I began to examine more exactly the general Christian theology which many
execrated and few examined. I soon found that it did in fact correspond to many
of these experiences of life; that even its paradoxes corresponded to the
paradoxes of life. Long afterwards Father Waggett (to mention another very able
man of the old Anglo-Catholic group), once said to me, as we stood on the Mount
of Olives in view of Gethsemane and Aceldama, “Well, anyhow, it must be obvious
to anybody that the doctrine of the Fall is the only cheerful view of human
life.” It is indeed obvious to me; but the thought passed over me at the moment,
that a very large proportion of that old world of sceptical sects and cliques,
to which I had once belonged, would find it a much more puzzling paradox than
the paradoxes of Oscar Wilde and Bernard Shaw. I will not develop the argument
here, which I have so often developed elsewhere; I merely mention it to suggest
my general sense, even at this stage, that the old theological theory seemed
more or less to fit into experience, while the new and negative theories did
not fit into anything, least of all into each other. It was about this time
that I had published some studies on contemporary writers, such as Kipling and
Shaw and Wells; and feeling that each of them erred through an ultimate or
religious error, I gave the book the title of Heretics. It was reviewed by Mr.
G. S. Street, the very delightful essayist, who casually used the expression
that he was not going to bother about his theology until I had really stated
mine. With all the solemnity of youth, I accepted this as a challenge; and
wrote an outline of my own reasons for believing that the Christian theory, as
summarised in the Apostles’ Creed, would be found to be a better criticism of
life than any of those that I had criticised. I called it Orthodoxy, but even
at the time I was very much dissatisfied with the title. It sounded a thinnish
sort of thing to be defending through thick and thin. Even then I fancy I had a
dim foreshadowing that I should have to find some better name for it before I
died. As it was, the only interesting effect of the title, or the book, that I
ever heard of, occurred on the frontiers of Russia. There I believe the Censor,
under the old Russian regime, destroyed the book without reading it. From its
being called Orthodoxy, he naturally inferred that it must be a book on the
Greek Church. And from its being a book on the Greek Church, he naturally
inferred that it must be an attack on it.
But there did remain one rather vague virtue about the title, from my point
of view; that it was provocative. And it is an exact test of that extraordinary
modern society that it really was provocative. I had begun to discover that, in
all that welter of inconsistent and incompatible heresies, the one and only
really unpardonable heresy was orthodoxy. A serious defence of orthodoxy was
far more startling to the English critic than a serious attack on orthodoxy was
to the Russian censor. And through this experience I learned two very
interesting things, which serve to divide all this part of my life into two
distinct periods. Very nearly everybody, in the ordinary literary and
journalistic world, began by taking it for granted that my faith in the
Christian creed was a pose or a paradox. The more cynical supposed that it was
only a stunt. The more generous and loyal warmly maintained that it was only a
joke. It was not until long afterwards that the full horror of the truth burst
upon them; the disgraceful truth that I really thought the thing was true. And
I have found, as I say, that this represents a real transition or border-line
in the life of the apologists. Critics were almost entirely complimentary to
what they were pleased to call my brilliant paradoxes; until they discovered
that I really meant what I said. Since then they have been more combative; and
I do not blame them.
-Autobiography (1936)
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