The Return of Christian Humanism: Chesterton, Eliot,
Tolkien, and the Romance of History by Lee Oser
(Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2007)

DAVID G. BONAGURA JR. is Associate Editor of The University Bookman.

In the first chapter of his biography of
St. Thomas Aquinas, G. K. Chesterton
compares the Common Doctor with St.
Francis of Assisi, asserting that “these saints
were, in the most exact sense of the term,
Humanists; because they were insisting on
the importance of the human being in the
theological scheme of things.” Of course,
as a Christian humanist himself, Chesterton
insisted on the same, as did, in different
ways, T. S. Eliot and J. R. R. Tolkien.
Independently the three labored to save
humanism from the positivism of Comte,
the liberalism of Matthew Arnold, and the
aestheticism of Walter Pater, not through
philosophy or rhetoric, but through literature,
the medium in which, according to
Lee Oser, “imagination mediates between
God and man.”

In The Return of Christian Humanism:
Chesterton, Eliot, Tolkien, and the Romance
of History, Oser, associate professor of English
at the College of the Holy Cross, offers
a passionate, piquant, and wide-ranging
articulation of Christian humanism in
Chesterton’s sense that “conserves the radical
middle between secularism and theocracy.” For Oser the tradition of Christian
humanism rests upon a moral foundation
of reason and human nature that affirms
“the orthodox planks of the Apostles’
Creed.” Through literary exegesis and
philosophical inquiry, Oser challenges the
reign of the postmodern academy with a
robust humanism that enlivens the soul
from the source of Christian tradition.

In three successive chapters that form
the foundation of the book, Oser presents
Chesterton, Eliot, and Tolkien as the twentieth
century’s principal exponents of Christian
humanism. According to Oser, Chesterton
sought “to make ordinary people aware
that common sense, if it was going to survive
the twentieth century, needed a religious
foundation.” But the writings of the
Apostle of Common Sense are more than
simple Christian apologetics; rather, Oser
describes his work as a “romance of history”
that “turns on his realization that Christian
theology defines European culture against
its rivals.” However, Oser cautions against
reading Chesterton as a reactionary: “Chesterton’s
thinking is molded and tempered
by a humanistic liberalism that engages
modernity,” and therefore he “is not reducible
to one camp.”

Eliot was a very different type of Christian
humanist from Chesterton, although
they both traveled tortuous paths to realize
that “it is religion that makes the best life
possible for man.” Eliot’s greatest contribution
to Christian humanism followed
his baptism, when he “was able to connect
his modernist aesthetic to Augustinian
theology.” Examining Eliot’s approach
to orthodoxy, morals, and democracy,
Oser concludes that Eliot, a “great mind
exhausted by its own divisions,” is “a theocrat,
though he wants a humanistic theocracy
that maximizes freedom in accordance
with his own somber worldview.”

Oser presents the tale-telling Tolkien
as the foil to the modernist: whereas the
latter “is no friend to human nature,” the
former “embraces human nature, sings to
the heart, and humanizes the soul.” For
this reason Tolkien has been dismissed
by modernist and postmodernist critics,
a mistake that Oser endeavors to correct.
In Chestertonian fashion, “Tolkien aims
to unite myth to reason and nature” in
a manner that “is not so much an escape
from modernity as a rejection of modern
dehumanization.” Therefore, “The
Lord of the Rings is an apology for Christian
humanism,” since “it relates truth
to goodness to beauty, in an analogue of
Christian myth that tells the story of man
in the created order.”

Oser proposes the works of these three
men against the “benevolent secular universalism”
of today’s postmodernism. Antihumanist
at root, postmodernism was born
from the literature of Beckett, who “concluded
modernism by waging total war on
Western culture” through the philosophy of
Schopenhauer, “the anti-Apollonian oracle
of old Europe’s slow suicide,” whose “gnostic
aestheticism undoes all humanistic values.”
With the adoption of Schopenhauer’s
gnosticism, the iconoclast Beckett sought
to dismantle “the Christian cosmos piece
by piece.” After Beckett, contemporary literary
critics imbibed this gnosticism that
seeks the destruction of all religious and
metaphysical foundations in the name of
multiculturalism and antiformalism, with
the essence of antiformalism receiving a
chapter of protracted analysis in the book.
Oser identifies Helen Vendler and Harold
Bloom as the deans of this movement; following
them “lesser talents quickly learned
the trick of demolition, which was simply a
matter . . . of putting me first.” Bloom himself
split the literary tradition between Christians
and gnostics, but in siding with the latter
“Bloom had it wrong: gnosticism is not
‘the religion of literature.’ Unlike the great
books, it is parasitical on orthodoxy and
possibly always has been.” As a result such
anti-Christian work unwittingly highlights
“the reason, nature, and history through
which Christianity gives literature life.”

