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Heretics/Orthodoxy Discussion
Sounds good. I am ordering the book (I should have it by next week). However, I have downloaded an e-version to get a little jump start to the reading. If anyone is interested I found a great program and website to download books. If you are like me you like to highlight and write notes in the margin's of books. If you do this program is great:
http://www.ereader.com/ereader/softwa...
The basic software is free and works really well. Kindle could learn from it.
Now download the book here:
http://manybooks.net/authors/chestert...
Select a title, on the right download it in EReader form and open it in ereader. You can highlight, write notes about a section, and do some other things.
Thanks for the Ereader link! That's great free software. I've just downloaded it and the two books - a better way to read. I am compulsive about marking up my books, so I can use that. I rarely read electronic texts, but this will be good for searching public domain texts quickly as well.
Hey guys, if you want you all can start this one without me. I have papers and I am currently studying "The Cost of Discipleship." I don't want to hold you guys up. I really don't mind. I'll make sure to jump on the next one though. :-)
Maybe we should do Cost of Discipleship next time around! That's a great book and sparks much discussion.
It is good. I could read it over and over. I'm down for whatever you guys want. Did you guys start Ortho/Heretics yet? I wanna see some chatter about it so i chime in without actually reading it lol.
The Cost of Discipleship does sound good. My husband has read it numerous times- a sure sign of a good book.
Wow! Chesterton is a deep one, yet I do like what he says. I am nearing the end of chapter 2 and need to process all the info. What is difficult for me is his mention of authors and play wrights that I am vaguely familiar with from college English many many years ago (too many!)I had to resort to Wikipedia for help. I feel like the tin man who needs a little oil to my brain! LOL
In some ways, I think Chesterton is a little dated because of these constant allusions to the "greats" of his time, or at least to their specific current comments and current worldviews; most have certainly passed into our repoitoire of classics. In other ways, I am surprised at how current his comments seem, how well they can apply to the same problems with current, 21st century, popular worldviews. The more things change, the more they stay the same, I suppose. When reading this, I want to highlight far too much.
I've now finished Heretics and just started Orthodoxy. There's a lot to digest here.I was struck by his reflection on how we tend to try to avoid deciding what is good, we tend to avoid wrestling with the grand moral questions, because this is probably just as true today as it was in his day. This is the quote I am thinking of:
"Let us leave all these arbitrary standards and embrace liberty." This is, logically rendered, "Let us not decide what is good, but let it be considered good not to decide it." He says, "Away with your old moral formulae; I am for progress." This, logically stated, means, "Let us not settle what is good; but let us settle whether we are getting more of it." He says, "Neither in religion nor morality, my friend, lie the hopes of the race, but in education." This, clearly expressed, means, "We cannot decide what is good, but let us give it to our children."
I have finished chapter 5 in Heretics, however, I am skipping around a bit and reading some sections that look interesting. A bad habit of mine! I liked the quote Skylar posted. What chapter was that in?Here is something I thought insightful from chap #5 on humility (a quote) I will use < > to show my underlining.:
"And this gay humility, this holding of ourselves lightly and yet ready for an infinity of unmerited triumphs, this secret is so simple that every one has supposed that it must be something quite sinister and mysterious. Humility is so practical a virtue that men think it must be a vice. It is mistaken for it all the more easily because it generally goes with a certain simple love of splendour which amounts to vanity. Humility will always, by preference, go clad in scarlet and gold; pride is that which refuses to let gold and scarlet impress it or please it too much. In a word, the failure of this virtue actually lies in its success; it is too successful as an investment to be believed in as a virtue. I had almost said it is too worldly for this world."
This reminds me of another Chesterton quote, about virtues vs. vices, which I also found insightful. I honestly don't remember if it was in Heretics or Orthodoxy or some other Chesterton work, but I thought it was very pinted -- "The modern world is not evil; in some ways the modern world is far too good. It is full of wild and wasted virtues. When a religious scheme is shattered (as Christianity was shattered at the Reformation), it is not merely the vices that are let loose. The vices are, indeed, let loose, and they wander and do damage. But the virtues are let loose also; and the virtues wander more wildly, and the virtues do more terrible damage. The modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad. The virtues have gone mad because they have been isolated from each other and are wandering alone. Thus some scientists care for truth; and their truth is pitiless. Thus some humanitarians only care for pity; and their pity (I am sorry to say) is often untruthful....
