The Prophet Gilbert.

Of Fairy Tales and Comic Books and Heroes and Civilization - "The more truly we can see life as a fairytale, the more clearly the tale resolves itself into war with the dragon."

Ben Domenech has a nice reflection on Batman and Aurora, with side jaunts into The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. It's worth reading:

You likely won’t be in a situation in your life where you are confronted by evil as murderous as the villain in Colorado or those on the screen. But you will be confronted by something that demands you set aside your fear to stand for what’s right, to sacrifice self-interest and safety for something more valuable than both. As Chesterton wrote, "The more truly we can see life as a fairytale, the more clearly the tale resolves itself into war with the dragon."

Remember in that moment: there’s always something you can do. Only you know what that is.

So do it.

Quote of the Day.

"There are two kins of people in the world, the conscious dogmatists and the unconscious dogmatists. I have always found myself that the unconscious dogmatists were by far the most dogmatic."

- G.K. Chesterton

The Calvinist Chesterton.

Calvinist John Piper is a fan of G.K. Chesterton, which is odd because Chesterton disdained Calvinism as a force that stifled true humanity. Piper writes:

Here’s the reason Chesterton’s bowshots at Calvinism do not bring me down. The Calvinism I love is far closer to the “Elfland” he loves than the rationalism he hates.

He would no doubt be baffled by my experience. For me the biggest, strongest, most beautiful, and most fruitful tree that grows in the soil of “Elfland” is Calvinism. Here is a tree big enough, and strong enough, and high enough to let all the paradoxical branches of the Bible live — and wave with joy in the sunshine of God’s sovereignty.

In the shade of this tree, I was set free from the procrustean forces of unbiblical, free-will presuppositionalism — the unyielding, alien assumption that without the human right of ultimate self-determination human beings cannot be accountable for their choices. When I walked away from this narrow, rationalistic, sparse tree, into the shade of the massive tree of Calvinism, it was a happy day. Suddenly I saw that this is what all the poetry had been about. This is the tree where all the branches of all the truths that men have tried to separate thrive.

William Watson Birch - scourge of all things that start with a "c" and end in "alvnist" - observes:

Does no one find odd the fact that Adam and Eve could make free will, self-determined choices in the Garden of Eden and yet God remained "sovereign"?

For me, the most absolutely astounding supposition of Calvinists -- deterministic Calvinists like John Piper -- is how eager they are to discard "free will" and "self-determination" and affirm that God decrees our so-called "choices." Though, I think, these alleged "choices" are only apparently genuine, since, in Calvinism, God has already predetermined what we shall do/choose/say/think.1 John Calvin writes that "men do nothing save at the secret instigation of God, and do not discuss and deliberate on any thing but what he has previously decreed with himself and brings to pass by his secret direction" (emphases added).2 Where is the fear and honor of God present in such an admission? Why not just admit that God is the only real sinner in the universe?

Calvin further admits, "Therefore, whatever men or Satan himself devise, God holds the helm, and makes all their efforts contribute to the execution of his judgments."3 Such evil, in Calvinism, is committed according to God's predetermined plan, not by "bare permission": "If the binding and infatuation of Ahab is a judgment from God, the fiction of bare permission is at an end."4

Webster is right. Chesterton delighted in apparent paradoxes that demonstrated the cleverness of God. Thus, Chesterton took delight in the tension between God's apparent providential care for His creation and God's decision to give real freedom for His creation, for God's great cleverness in accomplishing His ends through the free actions of His creation. Chesterton had no time for those who would solve the tension by denying that it actually existed.

Part of the Modernist Agenda to Turn Everyone into Criminals...

...because a population that knows it can be sent to jail at the whim of the State is a compliant population.

Canada cracks down on "illegal cultic activities," i.e., saying Mass.

Paula Celani will be in a Montreal courtroom Nov. 1 fighting a fine for attending an illegal Roman Catholic Mass.


Canadians of all religious faiths – and even those who care only about protecting Charter freedoms – should cross their fingers that she wins.

Celani actually showed up to fight the case this week. Alas, three public sector “witnesses” expected to testify against her were no shows so the matter was delayed until the day after Halloween.

“I’m not sure why I’m the one who has to make the effort to come back when they’re the ones who didn’t show up,” Celani said after Tuesday’s brief hearing before Judge Jean-Pierre Bessette. “It doesn’t make sense, but then nothing about this does. It’s ridiculous.”

Ridiculous doesn’t begin to describe it. Frightening is a much better place to start for the events that began with an entirely uneventful gathering of a Catholic group on October 4, 2009. Celani is the one in court only because her signature was on a $700 rental contract for the use of two rooms in a city-owned complex called La Maison du Brasseur in the borough of Lachine, just west of downtown Montreal.

