The Blatchford Controversies, 4 - The Eternal Heroism Of The Slums

The knock on Christianity is its sordid history of sin and crime.  But there is nothing in that sin and crime unique to Christianity.  All human institutions have histories riddled with crime, for crime is what happens when humans cling to their strongly held views and try for them to win the day.  The worst offender in theis arena is the State itself, the inventor of all the tools of torture.

The difference is that Christianity acknowledges its sin.  Its tale of its own origin, in fact, originates in human sin.  That sin is the starting point on which the edifice of redemption is built.  Unlike many other institutions, Christianity at least offers a remedy for sin.

The rationalists, on the other hand, offer only one solution to the state of humanity: the denial of any personal responsibility for any action at all.  Taken in full, this solution will ruin all of human experience.  For while it absolves the wrongdoer from any responsibility for wrongs done, it also excludes the good man from any responsibility for virtuous acts.  Moreover, the adoption of the materialist philosophy contradicts itself almost instantly:

[A]lthough people ought not to be blamed for their actions... they ought to be trained to do better.  They ought, he said, to be given better conditions of heredity and environment, and then they would be good, and the problem would be solved.  The primary answer is obvious.  How can one say that a man ought not to be held responsible, but ought to be well trained?  For if he "ought" to be well trained, there must be somebody who "ought" to train him.  And that man must be held responsible for training him.  The proposition has killed itself in three sentences.

Even if it fell to some to set up conditions to make all others virtuous there is not a soul who can tell you what the correct, perfect conditions would be.  And the reason is simple enough: the proper Utopia could only be built by perfect men.  Where are they?

But the attitude is even more sinister than this.  If the rationalist thinks it is up to the upper class to build a society to repair the sin arising out of the lower class, what does this imply?  Obviously, that the lower class is morally deficient, incapable of exercising virtue.  What a wicked thought.  We know that virtue is available to all men-- at times, the knowledge that he is still capable is all that will keep a man going under difficult circumstances.  And now the rationalist wants to take away even that hopeful thought, by telling him he bears no responsibility.  "So pants this strange comforter, from cell to cell."

Such a philosophy will never last.  In time, men will cast it aside in favor of the philosophy that treats them their freedom as men.  Christianity correctly offers that philosophy.

The Blatchford Controversies, III - Miracles And Modern Civilization

The silliest argument against Christianity is ridicule its claimed miracles, or to suggest that a belief in miracles is contradicted by modern science.  Miracles are by definition rare events, and it is not obvious at all that the laws of nature could not produce them in rare circumstances.  The real miracle, one not noticed by the rationalists, is the continued existence of things.  Their philosophy cannot begin to contemplate such an occurence as this.

Moreover, the use of a concept like a "law of nature" is no kind of explanation at all, but merely an analogous reference to a more familiar item of experience: a law of Parliament.  If we are free to choose from among familiar experience in our explanation of the world, the Christian prefers a much richer item to use as an analogy: an act of will.  The world emerges from the Father's will in the same way an earthly father begets his offspring.  And this is a much richer source for an analogy, as the potential works of this will are much more varied and marvellous than anything a mere law could ever produce.

The current fashion of materialism is just that: mere fashion.  Fie on that.  It is no argument to say a rational modern judge could not be convinced of Christianity.

But it does not seem to occur to [Blatchford] that we Christians may not have such an extravagant reverence for English judges as is felt by Mr. Blatchford himself. 

The experiences of the Founder of Christianity have perhaps left us in a vague doubt of the infallibility of courts of law.

[Burn.]

And it would be silly for the different religions to deny one another's miracles.  Signs and wonders are a universal feature of human experience.  The arguments among religions concern doctrine, of course.  The vital question is whether a religion has a "true philosophy of the Universe."

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At first I read this as just a boring repetition of the fallacy of inductive reasoning, but it's way deeper than that.  It's especially interesting that the vaunted "laws of nature" that the rationalist subscribed to were about to be overturned wholesale by quantum physics.

The Blatchford Controversies, II - Why I Believe In Christianity

Two facts of note: First, Christianity rose and spread within a very modern world, in that the Romans had a highly developed rational philosophy.  But it spread anyway.  Second, the Christian world advanced by leaps and bounds beyond the non-Christian world.

Secularists ridicule what they see as central contradictions at the core of Christian belief, but we should examine the nature of the contradiction.  The easiest way to avoid contradiction in belief is to proclaim agnosticism, but it is entirely unworkable.  As a practical matter, simply to get through the day, we must commit ourselves to one philosophy or to another.  If nothing else, we must decide to hold or not to hold others responsible for their actions.  The secularist tries to deny free will, but knows that he must behave in everyday life as if it were real.  Why can we not ridicule that contradiction, lived every day?  Whereas a Christian who professes free will recognizes the difficulty in the position, sees no other way, embraces the contradiction, calls it mystery-- and puts it at the center of his life.  Can we not respect the honesty?  Especially considering that that philosophy has all the success.