From Chap 6 Christmas and Aesthetes "Wherever you have belief you will have hilarity, wherever you have hilarity you will have some dangers. And as creed and mythology produce this gross and vigorous life, so in its turn this gross and vigorous life will always produce creed and mythology. If we ever get the English back on to the English land they will become again a religious people, if all goes well, a superstitious people. If we have no more turnip ghosts it is chiefly from the lack of turnips."
I get what he says about not being so divorced from nature, but not the superstition part. Could he mean as we have cultures with mythology it is as I think C.S. Lewis says, something that shows our search for God and perhaps has some truth mixed in. Does anybody understand this section better? I am such a concrete thinker! Sometimes I miss the obvious.
Chap.8 "We should really be much more interested in Mr. Moore if he were not quite so interested in himself...One of the thousand objections to the sin of pride lies precisely in this, that self-consciousness of necessity destroys self-revelation. A man who thinks a great deal about himself will try to be many-sided, attempt a theatrical excellence at all points, will try to be an encyclopaedia of culture, and his own real personality will be lost in that false universalism."
Oh how true!!!
I checked it out and found there is a "currently reading" choice for groups, so Heresy/Orthodoxy is now on our Anglican group shelf. This is all new to me :)
I was wondering if we could do that or how. Thanks for putting it on our shelf. I'm done with Heretics, but I haven't had a chance to start on Orthodoxy yet. "again a religious people, if all goes well, a superstitious people. The absence from modern life of both the higher and lower forms of faith is largely due to a divorce from nature and the trees and clouds. If we have no more turnip ghosts it is chiefly from the lack of turnips."
I THINK he means that supersition is a sign that, at least, man has some concept of awe. Superstition may be a "lower" form of faith, but it is a form of faith, and if we do not expereince it, it is not because we are "enlightened" but because we have divorced ourselves from the things that should create a sense of awe and mystery in us. I'm just guessing here. I don't really follow that either. Superstition evolves out of religion; the lack of superstition is a sign that there is no religion.
That does make sense Skylar. Thanks for helping me on that one! I know that you do find faith in cultures where there is more simplicity. Sometimes we get so used to leaning so much on science and technology.
I don't think science and technology is the problem so much as materialism. Science and technology can both put one in awe of the Creator. It's the idea that we know everything, or that everything that's worth knowin can be empirically known to us.
Hi everyone, sorry to have all-but-disappeared. I've had a hard time getting my hands on a copy of Heretics. My local library didn't have it, neither did a bunch of big box bookstores. I tried reading it as a text file but found that hard on the eyes. And then last night I realized I would probably be able to find it in Google books. And I did.
Here's the url:
http://snurl.com/2624f [books_google_com]
I'll make it a priority to get through at least one chapter today and I'll post my thoughts this evening.
In ref to Comment #19, True Skylar, materialism and our modern empirical knowledge are our worst stumbling blocks to faith.
Poppy, can't wait to hear your thoughts on Heresy. I am going through it really slowly.
I think it's also our post-industrial material wealth. You're not going to get people all excited about crops and harvests when all their food comes to them frozen or canned.I think what Chesterton is saying that if you get in close enough touch with the earth--if you have the turnips--you're going to develop a sense of the transcendent, even if it's only a turnip god, or praying for a better harvest.
Here's a digression for those who might be interested: conservative Anglican theologian James Packer has left the Anglican Church of Canada because he finds it heretical.Very interesting development now that I'm deep in Chesterton's book. I wonder what Chesterton would make of the priest's comment that calling it Heresy "stunts dialogue."
http://snurl.com/266lj [www_canada_com]
I love this passage--at the end of the Introduction. He nailed it!Suppose that a great commotion arises in
the street about something, let us say a lamppost,
which many influential persons desire to
pull down. A grey-clad monk, who is the
spirit of the Middle Ages, is approached upon
the matter, and begins to say, in the arid manner
of the Schoolmen, "Let us first of all consider,
my brethren, the value of Light. If Light be
in itself good " At this point he is somewhat
excusably knocked down. All the people
make a rush for the lamp-post, the lamp-post
is down in ten minutes, and they go about congratulating each other on their unmediaeval practicality.
