A garden of delight is the little book
(136 pages) titled “Chance or the Dance, A Critique of ModernSecularism,” by Thomas Howard. Although the topic is serious,
the writing is Lewis-like, almost whimsical, and very enjoyable.
The thesis of the author is that a new
myth (“if you can’t measure it, it does not exist”) has
replaced the old myth (angels, demons, gods, heaven, hell); and with
that changing of myth has come a necessary alteration of
significance. Under the old myth, everything means everything: the
patterns and rhythms and images of everyday humdrum existence all
point to an Ultimate Reality—they all mean something.
Conversely, under the new myth nothing means anything: everything is
the product of random chance, the fortuitous collocation of molecules
and atoms and therefore the very concept of meaning or significance
is an impossibility.
The book is not a philosophical tome by
any means – the writer eschews jargon and uses garden-variety
experiences and objects (wherein is the whimsy) – lunch, acorns,
soup cans, dishrags – to assert his argument (lurking behind it all
I sense he is drawing allusions to Plato’s forms). But it’s not a
book to exhaust the reader with mental gymnastics – his points are
simple. He also draws richly from the world of art, literature,
movies, poetry, etc, to make his case.
Do not be fooled: this is not a book
for skimming. He builds the wall of his argument a brick at a time
and if you skim you’ll wind up missing bricks here and there. Pay
close attention to the first two chapters where he lays out his ideas
of the old/new myths, the notion of form and content, and
imaging/imagination. These are matters Howard uses constantly
throughout the book, and you’ll want to note well what he means by
them.
Like Lewis, Tolkien, and Chesterton,
Howard comes from the tradition of Anglo-Catholic
philosopher/writers. If there’s a bone I have to pick with this
excellent and clear-minded tradition it is the exaltation of reason
to an excessive height, often putting God at the wrong end of the
microscope and making Him the object upon which we exercise our
rationality, rather than seeing God as the author of a rationality to
which He himself is not subject. This tradition often overlooks the
darkness which sin has imposed on our ability to think rationally. In
any case, you’ll enjoy Howard’s exquisitely precise argument that
comes wrapped in the clothes of everyday life.
Howard only intimates but does not
state the ultimate point of his book. He suggests rather than
proclaims. As a reader who knows the Ultimate Reality behind the
images, I found this to be a little frustrating, something like
listening to a truncated rendition of a glorious piece of music. The
conductor, coming to the finale of a bravura performance of a
gorgeous symphony, waves the orchestra to silence and neglects the
the final page. The music hangs in the air, begging for its
crescendo. But that is just the sort of subtlety that defines all the
pages of this little volume—Howard leaves the reader to connect the
final, obvious dots. Perhaps, in the end, that is part of its appeal.
That resolution does come (in the
edition that I read) in the afterword by Tyler Blanski. One might
accuse Blanski of stating the obvious, but in four pages he does it
well. Many readers of this book might be muddling about in darkness.
Connecting the lines to the final dots might be asking too much.
Blanski marks the path clearly for those wearing the opaque glasses
of secularism.
Five stars to Howard’s Chance or
the Dance; it is a relentlessly more powerful apologetic than
citing facts, figures, and statistics.
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