The Paradox of Christianity (Orthodoxy Part VI)

That’ll Preach

We continue our series in Chesterton's classic Orthodoxy by looking at his famous chapter on the paradox of Christianity. Chesterton writes about how the strangeness of Christianity bolsters its credibility as truth. We should not expect divine revelation to make complete sense to our minds. He also points out that the hostility of the modern world towards Christianity reveals its compelling power. People are fine with a universal religion so long as it is not Christianity. Christianity challenges, disrupts, and even romances us into seeing the world as it actually is.

"Paganism declared that virtue was in a balance; Christianity declared it was in a conflict: the collision of two passions apparently opposite. Of course they were not really inconsistent; but they were such that it was hard to hold simultaneously."

"It looked not so much as if Christianity was bad enough to include any vices, but rather as if any stick was good enough to beat Christianity with."

"This is the thrilling romance of Orthodoxy. People have fallen into a foolish habit of speaking of orthodoxy as something heavy, humdrum, and safe. There never was anything so perilous or so exciting as orthodoxy."

"It is always simple to fall; there are an infinity of angles at which one falls, only one at which one stands. To have fallen into any one of the fads from Gnosticism to Christian Science would indeed have been obvious and tame. But to have avoided them all has been one whirling adventure; and in my vision the heavenly chariot flies thundering through the ages, the dull heresies sprawling and prostrate, the wild truth reeling but erect."