The Thought That Stops Thought

And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. JOHN 8:32

The second argument of Orthodoxy follows directly from the first. Chesterton had shown that madness lies in reason cut off from everything else. Now he set out to show that the modern world was in danger of something worse: of losing faith in reason itself. He called the chapter The Suicide of Thought, and it reads today like a prophecy.

Reason needs defending

He began by making clear that he was on reason’s side. The chapter on the madman, he said, had not been meant to attack the authority of reason; the whole aim was to defend it, because it needed defending. The great danger of his age was not too much reasoning but a growing doubt whether reasoning could reach the truth at all.

The point is simple and devastating. Every argument, every science, every inquiry, assumes that our minds can grasp something real. But that assumption cannot itself be proved by argument, because every argument depends on it. “It is idle to talk always of the alternative of reason and faith,” Chesterton wrote in this chapter. “Reason is itself a matter of faith.” If our thoughts are only the by-products of chemistry, there is no reason to trust them, including the thought that they are only chemistry. The sceptic who doubts everything must, sooner or later, doubt his own doubting.

The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. PSALM 14:1

The thought that stops thought

From this Chesterton drew his conclusion. There is one kind of thought that ought to be stopped, and it is the thought that stops all thought: the idea that the mind cannot know anything, that truth is only a matter of taste, that every belief is as good as every other because none of them can be true. “There is a thought that stops thought,” he wrote. “That is the only thought that ought to be stopped.” He believed that the authority of the Christian religion had always stood, among other things, as a defence of the human mind against that idea. The church had insisted that there is truth to be known, and in doing so it had kept the door open for thinking itself.

He then surveyed the fashionable creeds of his day — the worship of the will, the cult of the superman, the restless revolt against every standard — and showed how each of them, pressed to its conclusion, ended in the same place: a world in which it is impossible to say that anything is better than anything else. The man who rebels against everything, he said, has lost the right to rebel against anything; for to rebel is to appeal to a standard, and he has abolished all standards.

Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness. ISAIAH 5:20

Humility in the wrong place

In the middle of the chapter comes a passage that has been quoted ever since, about humility. In the old days, Chesterton said, humility was meant to restrain a man’s pride and ambition, while leaving him confident about the truth. The modern world had reversed this. Modern people were bold about themselves — their rights, their desires, their opinions of their own worth — and timid only about truth, which they hardly dared to say they knew. “A man was meant to be doubtful about himself, but undoubting about the truth,” he wrote; “this has been exactly reversed.” The result, he warned, would be a generation too modest to believe in the multiplication table.

It is hard to read that sentence today without a shiver of recognition. We live among people who are certain of their own goodness and uncertain whether anything is true. Chesterton saw that this is not humility at all, but a peculiar kind of pride: the refusal to be bound by anything outside oneself.

Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let the mighty man glory in his might, let not the rich man glory in his riches: but let him that glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth me. JEREMIAH 9:23–24

Truth as a gift

Christianity, as Chesterton came to see it, does not ask a man to give up his mind. It gives his mind back to him. It says that the world is real, that God made it rational, that the human mind is made in His image and fitted to know it, and that truth exists and can be found. That is why, historically, the Christian faith has been the cradle of so much learning. A man who believes that God has spoken, and that God is truth, has every reason to think hard.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. JOHN 1:1

Weighing it

This chapter is among the most prophetic things Chesterton wrote, and evangelical readers will find little in it to set aside. Its insistence that truth is real and knowable, and that the mind is a gift of God to be used, stands squarely on Scripture.

Two points may be added. First, Chesterton’s confidence in the human mind needs to be balanced by Scripture’s realism about it. The mind is God’s gift, but it is also fallen, and it is often bent by the will to believe what it wants. Reason alone did not bring Chesterton to faith, and it will not bring anyone else; the Spirit of God must open the eyes.

But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. 1 CORINTHIANS 2:14

Second, when Chesterton speaks of religious authority as the guardian of the mind, the reader should remember where, for Christians of the Reformation, that authority finally rests. Chesterton came in time to locate it in the teaching office of the Roman Church. Evangelicals locate it in the written Word of God, by which every church and every teacher must be judged. The truth that sets us free is the truth spoken by Christ and written by His apostles.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Have you absorbed, perhaps without noticing, the idea that religious truth is only a matter of personal taste? How would your faith change if you really believed it was true?

2. Where are you bold about yourself and timid about the truth? Where should it be the other way round?

3. Read John 8:31–36 and notice how Jesus connects truth, freedom and Himself.

4. Choose one question about the faith that you have been afraid to think about, and study what Scripture says about it this week.

5. Read the chapter of Orthodoxy called The Suicide of Thought, in the Ochorus library.

A PRAYER

Lord, You are the truth, and You have made my mind to know You.

Forgive me for being proud about myself and timid about You, for doubting what You have said and trusting what I feel.

Guard me from every thought that would stop thought, and open my eyes by Your Spirit to see what is real.

Make me humble about myself and unashamed of Your truth, and keep me in the freedom that Jesus Christ has given. Amen.