But rather than rehash the common
arguments for resurrecting the literary tradition,
Oser instead seeks an ontological
foundation for Christian humanism. After
examining the implications of the metaphysics
of Schopenhauer, Kant, and John
Paul II, Oser sides with John Paul’s realism,
but not for the reasons described in
the Pope’s encyclical Fides et Ratio. Aware
of deconstructivist repudiation, Oser
acknowledges the limits of reason, but he
deems it “indispensable to the good life.”
Therefore, he gives an argument for rationality
that “is practical, not conclusive”:
“For reasons of health and sanity, we need
to conserve a moral foundation in human
nature,” which is brought about by reason
that “mediates between nature and culture.”
Readers may quarrel with his practical
means or his realist end, but even in
the twenty-first century realism remains
fundamental to viable religious orthodoxy
and to the Christian literary tradition.

Although philosophy plays a critical
cultural role, ultimately for Oser
“literature, benefiting from philosophy
and theology, restores thought to feeling”
in the postmodern world. Pragmatically
building upon Aristotle’s conception of
reason and nature and the orthodox theology
of the Apostles’ Creed, Oser’s literature
is romantic, but not in the fashion
of the nineteenth century. His romanticism
is Chesterton’s romance of history,
which finds its source in “the mystery and
the meaning of Rome.” Functioning as a
common source, Rome “furnishes history
with an organic form: a complex, living
structure of thought that is emphatically
not the cornerstone of ‘fortress Catholicism.'”
Indeed, Oser maintains “that the
romance of history is not a triumphalist
appeal to Rome or an unqualified plea for
central authority.” Rather, his romance
of history turns on “its uncanny pragmatism”
that engages the world by aiming “to
strike a balance between the center and the
margin, a balance that is humanistic in its
respect for culture.”

Thus the Christian humanist “must
defend the radical middle, where genuine
tolerance may be found.” For Oser,
religious orthodoxy, while mindful of
its tendency to “hypocrisy and intolerance,”
must push for its rightful place in
the public square, for “at its best, orthodoxy
is inspired, mystical, pragmatic,
and organic,” and it “speaks to our most
intimate moral awareness of each other
and of God.”

The broad scope of this book, which
probes deeply into the core of the Western
literary and philosophical tradition, invites
serious reflection and discussion from a
wide audience. Proponents of the literary
canon, formalist poetry, metaphysical realism,
and the relation of literature to philosophy
will draw ideas and inspiration from
Oser’s well reasoned and vigorously argued
account. His commentaries on Chesterton,
Eliot, and Tolkien are perspicacious
and invaluable, but, his account of religious
orthodoxy’s role in literature is too
focused on its informal dimension. In distancing
himself from the charge of Roman
triumphalism, Oser overlooks the positive
and effective role that religious institutions,
such as the Christian church including
the papacy, can play in the rebirth of
culture. The church’s orthodoxy, as Eliot
recognized, ensures that the metaphysics
from which literature flows remain sound.
Moreover, the institution of the papacy,
long the heart of Rome, has the power to
inspire genuine cultural renewal, as it did
in the Baroque era and as it attempts to in
the contemporary pontificates of John Paul
II and Benedict XVI. Additionally, over
emphasis on the pragmatic dimension of
Rome and of the romance of history tends
to forget the role of the Christian conception
of grace that in primis makes cultural
growth and human flourishing possible.
Despite the criticism of postmoderns, grace
cannot be swept into the sacristy if genuine
Christian humanism is to remain viable.
Even when addressing non-Christians,
Christian humanism’s willing receptiveness
of the supernatural opens itself to the truths
of revelation and of the human religious
experience, allowing it to speak intimately
and truthfully to the whole person.

Oser, like Chesterton, the writer with
whom he most strongly identifies, cannot
be confined within a single camp.
While clearly Aristotelian in his view
of reason and nature, Oser’s propensity
for myth and the romance of history has
Platonic underpinnings, and his practical
approach to realism follows that of atheist
Thomas Nagle. (Oser dismisses in the
first chapter the philosophy of pragmatism
as expounded by William James as inadequate
for humanism.) Moreover, although
he is drawn to Rome and the writings of
John Paul II, he praises the Reformation for
paving the path to democracy and endorses
F. H. Bradley’s defense of Protestantism.
But while there is a great diversity of influences
and tendencies, there is no division
in Oser’s thought: steeped in literature and
well-versed in philosophy, Oser writes fluently
on thinkers as diverse as Luther and
John Paul II, Matthew Arnold and Harold
Bloom, Nietzsche and Augustine, always
with an eye toward the cultural and philosophical
implications of their ideas.

Oser’s book, eminently quotable, and
simultaneously intelligent and passionate,
impressively illustrates the essence and
importance of Christian humanism: “It
is literature that illuminates the need for
Christianity, and not a weakness in Christianity
that creates a need for literature.”
In the final analysis, “by bringing its accumulated
wisdom to the service of democratic
modernity based on real freedom,
[Christianity] can be the leading force for
cultural renewal in the West.” So great is
the promise of Christianity and its humanistic
expression, and “that is just its practical
value.”