Extremes (Introduction)

I've recently begun a devotional at work on basic Christianity. As long as I'm writing, thought I'd blog it too.

"See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil." -Deuteronomy 30:15

"Christianity got over the difficulty of combining furious opposites, by keeping them both, and keeping them both furious." -GK Chesterton

EXTREMES (introduction)

One of the great challenges to the church today is the drastic cultural shift of the last 50 years, especially in the way the individual sees himself. My father's generation valued faithfulness and loyalty; that's why churches of that era had cemeteries. One generation expected to be in the same church as their parents, and be buried next to them. Today's generation, however, no longer shares those values, but is more committed to personal fulfillment. This is not necessarily a bad value, and it forces the church to shift to questions of fulfillment if she is to speak with clarity. But no one today is going to be buried next to Grandpa. He was a Christian, his son was an upwardly mobile agnostic, and his daughter in turn is a committed wiccan.

On one hand, the church should be excited about the modern concern with fulfillment. The gospel of Christ claims to be the ultimate definition of who man is and how his most basic needs are met. On the other hand, a quest for fulfillment means that all possibilities are open, and the world, including the church, is now a huge shopping mall of competing ideas.

The church is huffing and puffing to catch up in the competition. I read a Catholic author recently who argued that the great fault of Protestantism was the infinite splitting and division that occurred after the Reformation. His call was to come back to Mother Church with her infallible tradition and teaching office. What he failed to see was that in American culture the Roman Church is just another voice. There is no way around the fact that the American church is a potpourri of choices, and churches set forth their wares in the open market, hoping to hook someone's personal quest for meaning.

It's not unusual for visitors at my home church to declare at the door that they're "church shopping" (I hate the term). That means they are trying to find a particular combination of teaching and practice that make them feel "fulfilled." I picture myself with a half opened overcoat with watches hanging on the inside: "How about this little number here--slightly used, with a Methodist face, and matching hands that glow in the dark with Pentecostal fervor." Or how about an evangelical Starbucks: "I'd like a large cup of grace and love, with a dash of good works (so I can feel OK about myself), a hint of just enough suffering to look humble, but leave off the heavy doctrine--it gives me a headache." Don't shake my world. Just fulfill me.

I saw a spot on the news recently in which baseball fans were questioning the practice of walking a talented batter. It means that the best seldom get to perform, and the less talented play the game. The fans don't see as many great plays. Excellence takes a back seat to winning.

I wonder if that's not a metaphor for the church. At her best, the church is full of extremes: martyrs, heretics, councils that settled life and death issues, renewals, revivals, reformations, and saints. Her doctrine breeds sheer terror and joyous ecstasy. What can be more extreme than the notion that God became man? Nothing mediocre there! Yet I fear that the church in our culture has settled for a cup of latte, or to stick with the metaphor, "Ball four; take your base." I personally think the church needs to forgo selling a product, and return to confessing her extremes. More next time. . . .

Evangelicals on the Road to Somewhere Else

A Review of Journeys of Faith: Evangelicalism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Catholicism, and Anglicanism. Robert L. Plummer, General Editor

This was a fun book to read, and definitely had a different format than most books that explore defections from evangelicalism to the "high" churches. In the section on Orthodoxy, for instance, the convert presented his case, which was answered by an evangelical, which was in turn rebutted by the convert. This pattern was repeated in the sections on Catholicism and Anglicanism. And just to reverse the trend, there was a section by a Catholic turned Protestant, with a rebuttal and a rebuttal of the rebuttal.

I can't say that any of the doctrinal issues have changed. The Catholic blames all the divisions of western Christendom on the Reformation, with a hint that secular humanism is also an offspring of the events of the 16th Century. The Orthodox sets out to prove that the West is in error because it is, well, western; and describes an intellectual and emotional conversion to a whole different way of perceiving reality--which explains why all the Orthodox that I've known or read happen to be brilliant thinkers capable of such a feat. The Anglican writer describes a renewed love for history and for liturgy. This may come as a shock, but he quotes CS Lewis, and speaks of his influence on his worldview, along with GK Chesterton. This sounds vaguely familiar.

