Tag Archives: worldliness

On Giving Up On the Right Thing

A fuller title for this article might be The Contradictions of Francis of Assisi, Thomas Aquinas, and Martin Luther Through the Contradictions of G.K. Chesterton.

The subject of this post has been renting space in my mind for the past couple of weeks. I am not sure that I know how to express my thoughts, but that is a major part of the reason why I write to begin with. Part of the problem is that the subject has as much, perhaps more, to do with a mood than an idea. The mood in question is that of a conscientious Protestant coming to grips with a purposeful rejection of Roman Catholicism while at the same time honoring the ancient doctors of the church (imperfect as they, and I, are) and their teachings, especially when dealing what I deem to be major errors in their teaching and lives.

I am by no means a historian, but I am a lover of church history; for I am a lover of the church, and hence of Christians in general.  I am a lover of Francis of Assisi, of Thomas Aquinas, and of G.K. Chesterton. Therefore it would make sense that I would love books written by Chesterton on Francis of Assisi and Thomas Aquinas.

Saint Francis of Assisi, by G.K. Chesterton
Saint Thomas Aquinas: The Dumb Ox, by G.K. Chesterton

Yet I am a Protestant, and I doubt that any of these men, but especially Chesterton, would have much time for me. This is why, I think in at least one sense, Protestants can be, and should be, more catholic than the Roman Catholics. I can, and do, love Chesterton and Martin Luther. But Chesterton could never love Martin Luther (though perhaps he has by now learned to do so). We can say that we believe in ‘the holy catholic church’ and mean it in an entirely different sense; indeed a greater sense; for we really do mean ‘universal.’ I can think that the asceticism of Francis, the philosophy of Aquinas, and the anti-Protestant priggishness of Chesterton are all deeply flawed, and yet still love the men. But I digress.

Chesterton waxes hagriographically about Francis and Thomas, and that is all fine and good. I would expect nothing less. His defense of their ascetic ways, they were monks after all, is par for the course. I can even see some sense in his defense of the monastery. But his diatribe against Luther at the end of his biography of Thomas Aquinas set me in a melancholy mood for over a week; and I’m still fighting my way through it, trying to dance in the gray rain with my typing fingers.

Chesterton praises the Christian rationalism of Thomas and the Christian naturalism of Francis to the high heavens. And certainly, though imperfect, those things are indeed worthy of praise. He acknowledges the contradiction of Francis, who, though he loved nature and romance, practically gave up on it through his asceticism. Chesterton argues that he did not pursue marriage and fasted himself to death out of a greater romance with God; to him it is a justifiable contradiction: that is, more of a paradox or parable of history. It is no surprise that materialistic Christians give up on nature when the great saint of ecology did the same

Chesterton is not so fast to point out the great contradiction of Thomas, though he acknowledges the event that displays it. For Chesterton, Thomas was, perhaps, the first true Christian humanist; for he valued the mind of man, and called mankind to love God with the mind. Aquinas was an Aristotelian philosopher and therefore a rationalist of sorts. He spent his life in charitable debate, writing tomes upon tomes in defense of the faith. But, since he loves Aquinas, and sets him up as the great Christian humanist, it causes Chesterton to (mostly) implicitly and (sometimes) explicitly set Aquinas the humanist over and against Augustine of Hippo, whom Chesterton implicitly portrays as anti-humanist.

The anti-humanism of Augustine, as alluded to by Chesterton, is his belief in the total inability of man, in his own strength, to please God. How can one exalt humanity who says that man has nothing, and can do nothing, that is pleasing to God? Chesterton excuses this in Augustine as merely a point of emphasis: true, but perhaps over emphasized, especially by Augustine’s ‘followers.’ Of course there really should be no problem with Augustine’s teaching on man’s inability, for it is only the logical extension of the doctrine of Original Sin (which Chesterton himself argued was the only doctrine of Christianity that could be proved by universal experience), which is only an extension of the teaching of the epistles of the apostle Paul.

At the end of his biography of Aquinas, Chesterton sets the historical stage for the Protestant Reformation; and he sets it as a battle between two monks:

It is often remarked, as showing the ironical indifference of rulers to revolutions, and especially the frivolity of those who are called the Pagan Popes of the Renaissance, in their attitude to the Reformation, that when the Pope first heard of the first movements of Protestantism, which had started in Germany, he only said in an offhand manner that it was ‘some quarrel of monks’…

…And it was a quarrel of monks (p. 182).

