PROTESTANTISM:  A PROBLEM NOVEL

by G.K. Chesterton (taken from "The Thing." 1929)

I HAVE been looking at the little book on Protestantism which Dean Inge has contributed to the sixpenny series of Sir Ernest Benn; and though I suppose it has already been adequately criticised, it may be well to jot down a few notes on it before it is entirely forgotten. The book, which is called "Protestantism," obviously ought to be called "Catholicism." What the Dean has to say about any real thing recognisable as Protestantism is extraordinarily patchy, contradictory and inconclusive.  It is only what he has to say about Catholicism that is clear, consistent and to the point.  It is warmed and quickened by the human and hearty motive of hatred; and it makes everything else in the book look timid and tortuous by comparison. I am not going to annotate the work considered as history. There are some curious, if not conscious, falsifications of fact, especially in the form of suppressions of fact.  He begins by interpreting Protestantism as a mere "inwardness and sincerity" in religion; which none of the Protestant reformers would have admitted to be Protestantism, and which any number of Catholic reformers have made the very heart and soul of their reforms inside Catholicism. It might be suggested that self-examination is now more often urged and practised among Catholics than among Protestants. But whether or no the champions of sincerity examine themselves, they might well examine their statements.  Some of the statements here might especially be the subject of second thoughts. It is really a startling suppression and falsification to say that Henry the Eighth had only a few household troops; so that his people must have favoured his policy, or they would have risen against it. It seems enough to reply that they did rise against it. And BECAUSE Henry had only a few household troops, he brought in bands of ferocious mercenaries from abroad to put down the religious revolt of his own people.  It is an effort of charity to concede even complete candour to the story-teller, who can actually use such an argument, and then keep silent upon such a sequel. Or again, it is outrageously misleading to suggest that the Catholic victims of Tudor and other tyranny were justly executed as traitors and not as martyrs to a religion.  Every persecutor alleges social and secular necessity; so did Caiaphas and Annas; so did Nero and Diocletian; from the first the Christians were suppressed as enemies of the Empire;
to the last the heretics were handed over to the secular arm with secular justifications.  But when, in point of plain fact, a man can be hanged, drawn and quartered merely for saying Mass, or sometimes for helping somebody who has said Mass, it is simply raving nonsense to say that a religion is not being persecuted.
To mention only one of many minor falsifications of this kind, it is quite true to say that Milton was in many ways more of a Humanist than a Puritan; but it is quite false to suggest that the Milton family was a typical Puritan family, in its taste for music and letters. The very simple explanation is that the Milton family was largely
a Catholic family; and it was the celebrated John who specially separated himself from its creed but retained its culture. Countless other details as definitely false could be quoted; but I am much more interested in the general scope of the work-- which allows itself to be so curiously pointless about Protestantism, merely in order to make a point against Catholicism.

Here is the Dean's attempt at a definition.  "What is the main function of Protestantism?  It is essentially an attempt to check the tendency to corruption and degradation which attacks every institutional religion." So far, so good.  In that case St. Charles Borromeo, for instance, was obviously a leading Protestant.  St. Dominic and St. Francis, who purged the congested conventionalism of much of the monasticism around them, were obviously leading Protestants.  The Jesuits who sifted legend by the learning of Bollandism, were obviously leading Protestants. But most living Protestant leaders are not leading Protestants. If degradation drags down EVERY institutional religion, it has presumably dragged down Protestant institutional religion. Protestants might possibly appear to purge Protestantism; but so did Catholics appear to purge Catholicism.  Plainly this definition is perfectly useless as a DISTINCTION between Protestantism and Catholicism. For it is not a description of any belief or system or body of thought; but simply of a good intention, which all men of all Churches would profess and a few men in some Churches practise--especially in ours. But the Dean not only proves that modern Protestant institutions ought to be corrupt, he says that their primitive founders ought to be repudiated. He distinctly holds that we cannot follow Luther and Calvin.

Very well--let us go on and see whom we are to follow.
I will take one typical passage towards the end of the book.
The Dean first remarks, "The Roman Church has declared that there can
be no reconciliation between Rome and modern Liberalism or Progress."
One would like to see the encyclical or decree in which this
declaration was made.  Liberalism might mean many things,
from the special thing which Newman denounced and defined
to the intention of voting at a by-election for Sir John Simon.
Progress generally means something which the Pope has never,
so far as I know, found it necessary to deny; but which the Dean
himself has repeatedly and most furiously denied.  He then goes on:
"Protestantism is entirely free from this uncompromising preference
for the Dark Ages."  "The Dark Ages," of course, is cant and claptrap;
we need take no notice of that.  But we may perhaps notice,
not without interest and amusement, that about twenty-five
lines before, the Dean himself has described the popular Protestantism
of America as if it were a barbarism and belated obscurantism.
From which one may infer that the Dark Ages are still going on,
exactly where there is Protestantism to preserve them.
And considering that he says at least five times that the appeal
of Protestants to the letter of Scripture is narrow and superstitious,
it surely seems a little astonishing that he should sum up
by declaring Protestantism, as such, to be "ENTIRELY free"
from this sort of darkness.  Then, on top of all this welter of
wordy contradictions, we have this marvellous and mysterious conclusion:
"It is in this direction that Protestants may look for the beginning
of what may really be a new Reformation, a resumption of the unfinished
work of Sir Thomas More, Giordano Bruno and Erasmus."