So, what's going on here?

1) Psychological analysis. I am about to say something totally bizarre, and I hope humorous; but I am saying it from experience, not as an outsider. Raised a Presbyterian, I became deeply involved in the charismatic movement of the 1960’s and 70’s. In the 1980’s I began to burn out and look for historic continuity and consistency in the Christian faith. Without going into all the details, I emerged a few years later in a small, conservative Anglican communion similar to the one described in Plummer’s book. In a short time I went from anti-institutional spontaneity to wearing a collar and making the sign of the cross. It was a breath of fresh air to not have to do one better every service, but sink into the beauty and objectivity of the prayer book. I began to understand why my early heroes like Chesterton, Lewis, and Tolkien drew so much life from the Christian Liturgy. I felt cozy and secure.

I was struck while reading Journeys of Faith how common this experience is. Every writer had been where I was and described the need for “something more” in ways that resonated with me. Interestingly, all had been in some form of ministry for roughly 20 years, which would make most of them fortyish when they began a new quest. I have a subtle feeling that there is a need for radical change and a wider view and a deeper sense of security for men at that age. OK, laugh if you want. Much of the ecclesiastical shifts around that age bear a striking resemblance to a male mid-life crisis. That may lie behind some of the defections that evangelical churches have experienced since the 1960’s. Thank you, BF Skinner.

2) Ecclesiological strictures. My experience was different from the men in Plummer’s book in one sense: I did not stay in my new-found haven. I am one of the few men who has actually outlived his mid-life crisis. While I loved Anglicanism, it (at least at the local level) did not love me. I found myself at 60 out of a church, out of a denomination, and out of a collar. Anne and I let gravity take its course, and we ended up in a charismatic church with Presbyterian (Reformed) theology. This descent into the far past was expounded several decades ago by St. Dorothia of Kansas when she said “There’s no place like home.”

So why are people abandoning evangelicalism? I was going at this point to suggest that it’s because evangelicalism is not charismatic enough, and not Calvinistic enough. In other words, its not like me. Then I lapsed into some sort of euphoric state that only an old guy (I turn 70 this month) can have, and began to see boxes--little boxes, and big boxes, and men shouting “My box is bigger (and better) than your box,” and I was afraid I was in some Freudian nightmare. I thought of the fact that there is more than one Christian where I work, and maybe that’s where my church is--out there, where God had to drive the Jerusalem church because it wouldn’t leave the city, and that seed grows better when it is scattered than when it is gathered, and really, who gives a rat’s behind who wins the True Church Award?

Sorry to lose it there. I’m totally off the point (maybe there’s such a thing as stream of consciousness blogging). But there’s something afoot in the land.

John Flavel's The Fountain of Life

I just finished reading John Flavel's The Fountain of Life. Flavel was an English Presbyterian who lived through the Civil Wars of the early 1600's, and who, like most Presbyterians, would be classified as a Puritan. He preached faithfully, even when his ministry was curtailed by the Act of Uniformity of 1662.

I like the Puritans, in spite of the caricature of them as constipated, legalistic, sexually repressed, witch burning men in black with buckles on their shoes, who killed the Indians they with whom they ate Thanksgiving dinner. There has to be something appealing about a movement (on both sides of the Atlantic) that arouses so much hostility and misrepresentation both then and now.

The Puritans were all great writers, verbose by modern standards. There are no contemporary writers who dig as deeply into their own hearts to find grounds for repentance (see John Bunyan's Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners), or who were as joyous and emotional in their experience of Christ's love for them and their love for Christ (see Jonathan Edwards' Religious Affections).

