ability to give you a picture of the world "as it really is" rather than the modernist life-draining secular view of the world.

Lewis' Discarded Image addresses this, but Lewis is drawing a picture of how the world was seen in old myth, while Howard is showing the vacuity of the secular view by contrast.

Howard's writing style though is closer to Chesterton's essays or maybe Capon's "Supper of the Lamb." Delightful.

"The myth sovereign in the old age was that everything means everything. The myth sovereign in the new is that nothing "means" anything."

[Jennifer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Achingly beautiful and concise writing. His thoughts are interesting and profound and the way he phrases them kept making me exclaim out loud and go back and re-read passages.

[Jeremy]

Mentioned at 44:00 in this video with Eric Metaxas and Michael Ward.

[Nancy Head · Rating 5 out of 5]

What an important book!

[James L. Wallace · Rating 3 out of 5]

Assigned to read this book with the rest of the staff at the church I serve with, on September 2019. Before I provide my overview and reaction, let me take you back where I was raised as my mom who I credit with the biggest investment in my discipleship, went through her 30s as a time of enlightment. I was immersed as a result, my most formable years with the likes of Niche, Socrates , Sartre, Plato, Confucius, Aristotle, Solomon and many more. My stay at home mom would spend hours reading and taking notes on all of these amazing men of wisdom.
So you see I was reared with a Christian bent, of relating to the study of fundamental nature of knowledge. To understand reality and what my existence was to be. To connect free will to all of this in Christ.
As a student and driven man of God, I so desire to gain the clear and concise in my walk and also attempt to communicate the same to others. I have used everything from books, to music, to the absurd to hook folks to the truth as a result of who God made me.
Chance or the Dance to be quite honest was a true challenge to read.
As an adult believer I have read some easy reading books to the most complex.
National Review compared this book to a CS Lewis authored “oeuvre.” I can’t say that I agree with that even one bit.
Graduate student or pew-sitting duffer alike the first half of this book is filled with a Picasso like painting communications, where the reader is constantly stretching and reaching to ‘interpret” what the author is attempting to influence us to embrace about our current worldview!
As I read the earlier chapters of this book, I believe that although it is meant for a symphony, I found it to be a full orchestra where every musician was playing a different sheet of music.
As I highlighted and took notes, I found myself writing words like, Jibberish; Nonsense; deferential respect; confusion and even wrote, “this is my own reality in 2019” in chapter one.
At the halfway mark of the book at the end of “One Foot Up, One Foot Down” chapter, I jotted down this thought, “Zero clue of what the author was truly trying to convey here. Felt like this chapter was like a run-on sentence from start to finish, where I attempted to arrive at a conclusion that was never reached.”
Chapter after chapter I found myself lost in what Mr. Howard was trying to accomplish! Was truly frustrated on why I was even reading this book! I did find better clarity in the last four chapters and felt that the author has moments of being more concise. This created the readers ability to consume the thoughts much easier and perhaps that is what he intended all along.

In chapter five, the author has us looking at the particular way of looking at human experience manifests itself in the poet's and the painter's crafts. As a person who love art, I both struggled and was engaged by his comparison with both Andy Warhol and Johannes Vermeer. Ironically it is how I was experiencing the book… looking a Picasso while trying to find a Vermeer!

Then suddenly with one sentence, the book came into focus out of the prattle of the first four chapters. “Now this runs us back to the problem cited in the first chapter: that this is a world from which significance seems to have disappeared.”

It is a challenging read, but I would recommend giving it a go. The body of work here will enrich your walk and challenge your world view on many challenges you are facing today.

[Albert Norton · Rating 5 out of 5]

I just finished Thomas Howard's book Chance or the Dance. I found it because I'd read Christographia XIV by Eugene Warren, thought the phrase "Chance or the Dance" would be a good book title, then searched Amazon and found this one. I was intrigued, so I ordered it. The title perfectly fits not only the theme but the tone of Howard's book. Too bad for me, the title doesn't fit so well a recent as-yet-untitled work of my own.

My first impression was that this book was just awesome. The impression stayed with me to the end. I wish I had more than five stars to give. I think if a reader orders more copies to send to his grown kids, as I did, the author deserves an extra star or three.

Another impression was that the book was recently published. It was new to me, and the copy I ordered was new, so I took this as being a poetic addition to the sometimes-strident discourse on this subject in recent years. After I finished, for grins I went on goodreads to see what others said about it, and then saw it was first published in 1969. I'm pretty sure Mr. Howard wrote this today and then hopped a time machine to get it published earlier.

I should add that in the last 10 years or so I've read and studied deeply on the divide between naturalism and theism. This is the single best summary I've seen of the nature of that ever-widening chasm.

[Brad · Rating 5 out of 5]

At once delightful, challenging, and reassuring--particularly if ones' experience in the world has evoked a curiosity of what it all means. Howard frames human understanding of life as either an "old myth" which finds meaning in everything; that this means that--from the commonplace to the regal, from the humdrum to the ecstatic--and that it all, through incredible and ubiquitous imagery, points to God who in Creation has hidden himself in plain sight and a "new myth," sadly informed by "Enlightenment," which has us in a modern Dark Age unable to see or comprehend the eternal, stuck in the horrific clinging to "nothing means anything," unable or unwilling to set aside its so-called freedom for true glory.

If you enjoy C.S. Lewis, you'll want to read this short, fifty-year old commentary on our modern condition that reads as if it was targeted straight at 2020.

[John Funnell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Eric Metaxas’ forward was better than the book itself.

With that said it was an excellent critique of the secular age and the hypocrisy within.

It contains several profound thoughts that caused me to pause and digest before my brain exploded.

I had to read it on my kindle as I could not get a hard copy in the UK. I hate reading from a screen, but in this case it worked out for the better as there were so many words I had to look up!