The monks that Chesterton has in mind are not Luther and Tetzel, but Augustine and Aquinas.

Luther, Chesterton says, took the anti-humanism of Augustine to the extreme. After all, Luther was the one who wrote and sang (though he was only paraphrasing Psalm 130), ‘To wash away the crimson stain, grace, grace alone, availeth/Our works, alas, are all in vain, in much the best life faileth/No man can glory in thy sight/All must alike confess Thy might/And live alone by mercy. Luther made man into a beggar. Yet, ironically, as Luther made man into a beggar, he actually left the monastery and went out into the world.

A long quote from Dietrich Bonhoeffer summarizes Luther’s pilgrimage to, and from, the monastery well:

Luther had left all to follow Christ on the path of absolute obedience. He had renounced the world in order to live the Christian life. He had learnt obedience to Christ and to his Church, because only he who is obedient can believe. The call to the cloister demanded of Luther the complete surrender of his life. But God shattered all his hopes. He showed him through Scripture that the following of Christ is not the achievement or merit of a select few, but the divine command to all Christians without distinction. Monasticism had transformed the humble work of discipleship into the meritorious activity of the saints, and the self-renunciation of discipleship into the flagrant spiritual self-assertion of the ‘religious.’ The world had crept into the very heart of the monastic life, and was once more making havoc. The monk’s attempt to flee from the world turned out to be a subtle form of love for the world. The bottom having thus been knocked out of religious life, Luther laid hold upon grace. Just as the whole world of monasticism was crashing about him in ruins, he saw God in Christ stretching forth his hand to save. He grasped that hand in faith, believing that “after all, nothing we can do is of any avail, however good a life we live.” The grace which gave itself to him was a costly grace, and it shattered his whole existence. Once more he must leave his nets and follow. The first time was when he entered the monastery, when he had left everything behind except his pious self. This time even that was taken from him. He obeyed the call, not through any merit of his own, but simply through the grace of God. Luther did not hear the word: “Of course you have sinned, but now everything is forgiven, so you can stay as you are and enjoy the consolation of forgiveness.” No, Luther had to leave the cloister and go back to the world, not because the world in itself was good and holy, but because even the cloister was only part of the world.”

Luther’s return from the cloister to the world was the worst blow the world had suffered since the days of early Christianity. The renunciation he made when he became a monk was child’s play compared with that which he had to make when he returned to the world. Now came the frontal assault. The only way to follow Jesus was by living in the world…(The Cost of Discipleship, pp. 47-48).

For Chesterton, Luther was truly a bull trampling on the vineyard of the church; but what he was actually trampling on was the waste pile of the sort of humanism that destroys humans. The humanism Luther destroyed was the sort that starts with a capital H; the kind that exalts man and his powers. If that happened to be something that was rampant within the church, then so be it; ‘let God be true though every man be a liar.’ We have now set the stage for the contradictions.

Francis, we have already noted, essentially gave up on romance and nature for the ascetic life of extreme, perpetual self-denial; and by self-denial, we are not speaking of the denial of sinful pleasures, but of the denial of good, God-given pleasures. This asceticism came to a climax in the last days of Francis; for it would appear that he essentially fasted himself to death. At the very least his fasting ruined his health and precipitated his death. The naturalist denied nature.

As for Thomas, the climax of contradiction comes for him, like Francis, near the point of death. Thomas, that great rationalist and writer, gave up writing on account of a mystical experience:

His friend Reginald asked him to return also to his equally regular habits of reading and writing, and following the controversies of the hour. [Aquinas] said with a singular emphasis, ‘I can write no more.’ There seems to have been a silence; after which Reginald again ventured to approach the subject; and Thomas answered him with even greater vigor, ‘I can write no more. I have seen things which make all my writings like straw’ (p. 116).

Francis is the naturalist who gives up on nature. Thomas is the rationalist who has a mystical experience and gives up on reason. Martin Luther only gave up on himself. Luther, says Chesterton, was a man with a loud voice that attracted attention. Ironically, Luther himself decried the voice of man and said all man’s babbling availed nothing. Chesterton writes, I will not say argues, for he doesn’t argue but only asserts, that Luther was essentially a cult of personality. Ironically, he also says that Luther’s great sin was the destruction of personality in the doctrine of man’s total inability.

