Maybe I'm feeling Pagan.
Am I a pagan?
Chesterton’s “Heretics” is incredible, folks, a real trip…like a roller-coaster. Emotionally – I thrill or gasp in surprise at every other paragraph. You should observe me reading, you’d laugh. The poor library book has markings all over it (at least they’re in pencil, so don't turn me in.) But there are so many topsy turvy ideas, ones I have and haven’t thought about, and you know I’m a connoisseur of those. I’m trying to digest them all, and things connecting to them float through my head all day…. I'm afraid this is more or less copying and pasting together in understandable format the sentences/main ideas I underlined. It's a rough draft, just to get the ideas down....and I'm not a brilliant writer...yet.
I promise this will be interesting, if I get done with it and if you stay with me as I hash. Takes some explanation.
I am not, “Like so many Christian idealists, basing my case on certain things that Christ forgot to say.”
Chesterton thinks we have a mistaken idea of pagans. (I don’t really have one at all, so ja.) Factus unum: one came after the other. Paganism was prior to Christians. P isn’t the newer of the two, a parallel ideal, more fitted for a newer age. … The one thing in the modern world that’s been face to face with paganism is Christianity. I guess we get our string of sausages at Christmas and our flowers at Easter from pagans. (That is, the way of celebrating the holidays, apparently not the holidays themselves hehe.) Um cuz everything else stems from Christianity, the French Revolution, newspaper, anarchists, and physical science. The attack on Christianity is even of Christian origin. (Pretty much dominated.) The only thing today of pagan origin is Christianity. Huh.
He compares pagan virtues to Christianity’s. The first are sad virtues, and are quite reasonable: JUSTICE consists in finding out what’s due to someone and giving it to him. TEMPERANCE finds out the proper limit of a particular indulgence and adhering to it. But, Christian’s ‘gay, exuberant’ virtues are utterly unreasonable, and I’ll elaborate cuz they’re cool:
- CHARITY pardons the unpardonable, the power of defending that which we know to be indefensible. NOT in truth “charity to the deserving poor” -
- HOPE means hoping when things are hopeless, power of being cheerful in circumstances which we know to be desperate. Only exists in earthquake and eclipse.
- FAITH means believing the incredible, or it is no virtue at all. (this happens to be as insane as the other ones, but much less popular)
So, The old pagan world went straight forward. (If I use that one Martin Luther term again, forgive me in advance). Then they realized their enormous mistake: reasonableness will not do. He says the pagan age was truely an Eden, or a golden age, in the essential sense that it is not to be recovered. The naked innocence of the intellect cannot be recovered by any man after Christianity, b/c every Christian knows it to be misleading. (HA!) Love of a thing for its own sake is a Christian product. Everything in the old world was clean and obvious: a good man was a good man, a bad one bad. Now apparently the lines are smeared. Pagans hadn't the art of fiction, or romance (thinking a thing more delightful because it's dangerous). Here was a place common sense was really common.
Enough on the virtues then. There's that explained. Now I can start.
Christianity had to discover those three virtues, or die. They are all paradoxical b/c they are practical. "It is the stress of ultimate need, and a terrible knowledge of things as they are, which led men to set up these riddles (3 virtues that Christianity brought), and to die for them." The virtue of humility is another one. It explains
TO BE CONTINUED - sorry...
"
And by this point, I’m not quite sure how I was thinking paganishly...
Look with anticipation for the next post: "Maybe I'm feeling Marxist."
Chesterton’s “Heretics” is incredible, folks, a real trip…like a roller-coaster. Emotionally – I thrill or gasp in surprise at every other paragraph. You should observe me reading, you’d laugh. The poor library book has markings all over it (at least they’re in pencil, so don't turn me in.) But there are so many topsy turvy ideas, ones I have and haven’t thought about, and you know I’m a connoisseur of those. I’m trying to digest them all, and things connecting to them float through my head all day…. I'm afraid this is more or less copying and pasting together in understandable format the sentences/main ideas I underlined. It's a rough draft, just to get the ideas down....and I'm not a brilliant writer...yet.
I promise this will be interesting, if I get done with it and if you stay with me as I hash. Takes some explanation.
I am not, “Like so many Christian idealists, basing my case on certain things that Christ forgot to say.”
Chesterton thinks we have a mistaken idea of pagans. (I don’t really have one at all, so ja.) Factus unum: one came after the other. Paganism was prior to Christians. P isn’t the newer of the two, a parallel ideal, more fitted for a newer age. … The one thing in the modern world that’s been face to face with paganism is Christianity. I guess we get our string of sausages at Christmas and our flowers at Easter from pagans. (That is, the way of celebrating the holidays, apparently not the holidays themselves hehe.) Um cuz everything else stems from Christianity, the French Revolution, newspaper, anarchists, and physical science. The attack on Christianity is even of Christian origin. (Pretty much dominated.) The only thing today of pagan origin is Christianity. Huh.
He compares pagan virtues to Christianity’s. The first are sad virtues, and are quite reasonable: JUSTICE consists in finding out what’s due to someone and giving it to him. TEMPERANCE finds out the proper limit of a particular indulgence and adhering to it. But, Christian’s ‘gay, exuberant’ virtues are utterly unreasonable, and I’ll elaborate cuz they’re cool:
- CHARITY pardons the unpardonable, the power of defending that which we know to be indefensible. NOT in truth “charity to the deserving poor” -
- HOPE means hoping when things are hopeless, power of being cheerful in circumstances which we know to be desperate. Only exists in earthquake and eclipse.
- FAITH means believing the incredible, or it is no virtue at all. (this happens to be as insane as the other ones, but much less popular)
So, The old pagan world went straight forward. (If I use that one Martin Luther term again, forgive me in advance). Then they realized their enormous mistake: reasonableness will not do. He says the pagan age was truely an Eden, or a golden age, in the essential sense that it is not to be recovered. The naked innocence of the intellect cannot be recovered by any man after Christianity, b/c every Christian knows it to be misleading. (HA!) Love of a thing for its own sake is a Christian product. Everything in the old world was clean and obvious: a good man was a good man, a bad one bad. Now apparently the lines are smeared. Pagans hadn't the art of fiction, or romance (thinking a thing more delightful because it's dangerous). Here was a place common sense was really common.
Enough on the virtues then. There's that explained. Now I can start.
Christianity had to discover those three virtues, or die. They are all paradoxical b/c they are practical. "It is the stress of ultimate need, and a terrible knowledge of things as they are, which led men to set up these riddles (3 virtues that Christianity brought), and to die for them." The virtue of humility is another one. It explains
TO BE CONTINUED - sorry...
"
And by this point, I’m not quite sure how I was thinking paganishly...
Look with anticipation for the next post: "Maybe I'm feeling Marxist."
posted by Anna's Abstract at 6:46 PM
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