Chance or the Dance?: A Critique of Modern Secularism

102 Pages·2018·0.64 MB·English

by  Thomas Howard

CHANCE OR THE DANCE?
THOMAS HOWARD
Chance or the
Dance?
A Critique of Modern Secularism
Second Edition
IGNATIUS PRESS SAN FRANCISCO
First edition published by
Harold Shaw Publishers
Wheaton, Illinois
© 1969 by Thomas T. Howard
Reprinted 1989, 2001 by Ignatius Press, San Francisco
Cover photograph:
Starry Rotating Night
By LazyPiexel / Brunner Sébastien
© Getty Images
Cover design by Roxanne Mei Lum
Second edition © 2018 by Ignatius Press, San Francisco
ISBN 978-1-62164-229-9 (PB)
ISBN 978-1-64229-034-9 (EB)
Library of Congress catalogue number 2017954432
Printed in the United States of America
For Professor Kilby
who took my arm and said, “Look”
CONTENTS
Foreword by Eric Metaxas
Preface to the Second Edition
Acknowledgments
1 The Old Myth and the New
2 Of Dishrags and Borzois
3 Lunch and Death
4 “One Foot Up, One Foot Down”
5 Sublimity, Soup Cans, Etc.
6 Autocrats, Autonomy, and Acorns
7 Sex
8 Bravo the Humdrum
Afterword by Tyler Blanski
More from Ignatius Press
Notes
FOREWORD
by Eric Metaxas
Once upon a time—when I was a young man—I fell as it were under a spell.
Truth be told, I did not so much fall under it as I was buoyed up by it. It was not
the standard fairytale ensorcelling that pushes upright man downward toward
four-footed bestiality, but was rather the magnificent opposite of such. It was the
kind of spell that ennobles, that turns straw and lead into gold. In fact, it was as
though I had been carried from a low neighborhood of mud and brindle hair to
the very ramparts of heaven.
This took place in the summer of 1988, when I bowed my knee to that
Sovereign of Sovereigns whose coming is prophesied in the ancient Scriptures of
Israel. Truth be told, this new allegiance was the best thing that ever happened to
me, which is itself a wild understatement. Yet, this tremendous boon came with
some difficulties. For one thing, how was I to explain this dramatic change of
situation to my “educated” and “civilized” friends who had not been similarly
entranced, and who thought my newfound joy something barbaric, if not as
undeniable evidence of my having become non compos mentis?
I myself wondered about a few things too. For one thing, precisely how was I
to reconcile my new faith with certain parts of my previous life? For example,
must I leave behind forever my love of words and ideas and meaning? Was this
new world of serious Christian faith compatible with a love of classical and even
“pagan” literature? With puns and poesy? I seemed to have evidence that it was
not; and so I was troubled.
Then someone on a white steed hurriedly rode toward me and handed me the
book you are yourself now holding—his name is Tibor Lengyel, but we must not
name him publicly here. And that book I did ope and did read. And my life was
then and forever changed. So it is a fact that reading this book was for me like a
miracle—and was not merely like a miracle but really was a miracle. And the
book itself is a miracle still. How to describe it?
Let us imagine that C. S. Lewis had lived well beyond 1963 and had written
many more essays and poems and books. Imagine that six years after we thought
he had died he produced one of his most beautiful and important books, titled
Chance or the Dance? That, in effect, is what you have in your hands now. In
fact, anyone who loves C. S. Lewis and who has not read Chance or the Dance?
is almost missing a new book in Lewis’ oeuvre. It is simply quite that good.
There are differences between Lewis and Howard, to be sure. For one thing
Howard’s prose style is better than anything in Lewis’ nonfiction; and I hope
that everyone can at least agree that it is more beautiful—even sumptuous—and
I have no doubt that old Jack would agree. (By the way, as a graduate student,
Tom Howard visited Jack Lewis at the Kilns and spent an afternoon with him
there, but that’s another story.)
Unlike most books, this one is nearly impossible to categorize. What exactly
is it? For one thing, it is a manifesto, as you will soon see. But it is a kind of
prose symphony too, which manifestos manifestly never are. In another way it is
a rambling yet manicured and sweeping lawn, punctuated appropriately with a
population of ancient and agreeable marble busts. There are things in it that you
will simply never forget.
To put it another way, there are a handful of books that if not read will put one
at a serious disadvantage in life. These books are foundational and help us
understand the world in a way that is positively vital. They are primers, giving us
a new vocabulary with which to apprehend the cosmos. To read these books is
something like learning to tie a shoe. It is an experience without which life is
inestimably more difficult, and even dangerous. Who wants to trip on one’s
shoelaces over and over throughout the long decades?
But back to the prose. It is exquisite to the point of being baroque, but never
rococo. It is nearly as lapidary as Lincoln’s Second Inaugural, but is never
cloyingly so, as some of Chesterton’s aphorism-riddled writings can be, however
good they are. And like Chesterton, this book is both lapidary and fun. Sadly, the
universe of such writing seems limited to the works of these two authors. So be
of good cheer: this little sea upon which you are about to embark in your stout
coracle is inestimably and impossibly wonderful. I cannot think of a single book
in creation that says anything approaching what this book says, and certainly not
with the élan and joie de vivre and fitness with which this book says it.
For example, would you like to understand once and forever the forlorn folly
of so-called sexuality outside marriage? More to the point, would you like to
