Chesterton, Lewis, and Modernity: The Infallible Sign of the Presence of God

By Charles D. Beard

If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason? —Augustine, on why we should avoid literal interpretations of the Bible

One time before his conversion, Augustine tied himself in knots because he had to deliver a speech honoring the Emperor. In true political form, he said of it: “I was to deliver many a lie, and the lying was to be applauded by those who knew I was lying.”

Before he was to deliver the speech, he saw a drunk beggar wandering the streets of Milan, happy that he’d made enough to get a full belly and a drink. And Augustine hated himself because he knew that the beggar was happier than he was.

Many years later, as a bishop, Augustine reflected on this experience: “He had not, indeed, gained true joy, but, at the same time, with all my ambitions, I was seeking one still more untrue.”

In other words, Augustine says that the drunk was closer to God than he himself was — because at least in that moment, the drunk was happy.

So let’s talk about how Christians hate joy.

The excellent and interesting Scott Alexander wrote a blog post this week arguing that atheists can appreciate Christian writers like G.K. Chesterton and C.S. Lewis — not because they are Christian but because they are modern. 

Scott’s thesis is: 

“Lewis and Chesterton didn’t become brilliant moralists by revealing the truths of Christianity to a degraded modern world. They became great moralists by taking the better parts of the modern world, dressing them up in Christian clothing, and handing them back to the modern world, all while denouncing the worse parts of the modern world as ‘the modern world.’”

He goes on to discuss several virtues that atheists can appreciate in Lewis and Chesterton, giving particular attention to the reasons the “Christian clothing” is so compelling. I agreed with a large portion of that and I don’t intend to discuss that here.

However, I dispute his characterization of Christianity as lacking in modern virtues — at least in those modern elements that he and I would agree are virtues.

Scott, whose understanding of history is usually pretty good, describes a number of examples in which pre-modern Christians repudiate joy. He puts it: 

“The moral qualities that shine in Lewis and Chesterton — joy, humor, a love of the natural world, humanity, compassion, tolerance, willingness to engage with reason — are all qualities they inherited from modernity which would be repugnant to many of their Christian predecessors.”

Scott’s historical evidence is faulty. He displays little knowledge of Christian teaching or, more importantly, spiritual practice — both of which have always prioritized joy. I would go a step further than that: Christianity is the reason the modern world displays those virtues Scott extols in Lewis and Chesterton.

In this piece, I will first discuss the evidence Scott uses to prove his thesis, then I will discuss reasons why Christianity is the reason (or a reason) the modern world considers things like joy and humor to be values. Since this is a blog for Catholic Workers, I will end by showing why what I’m discussing is important for our work.

Untraditionally Traditional

Scott claims:

“For 90% of Christian history G.K. Chesterton and C.S. Lewis probably would have been burnt at the stake. … Promoting joy as a sign of sanctity and as a proper state for man — that’s a burning for the Epicurean heresy right there. Believing righteous non-Christians could get into Heaven — that’s a burning. A suggestion that that humor and lightness were chief attributes of God and the angels — more burning. Doubting the literal truth of some of the Old Testament? Uncertainty whether the New Testament was divinely inspired in a more-than-metaphorical all-great-art-is-divinely-inspired way? Claims that praying sincerely to false gods was praiseworthy and basically just another way of praying to God? Burning, burning, burning.”

This is completely false and a horrendous misreading of Christian theology and spirituality. Let’s take these one at a time.

1. Promoting joy as a sign of sanctity and as a proper state for man — that’s a burning for the Epicurean heresy right there.

Epicureanism is a heresy because it’s materialist and calls pleasure apart from God the highest good. This has nothing to do with joy. How can joy not be a sign of sanctity when it’s one of the fruits of the Spirit discussed in Galatians?

The insight of Christianity isn’t that joy — or happiness or inner peace — is bad. Instead, it provides a way to maintain joy when by all accounts one shouldn’t feel it. I emphatically do not mean the promise of Heaven. I mean the joy St. Paul felt in his own life when he said: 

“[W]e prove we are servants of God by great fortitude in times of suffering: in times of hardship and distress; when we are flogged, or sent to prison, or mobbed; labouring, sleepless, starving. ... thought most miserable and yet we are always rejoicing.”

