In the history of great debates, the one between Charles Kingsley and John Henry Newman looms large over most. What began as a fairly flippant dismissal of Newman by Kingsley for his conversion to Catholicism quickly led to one of the great defenses of one's character ever witnessed in Western literature, culminating in Newman's book the Apologia Pro Vita Sua.
With what appeared to be little forethought, Kingsley accused Newman's capability of telling the truth or at least of truly understanding his own actions. Newman (who would eventually be made a Cardinal of the Church) had spent years agonizing over this conversion and well understood that leaving the established Church of England would be viewed by many not only as apostasy but treason. Such is the case when membership in an established national religion is a compulsory part of civic life.
Deep down, Newman was relieved for the opportunity to tell his side of the story, even though the attack on his character pained him so. His defense was so thorough, so masterful and so surgical that Kingsley went down in history as having been thoroughly humiliated by his errors.
And yet, what of Mr. Kingsley?
Kingsley's errors occasioned one of the great texts in the English language. In a way he was a fox walking into a bear trap, who would be pitied in his total dismantling if his intentions were not so malicious. The trap was designed for the moment of ensnarement and yet may have never been sprung at all had it been simply left alone.
And yet, what of Mr. Kingsley? A man who is remembered for useful carelessness and error even though he was himself a brilliant man. He became an perpetual avatar for the modern spirit being ever at odds with Christian orthodoxy. There are still those who are cheering at this match that is relived anew anytime a copy of the Apologia is opened.
Then what of you and I?
How would we feel knowing that our work and ideas were only useful errors? Would it matter to us? Should it matter to us? Charles Kingsley was certainly sincere. He was passionate and he was a patriot. He cared for modern man and the spirit of the age.
But would we want to be Charles Kingsley? At some point he had to have known that he was in way over his head, deep in that haze of desperation that comes when one's first argument failed to persuade by bravado or wit. Newman reached beyond style into the substance of what Kingsley wrote of him, wrenched it, and laid its shallow essence bare.
Some months ago I jumped into an online argument with someone who saw that behind the stylistic gymnastics of what I wrote was a simple factual error, an error of history, that was more than a simple mistake. It revealed how little I knew of what I was talking about. I was Charles Kingsley.
Before that, endless conversations and arguments about music, about obscure metal bands or pastoral English folk music that were truly little more to me than trivia alive within snobby music magazines. I was Charles Kingsley.
Earliest on of all, sitting at a table in an Olive Garden with my father and his elderly physicist friend, arguing on the existence of God, surrounded by family and physicians. I'm 12, maybe 13. My father's friend is a scientist and he doesn't believe in God. I get heated. I get passionate. I don't know why. My sensibilities are offended and I can't explain what I'm feeling inside. I start arguing and I try to shush my father. The physicist is calm and composed and that, along with age and wisdom, serve only as markers of our total opposition. Eventually I am quieted. Internally I am disquieted, and ashamed, and humiliated. I am Charles Kingsley.
To be Charles Kingsley is an opportunity to be wrong and fail spectacularly. At that moment, you may stay or you may grow. To follow in his path is to forever be the contrasted and bested, proud of pride and little else. Of course, you can learn and move on.
Either way you will be useful, to others or to yourself.
