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Laughter in the Courts of Heaven? Chesterton and the Theology of Humor

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 October 2024

David Pickering
David Pickering*
Affiliation:
South Central Theological Education Institution; d.a.a.pickering@gmail.com
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Abstract

This article relates Chesterton’s theology, and that of other theologians, to existing theories of humor. It asks: With regard to the understanding of humor, what is offered by a theological perspective—especially by Chesterton’s theology—that cannot be supplied by philosophical and psychological theories? The article situates Chesterton’s work in relation to three theories of humor: the superiority theory, the release theory, and the incongruity theory. It then examines two important relationships: first, that between humor, worship, and joy; then, that between humor, cognition, and theology. While focusing on Chesterton’s writing, it also considers relevant aspects of the work of other thinkers, including Ian Ker, Duncan Reyburn, Thomas Aquinas, Søren Kierkegaard, Reinhold Niebuhr, Karl Rahner, Peter Berger, Ingvild Sælid Gilhus, Terry Lindvall, and Brian Edgar. The article concludes by suggesting the beginnings of an outline of a theology of humor.

Keywords

humorChestertontheologyincongruitywitsatirejoycognition

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Type
Article
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 117 , Issue 3 , July 2024 , pp. 532 - 557
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© The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the President and Fellows of Harvard College

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Footnotes

*

I would like to thank the journal’s anonymous reviewers for their very helpful comments and suggestions and Mr. Ross Jones of the Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford, for his kind help with research.

References

1 J. Y. T. Greig, The Psychology of Laughter and Comedy (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1923) 225–79.

2 See, for example, The European Journal of Humour Research (https://europeanjournalofhumour.org/ejhr).

3 John Morreall, “Introduction,” in The Philosophy of Laughter and Humor (ed. John Morreall; SUNY Series in Philosophy; Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1987) 5–7; Noël Carroll, Humour: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014) 7–42.

4 Morreall, “Introduction,” 4–6; Carroll, Humour, 4–7.

5 Ian Ker, “Humour and Holiness in Chesterton,” in The Holiness of G. K. Chesterton (ed. William Oddie; Leominster: Gracewing, 2010) 36–53.

6 Duncan Reyburn, “Laughter and the Between: G. K. Chesterton and the Reconciliation of Theology and Hilarity,” Radical Orthodoxy: Theology, Politics, Philosophy 3 (2015) 18–51; idem, “The Beautiful Madness called Laughter: On the Role of Humour in Chesterton’s Philosophy,” The Chesterton Review 41 (2015) 473–84; idem, Seeing Things as They Are: G. K. Chesterton and the Drama of Meaning (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2016). Reyburn’s book focuses on hermeneutics, not on theology as such, while the two articles deal more directly with the relationship between theology and humor.

7 Karl Rahner, “Laughter,” The Content of Faith: The Best of Karl Rahner’s Theological Writings (ed. Karl Lehmann and Albert Raffelt; New York: Crossroad, 1994) 148–52; Ingvild Sælid Gilhus, Laughing Gods, Weeping Virgins: Laughter in the History of Religion (London: Taylor & Francis, 1997); Terry Lindvall, God Mocks: A History of Religious Satire from the Hebrew Prophets to Stephen Colbert (New York: NYU Press, 2015); Brian Edgar, Laughter and the Grace of God: Restoring Laughter to its Central Role in Christian Faith and Theology (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2019); Peter Berger, Redeeming Laughter: The Comic Dimension of Human Experience (Berlin; Boston: de Gruyter, 2014); Søren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript to the Philosophical Crumbs (ed. Alistair Hannay; Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009).

8 Plato, The Republic (ed. and trans. R. E. Allen; New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006) 388d–389b; idem, Plato’s Philebus (ed. and trans. R. Hackforth; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972) 48a–50e.

9 Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (ed. Karl Schuhmann and G. A. J. Rogers; 2 vols.; London: Bloomsbury, 2006) 2:48; idem, The Treatise on Human Nature and that on Liberty and Necessity, with a supplement (ed. Philip Mallet; London: J. Johnson & Co., 1812) 64–66.

