Where did I go wrong!!!!

[Linna Heartbooger]

(Someone jab me in the ribs for a definition of "the church visible" vs "the church invisible," if any Watchers want a definition. Maybe I'll edit this post later to include one. For now - sorry, Christian jargon alert!)

*jab*jab*
I'm Catholic and I don't know what you mean by this.

Point! That is DEFINITELY "theology jargon," not "Christian jargon." ...And different schools of theology go after things from different directions. So even if you've had theology classes, you're not guaranteed to have heard -my- particular brand of jargon!

Definition? OKAY, I'm gonna sound really, really divisive & maybe scary.

Different groups have their opinions of who "the Christians" are - groups have various expectations, which may include some of these: baptized, regular church attendee, serving God in an obvious way, "saved," "had a conversion experience," "has a personal relationship with Jesus Christ," "shows the fruit of a life transformed by God" etc.

And, I mean, people in general have opinions of "who the Christians are"... whether it's defined by "the people who say they are Christian," "the people who go to church stuff a lot," "the people who quote the Bible a lot" or "people who seem like nice people who do good deeds."

All that has to do with the definition of "The Church Visible."

Then there's God Who sees what's in human hearts - and has the whole omnipotence thing going for Him. He knows who are actually members of "The Church Invisible," whether they go to church or not. And He knows who are NOT members of "The Church Invisible," even if all the people who see them in church respect them.

Tell me if you think of this attempt got across any clear meaning. (maybe there's other jargon that your familiar with that correlates with it; or maybe the concept seems shocking and strange.)

Sorry, I am not giving a real technical definition this time around, but more a "sense of what I mean." For various reasons.

[Linna Heartbooger]

I don't think people can really grasp the message or state what it was by merely reading, or even knowing quotes by heart.

I think that reading (or hearing) at least some of the scriptures in a fairly reliable translation is -probably- a necessary but not sufficient condition to knowing what the message is.

For example, He was born into the one nation in the Middle East that had a very solid idea of their monotheistic God, and that He was completely OTHER, and not human at all, and then Christ begins identifying Himself with the prophetical references to the Son of God and the Son of Man in the ancient Hebrew Scriptures - most notably Isaiah - He says that HE IS that Creator that was there from the beginning before all ages; He identified Himself with the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. He DID say He came to bring a sword, not peace - and yet much of what He said TAUGHT peace. He spoke in paradoxes, many of which make no sense from an unbelieving standpoint and cannot possibly be identified with kind messages of world peace.

Very nicely said.

That for me, would make a good discussion - the thesis of the introduction of that book - that the modern western thinker is too far from traditional/historic Christianity to understand it, and too near it to look at it impartially, as he would an Eastern religion.

Nice. My husband loves Chesterton & has been trying to get me into reading him. Maybe in a few months or something...

[Auleliel]

Lina--thanks. I understand what you're getting at now. I was quite confused before, thought you meant something completely different.

[rusmeister]

Duplicate

[rusmeister]

My thanks to Lina for some gracious posting. I see things done better than I think I do them myself, and try to learn from it. (On the other hand, if I give you the opportunity for vanity and a swelled head, you'll be struggling with pride, and - uh-oh, here goes a nasty cycle! )

I apologize for not responding to people's posts quickly here and on the meaninglessness thread - we are still in crisis, in general; the little one woke up and tossed her cookies, or more accurately, spaghetti, again. Watched Charlotte's Web with my younger son, though. he's in good spirits, and doesn't complain about the cast or about having to crawl and hop around at all. He has the hardest trouble understanding me now, because he is at a stage where his Russian is highly developed and his English is really under-developed, by comparison - but my wife sees his English development as my problem.

I have more of a problem finding stuff to disagree with than to agree with, because on so much, yeah, you're right, and I'd say the same things, only in trying to talk out such complex positions, I haven't had the time (as if any of us have). That's part of the problem - that so often we can only speak of one aspect of a concept, and when I do disagree with people, my own sense is that they have found something else that is true, or has truth in it, and over-emphasize it, rather than simply 'being wrong'. The treating of exceptions as rules is extremely common place - and I'm not even aiming that at you; just a general observation.

I realize that I express hardly 1% of what I have learned about faith and Church history, etc, on this message board; and the scary thing is that people drawing on me as a fairly exclusive source read things, and wrong things about Orthodoxy, which is a huge thing completely untapped by most here, and far bigger than me.