Thomas is a rationalist who, in the end, sees its futility and covers his mouth (again, no wonder modern experientialists give up on reason when the great doctor of reason gave up on it long before). Francis is a lover of creation who gives up on all creation, including himself. Martin is a monk who leaves the worldliness of the monastery for the sake of a lost world. A monk who leaves the monastery that he might find true holiness outside of it – how Chestertonian.

Chesterton loves the monks, but he despises Puritanism as a movement to bring the monastic life of prayer, meditation, and spiritual discipline into the common house of the common family. What do we say to these things?

I will not give up on Francis of Assisi, Thomas Aquinas, or G.K. Chesterton; nor will I give up on Martin Luther. But I will give up on myself. In the battle of the monks I will side with Augustine. But there is no real battle here. For, in the words of Luther,

That Word above all earthly powers, no thanks to them abideth
The Spirit and the gifts are ours, through Him who with us sideth.

Let us be Christian naturalists: that is, lovers of nature, because Christ is a lover of His creation. Let us be Christian rationalists: that is, deep thinkers, for Christ calls us to love God with all our minds. Let us be despisers of ourselves because we are sinners, and lovers of our fellow-men because they are created in the image of God. Let us be people of discipline and self-denial, but let us go into the world and enjoy the good gifts of God as we do so. If we give up on anything, let it be on our own abilities. For, ironically, Chesterton sums it up well when he says, ‘The truth is that people who worship health cannot remain healthy’ (St. Francis of Assisi, p. 20).

But, perhaps, St. Francis himself said it even better: ‘Blessed is he that expecteth nothing, for he shall enjoy everything’ (p. 67).

The Worldliness of the Monastery (Bonhoeffer)

In this post I simply want to record a quote from Dietrich Bonhoeffer that will come up (Lord willing) in some future thoughts about my summer reading on Thomas Aquinas and Francis of Assisi. Bonhoeffer describes the Augustinian monk Martin Luther’s journey to and from the cloister (paradoxically) as a journey, first, into worldliness, and then into the world:

…Luther passed through the cloister; he was a monk, and all this was part of the divine plan. Luther had left all to follow Christ on the path of absolute obedience. He had renounced the world in order to live the Christian life. He had learnt obedience to Christ and to his Church, because only he who is obedient can believe. The call to the cloister demanded of Luther the complete surrender of his life. But God shattered all his hopes. He showed him through Scripture that the following of Christ is not the achievement or merit of a select few, but the divine command to all Christians without distinction. Monasticism had transformed the humble work of discipleship into the meritorious activity of the saints, and the self-renunciation of discipleship into the flagrant spiritual self-assertion of the “religious.” The world had crept into the very heart of the monastic life, and was once more making havoc. The monk’s attempt to flee from the world turned out to be a subtle form of love for the world. The bottom having thus been knocked out of religious life, Luther laid hold upon grace. Just as the whole world of monasticism was crashing about him in ruins, he saw God in Christ stretching forth his hand to save. He grasped that hand in faith, believing that “after all, nothing we can do is of any avail, however good a life we live.” The grace which gave itself to him was a costly grace, and it shattered his whole existence. Once more he must leave his nets and follow. The first time was when he entered the monastery, when he had left everything behind except his pious self. This time even that was taken from him. He obeyed the call, not through any merit of his own, but simply through the grace of God. Luther did not hear the word: “Of course you have sinned, but now everything is forgiven, so you can stay as you are and enjoy the consolation of forgiveness.” No, Luther had to leave the cloister and go back to the world, not because the world in itself was good and holy, but because even the cloister was only part of the world.

Luther’s return from the cloister to the world was the worst blow the world had suffered since the days of early Christianity. The renunciation he made when he became a monk was child’s play compared with that which he had to make when he returned to the world. Now came the frontal assault. The only way to follow Jesus was by living in the world…(The Cost of Discipleship, pp. 47-48).

