Turning the popular negative connotation of “orthodoxy” on its head, G.K. Chesterton argues that orthodoxy is anything but dull and musty, but on the contrary exciting and adventuresome.

In 1952, C.S. Lewis did a great service to the world in producing Mere Christianity, his account of the fundamentals of Christian belief for a popular audience. It was a book both timeless and specifically of its time, since it aimed its defense of Christian ideas at modern man imbued with modern philosophical assumptions. It was a work of genius, written not for scholars or academics but for intelligent laypeople who belonged in the ranks of modern mass society. Mere Christianity, and Lewis’ work in general, helped to narrow the gap between different Christian communions by concentrating on a core of doctrine shared by all; in doing so, it also did the necessarily work of distinguishing the true historical Christian creed from distortions or dilutions.

Through Mere Christianity and other works, Lewis fostered an atmosphere of Christian fraternity, of fighting together for a common cause. He helped to shift the debate in the Christian world from the sort of internal doctrinal disputes that characterized the Wars of Religion to a new era in which Christianity is opposed to such outside forces as determinism, rationalism, pantheism, and materialism. Lewis provided intellectual strength for that battle. Essentially, Lewis achieved what Dr. Bradley Birzer has described as one of the canons of Christian humanism:

Christians (Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Protestant) … must sanctify the world through the grace of God. For men of good will to fight amongst themselves squanders precious time and resources, and it leaves the field to the Enemy.

It was a wise and timely path to take. During and after World War II, with the pervasive turn of society toward scientism, technocracy and collectivism, it made sense to work to reinforce the central tenets that once held Christian civilization together.

However, the task had also been done, in a somewhat more ornate form, a generation earlier. The book was G.K. Chesterton’s Orthodoxy (1908). Chesterton explained that he was writing in defense of “central Christian theology” as found in the Apostles’ Creed; he intended to show that this system of belief is “the best root of sound energy and sound ethics.” In not only expounding Christian beliefs and the Christian worldview but showing the effects these have in life and the world, it’s apparent that Chesterton’s “orthodoxy” is much the same as Lewis’ “mere Christianity.”

But why “orthodoxy”? Why have recourse to this weighty word, so redolent of incense and early church councils? The word seems very deliberately chosen. His book was an outgrowth of his earlier book Heretics, attacking errors in modern thought; “orthodoxy” (from the Greek, “right belief or opinion”) seemed to follow naturally from this as the opposing term. Chesterton’s use of the terms is philosophical, but even more, theological. As early as the fifth century, St. Augustine declared “orthodox” and “catholic” as coequal and complementary terms expressing the correctness of Christian belief in contradistinction to heretical movements. It was only later and gradually that they became something akin to brand names for respective churches; in the beginning they belonged together.

Augustine says, more precisely, that faith is “to be sought only among Catholic or orthodox Christians—guardians or truth and followers of right.” [1] Thus, true Christian teaching is marked by two qualities: It is orthodox—correct, in keeping with apostolic tradition; and catholic—whole and complete, universally held, not merely private or local opinion.

For Chesterton, orthodoxy means what it meant for Augustine, the essential creed of early Christianity. By extension, however, it is also a set of beliefs and imaginative perceptions that Western civilization has built up over the ages. Turning the popular negative connotation of “orthodoxy” on its head, Chesterton argues that orthodoxy is anything but dull and musty, but on the contrary exciting and adventuresome. It includes such ideas as:

-recognizing the power, and at the same time the limits, of reason, and therefore the necessity of faith

-the necessity, and reasonableness, of humility as a proper response to our place in the universe

-the pervasiveness of mystery

-the strangeness and specialness of the created world

-the obvious reality of sin

-the fixity and permanence of truth, transmitted through tradition

These ideas, as readers of this journal will note, have many points of contact with conservative philosophy. More than a set of doctrines, what Chesterton is defining here is at heart an outlook, a worldview, a mental disposition, and that is exactly what conservatism in its true sense is. What “imaginative conservatives” defend is a particular way of looking at the world and human nature as defined, beautifully, by Russell Kirk in his Ten Conservative Principles. Chesterton’s principles of orthodoxy may not be identical with Kirk’s principles of conservatism, but they are congruent. For instance, both systems respect reason but reject rationalism; recognize human imperfection; respect the individuality and variety of reality instead of leveling distinctions and reducing things to the lowest common denominator. Perhaps the overarching principle they share in common is the existence of a permanent and transcendent truth, expressed in many individual truths and transmitted down the ages through tradition.