Paul says that when one lives in the presence of God, one is able to live with joy no matter what things — good or bad — are going on around you.

One of the claims of Christianity is joy doesn’t have to be situational, that life in Christ allows one to live with joy when the world says what’s happening around you shouldn’t create joy.

St. Francis puts it even more boldly: 

“And if we continue to knock, and the porter comes out in anger, and drives us away with curses and hard blows like bothersome scoundrels, saying, 'Get away from here, you dirty thieves — go to the hospital! Who do you think you are? You certainly won't eat or sleep here' — and if we bear it patiently and take the insults with joy and love in our hearts, Oh, Brother Leo, write that that is perfect joy!”

This isn’t meant in a masochistic way. It’s meant to indicate that rooting one’s life in Christ is the source of joy, not the things that happen to us beyond our control. Joy is the freedom to love in the midst of hardship, and that’s something that Christianity provides.

<!--[if !supportLists]-->2. <!--[endif]-->Believing righteous non-Christians could get into Heaven — that’s a burning.

No. With few exceptions, the Church has held that the unbaptized, that is, non-Christians, can attain Heaven under certain circumstances. This belief is at least as early as Justin Martyr.

Now, there has always been difference of opinion as to how far this extends, with views ranging from “only the guy who has a heart attack on the way to getting baptized” to “everyone who tries his darndest.” Scott is right in that the majority opinion has shifted over the last two or three centuries from closer to the former to closer to the latter. But it is not correct that righteous non-Christians were automatically condemned before the modern era. (In the modern era, a priest holding that all non-Catholics go to Hell, Leonard Feeney, was excommunicated for a time. The few who agree with him are now called Feeneyites.)

Since I am less familiar with this area of theology, I relied on a very useful article arguing against Feeneyism. It includes a plethora of quotes from Church Fathers, most from before the modern era. Here’s one from the much-maligned Augustine: 

"I find that not only suffering for the Name of Christ can supply for that which is lacking by way of Baptism, but even faith and conversion of heart, if perhaps, because of the circumstances of the time, recourse cannot be had to the celebration of the Mystery of Baptism.” 

Scott might reasonably respond that Lewis, at least, goes a whole lot further than this and even flirts with universalism. That’s a fair point. But Lewis would not need to appeal to modern values to support that thesis; he could find evidence in Christian tradition.

<!--[if !supportLists]-->3. <!--[endif]-->A suggestion that that humor and lightness were chief attributes of God and the angels — more burning.

Let me demonstrate with a story. Once upon a time, St. Teresa of Avila fell off her horse and into a puddle of mud. Her immediate response was to cry out to the Almighty: “If this is how you treat your friends, it’s no wonder you have so many enemies!”

That’s right. St. Teresa — probably the most famous Western mystic — got fresh with God.

Teresa is also credited with saying, “From silly devotions and sour-faced saints, good Lord, deliver us!”

If there is a God — and I think there is — He seems to have answered the prayer. In a chapter in Chesterton’s own biography of Thomas Aquinas called “The Real Life of St. Thomas,” he mentions in the second paragraph that the Angelic Doctor used to make self-deprecating jokes about his weight. St. Philip Neri posted a sign over his door proclaiming his pad “The House of Christian Mirth.” He once attended a ceremony in his honor, but not before shaving half his beard.

My favorite is the possibly apocryphal story on St. Lawrence’s martyrdom. While being roasted alive, he called out: “I’m done on this side. You can turn me over!”

I’m recalling these not to prove that Christians were funny or even that Christians are supposed to be funny. St. Bernard of Clairvaux had some kooky ideas about humor — C.S. Lewis both addresses and corrects his concern in the Screwtape Letters. I don’t mean any disrespect when I say that St. Jerome was by all accounts kind of an asshole.

But Christianity claims that Christ came to sanctify everything human. There is a story in which Christ tells St. Jerome that everything about him except for his sins already belongs to him (Christ). That means every type of human personality — from Jerome’s prickly old man to Bernard of Clairvaux’s borderline mental illness — can be a means to salvation. That includes Philip Neri’s class clown and Teresa of Avila’s deadpan snarker. Humor as a means of salvation has at least as much support in Christian history as the perpetual solemnity we too frequently associate with sainthood.