Excellent and enjoyable read but not up to CS Lewis level of argument. An English graduate would appreciate the writing style, but someone reading from a philosophical stand point might find it tiresome trudging through the word play to get to the golden nuggets (which are there).

[Melissa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Exquisite. A strikingly beautiful treatise on the rise of secularism and how its worldview has turned our civilization into a world where nothing means anything from a world where everything meant everything. Howard speaks as one in love with God and all the meaning that the belief in God imbues in everyday life. He gives a clear and haunting view of a world that has replaced the Sacred with superficiality. Of the 40+ books I have read this year, this is my clear favorite. It inspires me to cultivate the ritual and sacred in my own life and reaffirm my connection to God. He is there in everything---the grand and the tedious. I choose to believe that everything means everything. Read it. You won't be disappointed.

[Ruth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful thoughts, and writing. The book reads like one is enjoying an intimate conversation in this brilliant man’s living room.
The author builds a case for art, beauty, poetry, purpose, and the meaning of even the seemingly mundane aspects of life. I feel this book should be more widely known, and deserves a space next to Lewis, Schaefer, and Chesterton.

“The business of the poet and prophet has always been to take [what is seen] and astonish and delight is into a fresh awareness of what they mean by discovering them suddenly in this image...The rest of us may see it all either as a pointless jumble of phenomena, or as the diagram of glory—as grinding tediously toward entropy, or as dancing toward the Dance”

[Jason Carter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Howard's book challenges the post-Enlightenment consensus that we, as humans, are simply products of chance. Rather, he argues, we are participants in a cosmic dance and our decision is whether we will join or simply throw popcorn from the sidelines.

True freedom lies not in autonomy but in disciplining our bodies and souls to realize our highest potential--as the runner winning a marathon, the vaulter clearing the highest pole, or a dancer dazzling us with grace and beauty. We can find meaning in art but also in the daily routine we are tempted to think of as humdrum.

Thoughtful and interesting. Recommended.

[Wes F · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such a wonderful, wonderful book. I first read this some 30 years ago, around the time I was first introduced to C.S. Lewis & Charles Williams. Tom Howard fits right in their company. I also now want to reread his other excellent books, which I have in hard copy...somewhere. Hopefully they're also available now on ebook. Howard is a first-rate logician and master of the treasures of literature. He does a great job blowing holes in the modern "new mythology" of scientific materialism. Things really do mean something--and point to something. Something that is very real.

[Bill Stutzman · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had read excerpts from this book and had looked for it for quite some time (as it was out of print). Much to my delight, it has been re-released. The forward is the most effusive bit of praise I've ever read (I do enjoy Metaxas), but the book lives up to the hype. I have a feeling I'll be returning to the ideas in this book perpetually. Lovers of Lewis, Tolkien, Chesterton, and their ilk will find a kindred spirit and a fitting explanation of much of what they love while still retaining the wonder of it all.

[Jeff · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Chance or the Dance?” is a much more readable version of C.S. Lewis’ “The Abolition of Man.” Thomas Howard shows secularism attempts to do away with the imagination and only finds validity in what can be measured (A lion does not look regal. It is merely flesh and bones. You must be reading your own notions into it!). Yet, despite that, we still maintain ritual and ceremony in everything from lunch to death to sex. Therefore, he argues that even those who attempt to embrace pure secularism cannot escape the “old myth” of meaning, ceremony, and ritual.

[Esteban · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not quite CS Lewis but several interesting observations make it a worthwhile read

Howard's style is far more direct than that of Lewis . He does however offer a valid observation on the fallacy of modern scepticism and secularism when they insist that the "old myths" Have been conquered and replaced with empirical realism. Howard's point is that the old myths were in fact a better representation of reality and that modern secularism has in fact merely created a new myth in its own image which is essentially self-defeating.

[Ron Pendley · Rating 5 out of 5]

I highly recommend this book. The title succinctly states the subject matter, his critique of the empty worldview that the Enlightenment has bequeathed us. Howard in the vein of C.S. Lewis with his powerful language and biting humor invites us to return to the beauty of life lived under the shelter of the Divine and leave behind the unpleasant world of the random chaos of unbelief. The Chance or the Dance invites us to relish the dance ordinary as ordinary as a gift from God rather than withering under the spell of chance with its seemingly endless freedom which is no freedom at all.

[Sharon Dunn · Rating 4 out of 5]

I ordered this book because Eric Metaxas talked about it on his podcast Socrates and the City as one of the books that changed his life. The book contrasts what the author calls the old myth and the new myth. The old myth is when the enchanted and the spiritual was a part of every persons life the new myth is where we live now where science seemingly explains everything and meaning seems to have been lost. A very intellectual read but well written and even a little whimsical at times. This is a book that I will probably read again in a few years to get even more meaning from it.

[Nicholas Zerangue · Rating 5 out of 5]

Chance or the Dance? is a beautifully written critique of modern secularism that dives into the philosophical and the everyday “humdrum”. Howard clearly articulates the human experience in a way that is hard to refute and unabashedly divisive. If you are anything like me you will find yourself jumping and laughing in your seat at the genius of his thinking and stringing together of words.

This book is clearly a classic and deserves a place on every man’s shelf.

[Ed Wojniak · Rating 5 out of 5]

CG Jung once stated that "the meaningful life is the symbolic one." Howard does a fine job of elaborating on that theme in his modern classic and critique of modern secularism. He, like Jung, advocates for a view that sees behind the material and into the immaterial, transcendence into God who lives among us "incognito." He, like Brother Lawrence, brings to life the "humdrum," e.g., the doing of laundry and washing of dishes, to see the "illumined vision of reality."