Cultural Incongruity

Athanasius had to be against the world (contra mundum) to be for the world. Chesterton argues that Thomas Aquinas offered a much needed contradiction to the world of Chesterton’s day (perhaps ours as well):

The saint is a medicine because he is an antidote. Indeed that is why the saint is often a martyr; he is mistaken for a poison because he is an antidote. He will generally be found restoring the world to sanity by exaggerating whatever the world neglects, which is by no means always the same element in every age…he is not what the people want, but rather what the people need…Salt seasons and preserves beef, not because it is like beef; but because it is very unlike it. Christ did not tell his apostles that they were only the excellent people, or the only excellent people, but that they were the exceptional people; the permanently incongruous and incompatible people…It is because they were the exceptional people, that they must not lose their exceptional quality…

Therefore it is the paradox of history that each generation is converted by the saint who contradicts it most.

-G.K. Chesterton, St. Thomas Aquinas, pp. 5-6

I do not know if I have ever read a more beautiful expression of the particularity of Christianity than the paragraphs the above quotes are taken from. I couldn’t move on after reading it. I don’t know how many times I reread it before finally turning a page.

Two things come to mind as applications. First, read people who most contradict the world. It is fitting that Chesterton found such in Aquinas, who predated him by several hundred years. It was the reading of the old saints that gave him the needed perspective to be salt in his own day. Second, when you find those areas we can, and should, contradict the world in, then proclaim, and live, those points. Be incongruous to the world around you. Proclaim the antidote even if the culture sees it as poison. Light is like poison to darkness, but it is really the antidote for darkness.

How can we do it in our own day? The best attempt at an answer I’ve heard can be found HERE.

Worldly Orthodoxy (Personal Knowledge)

Polanyi on cultural systems:

Moreover, such sharing [of values] constitutes an orthodoxy upholding certain intellectual and artistic standards, and an undertaking to engage in the pursuits guided by them which amounts in effect to a recognition of cultural obligations…

…The framework of cultural and ritual fellowship reveals primordially the four coefficients of societal organization which jointly compose all specific systems of fixed social relations…the first is the sharing of convictions, the second the sharing of a fellowship. The third coefficient is co-operation; the fourth the exercise of authority or coercion.

-Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge, p. 212

Polanyi points out that each culture has its own orthodoxy. It starts with doctrine, which leads to fellowship and cooperation, and anoints bishops to expose and excommunicate the heretics. It is not the church alone that attempts to hold up a standard of orthodoxy. And, when it comes to the world, the most fearful aspect of this system is that it has no greater authority over it than man. It begins with man and ends with man judging man.

People are sometimes fond of saying that they don’t believe in “organized religion.” The fact of the matter is that everyone is a part of organized religion whether they know it or not. The media and schools set the doctrine. Movie theaters, political rallies, social media, etc are after some sort of koinonia. And Hollywood stars, celebrities, and politicians can actually be little popes pronouncing their cultural anathemas. Behold the modern orthodoxy. Let us hope we are weighed in the balance and found wanting.

He did not move with the times…

It is his glory that he did not move with the times; it is his reward that he now remains when those times, as all times do, have moved away.

– C.S. Lewis, from his foreword to Athanasius, The Incarnation of the Word of God

This reminds me of the words of Charles Spurgeon, which I often quote: ‘He who marries today’s fashion is tomorrow’s widow.’

The Sons of this World are More Shrewd

Austin wanted me to expound a bit on a Dorothy Sayers quote I posted. This is my stream-of-consciousness-style attempt.

The master commended the dishonest manager for his shrewdness. For the sons of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than the sons of light (Luke 16:8).

Jesus tells the story of a man on his way out of power. He is about to get the oust from his boss, so on his way out the door he decides to give his boss’ clients some special favors so that he can be in their good graces when he is left unemployed. And his boss finds out, and thinks it’s brilliant. Hence Jesus lauds the ability of worldly wisemen to make friends through business and hang on to their jobs in the process.

Dorothy Sayers makes a passing comment on this passage:

The children of this world are not only (as Christ so caustically observed) wiser in their generation than the children of light; they are also more energetic, more stimulating and bolder’ (Creed or Chaos?, p. 8).

The energy, stimulation, and boldness Sayers mentions are implicit in the world ‘shrewd.’ In fact they make a decent definition of the term.