<!--[if !supportLists]-->4. <!--[endif]-->Doubting the literal truth of some of the Old Testament?

Prior to the fundamentalist movement of late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, almost no Christian theologian didn’t doubt the literal truth of some of the Old Testament. 

Bede Griffiths, the 20^th-century monk and pioneer of Hindu-Christian dialogue, wrote to a friend that he was bothered by the level of violence in the Old Testament but quickly noted that the Fathers of the Church got around this problem by interpreting it allegorically.

The Fathers of the Church did believe the mythological elements of the Old Testament were more literal than most Christians do today, but they thought the goal of the Old Testament was to point to Christ and the Church, history notwithstanding. This is, in fact, the way parts of the New Testament itself interpret the Old Testament. A brief section of First Peter discusses how Noah’s Flood prefigures baptism. The point isn’t answering the historical problem of how all those animals could have fit into that small an ark; the point for the author of the letter was prophesying the theology of baptism’s role in salvation of Christians.

Augustine, when discussing Hell in Books XX and XXI of City of God, has a long discourse on whether the “flame and the worm” mentioned in the Bible is literal or figurative. He answers that the flame is literal while the worm is figurative, but he seems to accept that people who believe both are figurative have a legitimate theological opinion. (He also weasels his way out of any real commitment by saying no one knows what Hell is really like unless the Spirit gave him or her a special revelation.)

The Book of Revelation isn’t in the Old Testament, but in Book XX, Augustine expresses frustration at people who think there will be a literal 1000-year reign of Christ on earth.

<!--[if !supportLists]-->5. <!--[endif]-->Uncertainty whether the New Testament was divinely inspired in a more-than-metaphorical all-great-art-is-divinely-inspired way?

Scott’s on solider ground here, though the Eastern Orthodox have a strong tradition that icons are just as inspired as the Bible. I don’t remember the exact quote, but it was said of Andrei Rublev’s icon of the Holy Trinity that “here is contained the fullness of Christian revelation.”

I don’t think the Orthodox would have extended this belief to non-religious or pagan art, but one might make the argument that Western Christians did during the Renaissance!

But I don’t think Chesterton or Lewis would have called the divine inspiration of great art metaphorical either. “This is something God did because humans couldn’t have done something so beautiful on their own” may not be the most useful hermeneutic, but Christians certainly don’t limit that belief to the Bible!

<!--[if !supportLists]-->6. <!--[endif]-->Claims that praying sincerely to false gods was praiseworthy and basically just another way of praying to God?

I don’t think Lewis or Chesterton quite claimed that. But it is true that both — especially Chesterton — believed that paganism was praiseworthy insofar as it prefigured Christianity and that starting from pagan assumptions to “prove” Christianity is a good thing.

However, far from being a burning offense, this is a Christian tradition going back to the New Testament. The Acts of the Apostles records Paul claiming that Jesus Christ is not just the Jewish Messiah, he’s also the Greeks’ Unknown God!

When Justin Martyr tried to reconcile the doctrine of the preexistence of Jesus with the Platonic idea of the Logos, he was doing the same thing: using peoples’ current beliefs to try to explain how Christian beliefs fulfilled them. In fact, stories like St. Boniface of Mainz chopping down a pagan holy tree are fairly rare (among saints, anyway). For every story like his there are two stories like St. Augustine of Canterbury — on the pope’s orders — saying Mass on pagan altars after consecrating them to Christ. Christianity has always seen itself as the fulfillment, not the repudiation, of what people believe previously.

This way of thinking dovetails nicely with Lewis’ idea that “myth became fact.”

Obviously, there has been tension in how to go about praising paganism to prove Christian points. Aquinas’ life’s work was to reconcile the (more or less pagan) philosophy of Aristotle with Christianity. Chesterton describes one of Aquinas’ opponents thus: 

“Stephen Tempier, the Bishop of Paris, was apparently a rather fine specimen of the old fanatical Churchman, who thought that admiring Aristotle was a weakness likely to be followed by adoring Apollo.” 

But that Aquinas is the Official Philosopher of Catholicism and I had never heard of Tempier before I read that sentence indicates which way Christianity has tended to lean vis a vis non-Christian philosophies and religions.

