Week 8: Chapter VIII — The Romance of Orthodoxy

1.Chesterton opens with a critique of the intellectual laziness hidden behind modern jargon: long scientific-sounding phrases that allow people to talk without thinking. He says it is a good exercise to try to express any opinion in words of one syllable. Try this: take one belief you hold (religious or otherwise) and express it in the simplest possible terms. What do you discover?

2.He argues that "almost every contemporary proposal to bring freedom into the church is simply a proposal to bring tyranny into the world." Why does he think liberalizing Christian theology is actually illiberal in its social effects? Do you find this surprising?

3.On miracles: Chesterton says disbelief in miracles is not a mark of liberality but of a prior dogmatic commitment to materialism. "The man of the nineteenth century did not disbelieve in the Resurrection because his liberal Christianity allowed him to doubt it. He disbelieved in it because his very strict materialism did not allow him to believe it." How does reframing doubt as a dogma (rather than as open-mindedness) change the conversation about miracles?