The Wild Truth Reeling but Erect

Beloved, when I gave all diligence to write unto you of the common salvation, it was needful for me to write unto you, and exhort you that ye should earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints. JUDE 3

Most people of Chesterton’s day, and most of ours, thought of orthodoxy as a dull thing: safe, heavy, respectable, the opposite of adventure. Heresy, by contrast, seemed bold and exciting, the mark of a free mind. Orthodoxy is the book in which Chesterton turned that picture upside down. The two chapters at the heart of its argument, The Paradoxes of Christianity and The Romance of Orthodoxy, set out to show that the true faith is the most thrilling thing in the world, and heresy the most tame.

The heavenly chariot

At the close of the chapter on paradox, Chesterton painted a picture that has stayed with his readers ever since. Orthodoxy, he said, is not a resting-place but a balancing act. There are a thousand ways of falling and only one way of standing upright. To have fallen into any one of the errors that have tempted the church — from the ancient Gnostics to the fashionable sects of his own day — would have been easy and dull. To have avoided all of them, century after century, was a breathless adventure. He imagined it as a chariot racing through history: “in my vision the heavenly chariot flies thundering through the ages, the dull heresies sprawling and prostrate, the wild truth reeling but erect.”

Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path. PSALM 119:105

The picture is worth dwelling on, because it changes the way a Christian thinks about doctrine. The creeds are not walls built to keep thought in. They are the record of a narrow road, kept open at great cost, between dangers on either side. To deny the deity of Christ is easy; to deny His humanity is easy; to hold both is hard and glorious. Every heresy is a simplification, and every simplification is a fall.

The freedom of dogma

In The Romance of Orthodoxy Chesterton went further. The liberal theologians of his time claimed that by abandoning the old doctrines they were making Christianity more free. Chesterton argued that the reverse was true. Take away the doctrine that God is distinct from His creation, and you are left with a God who is simply the universe — and a man who worships the universe has no ground for resisting anything in it. Take away the doctrine of the fall, and you lose the right to call anything a corruption that needs reforming. Take away miracles, and you have a universe locked shut against God. Take away the Trinity, and you have a God who is a solitary power rather than an eternal fellowship of love. Each of the old dogmas, he said, turned out to be the guarantee of some freedom that the moderns valued.

If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed. JOHN 8:36

He gave a picture for this too, in the last chapter of the book. Imagine children playing on the flat grassy top of a tall island in the sea. As long as there is a wall around the edge, they can run and play and fling themselves about in safety. Take the wall away, and they will huddle in the middle, afraid of the drop. Doctrine, he said, is that wall. It does not end the game; it makes the game possible.

Always a revolution

In the chapter between these two, The Eternal Revolution, Chesterton made a related point about progress. Everyone in his day talked about progress, but progress means moving towards something, and you cannot move towards a goal that keeps changing. A people that alters its ideal every generation is not progressing; it is merely drifting. The Christian has a fixed ideal, given by God and seen in Christ, and because it is fixed he can always measure the world against it and find it wanting. That, Chesterton said, is why the Christian is always a reformer, and why the doctrine of original sin, far from making men content with injustice, is the strongest of all grounds for fighting it.

In the same chapter comes a light-hearted sentence that says something serious about the Christian life: “Angels can fly because they can take themselves lightly.” The saints, he observed, have been marked not by solemnity about themselves but by a holy levity — a freedom from self-importance that comes from knowing that everything rests on God.

Casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you. 1 PETER 5:7

Weighing it

Chesterton’s vision of orthodoxy as adventure is a gift to every generation of believers, and especially to young believers who have been told that faith is the enemy of thought. He was right that heresy is usually dull, that the creeds guard a narrow and exhilarating road, and that dogma is a defence of freedom rather than an attack on it.

The caution concerns who keeps the road. When Chesterton speaks of orthodoxy he means the faith of the creeds, and evangelical readers can stand with him there. But his chariot is driven, in his imagination, by the church; and when he later became a Catholic he came to believe that the Roman Church’s teaching authority was the means by which God had kept the truth from falling. Evangelicals believe that the truth has been kept by God’s Word, and that churches, Rome included, have sometimes fallen off the road and needed Scripture to set them back on it. The Reformation itself was one such recovery. The faith once delivered to the saints is the standard by which every church is tested.

To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them. ISAIAH 8:20

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Have you thought of orthodoxy as safe and dull? How does Chesterton’s picture of the chariot change that?

2. Read the Nicene Creed slowly, and for each line ask what would be lost if it were denied.

3. Is there a doctrine that you have found confining? Consider whether it might be a wall that makes the playground safe.

4. Where are you taking yourself too seriously? Practise casting one care on God this week.

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

A PRAYER

Lord, You have given Your church the faith once for all delivered to the saints, and You have kept it through every age.

Forgive me for thinking Your truth dull, and for being dazzled by errors that are only simplifications.

Keep me on the narrow road between the dangers on either side, and let Your Word be a lamp to my feet.

Make me light-hearted about myself and earnest about Your truth, and give me the joy of the adventure, for Jesus’ sake. Amen.