10 F. H. Buckley, The Morality of Laughter (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2005) 191.

11 G. K. Chesterton, Alarms and Discursions (London: Methuen, 1910) 200–201.

12 G. K. Chesterton, The Common Man (London: Sheed and Ward, 1950) 158.

13 G. K. Chesterton, “The Moods of Mr. George Moore,” in The Collected Works of G. K. Chesterton (ed. George J. Marlin et al.; 23 vols.; San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1986) 1:106–9.

14 Chesterton, “Humour,” Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11:883–85.

15 Chesterton, Orthodoxy, in Collected Works, 1:298.

16 Chesterton, “Paganism and Mr. Lowes Dickinson,” in Collected Works, 1:122–31.

17 Chesterton, Orthodoxy, in Collected Works, 1:223.

18 Reyburn has very briefly related Chesterton’s humor to the superiority theory. He asserts that the superiority theory is an “overly universal or impersonal reading of humor” and “terribly self-limiting” but does not develop his argument (Reyburn, “Laughter and the Between,” 44).

19 G. K. Chesterton, All Things Considered (London: Methuen, 1915) 153–54.

20 Ibid., 17.

21 Ker very helpfully notes the central importance of humility in Chesterton’s understanding of humor without investigating its basis in these central Christian doctrines, the importance of Chesterton’s idiosyncratic exposition of these doctrines to his treatment of humor, or relating the role Chesterton assigns to humility to the superiority theory of humor (Ker, “Humour and Holiness,” 44–48).

22 G. K. Chesterton, A Handful of Authors: Essays on Books and Writers (London; New York: Sheed and Ward, 1953) 28–29.

23 Chesterton, “Protests against the War,” in Collected Works, 31:112–13.

24 Chesterton, Orthodoxy, in Collected Works, 1:365–66.

25 Ps 2:4; 37:13, 59:8 (NRSV)

26 Chesterton, “Humor.”

27 It should be noted that Chesterton treats “wit” and “humor” as separate categories; this article, however, will follow more conventional schemes of classification and treat wit as a subcategory of humor.

28 Chesterton, “Humor.”

29 Chesterton, “The New Greek Revival,” in Collected Works, 29:546.

30 Carlo de Marchi, “Thomas Aquinas, Thomas More and the Vindication of Humor as a

Virtue: Eutrapelia and Iucunditas,” Moreana 52 (2015) 95–107, at 104–5.

31 Reyburn, “Laughter and the Between,” 41, 45–46.

32 Herbert Spencer, “The Physiology of Laughter,” Macmillan’s Magazine (1860): 395–402.

33 Sigmund Freud, Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious (Routledge Paperbacks 59; London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1960). There was a later development of the theory in Freud’s paper “On Humor”: see the unsigned “Review of Sigmund Freud’s paper ‘On Humor,’” The Psychoananalytic Review 15 (1928) 85–86.

34 Morreall, “Introduction,” 6.

35 Chesterton, “Humor.”

36 Spencer is referenced dozens of times in Chesterton’s Collected Works.

37 G. K. Chesterton, Charles Dickens (London: Methuen, 1946) 175–77.

38 Chesterton, “The Dickens Period,” in Collected Works, 15:50.

39 Chesterton, “Omar and the Sacred Vine,” in Collected Works, 1:96.

40 Chesterton, “Rostand,” in Twelve Types (Norfolk, VA: IHS Press, 2003) 40–44.

41 Chesterton, “Creed and Deed,” in Collected Works, 27:389.

42 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, II–II, q. 168, a. 2 (trans. Thomas Gilby O.P. et al.; 61 vols.; London & New York: Eyre & Spottiswoode & McGraw-Hill, 1964–1973).

43 Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, II–II, q. 168, a. 4.

