Monday, August 01, 2005
Orthodoxy's Radical Optimism
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The last post discussed whitewashing optimism. This post will clarify the Christian view set forward by Chesterton, which is neither pessimism, optimism, nor a nice balance in the middle. Chesterton brings the Aristotelian idea of balance into the discussion, which as used in our culture has long irritated me and I am glad to have some one more brilliant than I articulate it for me. (Allie - this post is for you! :-) The balance I hear most my neighbors appeal toward is a kind of mediocre middle that lacks inspiration to say the least, though more probably a diabolical scheme to neutralize any, daring, "unbalanced" noble action whatsoever (Screwtape Letters comes to mind here). Mother's speak of balancing their children with their personal time or husband or other pursuits, which more often seems to lead to neither excellence in child rearing nor marriage nor Christian life but a kind of passable nor where, pray God, nothing too terrible happens as we have risked nothing too daring either. But I digress . . . First a few more snipets.
The idea was that which I had outlined touching the optimist and the pessimist; that we want not an amalgam or compromise, but both things at the top of their energy, both love and wrath burning. . . But the great truism of the balance remains for all thinking men. But granted that we have all to keep a balance, the real interest comes in with the question of how that balance can be kept. That was the problem which Paganism tried to solve: that was the problem which I think Christianity solved and solved in a very strange way. Paganism declared that virtue was in balance; Christianity declared it was in conflict: the collision of two passions apparently the opposite. Of course they were not really inconsistent; but they were such that it was hard to hold simultaneously. . . .
Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of readiness to die. "He that will lose his life, the same shall save it," is not a piece of mysticism for saints and heroes. It is a piece of everyday advice for sailors or mountaineers. . . . A soldier surrounded by enemies, if he is to cut his way out, needs to combine a strong desire for living with a strange carelessness about dying. He must no merely cling to life, for then he will be a coward and will not escape. He must not merely wait for death, for then he will be a suicide and will not escape. He must seek his life in a spirit of furious indifference to it; he must desire life like water and yet drink death like wine. . . . I began to find that this duplex passion was the Christian key to ethics everywhere. . . .
Take for instance the matter of modesty, of the balance between pride and mere prostration . . . The average pagan, like the average agnostic, would merely say that he was content with himself, but not insolvently self-satisfied, that there were many better and many worse. . . . Being a mixture of two things, it is a dilution of two things; neither is present in its full strength of contributes its full color. . . . Thus it loses both the poetry of being proud and the poetry of being humble. Christianity sought by this same strange expedient to save both of them. It separated the two ideas and then exaggerated them both. In one way Man was to be haughtier than he had ever been before. In so far that I am Man I am the chief of creatures. In so far as I am a man, I am the chief of sinners. . . . Christianity got over the difficulty of combining furious opposites, by keeping them both, and keeping them both furious.
I thought the following quote was interesting in light of the FQ issue that has been hot lately.
It is true that the historic Church has at once emphasized celibacy and emphasized the family; has at once (if one may put it so) been fiercely for having children and fiercely for not having children. . . . In fact, the whole theory of the Church on virginity might be symbolized in the statement that white is a colour: not merely the absence of a colour.
The idea was that which I had outlined touching the optimist and the pessimist; that we want not an amalgam or compromise, but both things at the top of their energy, both love and wrath burning. . . But the great truism of the balance remains for all thinking men. But granted that we have all to keep a balance, the real interest comes in with the question of how that balance can be kept. That was the problem which Paganism tried to solve: that was the problem which I think Christianity solved and solved in a very strange way. Paganism declared that virtue was in balance; Christianity declared it was in conflict: the collision of two passions apparently the opposite. Of course they were not really inconsistent; but they were such that it was hard to hold simultaneously. . . .
Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of readiness to die. "He that will lose his life, the same shall save it," is not a piece of mysticism for saints and heroes. It is a piece of everyday advice for sailors or mountaineers. . . . A soldier surrounded by enemies, if he is to cut his way out, needs to combine a strong desire for living with a strange carelessness about dying. He must no merely cling to life, for then he will be a coward and will not escape. He must not merely wait for death, for then he will be a suicide and will not escape. He must seek his life in a spirit of furious indifference to it; he must desire life like water and yet drink death like wine. . . . I began to find that this duplex passion was the Christian key to ethics everywhere. . . .
Take for instance the matter of modesty, of the balance between pride and mere prostration . . . The average pagan, like the average agnostic, would merely say that he was content with himself, but not insolvently self-satisfied, that there were many better and many worse. . . . Being a mixture of two things, it is a dilution of two things; neither is present in its full strength of contributes its full color. . . . Thus it loses both the poetry of being proud and the poetry of being humble. Christianity sought by this same strange expedient to save both of them. It separated the two ideas and then exaggerated them both. In one way Man was to be haughtier than he had ever been before. In so far that I am Man I am the chief of creatures. In so far as I am a man, I am the chief of sinners. . . . Christianity got over the difficulty of combining furious opposites, by keeping them both, and keeping them both furious.
I thought the following quote was interesting in light of the FQ issue that has been hot lately.
It is true that the historic Church has at once emphasized celibacy and emphasized the family; has at once (if one may put it so) been fiercely for having children and fiercely for not having children. . . . In fact, the whole theory of the Church on virginity might be symbolized in the statement that white is a colour: not merely the absence of a colour.
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