Alternatives: We can respect the beautiful natural world as our creator, but at some point we will ask, then why not go to war as the birds do?  Or we can recognize that problem, throw up our hands, and call the universe absurd.  Then why continue to try to make our way through the world, assert ourselves against that universe? 

Or, we can appreciate the birds as birds while we recognize man as man, with all the baggage and difficulty that comes with that declaration.  And as we do so, we can proclaim that the God who made the birds birds Himself became man.  And we will know we have solved the dilemma, even as the new path is full of contradiction.

Finally, the whole secularist program actually reaffirms Christian theology.  While they proclaim the march of progress, progress can only be recognized as a movement toward a higher state.  But actually recognizing a higher state as being higher requires an overall orientation that a barren universe does not provide.  The Christian story of the Fall leading to the Resurrection, on the other hand, is the template of against which all progress is judged.  The concept of a good human nature that can either be fallen short of or successfully pursued requires, at some point, the reality of that good state.

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Five pages.  Holy crap.

The Blatchford Controversies, I - Christianity And Rationalism

Four arguments are typically given, and specifically offered by Robert Blatchford, for the rejection of Christianity as false and absurd.  But the critical facts cited wihin each argument can just as easily buttress a sincere belief in Christianity.

1. The legend of a divine savior is common among many ancient and contemporary cultures, and is not unique to Christianity.  Answer: This does not suggest the impossibility of a divine savior, but rather that human existence is aimed toward its own redemption by a divine savior.  Just as a long and varied pedigree of tales of love and tales of revenge do not suggest the absurdity of such a thing as love and revenge, but instead highlight the centrality of such emotions and actions to genuine human existence.

2. Ascetic devotion to Christianity abandons its practitioners to a barren existence empty of other human pleasures.  Answer: It certainly must be a powerfully attractive force that would draw the absolute attention of its devotees in such a way as this.  In a crasser, but parallel example, we recognize that the destruction caused by alcoholism is due to the powerful hold the drink has on the drinker.  We don't conclude from the addiction that the alcoholic is hallucinating his own intake of drink, but that the feeling of drunkenness is entirely, frightfully real.

3. Commitment to religious tenets has produced terrible war, abject suffering, and the worst forms of cruelty.  Answer: Humans being what they are, our worst offenses always emerge out of our attempts to protect what we love best-- nearly every murder and robbery in history is undertaken in pursuit of a "noble" goal, and human religion cannot be immune from the flaws of humanity.  In a more recent analogy, the terrors of the French Revolution grew from devotion to Liberty, Egality, and Fraternity.  Terrible actions don't undermine the truth of their central goodness.  And what is more, the injection of such a greater Truth into human society would well lead to even harsher responses from us weak humans who are ill-equipped to deal with such greatness.

4. Hebrew and Christian religions trace back to particular, local, tribal groups and simplistic primitive events.  Answer: How else could human beings experience the divine, and then communicate that experience, except through the same means and patterns as their experience of their familiar local world?  A human who expresses a full-formed, logical conception of the infinite goodness of God full stop is surely making it up, for humans are not wired to gain knowledge in this way.

These arguments that were offered against Christianity, then, were not arguments at all, but mere observations.  And mere observations can always be used to lead to opposing conclusions.  The Secularists have entirely avoided, however, the most powerful arguments in favor of Christianity-- they will follow.  Furthermore, those who won't be swayed by the four arguments above only remain unmoved due to their steadfast devotion to the central tenets of their own secularist orthodoxy.  Ironically impressive.

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Time to get back on the Chesterton horse.  I'm re-reading the chapters in Heretics that I read months ago, but it's worthwhile to also get a handle on the background arguments that led to him write the book in the first place.  The Blatchford Controversies are the third selection in the Collected Works Volume 1.

The biggest difference between the use of the cited facts by Chesterton and their use by the secularists is Chesterton's willingness to observe human behavior as its own whole, ontologically basic thing.  In all four cases, the secularists argue away human responses as the mere agglomerated, non-meaningful end results of unthinking, unfeeling physical and material processes-- processes whose bizarre end results obviously can tell us nothing about some weird spiritual realm that doesn't really exist in the first place.  It is central to the argument of determinism that human existence has no genuine purpose, while Chesterton takes the purposefulness of human existence (and the personal internal experience of that purposefulness) as absolutely central and reads the reality of spiritualness back from that.  And then experiences great joy out of his conclusions.