The fact is that the Puritans loved Christ, and wrote about Christ, and searched their souls to make sure they were bound to Christ. Flavel wrote:

"He (Christ) is bread to the hungry, water to the thirsty, a garment to the naked, healing to the wounded; and whatever a soul can desire is found in him....Take away Christ, and where is the loveliness of any enjoyment? The best creature-comfort apart from Christ is but a broken cistern. It cannot hold one drop of true comfort. It is with the creature--the sweetest and loveliest creature--as with a beautiful image in a mirror: turn away the face and where is the image? Riches, honors, and comfortable relations are sweet when the face of Christ smiles upon us through them; but without him, what empty trifles are they all?"

The Fountain of Life is a detailed exposition of Christ's atoning work, beginning with the cost of our salvation in the heart of the eternal Trinity, moving through the incarnation, the humility and suffering of Christ through his lifetime, and ending with His passion, resurrection, ascension, session, and final triumph. Flavel unpacks the absolute all-sufficiency, all-pervasiveness, all-completed work of Christ on our behalf, a work approved and accepted by the Father, and confirmed by the coming of the Holy Spirit upon vessels that were previously unclean.

Flavel makes no apology for the doctrine of the Substitutionary Atonement. Of course, The Fountain of Life is not a doctrinal apologetic at all. It is aimed at lost sinners and believers who are seeking assurance of the love of God. But the doctrine of Christ's suffering and dying in our place pervades the book.

Flavel makes two assumptions:

1) Man is fallen beyond repair, and unless God takes the initiative, is under the wrath of God and an eternal curse. Flavel: "Man, by the apostasy, is become a most disordered and rebellious creature, opposing his maker, as the First Cause, by self-dependence; as the Chief Good, by self-love; as the highest Lord, by self-will; and as the Last End, by self-seeking. Thus he is quite disordered, and all his actions are irregular. But by regeneration the disordered soul is set right; this great change being, as the Scripture expresses it, the renovation of the soul after the image of God...."

2) God Himself supplies the antidote in Christ, who as God and representative Man bears the curse that rests upon our sin, bears the whole load, and in the process declares us free. His ascension and session are the Father's proof that the sacrifice is sufficient. Flavel: "O what a melting consideration is this! that out of his agony comes our victory; out of his condemnation, our justification; out of his pain, our ease; out of his stripes, our healing; out of his gall and vinegar, our honey; out of his curse, our blessing; out of his crown of thorns, our crown of glory; out of his death, our life: if he could not be released, it was that you might. If Pilate gave sentence against him, it was that the great God might never give sentence against you. If he yielded that it should be with Christ as they required, it was that it might be with our souls as well as we can desire. And therefore, thanks be to God for his unspeakable gift."

I realize that the doctrine of penal substitution is rejected in some parts of the church, accepted by others but not seen as all-sufficient, and is a bit of an embarrassment even among Protestants. Personally, I find it a great comfort and a joy beyond anything hoped for. I also believe we should move closer to the Puritans in the church's proclamation of the gospel in an age that resents God's right to be God. Let me close with Flavel's conclusion:

But now reader, let me tell thee, that if ever God send forth these two grim sergeants, his law, and thine own conscience, to arrest thee for thy sins, if thou find thyself dragged away by them towards that prison from whence none return, that are once clapt up therein, and that in this unspeakable distress Jesus Christ manifest himself to thy soul, and open thy heart to receive him, and become thy surety with God, pay all thy debts, and cancel all thy obligations, thou wilt love him at another rate than others do; his blood will run deeper in thine eyes than it does in the shallow apprehensions of the world; he will be altogether lovely, and thou wilt account all things but dung and dross in comparison of the excellency of Jesus Christ thy Lord."

Spring Update

For some reason I feel guilty when I don't blog on a regular basis--maybe because I picture the hundreds of disappointed friends who found I had nothing to say this week. This is definitely a neurotic fantasy that needs correction. Anyway, for you real people out there, here is an update.