I mentioned NPR (National Public Radio) as an example of this fact in a previous post. The thoughtfulness displayed on many NPR programs really puts most of Christian radio to shame. Whether they are right or wrong, they are generally more energetic, certainly more stimulating, and perhaps more bold than anything we hear on Christian radio.

But that is just one small example. I recently watched a 12-year-old episode of PBS Frontline called The Merchants of Cool. You can watch it HERE. In less than an hour, the program takes you on a tour de force of pop culture marketing. The shrewdness of the sons of this world is on full display. Their energy and boldness is on full display, all for the purpose of stimulating teenagers to buy their products. Executives making millions of dollars a year are going to the houses of random teenagers to see what they’re in to. They’re taking what they learn and analyzing it, and trying to put it into the magic bottle of plasma screens in order to shape culture and fill their wallets. I wonder how many pastors are checking in with their youth from time to time to see what they’re in to? I wonder if we are asking ourselves how we can shape the culture of our youth? Notice I did not say, ‘how we can cater to our youth.’ Rather, are we as shrewd in considering how we will work to shape them as citizens of the Kingdom of God and his Christ?

Are we on the cutting edge of anything? Yes. We are on the cutting edge of the rock of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream, the rock that will fill the whole earth. Yet we tend to stay so far behind the wisemen of the world that it’s hard to imagine that we are filling up anything but the wake of their ever forward moving steam-liner. Being on the cutting edge does not mean that we conform to whatever is new or hip. It means that we must cut. We must cut the path that will allow culture to thrive, rather than simply following the leaders. This calls for wisdom.

Jesus calls us to be ‘as shrewd as serpents’ and ‘as harmless as doves.’ A serpent seeks prey. A dove is prey. We must be both the hunter and the hunted. We must be the hunter seeking out ways to shape our age – to be more energetic than worldly culture, to be more stimulating, to be bolder. If we were actually that shrewd, we might find a bit more resistance, and actually be able to respond as harmless doves. The snakes of the world bite in order to kill. We should bite in order to give life. The snakes of this world bite with venom and hatred. We are called to act as doves.

I said all of that to say this: my early experience in Christianity was mainly doctrinal (in a stuffy, academic sort of way). I wasn’t exposed to Christian shrewdness that often. Shrewdness involves ‘sharp powers of judgment’ (that’s the dictionary idea). Christian shrewdness is not the sharp power of calling beer bad or church good. Christian shrewdness involves being able to cut sharply against the grain of this world and do what we do better than they do what they do.

They reach young folks by getting to know what they like, through sensational marketing and constant advertising. That’s what they do, and they do it well. We have, or at least certainly should have, another way of reaching the same people. Our intentions are certainly better, but are we more wise, more discerning, more proactive? They reach culture at large through basically the same means. Do we have a vision for enculturating our people and shaping their view of the world? Or are we just doing what we do without any thought or concrete intention?

I watch wordly wisemen every day. I observe and I learn. I see a man who knows that people will like him if he is generous. I see a man who knows that people will pay attention if he raises his voice. I see a man who knows that people will take him seriously if he knows his subject better than most. The question is, can I be as energetic, bold, and stimulating by doing what I do in a different way, and doing my way better than them?

On ‘On Lying in Bed’ by G.K. Chesterton

G.K. Chesterton, On Lying in Bed, from In Defense of Sanity, pp. 39-42. Read the essay online HERE.

This short essay by Chesterton is one of my favorites. In it, he meditates on the act of lying in bed and staring at the ceiling. Many would consider this inactivity. But, considered rightly, lying in bed and staring at the ceiling should be an act. Chesterton ponders whether this was the very act that inspired Michelangelo in his work on that other famous ceiling.

This probably wasn’t the case, but it is a great thought nonetheless. Chesterton himself considers the great possibility of art on what may be the only extended blank surface in a house – the ceiling. I read the essay to my 7-year-old daughter and she immediately wanted to start painting the ceiling.