If Scott wants to claim that the Church has done terrible things or has encouraged unhealthy devotions or has done a bad job at certain times of getting out the message that happiness is really okay, he won’t get an argument from me. I’ve had to argue elsewhere against other Catholics that the Crusades really were a bad idea and that maybe we should have been more skeptical of teaming up the Church and State quite as closely we did back when.

But Scott’s thesis was that Lewis and Chesterton stand in contrast with Christian history on these and other issues. (One particularly nasty bit of evidence he offered was a misquote of Aquinas that he attributed to Augustine.) I think I’ve shown that on the contrary the two stand in great continuity with Christian history. When they espoused joy, humor, salvation of at least some non-Christians, allegorical interpretations of Scripture, and even the value of paganism, they were in good company among the saints.

Modern (?) Values

Let’s review the modern values that Scott appreciates in Lewis and Chesterton: “joy, humor, a love of the natural world, humanity, compassion, tolerance, willingness to engage with reason.” I concede that the two more or less possessed these values. The question becomes: Are they really modern values?

Joy and humor? Yes, absolutely. They are modern values as well.

Willingness to engage with reason is one of the best values of the modern world. No argument there. So far, so good.

I don’t think a love of the natural world could be considered a modern value. With the world more urban than ever before and our destruction of the environment continuing apace, I find most people (I include myself, though I’m working on it) who say they love the environment to be engaging in platitudes. When half of mine and Scott’s generation move back to farms, I’d be inclined to change my mind. But I think it would take that.

Compassion is a modern value, surely. Moderns try to do a good job of taking care of the less fortunate, or at least they think that’s something they should do.

This leaves humanity and tolerance. If I were feeling particularly Chestertonian, I might say that these are indeed modern values because the words don’t mean anything! Interpreting these as charitably as I can, I take them to mean the idea that most people should be treated reasonably well most of the time. I’d say that is a modern value too. (Scott, correct me if I’m wrong in my interpretation here.)

(To modern values, I would add “progress,” that is, the idea that things are gradually getting better or at least that they can. Lewis and Chesterton were quite skeptical of that notion, but others — including Scott — have defended it admirably. Scott’s work on the decline of war is particularly worthy of note.)

To the extent that these values are worth having, I attribute them to a continuing influence of Christianity — and not to modern discoveries, philosophies, or endeavors.

<!--[if !supportLists]-->1. <!--[endif]-->Humanity and Tolerance.

The idea that most people should be treated reasonably well most of the time came into Western Civilization with the advent of Christianity.

Anecdotally, when I cover virtue ethics in my ethics class, I ask students to come up with their own list of virtues. Most of the time, they include the virtue of “love.” That idea is conspicuous by its absence in Aristotle’s own list of virtues.

From an historical perspective, the Church’s vigorous condemnation of, say, infanticide, ended a practice both common and unquestioned during Greek and Roman times. It can only be based on the idea that human beings have an inherent moral worth or, as the Bible puts it: “You have made him but little lower than the angels; you adorn him with glory and honor.”

Christianity has had a complicated relationship with sex and Christian culture surrounding sex has certainly done a great deal of harm. But the idea that rape victims aren’t at fault and don’t have to commit suicide? That was originally a Christian idea. When discussing virgins who were raped during a recent war, Augustine says in City of God Book I: “[W]hile the will remains firm and unshaken, nothing that another person does with the body, or upon the body, is any fault of the one who suffers it.” In other words, if you don’t consent, it’s not your fault.

These are just a couple of examples in which humanity and tolerance are values in the modern world because of Christianity.

<!--[if !supportLists]-->2. <!--[endif]-->Willingness to Engage with Reason

Willingness to engage with reason stood at the heart of the Scholastic movement during the Middle Ages. Scott might dispute how well they did (and I won’t argue — I’m no scholastic!), but just like utilitarians shouldn’t claim that deontologists aren’t trying to engage with reason, they should extend Christian philosophers the same courtesy, I think. 

But the first utilitarians and deolontolgists — and by extension their modern successors — only had the background that valued reason because of the attempts to reconcile faith with reason that have been with Christianity since the beginning and reached a crescendo during the Middle Ages.

