...It is not a particularly "postmodern" reaction that finds talk of orthodoxy arrogant and narrow-minded. Chesterton speaks of the "dislocation of humility" in modern thought:
By asking for pleasure, he lost the chief pleasure; for the chief pleasure is surprise. Hence it became evident that if a man would make his world large, he must be always making himself small....But what we suffer from to-day is humility in the wrong place. Modesty has moved from the organ of ambition. Modesty has settled on the organ of conviction; where it was never meant to be. A man was meant to be doubtful about himself, but undoubting about the truth; this has been exactly reversed. Nowadays the part of a man that a man does assert is exactly the part he ought not to assert-himself. Today what we doubt is not ourselves but God's Word. (7)
The new humility para-lyzes people from actually moving in any direction, despite all the talk of progress, innovation, and forward-looking excite-ment. "We are on the road to producing a race of men too mentally modest to believe in the multiplication table....Scoffers of old time were too proud to be convinced; but these are too humble to be convinced." (8) Chesterton adds, "An imbecile habit has arisen in modern controversy of saying that such and such a creed can be held in one age but cannot be held in another....You might as well say that a certain philosophy can be believed on Mondays, but cannot be believed on Tuesdays." (9)
Therefore, when orthodoxy is defined by its particular convictions, it is seen to be more open and free, not less. In fact, "It is commonly the loose and latitudinarian Christians who pay quite indefensible compliments to Christianity," Chesterton observes.
They talk as if there had never been any piety until Christianity came, a point on which any medieval would have been eager to correct them. They represent that the remarkable thing about Christianity was that it was the first to preach simplicity or self-restraint, or inwardness and sincerity. They will think me very narrow (whatever that means) if I say that the remarkable thing about Christianity was that it was the first to preach Christianity. Its peculiarity was that it was peculiar, and simplicity and sincerity are not peculiar, but obvious ideals for all mankind. Christianity was the answer to a riddle, not the last truism uttered after a long talk. (10)
It is not Christian orthodoxy but moralistic liberalism that reduces the surprising news of the gospel to the bland repetition of what people already know.
Chesterton refers to an article he had recently read arguing that "Christianity when stripped of its armour of dogma (as who should speak of a man stripped of his armour of bones), turned out to be nothing but the Quaker doctrine of the Inner Light....Now, if I were to say that Christianity came into the world specially to destroy the doctrine of the Inner Light, that would be an exaggeration. But it would be very much nearer the truth." (11) The Romans of the first century (especially the Stoics) were advocates of the Inner Light,
[Yet] of all horrible religions the most horrible is the worship of the god within....Christianity came into the world firstly in order to assert with violence that a man had not only to look inwards but to look outwards, to behold with astonishment and enthusiasm a divine company and a divine captain. The only fun of being a Christian was that a man was not left alone with the Inner Light, but definitely recognized an outer light, fair as the sun, clear as the moon, terrible as an army with banners. (12)
The identification of orthodoxy with mere conservatism cannot explain how Christianity (unlike liberal "pro-gressivism") has brought perpetual shock and disruption to the status quo. "Some fall back simply on the clock: they talk as if mere passage through time brought some superiority; so that even a man of the first mental caliber carelessly uses the phrase that human morality is never up to date. How can anything be up to date?-a date has no character." (13) A heresy in the second, fourth, or twelfth century is still a heresy in the twenty-first. There is nothing "postmodern" about the suggestion that the faith has to be constantly conformed to the spirit of the age; this is the unassailable modern dogma of progress. With the whole world being divided between progressives and conservatives, Chesterton quipped, "The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes from being corrected." (14)
Today, orthodoxy is often confused with a cultural and even political conservatism. This has not always been so (and still is not in other parts of the world). Frequently, America's culture wars are identified by sociologists in terms of "orthodox" versus "progressive," which is to define orthodoxy again in terms other than Christian doctrine.
Setting its sights on the plotline of God's mighty acts in history "for us and for our salvation," orthodoxy defines faithfulness by how well we not only conserve this faith but by how well we correct our faith and practice to conform to its rule. That's why orthodoxy has given rise as often to reformations as to conservations. It is a living faith-in fact, the only part of what calls itself Christianity that is actually alive. From this Archimedean point, William Wilberforce was able to stand almost alone in bringing down the British slave trade. Christian orthodoxy has no personal stake in progressivism or conservatism; its instincts are evangelical in the deepest sense: oriented to the gospel that creates and sustains the church in all times and places.
Heterodoxy is easy; orthodoxy is the challenge. Orthodoxy forces us to set sail for ever new and distant harbors, beyond the comfort of our cherished assumptions and practices. It is orthodoxy that is adventuresome, refusing to allow us to stew in our own juices. We are not allowed to reduce our horizon to the dimensions of our own experience in our own time and place but must become "catholic" creatures: opened up to the church in all times and places.