About 100 people belonging to a lay Catholic association used the rooms to watch some inspirational videos and have a potluck lunch together. Oh, and horror of horrors, they sang songs and held a Mass behind closed doors. Then everyone went home. End of story. Or so it seemed.

Except that seven months later, in April 2010, Celani received a $144 ticket for having allowed the Mass to take place.

By so doing, she had broken a bylaw that prohibits “cultic” activity such as “praying, singing religious songs or conducting religious celebrations.” Under the same regulations, interestingly, renters are allowed to serve liquor provided they have the necessary permits. They are forbidden, however, from using propane tanks to cook inside the building. So, you can get hammered in La Maison du Brasseur. You just can’t blow the place up or mention God.

Perhaps the state needs "time, place and manner" regulations of this kind in order to prevent the anarchy and chaos and public inconvenience of people praying behind closed doors, maybe, but not its likely.  Whatever the justification this seems like a stupid waste of public resources. It is a sad commentary on the state of the modern State that there were, apparently, no sensible person to stop this idiocy.

It reminds us of the immortal truth spoken by the Prophet Gilbert:

"In short, we do not get good laws to restrain bad people. We get good people to restrain bad laws."

G.K. Chesterton, Thoughts around Koepenick (1915).

This is another example of a "chiasmus" offered by Ward Farnsworth in his most engaging "Farnsworth's Classical English Rhetoric."

Via Mark Shea.

"Every heresy is a truth taught out of proportion."


- G. K. Chesterton

In which we discover "hyper-dispensationalism." 

From that blog whose name we dare not utter, lest we summon its proprietor in a cloud of sulfurous smoke:

[Pastor Joel] Finck is one of the leading defenders of the particular (and popular) version of Hyper-Dispensationalism espoused by Cornelius R. Stam and the Berean Bible Society (bereanbiblesociety.org). Stam wrote one of the clearest (and most theologically and hermeneutically absurd) defenses of the theology in the book Things That Differ: The Fundamentals of Dispensationalism (1951). Stam's ultimate purpose in his writings was to argue that his theology (along with Charles Baker) was the true version of Dispensationalism that all the previous Dispensational thinkers had missed, and in doing so, mainline evangelicalism had missed the "true theology boat" altogether.


As you might have guessed, this kind of situation is going to produce some bad theology. As I pointed out almost a year ago (here), Finck and the BBS believe the following:

1. The Bible is divided up into absolute dispensations.[1] Therefore…

2. Paul introduces a completely new gospel (the “mystery” was revealed to him only) with the inauguration of the Dispensation of Grace.[2] Therefore…

2A.There are “two gospels” in the New Testament that are not compatible with each other[3]; Peter, Jesus, and all those prior to Paul believed in works-righteous salvation while Paul taught a gospel of grace.[4] Therefore…

2B. Only Paul’s epistles are the basis for doctrine today,[5] and people are not saved by the teachings of Jesus or Peter, but exclusively by the gospel of Paul.[6]

3.There is no “Great Commission” in Matthew’s gospel.[7]

4. Water baptism is no longer a church ordinance. In fact, it’s “dangerous.”[8]

All very logical, but doesn't it sort of miss the point about Jesus and all that?
All one can say is "Chesterton was right."

Another Chesterton moment.

Steve Sailer quotes Chesterton as follows:

Why do people think it intelligent to say, "I can see no difference!" It is nowadays quite a mark of culture to say that one can see no difference between a man and a woman, or a man and an angel, or a man and an animal. If a man cannot see the difference between a horse and a cow across a large field, we do not call him cultured; we call him short-sighted. Now, there are really interesting differences between angels and women; nay, even between men and beasts, and all such things. They are differences which most people know instinctively, as most people know a cow is not a horse without looking for its mane; or most people know a horse is not a cow without looking for horns. Whether the difference ought to count in this or that important question is a completely different matter, but it ought not really to be so difficult simply to see the difference.




... modern thought means modern thoughtlessness.

The Prophet Gilbert.

There has been an eruption of interest in G.K. Chesterton on the interent - here,  here and here.

