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Chesterton University |
An Introduction to the Writings of G.K. Chesterton
by Dale Ahlquist
The Strangest
Story in the World
The
Everlasting Man
CS. Lewis was an atheist until he read
G.K. Chesterton's book, The Everlasting Man, but he wasn't afterwards,
prompting him to observe that a young man who is serious about his atheism
cannot be too careful about what he reads.
Of all of Chesterton's literary monuments, this is perhaps his greatest,
for he eloquently and concisely packs the whole human story between the covers
of one book. He begins by pointing out that the main problem with the critics
of the Church is that they are too close to it to see it properly. They cannot
see the big picture, only the small picture that directly affects them. With
their sulks and their perversity and their petty criticism they are merely reacting
to the Church. What they need to do is back up. And that's what Chesterton has
the reader do in this book: back up far enough and to see the Church in all its
startling beauty and unexpected truth.
The book was written as a kind of rebuttal to H.G. Wells' popular book, The
Outline of History. Chesterton said that Wells was like an author who
disliked the main character in his book. Wells glossed over the two biggest
points in history. The first is the uniqueness of the creature called man and
the second is the uniqueness of the man called Christ.
What do we know about early man? The one thing we really know for sure
is that he was an artist. The cave man left behind his drawings on the wall of
the cave. The creature who made these drawings was truly different from all
other creatures because he was a creator as well as a creature. "Art is
the signature of man," says Chesterton. It is just one of many things that
demonstrates that "the more we look at man as an animal, the less he will
look like one." In addition to art are such artificial things as clothes
and furniture and such unique reactions such as shame and laughter. And that
other exclusively human thing called religion.
Religion is as old as civilization. And civilization is as old as
history. Chesterton says that when we study history, the curtain rises on a
play already in progress. He argues that it was religion that advanced
civilization. It was religion that dealt with the meanings of things, with the
development and interpretation of symbols, which advanced communication and
knowledge, or what we call the arts and the sciences.
If we study any civilization, we see that after progress comes decay.
Chesterton says men do not grow tired of evil, but of good. They become weary
of joy. They stop worshipping God and start worshipping idols, their own bad
imitations of God, and they become as wooden as the thing they worship. They
start worshipping nature and become unnatural. They start worshipping sex and
become perverted. Men start lusting after men and become unmanly.
The most ignorant of humanity know by the very look of earth that they
have forgotten heaven.
But then something marvelous happens in history. And it also happens in
a cave. A cave in Bethlehem.
Bethlehem, says Chesterton, is emphatically a place where extremes meet.
It is where heaven meets earth. God comes to make a home in the world and finds
himself homeless.
A mass of legend and literature has sprung from this single paradox;
that the hands that had made the sun and stars were too small to reach the huge
heads of the cattle. Upon this paradox, all the literature of our faith was
founded—it is something too good to be true, except that it is true.
Chesterton says that if we approach the Gospel objectively we will see
that it is not a book of platitudes. It paints a picture of a man who was
indeed a wonder-worker, but who spoke in riddles and rebukes. His teachings
were as difficult to accept in his own time as they are today. None of the
critics of Christianity seem to appreciate the fact that Christ's teachings
were not dependent on the social order in which he lived but transcended their
time altogether.
The critics of course try to create a different Christ from the one
portrayed in the Gospels by picking and choosing whatever they want. They
always try to make him merely human, whether they make him a socialist or a
pacifist or a madman. "There must surely have been something not only
mysterious but many-sided about Christ if so many smaller Christs can be carved
out of him."
But the main impression one gets from studying the teachings of Christ
is that he really did not come to teach. What separates Christianity from other
religions is that its central figure does not wish to be known merely as a
teacher. He makes the greatest claim of all. Mohammed did not claim to be God.
Buddha did not claim to be God. But Christ did claim to be God.
The story gets stranger still. All of Christ's life is a steady pursuit
towards the ultimate sacrifice: the Crucifixion.
All the great groups that stood about the Cross represent in one way or
another the great historical truth of the time; that the world could not save
itself. Man could do no more. Rome and Jerusalem and Athens and everything
else—Chesterton says that the strength of the world was turned to weakness and
the wisdom of the world was turned to folly. For what could be stranger than
the fact that the local execution of a minor revolutionary in an obscure
outpost would become the central event in all of history? But that is where the
Cross stands: at the center of history.
This central dogma of the Christian faith, that God died—that, in
Chesterton's phrase, God was for one instant forsaken of God, that God
sacrificed himself to himself—is more mysterious than anything, even the
mystery of creation itself. And those who object to this dogma do so not
because the dogma is bad, but because it's too good to be true. The Gospel
story does not end with God's death; it ends with the most startling episode of
all. An empty grave. And God again walking in a garden, as on the first day of
creation.
It is this strange story that explains why Christianity has done
something different than just survive. It has itself returned to life many
times after having been apparently defeated. It has, as Chesterton says,
"died many times and risen again; for it had a God who knew the way out of
the grave."