Anne and I are both increasingly involved in the ministry of Trinity Chapel in Knoxville, and since we are both still working, our time gets spread thin. Trinity has been a safe place for us over the last ten years, a place of growth and healing, a place to readjust, and more than anything, a place to see the fulfillment of the vision for church that has evolved in us during our years in the ecclesiastical jungle. Trinity is establishing a sound doctrinal base in Reformation theology while continuing to adhere to its charismatic roots. (Can you believe a group of charismatics coming together to study Grudem's Systematics?) Trinity also has past roots in the inner city, and is taking a renewed look at what it means to be a community, and its responsibility to the city at large. Any of you who know me realize that being part of this combination is like throwing a pig in the mud!

I also need to mention that Trinity Chapel has been attracting old and beat up ex-ministry somethings during the past years. I've never seen a group of Christians with as much experience and gifting under one roof, coupled with a leadership that has the vision to revitalize them.

Anne has been teaching a women's study on Thursday mornings, using the inductive approach she learned in Inter-Varsity. It's good to see her productive and working change in others' lives.

I've done some teaching at our Wednesday night services, and am about to begin a Sunday AM class on the life qualities listed in 2 Peter 1:5-7. It's been good to get on the floor with my books, whom I consider to be old friends, dust and all. I love exegesis. (I have some videos on the church's website: http://www.trinitydownloads.com/262.php.) We've also begun leading a house church, with our friends the Marleys, in north Knoxville. Right now we're building a core group and getting used to each other.

It seems odd that, though we live (and I work) in Sevier County and enjoy the entertainment and beauty here, we've never had a deeply rooted ministry here. I don't know whether that's for spiritual, psychological, or cultural reasons. At any rate, most of our friends, church relationships, shopping, and Anne's work, are in Knox County. I'm glad we bought a house near I-40!

We're heading to Hilton Head next weekend to celebrate Anne's mother's 100th birthday. She's had some physical set-backs lately, but is still mentally sharp, and definitely the most positive, optimistic person I know. We're expecting @50 family members, plus her friends at the Seabrook. Beth is coming down from Charlotte, and David is flying in from Los Angeles (traveling is hard on Channon's health--we'll miss her).

We're working on a late spring vacation on the Island, and thinking about a trip to California in the fall. Otherwise, life goes on. Blessings, everybody!

And He Is Us

We have met the enemy, and he is us.

-Walt Kelly

In the hum-drum of getting up, going to work, coming home, reading, attending church, and doing some teaching, my mind, which has an existence apart from my will, wanders down strange paths, peeking into old doors, and trying to understand what's happening in me, and around me in the culture.

One thing I think about far too much is the duality of American thought. Our culture grew out of two great movements: The Renaissance and the Reformation. For a while they were fairly comfortable bed-fellows, connected by a theory of education that produced both More's Utopia and Erasmus's edition of the Greek New Testament. Calvin was comfortable quoting Seneca and Cicero, and deist Thomas Paine was not adverse to quoting Scripture to provoke revolution. (For a modern rendition of this amalgam, consider the Christian school movement that relies on the Greek trivium and builds its curriculum around Latin and Logic.)

But the movements morphed (or perhaps reached their own logical conclusions), and the fellowship was broken. The Renaissance morphed into the Enlightenment, Deism, Romanticism, and with Darwin's boost, into modern secular humanism. The Reformation and its child Puritanism, morphed through later revivalism into modern evangelicalism, which has lost much of its power because it is embarrassed by its roots in Wittenberg and Geneva.

This parting of Renaissance and Reformation was inevitable, given the roots of both movements. The Renaissance was the rediscovery of Graeco-Roman culture and a philosophy that was based on two premises: 1) Man by reason can solve his problems and attain greatness (he is the measure of all things). 2) Whatever is natural is right. Hence Bowra's (The Greek Experience) defense of the exposure of deformed infants as consistent with natural evolution; and anyone who has struggled through Plato's Dialogues knows Socrates' "natural" fascination with young boys. Both premises assume that human goodness is an innate given, and evil is an anomaly. And both premises are heartily embraced by American humanism.