understand exactly what sex is and what it is for? Here you will find it. And
incidentally, if you ever in your life discover a better chapter on sex than the one
in this book—in any written language—do not delay in dropping everything and
chartering a plane to wherever I am to share it with me, for which trouble and
expense I will hock all I have to reimburse you. In this book you will see with
your whole soul how the modern, materialistic view of the world is as sad and
silly as anything ever could be: as a snake swallowing its own tail—and then
vanishing into thin air with a faintly audible pop. Ciao!
But have I mentioned the prose style? The book is a happy bramble of giddy
turns of phrase, and through it that reader will proceed best who proceeds least
hurried. Be absolutely certain that you give yourself the time to take in the
whorls and the whoopees. And by all means feel free to look up—and then
sunbathe in—such words as “valetudinarian” and “purlieu” and “bibelot”. And
be sure to gambol and cut capers over the references to Vermeer and Wee Willie
Winky and Ultima Thule. And by all means turn cartwheels and handsprings
around such sentences as “Don’t insist on seeing a cosmic order in Goosey,
Goosey, Gander.” That’s the only appropriate response.
Must we cut to the chase? There is nothing like this book. It stands apart in
what it is and what it says and cannot really be compared to any other books ever
written. Read it for yourself and tell me to what you would compare it. To a
Shakespearean sonnet? At least that’s a start. And like all the truly best art, it has
a powerful moral component. If I may say so, this book makes me want to be a
better man. If you are a man I suspect it will make you want to be a better man,
too; and if you are a woman it will make you want to be a better woman. And
that’s no jive, turkey.
*
In the summer of 1998, nine years after reading this book, I found myself headed
to Oxford University for the centenary of C. S. Lewis’ birth. I was in part excited
to go because I understood that Thomas Howard was to be there. Could he exist
in the same world in which I did? On the bus from Heathrow I met a woman
who was also headed to the Lewis event, and somehow it came out that she was
friends with the Howards. I gulped.
And then it happened. Later that day there was a reception in the grassy
quadrangle of Magdalen College, which was C. S. Lewis’ college at Oxford and
whose particular golden greenness—framed by the stone-cloistered walks—
seemed itself to partake of the Middle Ages. The woman to whom I was
speaking on the bus saw me and introduced me to her friend Lovelace Howard.
When I visibly goggled to be speaking to the wife of the man whose book had
changed my life, she smiled and said: “Would you like to meet him?”
I said that I would, and she disappeared into the crowd and I waited. And then
out of that same crowd came the very man himself. “What ho?” quoth he, for he
actually talks as he writes. He was indefatigably self-deprecating, and I could
hardly believe I was talking to him. Such sublime moments partake of eternity,
as though forever preserved in aspic and amber, and they are.
The next day, dressed in an academic gown, he gave a talk in the Sheldonian
—that illustrious building designed by Sir Christopher Wren—whose interior is
painted in that uniquely English orange-red and gold, and I remember that in his
talk he used the word “ultra-marine”. Like this book and most of his writing, his
speech was all just perfectly shy of grandiloquence.
In the twenty years since then I have had the inestimable privilege of
befriending this great man and of trying to convince him that his book changed
my life, but—alas and alack!—to no avail. That I even would use that
ejaculation in an essay should prove the point all by itself, once and for all. But
my humble mentor will have none of it. If you try to convince him of such things
he will only retreat into the depths like a cuttlefish, all the while squirting ink
that spells “Oh, pshaw!” In fact, no matter how you try to praise him he will
invariably and frustratingly adopt a perfectly Puddleglummian demeanor—the
only difference between his adoption of it and Puddleglum’s being that unlike
the venerable Puddleglum, Thomas Howard does not have the good excuse of
actually being a marshwiggle, which strikes those who know and love him as a
dispositive distinction.
Still, you needn’t take my word for it. You too can in a moment catch a gray
glimpse of marshy hue in the final sentences of his new Preface right here in
these pages. If a reply is tenable, he writes. Yes, if! “But of course a reply is
tenable!” we all wish to shout. “And this book, dearest Tom, is that golden reply
itself—and if you could bear to hear it, it is the best reply thereto ever written
and that anyone ever will write, by full fathoms five and then some. Put that in
your corncob pipe, sir, and smoke it!” But enough.
Before we enter the realm of Thomas Howard’s glorious and luminescent
reply, please imagine an island in the middle of the sea. Imagine sailing there
and then learning that there is in the middle of that seagirt isle a freshwater lake.
And then travel overland to that lake and behold there floating in the midst of
that lake a small island. Why do you want to go there? But you do. But why?
Reading this book is like visiting that island; and reading this book will help
explain why you want to go to that island. And it will help explain why you hope
that that small island in the middle of the lake will in turn have a small pond
upon it. And perhaps in the midst of that small pond there will be another tinier
—tiniest—island. Tolle lege.
—Eric Metaxas
December 2017