But as things go on they do not work
out so easily. Some people have pulled the
lamp-post down because they wanted the electric
light; some because they wanted old iron;
some because they wanted darkness, because
their deeds were evil. Some thought it not
enough of a lamp-post, some too much; some
acted because they wanted to smash municipal
machinery; some because they wanted to smash
something. And there is war in the night, no
man knowing whom he strikes. So, gradually
and inevitably, to-day, to-morrow, or the next day, there comes back the conviction that the monk was right after all, and that all depends
on what is the philosophy of Light. Only what
we might have discussed under the gas-lamp,
we now must discuss in the dark.
To The above I say a loud,"AMEN!"Also Poppy, I liked the little digression above. Actually it is perfect, because we are dealing with a study of a classic book that deals with truth, heresy, and what orthodoxy is. Here's an article from back in December that would help non Anglicans to see why what Modern Anglicans are currently wrestling with in their church is SO important. It clarifies what Anglicanism has traditionally taught as orthodoxy.
http://hillsofthenorth.blogspot.com/2...
In regard to "frozen and canned": What is Rogation Sunday like at your church?
Rogation Sunday? I can't say that I've ever noticed. I vaguely remember hearing the phrase used when I was a child, but in that era, children were packed off to Sunday School and didn't experience the full Sunday service. And as an adult, I can't say that I've ever seen it observed. Of course, when it comes to various special days being observed, I'm not very observant. ;-)
Welcome to the group "Reading Recluse. See "New Member" Discussion topic.
"Dialogue" is much overrated. It's a buzz word that means doing nothing about a problem other than talking about it.
The other term that keeps cropping up is "conversation." The provost of our cathedral wanted to know why we don't have more people coming to services. I told her in our case, it's because there isn't a Sunday School, and I think my children are too old to sit there playing quietly with toys, and too young to profit from the sermon.
The next thing you know, she's leaving me a long answering machine message in which she promised to "keep the conversation going."
What conversation? We don't need to talk about anything; we need to start a Sunday school.
This kind of response drives me nuts!
Hi, Reading*Recluse--I checked out the link. Very interesting stuff. I must shame-facedly admit that I don't think we observed Rogation Sunday at all.
On the other hand, I used my new-found knowledge to help my son with his Latin homework. "'Rogare' means 'to ask'" I informed him sagely.
I love it when I sound smart!
I'm going to add that website to my Anglican links. Thanks!
I don't think we observed Rogation Sunday either. Poppy, there was an interesting article in Touchstone Magazine about how we shouldn't have children's church and should have whole families sit together during the service or we lose some of the meaning of church. I remember reading it and thinking, "Clearly you don't have my kids." My church service is 1.5 hours; they have the kids sit through the first 10 mintues, then dismiss to go to Chidlren's Church where they do their own songs and prayers and have Bible stories. Then they come back just before communion, so they are in church about 25 minutes total. That's about as much as my 4 year old can take. She has learned to sing some of the liturgy, and she's pretty well behaved now, but it's hard for an active preschooler, and not really worshipful for the parents. Between services we have Sunday School as well, but there is adult and children's sunday school both and no service at that time. Sometimes the "adult sunday school" is sitting around drinking coffee and socializing...
Rogation Sunday: Our priest has mentioned it briefly in sermons before, but other than that, nothing else. I like that web site-from Reading Recluse.Conversation: Yuk, that word does mean nothing but blah, blah, blah in the Episcopal Church.No action, for sure.
Children in Church: Our church has 2 congregations, but we are one church. I attend the smaller church in the city. We traditionally had Sunday school for adults in Parish hall and it was meaty study, barely time to sip coffee! In Children's Sunday school they learned Bible and catechism. During the time of the sermon, we dismiss the children for Children's Chapel (about 20 minutes long) and do either a mini kid friendly church, or some catechism/ bible lessons. We have a paid nursery lady who is there for preschoolers and little ones from Sunday school through the service. Parents retrieve their nursery kids just before communion. It is interesting to hear how others do Sunday school.
Poppy, I will pray God brings a Sunday school teacher to your church. Do pray and don't give up on it.
