Chesterton: The Real "Heretic": The Outstanding Eccentricity of the Peculiar Sect Called Roman Catholics

I did try to found a heresy of my own; and when I had put the last touches to it, I discovered that it was orthodoxy.

G. K. Chesterton, 1908¹

I should regard any civilization which was without a universal habit of uproarious dancing as being, from the full human point of view, a defective civilization. And I should regard any mind which had not got the habit in one form or another of uproarious thinking, from the full human point of view, a defective mind.

G. K. Chesterton, 1905²

An Uproarious Truth

No one, I presume, wants to be charged with having a "defective mind," even if, perchance, he has one and knows it. However, as Chesterton implied in the chapter "The Maniac" in Orthodoxy, probably the last thing a "defective mind" would know about itself is that it is defective. It takes the normal to see what is abnormal. In order not to have such a "defective mind," Chesterton told us in Heretics, we need, as an antidote, the habit of "uproarious thinking." What did he mean by "uproarious thinking?"

Thinking, after all, seems to be rather a quiet, if not silent, activity. No one can tell, just by looking at us, whether we are thinking or not. Few "roars" or even murmurs come forth from our being when we are thinking. We usually want quiet, not noise. It is true that when we chance to come across or concoct something that really inspires us or amuses us, we rush forth to tell someone about it, a sure sign that we are social beings, even in our silent pursuit of knowledge. But Chesterton, who was ever precise in his use of words, obviously intended "uproar" and "thinking" to go together. We can, however, easily imagine him laughing and even shouting in a lively debate in some London pub or university debating society.

But still, in Chesterton's usage, uproarious modifies thinking, as if to say that what causes the "roar" is not the activity, qua activity, of thinking but what is thought about. The thought that causes the most roar is the one that is most unexpected, seemingly most outlandish by comparison with other thoughts. It may, for all that, still be the one that is most true. And in this sense, what causes the most roar in the modern world is precisely the unbearable public claim that Christianity, in its central positions about God, world, and man, is true. The claim that, in the end, it describes reality better than any contrary theory or supposition alive and flourishing in the modern mind. This very claim, presented simply as a truth to be calmly considered, is conceived to be so dangerous that a growing number of polities, and not merely Islamic ones, are devising ways legally to restrain its right to present itself in the public forum. Even Bible reading is suspect if it touches a tolerance topic.

Furthermore, what causes even more uproar is the further affirmation that the evidence for this truth is quite compelling both in logic and in the weight of probity that this evidence presents. If this truth is not accepted—and it is something of a fad not to accept it, whatever it holds—it is, in truth, more likely to be rejected through the influence of our own internal sins and disorders. We end up striving to protect ourselves from a reality to which we refuse to conform. No weight of evidence for the supposed "untruth" of Christianity is really brought forth. It is no surprise that the new pope, Benedict XVI, sees relativist intolerance to be one of the major problems of modern times.

No doubt, as we read Heretics, the book in which Chesterton systematically demolishes the alternate claims to truth that he found about him in his time, we have the impression that a century ago, more respect and attention were given to actual controversies about truth than we find today. What is characteristic of our more recent times is that...