So when you speak about the 'Church invisible' in particular, there is much that I can chime in with. It has been said that there is no salvation outside the Church, but also that we can say where the Church is, but we cannot be completely sure where it is not. There are plenty of non-Orthodox saints - who we simply can't formally acknowledge as saints - but we may certainly believe that God recognizes them as saints (Just thinking of Francis of Assisi, Theresa of Calcutta, any number of Protestants (or even atheists) who fully gave their lives to loving their neighbor, and therefore loving God (even if they didn't realize that they were loving God by loving good enough to enact it. I'm quite sure there are plenty of unbelievers who are better 'Christians' than I am - and some are likely on this forum.

I think the thing I was kicking back against most is the idea that, because there are sinners in churches (that people have encountered in their experiences here) that therefore their faith must be hypocrisy and falsehood. I see something quite different - a religion that teaches that all people are sinners, and predicts that they will sin, is obviously telling the truth. It's sadder when people suffer at the hands of such believers in church, and therefore decide that ALL faith is stuff and nonsense.

Loved your comment on "Away in the Manger". It's quite Orthodox (that's always a complement from my side).

I didn't understand your ref to a quote by Lord Foul at all.

I guess in extreme brief I can summarize the Orthodox position on the Church Visible vs Invisible by saying that the OC does say that it IS the Church Visible, and that people not in it are outside that - but that they certainly could be by God's grace included in the Church invisible. We think it DOES matter whether a person in in the Church (visible) or not, but we don't put any limits on God's mercy or grace. (Caveat - I am an untrained layman and my 2nd-class explanations may include minor inaccuracy in places.)

I came to Chesterton through Lewis (also a thoroughly admirable first rate thinker, and my first teacher in genuine thinking).
Chesterton was the greatest thinker of the 20th century, period, and imo the greatest writer in the English language, although my criteria are not those of typical literary critics. Dale Ahlquist overblows it a little in a few places, but his summary of GKC is mostly correct:
209.236.72.127/wordpress/?page_id=40
When I read him, I have no trouble taking his references to the Catholic Church in his later works, and applying them to the Orthodox Church. It helps a lot that, historically, for the first thousand years, they WERE the same Church. Protestants also find him eminently readable, although the more hardline ones tend to prefer his earlier works and shy away from the "Catholic" ones, and a lot of other people admired and enjoyed him besides; all the more because he didn't only talk about "religion" - from the Father Brown murder mysteries to 'the Ballad of the White Horse" - the greatest ballad in the English language to his literary criticism of all sorts of people, from Browning to Dickens, he talks about every subject under the sun, and does so with humor and humility. I am indebted to his essay "On Evil Euphemisms" for opening my mind to the falsehood of the language of the modern world: www.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~mward/gkc/books/on_e ... misms.html (make sure to note the dates)

The case for murder, on modern relative and evolutionary ethics, is quite overwhelming. There is hardly one of us who does not, in looking round his or her social circle, recognize some chatty person or energetic social character whose disappearance, without undue fuss or farewell, would be a bright event for us all.

It's interesting to learn that what we now call "living together" or "common-law marriage" was widely called "companionate marriage" in his time (I have since confirmed this independently). His predictions on murder, forseeing the rise of euthanasia and abortion, are also of considerable interest. In general, it's awesome how we can now look back and see that he correctly prophesied what would happen on so many things.

Anyway, 'nuff said. Thanks again for your kind words!

[aliantha]

Sorry about the continuing kid issues, rus. Hope everybody makes a speedy recovery.

[Vraith]

I'll give Rus that GKC has much to commend him and make him worth reading. [Especially for those who want to keep enemies close].
But, also be ready for a slog fairly often unless you are very widely read/educated [probably read of yourself, cuz it is true he isn't taught much]
His essays can be fun, have a fair amount of insight, wit, and point out important issues...BUT unless you, yourself, are already thoroughly versed in the topics/dilemmas/context they are set in, you will miss almost everything...or have to do research while reading simultaneously.

He is intelligent without doubt, but not scintillating or easy or, especially, right and double-especially not right when criticizing particular philosophers.

Also, his poetry is god-awful...he'd have been better off writing a couple thousand more essays...or anything...than do poetry.