Chesterton-Heresy: Wow, he gets better as the book progresses. I'm in chap 13 now. I like this from chap 10:"In this matter, then, as in all the other matters treated in this book, our main conclusion is that it is a fundamental point of view, a philosophy or religion which is needed, and not any change in habit or social routine. The things we need most for immediate practical purposes are all abstractions. We need a right view of the human lot, a right view of the human society; and if we were living eagerly and angrily in the enthusiasm of those things, we should, ipso facto, be living simply in the genuine and spiritual sense"
The Episcopal church and much of protestantism is so divided because we have drifted too far from the traditions and teachings of the Apostles and Church fathers, and the very creeds that have brought us clarity on the deity of Christ and the trinity. There is a Christian Philosophy within the creeds. I get tired of all the different protestant misinterpretations of scripture ( but I am protestant). We so need to get back to the 3 core principles of faith in Anglicanism that are based on scripture, tradition (teachings of the early church fathers, as laid out in the creeds) and reason.
Oh, hope that wasn't preaching to the choir!
Still plodding along and trying to finish Heresy soon.(I was slowed down by sick kids and a hubby recovering from surgery)I must say again, Chesterton was so wise, so brilliant. Just like Skylar said much earlier in this discussion, what he says still speaks for today. Many times I feel like within the evangelical churches, as in our world, things just get too focused on teens. Gosh the teen years are not a time you want to focus on or prolong!!! Ug, puberty and hormonal chaos!Then after that cool fads, growing up and making mistakes. Oh how much we need truth, growth to maturity; not coolness. I can't wait to get into Orthodoxy!
I got Orthodoxy from the library and can now begin reading in hard copy! I am amused by his comment that he attempted to develop his own philosophy and found he had developed...orthodoxy.
I commented earlier how surprisingly CONTEMPORARY Chesterton sometimes seems. I was struck, given all of the contemporary discussion during war time of what it means to be a patriot or an anti-patriot, by his insight into this question:A man who says that no patriot should attack the [war] until it is over is not worth answering intelligently; he is saying that no good son should warn his mother off a cliff until she has fallen over it. But there is an anti-patriot who honestly angers honest men…he is the uncandid candid friend; the man who says, "I am sorry to say we are ruined," and is not sorry at all…Granted that he states only facts, it is still essential to know what are his emotions, what is his motive. It may be that twelve hundred men in Tottenham are down with smallpox; but we want to know whether this is stated by some great philosopher who wants to curse the gods, or only by some common clergyman who wants to help the men.
An interesting take on what tradition means and why it is important:"Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about.",
Now that is an awesome quote. Many of those dead have been martyrs too. All the more we need to honor tradition. Thanks Skylar :)
I liked chapter 2 of Orthodoxy, "The Maniac."I love how Chesterton defends the creative mind and contrasts it to the logical mind that has the tendency towards lunacy, if not balanced by some creativity. True, most of the crazy people that I have met in life were geniuses and real logic people, manic about math, science or some left brained topic...And then there is me, totally right brained, creative type with a pea sized spot of logic in my brain, LOL!
I really like this from chap.3:"And in the act of destroying the idea of Divine authority we have largely destroyed the idea of that human authority by which we do a long-division sum. With a long and sustained tug we have attempted to pull the mitre off pontifical man; and his head has come off with it."
I really liked this part about the ideal vs. the real, especially given the modern controversies that are plaguing the church with the orthodox and progressives contending with one another: "Progress should mean that we are always walking towards the New Jerusalem. It does mean that the New Jerusalem is always walking away from us. We are not altering the real to suit the ideal. We are altering the ideal: it is easier."
People sometimes respond to me, as an orthodox Christian - why have such an unrealistic ideal for yourself and your family? Aren't you just setting yourself up for failure? And so this interested me too -
"...it does not matter (comparatively speaking) how often humanity fails to imitate its ideal; for then all its old failures are fruitful. But it does frightfully matter how often humanity changes its ideal; for then all its old failures are fruitless."