The premises Chesterton defends in his book Orthodoxy form the background of a religious imagination, embodied in Christian belief and Western civilization. Indeed, imagination is very much at the center of Orthodoxy. In the chapter “The Ethics of Elfland,” Chesterton describes Christians’ perception of the world as a story with a storyteller. His high regard for imaginative perception is suggested by such morsels as: “The vision is always solid and reliable. The vision is always a fact. It is the reality that is often a fraud.”

Similarly, conservatism as a philosophy aims at an imaginative vision: the best insights, perceptions, beliefs, and traditions of our civilization. To echo Augustine’s theology, these are principles that conservatives consider to be both “correct” and “universal.” Conservatives see themselves as defending nothing less than common sense, reality and truth. Lewis in Mere Christianity presents Christian doctrine as reasonable and reflecting the way things are in our experience.  Both Chesterton and Lewis show that religion is more than a private affair but has an effect on our lives in community and on civilization. The conservative as well upholds principles and assumptions that underlie civilized life. Yet whether orthodoxy and conservatism are exactly equivalent is less important than the fact that both are opposed to similar ideas and forces.

Rarely does one encounter the word “orthodoxy” in popular usage with anything but a pejorative connotation; it is frequently used to denote a program or set of beliefs belonging to an ideology, with the implication of narrow-mindedness and rigidity. (Chesterton, as we saw, turned this assumption on its head.) But does the usage not suggest something more: that in place of the simple old universal Judeo-Christian orthodoxy, we have substituted a multiplicity of beliefs and ideologies all fighting against one another?

And yet there was, as Augustine’s words imply, never a time when orthodoxy reigned unchallenged. It was continually holding forth against heretical and divisive movements—those that denied Christ’s humanity, those that denied his divinity, those that thought matter evil, and so on. Chesterton emphasizes orthodoxy as a perilous adventure, in which one must aim for the true target while avoiding errors on either side.

Even long before Chesterton’s day, modern thought had developed an allergy to orthodoxy. The idea of the church being the custodian and transmitter of revealed truth came to be seen as too tidy and naïve, a belief system for a supposedly simpler age. Enlightenment thought propounded the idea that man should think things out for himself, free from the constraints of authority. What was ignored was the fact that human beings cannot live without some authoritative truth. After overthrowing the traditional -oxy, man will substitute any number of -isms. Another irony is that when dissent from orthodoxy becomes so widespread as to become mainstream—to become a new orthodoxy, in effect—then the original orthodoxy becomes the new dissent. This is the ironic sense of “revolution” that Chesterton points to and something he discovered in the course of the “growth in spiritual certainty” charted in his book, whose title must have struck readers with countercultural force.

Chesterton, Lewis, and other thinkers of the modern era brought about a dissent from established “unorthodoxy,” rehabilitating both the idea and the substance of orthodoxy in the most genial way. The original subtitle of Chesterton’s book, omitted in many editions, is “The Romance of the Faith,” and his great accomplishment was to take a word which the modern world loves little—orthodoxy—and make it attractive, human, and romantic. Their work emphasized the imaginative and narrative aspects of truth, just as “imaginative conservatism” does. In Russell Kirk’s formulation, “imaginative persuasion” convinces us more than rational proofs. In similar fashion, Lewis and Chesterton speak to how Christianity answers the questions that life poses, like a key unlocking a door. Thanks to the spirit Chesterton and Lewis unleashed, a Cardinal Avery Dulles could write that “at its best, orthodoxy is warm, genial, and beneficent… a loving adherence to the word of God in its fullness, with all its complexities, paradoxes, and mysteries.” [2]

G.K. Chesterton and C.S. Lewis both sketch a vision of an essential creed that starts in pure religious doctrine but ultimately becomes a sane and sensible way of looking at the world and our place in it—one that conservatives, even if outside the Christian fold, can take to heart. For Lewis’ and Chesterton’s synthesis of traditional thought is meant to welcome, not exclude; to unite; to bring people together in a common philosophy or creed. By defining what is Christian and weeding out what is not, it provides a framework from which Christians of different communions can peaceably and constructively discuss their differences. Such an essential Christian worldview is also embedded within what we call conservative philosophy, which seeks to articulate and preserve the best insights of a civilization that has been formed by both classical reason and biblical faith.

The Imaginative Conservative applies the principle of appreciation to the discussion of culture and politics—we approach dialogue with magnanimity rather than with mere civility. Will you help us remain a refreshing oasis in the increasingly contentious arena of modern discourse? Please consider donating now.

[1] Quoted in Dulles, Avery Cardinal, “The Orthodox Imperative,” First Things.

[2] Ibid.

The featured image is a picture of G.K. Chesterton. It is in the public domain, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

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