44 Lindvall, God Mocks, 267–71.

45 Berger, Redeeming Laughter, 199.

46 Perhaps Gilhus’s investigation is handicapped by her attempt to structure her survey by means of a highly generalised history of religions framework for humor rather than a more precise and analytical theological approach. See Gilhus, Laughing Gods, Weeping Virgins, 149.

47 Francis Hutcheson, Reflections upon Laughter, and Remarks upon the Fable of the Bees (Glasgow: R.Urie, for Daniel Baxter, Bookseller, 1750) 7.

48 James Beattie, Essays on the Nature and Immutability of Truth, in Opposition to Sophistry and Scepticism; on Poetry and Music, as They Affect the Mind; on Laughter, and Ludicrous Composition; and, on the Utility of Classical Learning (Dublin: C. Jenkin, 1778) 303.

49 See Morreall, “Introduction,” 6, 26–89, 139–55, 172–86.

50 Carroll confidently asserts that “most philosophers and psychologists. . . find the incongruity theory (or some variant thereof) to be the most fruitful” hypothesis about the nature of humor (Carroll, Humour, 8).

51 Reyburn relates Chesterton’s understanding of humor to the incongruity theory, although only very briefly and without a substantial discussion. See Reyburn, “Laughter and the Between,” 26, 38; idem, “The Beautiful Madness called Laughter,” 474, 479–81.

52 Chesterton, “Humor.”.

53 Chesterton, “Moral Poison in Modern Fiction,” in Collected Works, 32:444.

54 G. K. Chesterton, The Man Who Was Orthodox (ed. A. L. Maycock; London: D. Dobson, 1963) 84–86.

55 Chesterton, “The Outline of the Fall,” in Collected Works, 3:311.

56 Hugh Kenner, Paradox in Chesterton (introd. by Herbert Marshall McLuhan; London: Sheed & Ward, 1948), 92–93.

57 Chesterton, Man Who Was Orthodox, 84.

58 Ibid., 166.

59 G. K. Chesterton, “Bacon and Beastliness,” The Speaker (8 February 1902), qtd. in William Oddie, Chesterton and the Romance of Orthodoxy: The Making of GKC, 1874–1908 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 189–90.

60 Chesterton, Twelve Types, 28.

61 Kenner, Paradox, 17.

62 Chesterton, “Popular Jokes and Vulgarity,” in Collected Works, 28:66–67.

63 Reyburn has related the importance of the incarnation to that of creation and fall in the background of Chesterton’s thought and humor as part of his book-length study of Chesterton’s hermeneutic. Because that book centers on hermeneutics, however, in it he addresses the theology-humor relationship indirectly, as a subsidiary aspect of his discussion. See, for example, Reyburn, Seeing Things as They Are, 172–85.

64 Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, 179–96, 226–28, 244–46. See also Aaron Edwards, “The Paradox of Dialectic: Clarifying the Use and Scope of Dialectic in Theology,” International Journal of Philosophy and Theology 77 (2016): 273–306, at 291–92.

65 Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, 182–83, 486–88.

66 Reyburn, “The Beautiful Madness Called Laughter,” 478, 481.

67 Roger Scruton, “Laughter,” the first part of Roger Scruton and Peter Jones, “Laughter,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society (Supplementary Volumes) 56 (1982) 197–228, at 197–212.

68 Reyburn, “The Beautiful Madness Called Laughter,” 473–84, at 480.

69 See Oddie, Chesterton, 38–42, 121–25. I. T. Ker, G. K. Chesterton: A Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012) 213–29.

70 G. K. Chesterton, The Autobiography of G. K. Chesterton (London: Hutchinson, 1936) 93–95. See also Garry Wills, Chesterton, Man and Mask (New York: Sheed & Ward, 1961) 24–26.

71 Michael D. Hurley, G. K. Chesterton (Tavistock: Northcote House, 2012) 4.

72 Hurley, Chesterton, xiii.

73 Victor Shklovsky, “Art as Technique,” in Literary Theory: An Anthology (ed. Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan; 3rd ed.; Chichester, West Sussex: Wiley Blackwell, 2017) 8–15.