The Reformation, on the other hand, espoused a much darker reality, drawing not from Graeco-Roman writers, but from the Hebrew Scriptures, with their strong emphasis on the fall and depravity of man. While the Reformers believed that man was capable of goodness and some degree of virtue, they also believed that man innately hated God, and (to use the symbols of the fall), preferred the trees of the garden to the presence of the Gardener. Man's desire to be God so warped his nature that his animosity to God could not be overcome from within, but required an act of God from without. Repentance became a gift.

Enter Grace. In the beginning of his believing, grace begins to work in the Christian, slowly changing him, calling him, lifting him up in failure, working contrary to the human expectation of spiritual strength by being "made perfect in weakness." In Reformation thought, evil is "normal," and grace, while not an anomaly, is certainly alien. In the end, all of creation will thrive and worship God by his grace alone.

And as far as human cultures are concerned, that which keeps evil in a culture from being as evil as it can be is only grace (sometimes spoken of as "common grace"). God will restrain evil by common grace, or loosen its bonds as he sees fit. A culture is as much in the hands of God and his grace as the individual heart. When common grace is lessened, man has an opportunity (which he will ignore) to see himself.

So, is there anything practical in forgotten histories and movements, any application? Well, Americans will automatically run to one world-view or the other when asking something as contemporary as "Why Sandy Hook?" Renaissance man (whether or not he holds to the name) will assume the goodness of man, puzzle over the anomaly, and blame anything but the heart of man. It is our structures and our institutions that contain the seeds of evil. Gun control will fix us. Better mental health care will fix us. Armed school guards will fix us. Government will fix us. More legally responsible school administrators will fix us. The trees of the garden will fix us. A nice apron of sewn leaves will fix us.

No one much believes the old Reformation view anymore. Most of us don't live long enough or pay attention long enough to comprehend the mystery of lawlessness. The answer to the "Why?" is Us. You and I are the problem. The very fact that we resist the implication that we are Lanza proves the rule. We contain the capacity for total absorption in self. We are Self. There is no remedy but alien grace.

I for one hope to see one more great renewal--not froth, not the gospel of the poor Jesus who knocks, hoping I'll let him in out of the cold. I opt for a renewal of brokenness, humility, repentance, real fear of an omnipotent God, gratitude for mercy, an awareness that Christ has a right to reign, a longing for grace, and an end to human presumption; I opt for another Reformation.

The Old Religon in a New World

The "denomination" in America is neither a "church" nor a "sect." Rather, it is a singular product of an environment defined by great space, an absence of formal church-state ties, and competition among many ecclesiastical bodies.

-Mark Noll

I recently finished Mark A. Noll's The Old Religion in a New World. This was a shorter abridgement of his textbook, A History of Christianity in the United States and Canada, written for a European (German) audience, and reworked for English speaking readers. It is a study of the rise of denominationalism in North America, with a look at movements (especially revivalism) and major figures from Jonathan Edwards to Joseph Smith, George Whitefield to Billy Sunday.

Noll attributed the American contribution to Christian history to the break from European conservativism, with its hereditary caste system and strong church-state connections. The other three contributors were space, race, and plurality. By far the most influential was space. The frontier, with an infinite wilderness, allowed for both break-away groups (Hutchinson, Williams), evangelistic churches with European roots (Methodists, Baptists, Presbyterians), and later indigenous bodies (Campbellites, Mormons, Pentecostals), to form their own congregations. If they were faced with government interference (as in early Boston) or persecution (as was true of the Mormons in Illinois), there was always more room to find a place of rest.

The state followed this impulse for religious freedom in the Declaration’s statements about divine rights, and the Constitution’s First Amendment. Christianity in America was a new thing, with a new mind-set. The faith was, to be redundant, Americanized. And, even after the settlement of the country, this same sense of freedom and never-ending expansion is locked into the American religious psyche.

