When the word "orthodoxy" is used here it means the Apostles' Creed, as understood by everybody calling himself Christian until a very short time ago and the general historic conduct of those who held such a creed.
The title of this tome may be confusing to many, especially today. Fortunately, Chesterton outlines what he thinking of when he chooses this title and he does so very early on. Of course, as Chesterton himself somewhat snarkily points out; what good is knowing the particular connotation of orthodoxy if one is unfamiliar with the Apostle’s Creed.
How can we contrive to be at once astonished at the world and yet at home in it? How can this queer cosmic town, with its many-legged citizens, with its monstrous and ancient lamps, how can this world give us at once the fascination of a strange town and the comfort and honour of being our own town?
Chesterton is a very obliging writer. Not only does he take the time to give a specific meaning of orthodoxy, but he is also straightforward in identifying what the reader should keep in mind when trying to identify the main problem his text is trying to work out. Indeed, he considers the concept quoted above as not just those he has devoted his book to answering, but also the main problem with philosophers in general.
The ordinary man has always been sane because the ordinary man has always been a mystic. He has permitted the twilight. He has always had one foot in earth and the other in fairyland. He has always left himself free to doubt his gods; but (unlike the agnostic of to-day) free also to believe in them.
The author expends a lot of words and energy on the ideas contained in fairy tales and how they relate to the real world, religious devotion and madness. He admits that the things he believed in as a child are the things he believes in as an adult. And why not? Fairy tales, he suggests, seems to exist as “entirely reasonable things.” That is the kind of admission that only someone devoted to a rigid, dogmatic, doctrinal system of faith constructed upon preternatural powers and events could say with a straight face. That is what he means by the ordinary man.
Spiritual doctrines do not actually limit the mind as do materialistic denials. Even if I believe in immortality I need not think about it. But if I disbelieve in immortality I must not think about it. In the first case the road is open and I can go as far as I like; in the second the road is shut.
Treading somewhat along perhaps the dull edge of Occam’s Razor, Chesterton is here making the argument that nothing stands to be lost by having faith in the idea of Christian afterlife while that which is to be gained by rejecting such faith is short-lived whatever the actual outcome. Materialism is only dependable when one has material form. When that substance is put into the ground or incinerated, you still have nothing even if rejected Christianity. Only by then the afterlife in store for you may not be what it might have been. Easy choice when based on this principle.
Now, the extraordinary thing is that the bad optimism (the whitewashing, the weak defence of everything) comes in with the reasonable optimism. Rational optimism leads to stagnation: it is irrational optimism that leads to reform.
A Christian's joy in this cursed world, his joy alongside his knowledge of this world's ghastliness, his hope and happiness, his faith and fearlessness, his obstinacy in his Christian optimism—all comes also from the belief that he is made for another world, among other things. Christians as optimists consider themselves as "strangers and pilgrims on earth" and find they can not only endure the inn they know to be ill-fated unlike the rest of the optimists, who consider the inn their "sweet" home and convince themselves that “people get what they deserve” when they see the innocent or good suffer—but even enjoy their stay, despite that knowledge.
This is true not only for the Christians who are undergoing severe persecutions and sufferings, but also for the Christians who are enjoying the most idyllic and glorious lives anyone can have in this present life. Though all Christian will certainly be persecuted, and though all who enter heaven can enter it only through many tribulations, Christians are filled with the joy and peace that the most loved and honored of unchristian celebrities lack. But above everything else, it is Christian's alone who can make others endure and enjoy their stay like Jesus did—fighting evil and doing good to all men, making the present world a better place even as they know it is destined for destruction.
For not only (as I understood) had Christianity the most flaming vices, but it had apparently a mystical talent for combining vices which seemed inconsistent with each other. It was attacked on all sides and for all contradictory reasons.
Being criticized is not a proof of something being worthy or needful of criticism. If something is attacked for truly contradictory reasons by its critics, then at least one of the critics is wrong, or the thing attacked is changing even while being criticized. Now, Christianity does not change since its truth is unchanging—orthodoxy is eternal. So, at least some of its critics are wrong.
Now, we can find all the critics are wrong when we see that the words of the Bible are in agreement to reality. When critics truly contradict themselves, they are foolish in their criticism. If all the attacks made on it were proved to be futile in its goal to show Christianity being false, and moreover, shows why Christian is true or rational, it is the attackers who lose credibility and expose themselves to be fools, liars or madmen.
The man who lives in contact with what he believes to be a living Church is a man always expecting to meet Plato and Shakespeare to-morrow at breakfast. He is always expecting to see some truth that he has never seen before.
Christianity's absolute uniqueness in having statements corresponding to reality and its universal accuracy while doing so by transcending the limits of culture, geography, and time—is seen here as the reason for its obvious truthfulness and its inevitably exclusive greatness. The truths contained in the Bible is not within it as much as it is from it, for the Bible is like an eternal fountain of limitless truths flowing from God Himself as the ultimate source, filled with all the most essential truths for mankind—needful, satisfying, sweet, great and beautiful.