74 Alison Milbank, Chesterton and Tolkien as Theologians: The Fantasy of the Real (T&T Clark Theology; London: T&T Clark, 2007), 31–39.

75 Hurley, Chesterton, 5–6.

76 Shklovsky, “Art as Technique,” 12.

77 Chesterton, St. Thomas Aquinas, in Collected Works, 2:513.

78 René Girard has argued that pain is not far from laughter, and Thomas Veatch has described humor as “(emotional) pain that does not hurt”; notwithstanding the work of these authors, the predominant view of humor is of something that is usually enjoyable and is not normally closely related to pain (the same is largely true of laughter, with allowances made for its nature as an embodied phenomenon; tickling is a special case, as the laughter it causes is the result of physical stimulus not comic amusement). See René Girard, “To Double Business Bound”: Essays on Literature, Mimesis, and Anthropology (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978) 121–35 and Thomas Veatch, “A Theory of Humor,” Humor: The International Journal of Humor Research 11 (1998) 161–215, at 164.

79 G. K. Chesterton, The Defendant (London: J. M. Dent, 1914) 124–27.

80 Chesterton, Orthodoxy, in Collected Works, 1:364–65.

81 Aidan Nichols, G. K. Chesterton, Theologian (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 2009) 107–18. See also Ralph C. Wood, “The Argument from Joy: The Current State of Scholarship on G. K. Chesterton as Thinker and Theologian,” VII: An Anglo-American Literary Review 27 (2010) 85–92.

82 Romano Guardini, The Spirit of the Liturgy (London: Sheed & Ward, 1930) 102.

83 Chesterton, Defendant, 61–70.

84 Chesterton, “Protests against the War,” in Collected Works, 31:112–13.

85 Rahner, The Content of Faith, 151.

86 Rahner, The Content of Faith, 150.

87 Edgar, Laughter and the Grace of God, 123–35.

88 Reinhold Niebuhr, The Essential Reinhold Niebuhr: Selected Essays and Addresses (ed. Robert McAfee Brown; New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987) 49.

89 Chesterton, St. Thomas Aquinas, in Collected Works, 2:513.

90 G. K. Chesterton, The Uses of Diversity: A Book of Essays (London: Methuen, 1920) 72.

91 Chesterton, “Spiritualism and Frivolity,” in Collected Works, 27:206.

92 Jonathan Miller, “Jokes and Joking: A Serious Laughing Matter,” in Laughing Matters: A Serious Look at Humour (ed. John Durant & Jonathan Miller; Harlow, Essex: Longman, 1988) 5–16, at 15.

93 Chesterton, “The Obvious Blunders,” in Collected Works, 3:74.

94 It would seem that this should read “possession” not “obsession”; “obsession” is the word used in Chesterton’s original article where he may have misquoted Mr. Roberts.

95 G. K. Chesterton, “Jesus or Christ? A Reply to Mr. Roberts,” The Chesterton Review 7 (1981) 95–107, at 104–5.

96 Marvin Minsky, “Jokes and the Logic of the Collective Unconscious,” in Cognitive Constraints on Communication: Representations and Processes (ed. Lucia Vaina and Jaakko Hintikka; Dordrecht/Boston/Lancaster: D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1984) 175–200, at 176.

97 G. K. Chesterton, Lunacy and Letters (London; New York: Sheed and Ward, 1958) 26.

98 Chesterton, “Why I Believe in Christianity,” in Collected Works, 1:383–84.

99 For instance, he suggests: the “man building up an intellectual system has to build like Nehemiah, with the sword in one hand and the trowel in the other. The imagination, the constructive quality, is the trowel, and argument is the sword” (Chesterton, Twelve Types, 56).

100 Chesterton, The Autobiography of G. K. Chesterton, in Collected Works, 16:132.

101 Berger, Redeeming Laughter, 199.

102 Oliver O’Donovan, The Ways of Judgment: The Bampton Lectures, 2003 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005), xv.