[Fist and Faith]

I swear, right about now, I'd pay good money if my problems were a vomiting and broken-legged kid. However, I surely sympathize with you, rus. Nothing worse than seeing your child in pain. To say nothing of the exhaustion it all causes.

[rusmeister]

I swear, right about now, I'd pay good money if my problems were a vomiting and broken-legged kid. However, I surely sympathize with you, rus. Nothing worse than seeing your child in pain. To say nothing of the exhaustion it all causes.

Thanks, Fist,
Yeah, I can imagine worse things. But what happened to my littlest one - when the specter of the death of your children raises its head - EVERYTHING else becomes pretty meaningless (I mean like job and money worries, forclosure threats, kids failing in school and getting into trouble, etc). I only had prayer between myself and terror/panic/etc - and the prayer is with the full understanding that it's just a request, that God sometimes says "No", and then it's my passions vs my reason.

It's one of the things I've learned - the grand falsehood that faith is opposed to reason. The truth is that our PASSIONS are opposed to reason.

Faith is the power to go on believing not in the teeth of reason but in the teeth of lust and terror and jealousy and boredom and indifference that which reason, authority, or experience, or all three, have once delivered to us for truth.

[rusmeister]

I'll give Rus that GKC has much to commend him and make him worth reading. [Especially for those who want to keep enemies close].
But, also be ready for a slog fairly often unless you are very widely read/educated [probably read of yourself, cuz it is true he isn't taught much]
His essays can be fun, have a fair amount of insight, wit, and point out important issues...BUT unless you, yourself, are already thoroughly versed in the topics/dilemmas/context they are set in, you will miss almost everything...or have to do research while reading simultaneously.

He is intelligent without doubt, but not scintillating or easy or, especially, right and double-especially not right when criticizing particular philosophers.

Also, his poetry is god-awful...he'd have been better off writing a couple thousand more essays...or anything...than do poetry.

Thanks a lot, Vraith - I think that's quite fair of you from your side!

I think that you really underscored what I was saying about him being a bona fide genius. If someone IS more intelligent than us, then they are NOT going to be easy - if they are easy, then they are not so terribly intelligent (at least in relation to us).
Reading Chesterton is an education all in itself. I have learned more from him than I learned in any formal education program. And I have been forced to do research - and that research is not limited to his time - despite what a few here think, he was NOT "a product of his time"; that is, someone who was limited to and could only see and understand things in terms of his own time; quite the opposite. It is most of US that are products of our time, and so cannot understand someone who has freed themselves of that. My own research in trying to keep up with him was not limited to the Edwardian era in England. It's spanned history, although I think you can say that his particular knowledge was everything covered by English letters. There are still things out there that I haven't gotten to - his bios and literary criticism of English thinkers and doers of the 19th century (William Cobbett, for example). What he especially excels in is his ability to grasp the heart of issues and people's lives. His bio of Browning floored me for being different from the typical blueprint for biography and yet nailing what had obviously been important to Browning - what had been central to his life.

But really, it is the things that you criticize that are the most debatable - do we agree on philosophy? Or taste in poetry? But I don't think him the greatest poet - but some of his poetry IS great. The fact that he did it, and did produce some great poetry - "The Donkey", "The Babe Unborn" completely on the side from his main pursuit as a journalist who happened to see far beyond the jour, is what is notable. Who in the heck anywhere in history has written thousands of essays, most of which are both readable and relevant a hundred years after they were written???

Don't like his poetry? Then try the Father Brown stories. Don't like mysteries? Try his other prose - "The Club of Queer Trades" or "Manalive". Don't like his prose? Try his literary criticism. And so on. If you don't like any of those things in general, then I'd say the problem is more in the individual than in him.

But I think the most objective thing that can be said is that he predicted a great many things (in the sense of "If you do x, y will result) that turned out to be right. In his time nearly everyone in the intellectual elite was saying that if you make divorce easy, then happy families will result because of all the free choice and that if you engineer a man's genes, he will turn out a better man, and many other things that we can now see, having actually allowed those things to be put into practice, that Shaw, Wells, and everyone one else who got their way (Hey, Chesterton was largely ignored) was wrong and Chesterton was right. he correctly saw what would happen if eugenics (and messing with human genetics in general) became widely accepted anywhere (see his GREAT (and difficult ) book "Eugenics and Other Evils (1922). He predicted what would happen to the family in "The Superstition of Divorce", at a time when people thought that things like divorce and abortion, if made legal and deprived of social stigma, would be rare, a last resort that nobody wanted. We can see that the advocates of those things were quite wrong about that, and that Chesterton was quite right - not because of some philosophical theory, but because of what was actually put into practice. The Nazis really DID put eugenics into full practice. Roughly half of all marriages now end in divorce, if not more. Millions of babies are "aborted" every year. Rare things? Last resorts? Point is, GKC was RIGHT as a fact, not as an opinion. And yet it is his opponents who were WRONG who got the green light in our English lit programs - it is Shaw and Wells who are popularized, and Chesterton who is ignored.