So, on a personal note: reading Noll’s book was a great review of the past. I could have wished for more interaction and even interpretation by the author, instead of the repetition of facts and numbers-- subjectivity would have been more fun than historical objectivity. I never felt bored reading this account, but I did find myself tired--worn out by the sheer volume of groups, sub-groups, splinters, imports from the old world, view-points, new indigenous movements, sects, theologies, revivals, renewals, para-church organizations, social movements, political entanglements, ethnic groups, and in some cases, just plain weirdness, all as a result of an incredible freedom never before experienced by a religious faith.

Noll pointed out that even the most stable and ancient churches are effected by Americanization. The Roman church has bent over backwards to prove that it is a patriotic member of the greater culture. It has insisted that the papacy binds the conscience of the believer in spiritual and ecclesiastical matters only; that it has no authority in political or civic issues. And we all know how seriously American Catholics take the Vatican's stance on birth control and other moral issues. Noll also predicted that, with its great influx of disenchanted evangelicals, Orthodoxy will follow the same cultural path over time.

Let me mention at least four drawbacks of the Americanization of Christianity:

1) It is almost impossible for the church to speak prophetically to the state or the general culture. This is both because it cannot agree on the prophetic word, and because the culture perceives the church as broken and inconsistent. A classic example was the defense of both abolition and slavery by Christians prior to the Civil War, using texts from the same Bible. Non-Christians witnessed literal bloodshed among members of the same faith. This attitude among unbelievers has not really changed.

2) There is no theological maturity or standard. One can join the Roman Church, a Protestant body, or the Fire Baptized Apostolic Church of God of Prophecy of the Two Seeds of Abraham. Freedom means that any Tom, Dick, or Harriett can open a storefront and proclaim whatever. Freedom remains, and mediocrity increases.

3) The Quest for the True Church is near to impossible. What new Christian can objectively find the most mature, biblical, traditional, in-step, relevant, loving, nearest-to-the-heart-of-God, Christ-centered fellowship in a potpourri of over 600 denominations, including at least 10 major varieties of Protestants (with sub-divisions), and approximately 8 Orthodox communions (most of them ethnic)?

4) Church discipline and commitment to a religious community will always be shallow, except in groups that have established closed geographic boundaries (such as the Amish in Pennsylvania). The same freedom that allowed Roger Williams to leave the Puritan experiment in Massachusetts allows me to move to the church down the street if my present church demands moral or theological accountability. It is easy to hide behind the trees in the garden and never deal with my nakedness.

These drawbacks are the fruit of freedom, and I am not sure that the antidote is old world structure or tyranny. While the price of (political) freedom is eternal vigilance, the price of religious freedom may be eternal trivialization. Or perhaps there is another, healthier, way to look at the American religious experiment.

There is a parallel between what happened in the Christian communities along the eastern coast of North America and the Big Bang. All the potential of future religious development was pressurized in those communities, and after a few preliminary probes, it erupted across a continent in a display of galaxies, nebulae, stars, planets, hot fires and cooling metals--all originating from the same source. The explosion was fed over time by waves of immigrants fleeing poverty, political oppression, and in many cases, religious persecution.

Or to put it in terms of the faith: how could the truth of God’s coming among men, his word and story, his passion, new life, and presence in his people, be contained in one set of perceptions, without exploding and re-expressing itself in myriads of ways? I cannot help but think that all the variety points to something too glorious to contain, and the multiplicity began with a single Source. An amazing story can only be told through time in hundreds of different ways.

One must settle on his own planet without forgetting that he belongs to the whole cosmos.

Chesterton on Dickens

The thing that cannot be defined is the first thing, the primary fact. It is our arms and legs, our pots and pans, that are undefinable. The undefinable is the indisputable. The man next door is undefinable, because he is too actual to be defined. And there are some spiritual things that have the same fierce and practical proximity; some to whom God is too actual to be defined.