In short, Protestants may look forward to a Reformation modelled on
the work of two Catholics and one obscure mystic, who was not a Protestant
and of whose tenets they and the world know practically nothing.
One hardly knows where to begin, in criticising this very new Reformation,
two-thirds of which was apparently started by men of the Old Religion.
We might meekly suggest that, if it be regrettable that the work
of Sir Thomas More was "unfinished," some portion of the blame
may perhaps attach to the movement that cut off his head.
Is it possible, I wonder, that what the Dean really means is that we
want a new Reformation to undo all the harm that was done by the
old Reformation?  In this we certainly have no reason to quarrel
with him.  We should be delighted also to have a new Reformation,
of ourselves as well as of Protestants and other people; though it
is only fair to say that Catholics did, within an incredibly short
space of time, contrive to make something very like a new Reformation;
which is commonly called the Counter-Reformation. St. Vincent de
Paul and St. Francis of Sales have at least as good a right to call
themselves inheritors of the courtesy and charity of More as has
the present Dean of St. Paul's. But putting that seventeenth century
reform on one side, there is surely something rather stupendous
about the reform that the Dean proposes for the twentieth century,
and the patron saints he selects for it out of the sixteenth century.

For this, it seems, is how we stand.  We are not to follow
Luther and Calvin.  But we are to follow More and Erasmus.
And that, if you please, is the true Protestantism and the promise
of a second Reformation.  We are to copy the views and virtues
of the men who found they could remain under the Pope, and especially
of one who actually died for the supremacy of the Pope.
We are to throw away practically every rag of thought or theory that was
held by the people who did not remain under the supremacy of the Pope.
And we are to bind up all these views in a little popular pamphlet
with an orange cover and call them "Protestantism." The truth
is that Dean Inge had an impossible title and an impossible task.
He had to present Protestantism as Progress; when he is far too
acute and cultivated a man not to suspect that it was (as it was)
a relapse into barbarism and a break away from all that was
central in civilisation.  Even by the test of the Humanist,
it made religion inhuman.  Even by the test of the liberal,
it substituted literalism for liberalism.  Even if the goal
had been mere Modernism, it led its followers to it by a long,
dreary and straggling detour, a wandering in the wilderness, that did
not even discover Modernism till it had first discovered Mormonism.
Even if the goal had been logical scepticism, Voltaire could
reach it more rapidly from the school of the Jesuits than
the poor Protestant provincial brought up among the Jezreelites.
Every mental process, even the process of going wrong, is clearer in
the Catholic atmosphere.  Protestantism has done nothing for Dean Inge,
except give him a Deanery which rather hampers his mental activity.
It has done nothing for his real talent or scholarship or sense
of ideas.  It has not in history defended any of the ideas
he defends, or helped any of the liberties in which he hopes.
But it has done one thing:  it has hurt something he hates.
It has done some temporary or apparent harm to the heritage of St. Peter.
It once made something that looked like a little crack in the wall
of Rome.  And because of THAT, the Dean can pardon anything
to the Protestants--even Protestantism.

For this is the strange passion of his life; and he toils through
all these pages of doubts and distinctions only for the moment when
he can liberate his soul in one wild roar of monomaniac absurdity:
"Let the innocent Dreyfus die in prison; let the Irishman who has
committed a treacherous murder be told to leave 'politics'
out of his confession; let the lucrative imposture of Lourdes..."
That is the way to talk!  It is so tiring, pretending to talk sense.

-/-

A SIMPLE THOUGHT

MOST men would return to the old ways in faith and morals if they
could broaden their minds enough to do so.  It is narrowness that
chiefly keeps them in the rut of negation.  But this enlargement
is easily misunderstood, because the mind must be enlarged to see
the simple things; or even to see the self-evident things.
It needs a sort of stretch of imagination to see the obvious
objects against the obvious background; and especially the big
objects against the big background.  There is always the sort
of man who can see nothing but the spot on the carpet, so that
he cannot even see the carpet.  And that tends to irritation,
which he may magnify into rebellion.  Then there is the kind of man
who can only see the carpet, perhaps because it is a new carpet.
That is more human, but it may be tinged with vanity and even vulgarity.
There is the man who can only see the carpeted room;
and that will tend to cut him off too much from other things,
especially the servants' quarters.  Finally, there is the man
enlarged by imagination, who cannot sit in the carpeted room,
or even in the coal-cellar, without seeing all the time the outline
of the whole house against its aboriginal background of earth and sky.
He, understanding that the roof is raised from the beginning as a shield
against sun or snow, and the door against frost or slime, will know
better and not worse than the rest the reasons of the rules within.
He will know better than the first man that there ought not to be
a spot on the carpet.  But he will know, unlike the first man,
why there is a carpet.

He will regard in the same fashion a speck or spot upon
the records of his tradition or his creed.  He will not explain
it ingeniously; certainly he will not explain it away.
On the contrary, he will see it very simply; but he will also see
it very largely; and against the background of larger things.
He will do what his critics never by any chance do; he will see
the obvious thing and ask the obvious question.  For the more I
read of the modern criticisms of religion, especially of my
own religion, the more I am struck by this narrow concentration
and this imaginative incapacity to take in the problem as a whole.
I have recently been reading a very moderate condemnation of current
Catholic practices, coming from America, where the condemnation is often
far from moderate.  It takes the form, generally speaking, of a swarm
of questions, all of which I should be quite willing to answer.
Only I am vividly conscious of the big questions that are not asked,
rather than of the little questions that are.

 

Taken from The Thing, published 1929. Available on-line at:  G.K.C. Webpage *