So to summarize, in engaging Chesterton, whether you agree or not, you are forced to become well-versed in the topics - when you thought you already WERE well-versed, you generally discover that you are not. Either way, you actually learn something.

(And it's nice to have the guy who was right on your side. )

PS: the above listed works can all be found here: www.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~mward/gkc/books/index.html

[Cambo]

It's one of the things I've learned - the grand falsehood that faith is opposed to reason. The truth is that our PASSIONS are opposed to reason.

With that, Rus, you have done something you rarely do; made a statement I agree with unreservedly .

Although, then there's this:

If someone IS more intelligent than us, then they are NOT going to be easy - if they are easy, then they are not so terribly intelligent (at least in relation to us).

Didn't someone once say that a mark of genius is the ability to make complex ideas easy to understand?

[Auleliel]

Didn't someone once say that a mark of genius is the ability to make complex ideas easy to understand?

There's a difference between making it easy to understand, and watering it down so much that it loses its significance and context.

[Cambo]

Didn't someone once say that a mark of genius is the ability to make complex ideas easy to understand?

There's a difference between making it easy to understand, and watering it down so much that it loses its significance and context.

Certainly. I just instinctively resist the idea that if someone is easily understood, they are not as intelligent as someone only comprehensible by great mental effort.

Neither necessarily indicates intelligence at all- there will be geniuses (genii? ) and idiots everywhere regardless of communication skills.

[rusmeister]

It's one of the things I've learned - the grand falsehood that faith is opposed to reason. The truth is that our PASSIONS are opposed to reason.

With that, Rus, you have done something you rarely do; made a statement I agree with unreservedly .

Although, then there's this:

If someone IS more intelligent than us, then they are NOT going to be easy - if they are easy, then they are not so terribly intelligent (at least in relation to us).

Didn't someone once say that a mark of genius is the ability to make complex ideas easy to understand?

Someone may have said it, but it's just good-sounding BS.
A) There is no reason why a genius should necessarily be a good teacher, or that a good teacher must be a genius.
B) As soon as you say that about, say, quantum physics or any other truly complex discipline, the statement becomes nonsense, anyway. Sure, a good teacher can make analogies and draw illustrations that can get ideas across, but without understanding all of the pathways of why they are not false analogies or illustrations, it's accepting the doctrine on faith.

Having said that, I think Chesterton does a pretty good job. I think that a person who is indifferent or hostile to the things he talks about has an automatic incentive to NOT make the effort, and to write him off as unintelligible or wrong.
I myself am a teacher; I think, for example, that I CAN make simple and defend the introductory thesis of "The Everlasting Man" (and I don't even think it that hard or that GKC made it so).

The end run is that a person who wants to grow mentally has to be willing to make mental effort. As long as we are only happy with easy reading and entertainment, Stephen King, John Grisham, etc we cannot do that. By way of analogy, I think that readers of SRD would probably agree that SRD's prose and vocabulary are more complex and laborous, and that he doesn't attract people who never had much mental growth to begin with. But to the people who have, or who do make the effort, it is truly rewarding.

Belloc had a GREAT line in the beginning of his book "The Great Heresies" that expresses it for me:

We must begin by a definition (of heresy), although definition involves a
mental effort and therefore repels.

[rusmeister]

Didn't someone once say that a mark of genius is the ability to make complex ideas easy to understand?

There's a difference between making it easy to understand, and watering it down so much that it loses its significance and context.

Certainly. I just instinctively resist the idea that if someone is easily understood, they are not as intelligent as someone only comprehensible by great mental effort.

Neither necessarily indicates intelligence at all- there will be geniuses (genii? ) and idiots everywhere regardless of communication skills.

