Christianity Is the Way and the Truth
As surprising as it might seem, the entirety of this well-reasoned and entertaining book is quite simple: Christianity really is the way and the truth. Let’s start at the end. Chesterton wraps things up quite nice and tidy, so why not use his own words to describe what the overarching theme of his work winds up being:
“…in conclusion, my reason for accepting the religion and not merely the scattered and secular truths out of the religion. I do it because the thing has not merely told this truth or that truth, but has revealed itself as a truth-telling thing.”
Rational analysis of the secular and the madness of blind faith combine to create the paradoxical situation in which the orthodoxy of Christianity winds up being the only dependable and logical path to understanding truth and knowing the way to get there.
A Paradoxical Religion for a Paradoxical World
An ongoing and ever-changing friction is the definitive character of Christianity and that character is defined as a foundation of paradox. But the paradoxical and contradictory nature of the religion is the ideal religion for the world in which we live, a world that “is nearly reasonable, but not quite.” Such is the basic fundamental truth that Christianity works through paradox that even the criticism leveled at it becomes another example of this ironic inconsistency. An example is the critique that Christianity is a religion denoted by its poverty: monks in sackcloth dining on the most meagre of food while at the same time it is a religion disparaged for all the pomp and circumstance of religious rituals performed inside ornate cathedrals of gold and marble.
Orthodoxy Is Sanity
The book is in large part a response to the view that orthodoxy in general but in Christianity particularly is a stifling tribute to the safety of the mundane. To this assertion, Chesterton responds quite directly and with finality:
“There never was anything so perilous or so exciting as orthodoxy.”
He then goes on to make what may be the central metaphorical image of the entire book by proclaiming that not only is orthodoxy exciting, it is exciting (and perilous) because it is sanity. In an insane world that is almost reasonable but can’t quite make it there, what could be more enticing than coldly dependable sanity? In an asylum, it is not the insane patients who are exciting, but the orthodox caregivers charged with the overwhelming responsibility of making sure everyone doesn’t completely lose their mind. That, for Chesterton, is the real lure of Christian orthodoxy.