I have always struggled intellectually with the concept of the Trinity because it does not make logical sense to me, but I have always accepted it on faith as a matter of heart. I therefore found this passage from Orthodoxy very provoking:...The complex God of the Athanasian Creed may be an enigma for the intellect; but He is far less likely to gather the mystery and cruelty of a Sultan than the lonely god of Omar or Mahomet...The HEART of humanity, especially of European humanity, is certainly much more satisfied by the strange hints and symbols that gather round the Trinitarian idea, the image of a council at which mercy pleads as well as justice, the conception of a sort of liberty variety existing even in the inmost chamber of the world. For Western religion has always felt keenly the idea "it is not well for man to be alone."...If this love of a living complexity be our test, it is certainly healthier to have the Trinitarian religion than the Unitarian. For to us Trinitarians (if I may say it with reverence)--to us God Himself is a society. It is indeed a fathomless mystery of theology, and even if I were theologian enough to deal with it directly, it would not be relevant to do so here. Suffice it to say here that this triple enigma is as comforting as wine and open as an English fireside; that this thing that bewilders the intellect utterly quiets the heart: but out of the desert, from the dry places and the dreadful suns, come the cruel children of the lonely God; the real Unitarians who with scimitar in hand have laid waste the world. For it is not well for God to be alone.
I think this is an example of Chesterton being too clever by half--certainly too clever for his own good. It also dates him.
Really? How does it date him? Given the modern concerns of Islamic terroism, it actually seemed somewhat prescient to me. I would be interested in your perspective. I do agree Chesterton can often be too clever by half.
Chesterton on the Trinity (chap. 8):"For to us Trinitarians (if I may say it with reverence) -- to us God Himself is a society. It is indeed a fathomless mystery of theology"
I once heard a teaching on the trinity that was beautiful. The teacher stated that the trinity shows that "God is love," in that God is eternal and was love before we existed. This is seen in the Father loving the Son and the Son loving the Holy Spirit, the Son loving the Father...etc. The love the trinity has within the trinity, truly shows God's heart of love. There is order in the trinity. There is submission in the trinity. We see the beautiful submission as Christ struggles in the garden of Gethsemane asking the Father if he needed to drink the cup of suffering, but in the same breath he submitted to the Father's will, "Not my will but thine."
All we can do with this is stand in awe of God.
Backtracking to Orthodoxy Chap 6,last Paragraph: "This is the thrilling romance of Orthodoxy. People have fallen into a foolish habit of speaking of orthodoxy as something heavy, humdrum, and safe. There never was anything so perilous or so exciting as orthodoxy. It was sanity: and to be sane is more dramatic than to be mad. It was the equilibrium of a man behind madly rushing horses, seeming to stoop this way and to sway that, yet in every attitude having the grace of statuary and the accuracy of arithmetic...To have fallen into any of those open traps of error and exaggeration which fashion after fashion and sect after sect set along the historic path of Christendom -- that would indeed have been simple. It is always simple to fall; there are an infinity of angles at which one falls, only one at which one stands. To have fallen into any one of the fads from Gnosticism to Christian Science would indeed have been obvious and tame. But to have avoided them all has been one whirling adventure; and in my vision the heavenly chariot flies thundering through the ages, the dull heresies sprawling and prostrate, the wild truth reeling but erect."
Just some thoughst I've been having--I like Chesterton, and I think there is truth in what he says above, but Chesterton has a way with exaggerated rhetorical flourish. I'm in favor of orthodoxy, but I'm not really sure that a slight difference in doctrine here or there would really have sent us hurling into the vortex.
Sometimes I read the early church debates over matters that later were decided into orthodox doctrine, and sometimes I don't even understand the major distinction between the two competing views: often they seem to be splitting hairs over semantical differences. I think it is important to maintain the creeds and acknowledge the inspiration of the Bible, but sometimes I think we Christians seem to spend so much more time obsessing about THINKING the right thing than we do about DOING the right thing.
Now, I believe in salvation by faith and not of works that any man should boast, but it's always been interesting to me that when Jesus is dividing the sheep from the goats, he never discusses doctrine. He only talks about what they DID: "for I was hungry and you gave Me food; I was thirsty and you gave Me drink; I was a stranger and you took Me in; 36 I was naked and you clothed Me; I was sick and you visited Me; I was in prison and you came to Me."
Orthodoxy is important, but perhaps it's not THE most important thing.
Heretics
http://www.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~mward/gkc/b...
Orthodoxy
http://www.leaderu.com/cyber/books/or...