-GK Chesterton

Just finished GK Chesterton's biography of Charles Dickens. It was a joy to read, mainly because of Chesterton's humor and style. Chesterton asserted that the greatest thing revealed by Dickens' characters is Dickens. Likewise, the greatest thing revealed in Chesterton’s biography of Dickens is Chesterton. I’ll end with some of his quotes. But first, Dickens.

According to Chesterton, Dickens was at heart a child of the (French) Revolution, and a true democrat, believing not in the equality of faceless masses, but in the intrinsic worth of every human being—combining, in fact, the brotherhood espoused by the Revolution with the Christian concept of the distinctive and expansive value of the individual.

Dickens was attacked by literary critics for his response to criticism (an interesting circle). He often rebutted with an involved defense of himself that aggravated more than soothed. America never forgave him his open hostility to American copyright laws, which he believed were robbing him of income. After all, Americans came out in droves during his tour of the country to worship his popularity, not to be slighted by him. Chesterton reminds us that Dickens never let anything go that seemed remotely like injustice, especially injustice to himself.

More importantly, Dickens was criticized for creating novels with fascinating characters within weak plots. It is certainly true that his early works (Pickwick Papers, the Christmas tales) used plot as a way to move their characters from one episode to another, while later works (David Copperfield, Bleak House) show a more mature balance of character and plot. But the criticism misses the point. We today don’t remember much about his plots, but we do remember his characters. Dickens is his characters. They are optimistic, find joy in the midst of suffering, and we never want them to die. Chesterton points out that at the end of every novel, we assume that the main characters, even Sydney Carton, live forever. That's because they get inside us.

Tragedy (as an art form) reveals that all men are alike. Even though loss and grief are borne individually, they are unwelcome reminders that we share the common experiences of our humanity. But Dickens was a humorist, and humor has the opposite effect. Men strike us as funny because they are different. And Dickens was fascinated with the differences between men. But this fascination was not condescension or arrogance. It was a robust and exhilarating joy in who individual men and women simply are.

Humanity for Dickens meant one character at a time, and he created dozens of them. They simply emerged out of his head, and had he lived indefinitely he would populated a whole planet with unique human beings. Dickens’ characters soaked into his readers and occupied their psyches. Chesterton points out that social reformers had only slight impact in Dickens’ time. It was the revelation of the poor as real individuals instead of a faceless class that brought social change in England. His characters helped change a culture because they lived in the hearts of the culture. This is the greatest justification of Dickens' work.

Now to Chesterton: Charles Dickens contains vintage Chesterton passages. Here is one describing the power of democracy in the early 19th Century, before humanism was infected with Darwinism and began its downhill slide into the survival of the fittest and social engineering:

"The spirit of the early (19th) century produced great men because it believed that men were great. It made strong men by encouraging weak men. Its education, its public habits, its rhetoric, were all addressed towards encouraging the greatness in everybody. And by encouraging the greatness in everybody, it naturally encouraged superlative greatness in some. Superiority came out of the high rapture of equality. It is precisely in this sort of passionate unconsciousess and bewildering community of thought that men do become more than themselves. No man by taking thought can add one cubit to his stature, but a man may add many cubits to his stature by not taking thought. The best men of the Revolution were simply common men at their best."

High praise for a period of history from a man who saw the late Middle Ages as the apex of human achievement. Let me close with a quote from the last page of the book. It is impossible to read this without seeing Chesterton's influence on CS Lewis:

"But we have a long way to travel before we get back to what Dickens meant: and the passage is along a rambling English road, a twisting road such as Mr. Pickwick traveled. But this at least is part of what he meant; that comradeship and serious joy are not interludes in our travel; but that rather our travels are interludes in comradeship and joy; which through God shall endure forever. The inn does not point to the road; the road points to the inn. And all roads point at last to an ultimate inn, where we shall meet Dickens and all his characters: and when we drink again it shall be from the great flagons in the tavern at the end of the world."

Heaven as an English tavern. Wonderful. We will lift our flagons and proclaim in unison, "God Bless Us, Every One!"