To drive this point home, Ayn Rand — no religious philosopher she! — once said that the only three philosophers people should read are Aristotle, Aquinas, and herself. Those three, she thought, had the best philosophy of human reason.

The conclusions of Christian and modern philosophies differ, but the modern philosophies couldn’t have gotten off the ground without Christian influence in reasoned engagement.

<!--[if !supportLists]-->3. <!--[endif]-->Joy, Humor, and Compassion

As for the other values — joy, humor, and compassion — they likewise are only values because of the continuing influence of Christianity.

If you’ve read this far (why did you do a thing like that?), you may be wondering when I’ll finally bring my point back to Catholic Worker. Here it is: Joy, humor, and compassion only make sense at a personal level. A man can be joyful, but a society cannot, except insofar as the individuals in that society are. We may speak of a national joke, but humor is only person to person. If I think Steve Carrell is funny and my wife does not, it’s because his humor “speaks” to me but not her. We may think we’re compassionate toward “the poor,” but until we are compassionate toward the poor person in front of us, we’re lying to ourselves. These values begin and end with individuals.

This individualist influence is something that — by Scott’s own admission — Christianity as articulated by Lewis and Chesteron does quite well. He writes: “The idea of talking about what goes on in the individual soul, of having strong opinions about it, isn’t a very modern sensibility at all. …  [R]eligion has a head start on individualist vocabulary and thought processes which non-religion doesn’t really have good alternatives for."

Conclusion

We're Catholic Workers; we are both modern and anti-modern. We use the vocabulary and sometimes the symbolism of early-20^th century socialism and mid-20^th century progressive Catholicism. We don’t romanticize the Middle Ages or 1950s America the way conservative Catholics do. We are committed to what Scott would think of as modern ideas: liberty, equality, fraternity and all that.

But we do so not because of a modern idea of humanity making progress. We do so because we see in every human being more than a set of preferences, more than duties and obligations, more even than persons. We see in every human being a Person, which both equalizes everyone and provides them with dignity beyond compare.

Scott concludes his essay with a compliment toward Lewis and Chesterton. He says that because of them, he (Scott) was better able to see Good as more than an idea, but as a Powerful Force. He admits that with one possible exception, he doesn’t see the same thing in atheism. In other words, there’s little in atheism to tie its various values together into One Ultimate Value.

This lack of One Ultimate Value may be atheism’s biggest advantage. But it provides nothing to root the “good” values of modernity, and I think Lewis and Chesterton spent a great deal of their work arguing our moral intuitions need something to root them or they break down.

I agree with that insight. I don’t think it means falling into the trap of “morality exists; therefore God.” That’s simplistic. But Lewis and Chesterton both intuited that they needed rooting and that modernity doesn’t provide one.

As Catholic Workers (regardless of denomination), our joy is rooted in God. Our challenge is to live like it lest our joy be extinguished. 

Below is a response Scott kindly offered, which he asked I put somewhere since he couldn't use the combox.

You point out that many of the good things that Chesterton and Lewis spoke of are found in the Christian tradition. I don't deny this. But the opposites are also found in the Christian tradition. My argument is that for most of history the opposite tradition was emphasized, and that it's modernity which is fueling the choice to emphasize the good side of the tradition.

Before I go too far with this, let me just cite the opposite tradition I'm talking about. You mention St. Augustine on joy, so let me bring in St. Ambrose:<blockquote>Epicurus . . . the advocate of pleasure, although he denies that pleasure brings in evil, does not deny that certain things result from it from which evils are generated; and asserts in fine that the life of the luxurious which is filled with pleasures does not seem to be reprehensible, unless it be disturbed by the fear either of pain or of death. But how far he is from the truth is perceived even from this, that he asserts that pleasure was originally created in man by God its author, as Philomarus his follower argues in his Epitomæ, asserting that the Stoics are the authors of this opinion.

But Holy Scripture refutes this, for it teaches us that pleasure was suggested to Adam and Eve by the craft and enticements of the serpent. Since, indeed, the serpent itself is pleasure, and therefore the passions of pleasure are various and slippery, and as it were infected with the poison of corruptions, it is certain then that Adam, being deceived by the desire of pleasure, fell away from the commandment of God and from the enjoyment of grace. How then can pleasure recall us to paradise, seeing that it alone deprived us of it?</blockquote>
On universalism, I have the following on Chesterton:<blockquote>When H.G. Wells was seriously ill, he wrote Chesterton and said, "If after all my Atheology turns out wrong and your Theology right I feel I shall always be able to pass into Heaven (if I want to) as a friend of G.K.C.'s. Bless you."