Chesterton remains singularly topical today; many of the things he opposed as fringe, crazy ideas are normative today, but still remain crazy.  This observation seems spot on:

Bramwell is looking for an exposition of Christian ideas over and against modern novelties. But Chesterton is rather a publicist and a polemicist on behalf of those ideals. He is not joining some great conversation with Don Scotus, Aristotle, and Nietszche. Rather he is in a constant scrum with Bertrand Russell, Benjamin Kidd, Cecil Rhodes, H.G. Wells, Sidney Webb, Edward Carpenter, W.T. Stead, etc... Notably, only half those names live on and most are dimmer than Chesterton's. Judged in that company he is sterling. When was the last time you saw an H.G. Wells insight applied to anything? If Chesterton were alive today a similar list would be something like, Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Karen Armstrong ... Marty Peretz, Stephen Hawking, and Jonathan Chait. If I were going to produce a polemic against Karen Armstrong's book The History of God - and I dearly would like to - you might be satisfied with a clever review. You wouldn't chastise me for failing to produce the Summa Theologica. To criticize Chesterton in this regard seems unfair. Besides The Everlasting Man, his books are mostly recycled newspaper material. Next to a considered book of philosophy, Chesterton seems a little smug. Next to a cartoon and letters to the editor and in response to his actual opponents, he's not only a genius, but a delightful one.

100 years from now, people will be reading Chesterton when Dawkins is long forgotten.

Chesterton on Progress.

From Ignatius Insight:

Progress, properly understood, has, indeed, a most dignified and legitimate meaning.  But as used in opposition to precise moral ideals, it is ludicrous.  So far from it being the truth that the ideal of progress is to be set against that of ethical or religious finality, the reverse is the truth. Nobody has any business to use the word "progress" unless he has a definite creed and a cast-iron code of morals. Nobody can be progressive without being doctrinal; I might almost say that nobody can be progressive without being infallible-- at any rate, without believing in some infallibility. For progress by its very name indicates a direction; and the moment we are in the least doubtful about the direction, we become in the same degree doubtful about the progress.

From Heretics.

A Presbyterian Take on Chesterton's The Ethics of Elfland

Check it out here.

"50 Crime Writers You Should Read."

The Telegraph has a list of recommendations for mystery writers.

The Telegraph's list puts G.K. Chesterton's Father Brown stories at the top of the list, ahead of Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes.

Good decision.

"My hope is that the movie will bomb, and Hollywood will have to go back to less alluring efforts to corrupt the young."

One thing about being a reflexive and tribal anti-anti-Catholic is that it seems to keep one on the side of true humanity and reason.

Hence, Tom Smith writes about the real problem with the atheistic agit-prop in Philip Pullman's The Golden Compass (in theatres everywhere!) - it's a fascist fable.

Fascist in the sense of the Nazi scheme of supplanting Christianity with pagan nature fables and the occult. Smith writes:

I think his invocation of fascist themes and memes is probably unconscious. It is just that similar jobs tend to call forth similar tools. The European fascists generally and the Nazis in particular very much wanted to cut off the influence and ultimately destroy the Judeo-Christian God and the Church in particular. They had political reasons for wanting this, but also ideological and (weirdly) religious reasons. Not all of the Nazis were devotes of the occult, but many of them were, and the ones who were not very much understood the importance and power of building a fascist mythos which could motivate and inspire people. To put together their ideology, the Nazis pulled out of the great cesspool of European ideas a lot of nasty things that would have been much better left alone, but among them was the idea that Christianity, which they saw as nothing more than a kind of Judaism, severed people from their inner Nature spirit, their pagan, let's run through the woods naked sort of thing. When Pullman has the Church taking children to camps to sever them from their daemons -- their animal- embodied-soul-mates that every whole person in his alternative universe has -- he is just parroting in kid lit form the old canard you could have picked up in a hundred disreputable places in Bavaria or Vienna in the 1930's.

Smith's point about the occult in Pullman is interesting in light of Umberto Eco's observations that I posted yesterday:

The existing religions just aren't big enough: we demand something more from God than the existing depictions in the Christian faith can provide. So we revert to the occult. The so-called occult sciences do not ever reveal any genuine secret: they only promise that there is something secret that explains and justifies everything. The great advantage of this is that it allows each person to fill up the empty secret "container" with his or her own fears and hopes.

Read Smith's post. It has some gems including a nod to G.K. Chesterton and this keen observation:

Catholics used to complain that anti-Catholicism was the Antisemitism of the intellectuals, but this was before the intellectuals went back to antisemitism.

Sad, but true.

Worth Reading - An Agnostic on Christmas.

Walking Together posts Umberto Eco's thoughts on Christmas and the poverty of the modern alternative to faith.

Read the whole thing, but there are things that caught my eye.