No argument there, nor was I suggesting that. But if one needs to express a complex idea that deals with all imaginable objections to it, then the expression must be complex and, yes, wordy.

[Avatar]

Certainly. I just instinctively resist the idea that if someone is easily understood, they are not as intelligent as someone only comprehensible by great mental effort.

Agreed. Being able to render complex concepts in more understandable ways is a skill indicative of the opposite.

--A

[Fist and Faith]

Also, the fact that one is incomprehensible is not evidence that s/he is a genius.

[Linna Heartbooger]

My thanks to Lina for some gracious posting.

Well... I have received "grace upon grace" from Christ and His church. I am in a unique position, because I have been given so much.

You see, right now about half the women in my Bible study are Catholic gals. They're intelligent, kind, funny, & interesting. Really an oasis in the midst of "suburbia." They treat me sometimes like a peer and sometimes like a daughter... (Most women in the study have children about my age.)

And it was THEIR HANDS that reached out so recently to pull me up out of a slump of depression. Helping me clean my house, sending me meals, and reaching out to me when I was so confused I couldn't articulate my problems... even though when I first talked about my depression, it made them anxious and they "didn't know what to do with me." And they did all this in a way that preserved my family's dignity, too!

For people who've been watching the Depression thread... this might sound like "Lina's plug for Christianity" - a story that's "too good to be true." But it really happened. Sometimes fact is stranger than fiction.

I've also received gifts of great worth from people who don't currently "claim the name of Christian," including my own dad and also our favorite inconveniently-dark author, SRD ...and I have experienced these as profound acts of grace as well.

After all: "To whom much is given, much is required." My old Christian mentor would hammer on that. He is also the person who is most to blame for introducing me to Donaldson.

Also, while I was looking all "gracious and intelligent" on this forum, I had lost track of time and failed to cook dinner for my family. My husband bailed me out & cooked supper while I CONTINUED to "tune out" my family and write posts (LOL!) even though we'd had a stupid argument just hours earlier. Grace upon grace, I tell ya!

I see things done better than I think I do them myself, and try to learn from it.

I've learned some things from you, too. I've been challenged by your appeal to authority. My worldview was changed 3 years ago by things you said on the subject.

(On the other hand, if I give you the opportunity for vanity and a swelled head, you'll be struggling with pride, and - uh-oh, here goes a nasty cycle! )

Already on it! That is -exactly- what I was talking to my counselor about for like 45 mins the day before yesterday, I kid you not. She COULD NOT see my self-satisfied arrogance being a big risk - my aforementioned husband has seen it rumbling for days - but she DID identify something else I'm avoiding that is also rather significant. (but that's a story for the Depression thread, if anything!)

[rusmeister]

Also, the fact that one is incomprehensible is not evidence that s/he is a genius.

No, but if ANYONE AT ALL understands that person, then he is not really incomprehensible - the problem is not that of the misunderstood person, but of the person who fails to understand. If it is possible at all to understand someone, and someone actually does it, then they are NOT incomprehensible.

I DO understand GKC. I'd say I understand 98% of what he writes. He almost never goes completely over my head - but I do have to slow down, reread a couple of times and think hard quite often (less often as time goes by, since I have 'gotten his drift'. Therefore, he is NOT incomprehensible. I'm ready to go over anything that is not understood by the receiver. In your case, Fist, you've been pretty specific about refusing to say what is "so bad" about him. So I don't see rational refutation of Chesterton - demonstration that he does indeed speak nonsense - I see evasion (for whatever reasons).

It should be obvious that only a person who understands an argument can possibly refute it. The person who admits that they do not understand it leaves the door wide open to the possibility that the other person is right.

I believe that a failure to comprehend Chesterton CAN be overcome - because I overcame it, and the comprehension brings great pleasure. For some, as Dale Ahlquist put it, it is a glorious defeat. When we really ARE wrong in anything, ever, we really prefer to be put right by someone of the most humble attitude, who does not lord it over us.

[Fist and Faith]

I was just saying.


Anyway, I don't have a problem with him because I don't think he's smart. I just think he's wrong. About nearly everything I've read so far. Mozart was the greatest natural talent of music that we know of. No musical feat was beyond him. His memory; his ear; his ability to compose huge pieces in his head, start to finish, then write them down perfectly at a later date... But I don't much care for his music. Kinda bland imo. Bach and Beethoven, otoh... Other people feel the opposite.