This is why I read Chesterton. I am a Reformed Protestant. He was, for a good part of his life, a Roman Catholic. I am a Calvinist. He was a staunch anti-Calvinist. He would probably dislike me immensely. But I love the man because of his imagination and wit. Because he can take mundane things and expose the fact that they are not mundane. A ceiling is not mundane. Lying on your back and staring at a ceiling does not have to be boring. In fact, it can be inspiring, depending on what your eyes can see via the imagination. A bored teenager sees his ceiling as a blank space that doesn’t compare to a computer screen. Michelangelo sees it as a canvas. A bored teenager sees walls as controlling borders. A child sees them as the holding place for adventure indoors. God sees them as a piece of paper to write, Mene, Mene, Tekel, Parsin. God the graffiti-artist.

And beside his ruminations on ceilings themselves, and on art, Chesterton contributes some very solid reflections on the condition of the world. Though the essay was published in 1909, it is timely. He notes modern disdain for lying in bed. The world is too busy for such inactivity. He notes that early rising is no mark of greatness:

Misers get up early in the morning; and burglars, I am informed, get up the night before. It is the great peril of our society that all its mechanisms may grow more fixed while its spirit grows more fickle. A man’s minor actions and arrangements ought to be free, flexible, creative; the things that should be unchangeable are his principles, his ideals. But with us the reverse is true; our views change constantly; but our lunch does not change. Now I should like men to have strong and rooted conceptions, but as for their lunch, let them have it sometimes in the garden, sometimes in bed, sometimes on the roof, sometimes in the top of a tree. Let them argue from the same first principles, but let them do it in a bed, or a boat, or a balloon.

The point is simple. The modern pharisees of the world are often of the sort that judge someone for the hour they rise, the type of food they eat, and the type of car they drive. They judge a man for his carbon footprint but do not care what foundation his feet are planted on. As I’ve heard Doug Wilson say, they will allow a woman to have an abortion, but malign her if she smokes while she is pregnant. They will praise her if she eats organic, but tear her down if that organic food makes her overweight. They build cities with no sidewalks and then demand that we walk three miles a day. To lay in bed and do nothing is atrocious, but to lay on the couch and text is the norm.

At the end, Chesterton gives his qualification for lying in bed:

…If you do lie in bed, be sure you do it without any reason or justification at all. I do not speak, of course, of the seriously sick. But if a healthy man lies in bed, let him do it without a rag of excuse; then he will get up a healthy man. If he does it for some secondary hygienic reason, if he has some scientific explanation, he may get up a hypochondriac.

He is giving us insight here into the world’s strange morality that will stamp all kinds of acts as virtuous if there is some scientific or popular fad surrounding them. Eating oats can become a virtue. Taking a certain vitamin can become a virtue. If Dr. Oz says the word, lying in bed could become the next great viral sensation.

Do what you do, first, because you are a human being. Next, do it out of conviction from first principles, that’s the point. Or else you will be tossed around ad infinitum from one morality to the other. God doesn’t care what you eat. He doesn’t tell you how long to sleep. He doesn’t tell you when to wake up or what breakfast to start your day with, or whether you should have breakfast at all. What he does tell you is to eat the book, that you do not live by bread alone, and that when you do lie down, as well as when you get up, to let that word dominate the conversation (Deut. 6:7).

Chesterton: More Humane in Order to Contain More of Humanity

Thought-provoking words from Chesterton:

If the capitalists are allowed to erect their constructive capitalist community, I speak quite seriously when I say that I think Prison will become an almost universal experience. It will not necessarily be a cruel or shameful experience: on these points (I concede certainly for the present purpose of debate) it may be a vastly improved experience. The conditions in the prison, very possibly, will be made more humane. But the prison will be made more humane only in order to contain more of humanity.

-G.K. Chesterton, Utopia of Userers, Section 3: The Evolution of Prison

This is totally unrelated to what Chesterton had in mind, but alas, my thoughts carry me away: You might say the same thing about worldliness and worldly culture, which is a sort of prison if you think about it. It puts on the appearance of being humane in order to attract more humans. It wants to look civilized so it can bring in more civilians. It puts on the appearance of rescuing them from barbarism, or one of a hundred other conditions, only to lock them up in its political-correctness.

Wordly Asceticism (G.K. Chesterton)

Of Augustine and asceticism:

The war upon life, the denial of nature, were exactly the things he had already found in the heathen world outside the Church, and had to renounce when he entered the Church.

-G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man, pp. 225-226

This is still the case today. The world is full of ascetics, and a lot of its asceticism infests the church in strange forms.