For example, I've always considered the execrable Da Vinci Code to be a poor man's Foucalt's Pendelum (by Eco), so I thought that this was amusing:

The "death of God", or at least the dying of the Christian God, has been accompanied by the birth of a plethora of new idols. They have multiplied like bacteria on the corpse of the Christian Church -- from strange pagan cults and sects to the silly, sub-Christian superstitions of The Da Vinci Code.

It is amazing how many people take that book literally, and think it is true. Admittedly, Dan Brown, its author, has created a legion of zealous followers who believe that Jesus wasn't crucified: he married Mary Magdalene, became the King of France, and started his own version of the order of Freemasons. Many of the people who now go to the Louvre are there only to look at the Mona Lisa, solely and simply because it is at the centre of Dan Brown's book.

The pianist Arthur Rubinstein was once asked if he believed in God. He said: "No. I don't believe in God. I believe in something greater." Our culture suffers from the same inflationary tendency. The existing religions just aren't big enough: we demand something more from God than the existing depictions in the Christian faith can provide. So we revert to the occult. The so-called occult sciences do not ever reveal any genuine secret: they only promise that there is something secret that explains and justifies everything. The great advantage of this is that it allows each person to fill up the empty secret "container" with his or her own fears and hopes.

Also, the Joyce quote in this paragraph came up yesterday in a book discussion group:

I was raised as a Catholic, and although I have abandoned the Church, this December, as usual, I will be putting together a Christmas crib for my grandson. We'll construct it together - as my father did with me when I was a boy. I have profound respect for the Christian traditions - which, as rituals for coping with death, still make more sense than their purely commercial alternatives.

I think I agree with Joyce's lapsed Catholic hero in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man: "What kind of liberation would that be to forsake an absurdity which is logical and coherent and to embrace one which is illogical and incoherent?" The religious celebration of Christmas is at least a clear and coherent absurdity. The commercial celebration is not even that.

The Joyce quote actually goes:

- Then, said Cranly, you do not intend to become a protestant?
- I said that I had lost faith, Stephen answered, but not that I had lost selfrespect. What kind of liberation would that be to forsake an absurdity which is logical and coherent and to embrace one which is illogical and incoherent.

There is also this:

- And why were you shocked, Cranly pressed on in the same tone , if you feel sure that our religion is false and that Jesus was not the son of God?
-I am not at all sure of it, Stephen said. He is more like a son of God than a son of Mary.
- And is that why you will not communicate, Cranly asked, because you are not sure of that too, because you feel that the host, too, may be the body and blood of the son of God and not a wafer of bread. And because you fear that it may be?
- Yes, Stephen said quietly, I feel that and I fear it also.

Which ties into Eco's initial point about the superstition of the materialists.

The sharp logic of madness.

The Anti-defamation League has compiled this useful compendium of cases dealing with the zany positions taken by some on the fever swamp right. These are people who argue that income tax is voluntary or that a person can escape his tax obligations because of their status as a "sovereign" legal entity.

I've run into a few of these people and dealing with them can be a lesson akin to diving down the hole into bizarro-land: their reasoning and logic is impeccable and flawless but so very wrong.

All of which goes to prove the truth of G.K. Chesterton's observation:

Every one who has had the misfortune to talk with people in the heart or on the edge of mental disorder, knows that their most sinister quality is a horrible clarity of detail; a connecting of one thing with another in a map more elaborate than a maze. If you argue with a madman, it is extremely probable that you will get the worst of it; for in many ways his mind moves all the quicker for not being delayed by the things that go with good judgment. He is not hampered by a sense of humour or by charity, or by the dumb certainties of experience. He is the more logical for losing certain sane affections. Indeed, the common phrase for insanity is in this respect a misleading one. The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason.

Stupid conversations I have in real life...

But to hear this kind of breathless dim-wittery being broadcast to millions after being given the imprimateur of our smart opinion-forming class is amazing.

The amazing thing is that not one of the crew of The View got one thing right, but they sure were able to pander to prejudice by staying firmly in urban legend land.

But, then, why should it matter what a group of gals with barely room temperature IQ should share with the unwashed masses?

Because ideas have consequences.

The Prophet Gilbert.

Ignatius Insights quotes Michael Crichton's precis on two G.K. Chesterton books.

Crichton's conclusion: G.K. had it right and everyone else had it wrong.

Update: But being right may not keep him on prison library bookshelves.

Actually, the title "Bush bans Chesterton" is a bit premature. Apparently, in a move to prevent prisons from being used as jihadi recruitment sites, the Bush administration is limiting each religion to 150 books, which perforce means that a lot of books by a lot of authors won't make the cut.

Chesterton ought to make the cut. I don't think anyone can come away from reading Chesterton with anything but a happier, more even-tempered disposition.