To this Chesterton replied, "If I turn out to be right, you will triumph, not by being a friend of mine, but by being a friend of Man, by having done a thousand things for men like me in every way from imagination to criticism.</blockquote>
I acknowledge that there has always been some wiggle room on "only Catholics can enter Heaven", but through most of history it was limited to "Catholics plus people who had never heard about Catholicism but would have converted if they had" or similar special cases. I do believe that in most cases the idea that a confirmed atheist in a society well aware of Catholicism was assured of a place in Heaven simply by doing good works would have been considered, if not actively heretical, at least extremely out of the mainstream. Yes, Lewis' universalism is even more sketchy, and although he could appeal to ancient tradition, those ancients were pretty soundly condemned (eg the Origenites). Once again, I'm not saying there weren't old Christian strains that believed in these things, just that those Christian strains mostly lost on their own terms and only came back thanks to modernity.

I linked to my source on laughter in the original post, but since it was long, here's a key quote:<blockquote>Screech reports that the early and medieval church generally took a dim view of jokes and laughter; they seemed inappropriate to the godly life. Church leaders took seriously Paul’s warning in Ephesians 5:4 about engaging in "silly" talk (which the King James Version translates as "jesting"). St. Bernard argued that Paul’s directive ruled out not only lewd or extravagant jokes but jesting of any kind.</blockquote>
At the risk of bringing in fictional evidence, <i>Name of the Rose</i> bears on this point as well.

You say you don't think Lewis or Chesterton quite claimed that praying to pagan gods was okay. Lewis:

"I had some ado to prevent Joy and myself from relapsing into Paganism in Attica! At Daphni it was hard not to pray to Apollo the Healer. But somehow one didn’t feel it would have been very wrong — would have only been addressing Christ sub specie Apollonius." 

He also has a passage in the Narnia series where a follower of the evil god dies but is accepted by Aslan because Aslan says he was a good person and that by following the evil god in a good way, he was secretly following Aslan, the god of good.

Worshipping an Unknown God seems like a very different matter than specifically worshipping a different god, and a civilization that had never heard of Christianity seems like a very different matter than otherwise. Given what the Spaniards did to the Aztecs (not to mention the Jews), I'm sticking to my "No, lots of medieval Christians really didn't like other religions". 

So my response to the first part of your essay is that Christian tradition is a grab bag with lots of contradictory values. We can look back on it and note that it contained the values we most respect today, but if we had gone the opposite way and created a civilization that valued misery, tyranny, and slavery, we could have found that in the Christian tradition too. Most earlier Christian societies were a mishmash of both - I think they drew heavily from the negative side of the distribution, but you may disagree. But I don't think there was any Christian or group of Christians who were as good at picking out the good and leaving the bad as modern society is, and so I attribute the superiority of a Lewis to an Augustine to his modernity.

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I'll just respond to a couple of these.

The idea that rape victims aren't at fault and don't have to commit suicide was Christian??! Are you aware that the rape of Lucretia was considered so atrocious, and her suicide so horrible and unexpected, that they literally overthrew the king of Rome in outrage? On the other hand, Wikipedia helpfully points out that "The medieval theologian Thomas Aquinas argued that rape, though sinful, was much less unacceptable than masturbation or coitus interruptus". Overall this claim seems very wrong and I challenge you to provide evidence for it.

I freely admit that many scholastics were very fond of reason, although, once again, other Christians were not. On the other hand, you flirt with making the claim that reason is *uniquely* Christian, which is of course wrong - not only were the Greeks good at it, but the Muslims and Indians were as well.

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So overall, I very much disagree with your claims that Christianity invented various good values. I agree that there are examples of great values throughout Christian tradition, but I hope I've proven my point that there are examples of horrible values as well, and that real-world Christianity often didn't do a very good job of letting the good values win out over the horrible ones. That's been something we've been getting better and better at over the centuries, and I think Lewis and Chesterton have benefitted from that progress.