I think one of the best parts of TEM is the passage where GKC describes the paradox of the infant Christ in the manger helpless below the lowing heads of the livestock He created. That one brought this reader to tears.
3 acres and a cow is all very well, but doesn’t the UK have 20M families and 15M acres of arable land? I guess GKC was banking on the policy being like insurance, i.e. don’t everyone make a claim at once or you’ll bankrupt the company.
A cubicle and a free subscription to Microsoft Office 360 for a year. In comparison to GKC's times, the modern humans are fundamentally different species (and by no means better)
It's a fair point. But I don't think he necessarily meant arable land, and that everyone should return to subsistence farming. I think he meant more broadly that what should be distributed in society is land, not wealth: because land ownership and its wide distribution is how wealth can then be created broadly. For GKC, the 'Redistribution of wealth' as in socialism, and the 'free market creation of wealth' in a system that naturally privileges capital over labour, will both tend towards monopoly, and end (if they don't already begin) in tyranny. It's interesting that Chesterton certainly didn't believe in the abolition of private property ("the socialist tries to solve the problem of pickpockets by banning pockets"), or in compulsory common ownership - but he did believe in the benefits of common land, as this used to exist far more widely in England.
> 3 acres and a cow is all very well, but doesn’t the UK have 20M families and 15M acres of arable land?
That's the " total croppable area" (from what I see), the utilised agricultural area is 42M acres, so 2.1 for each family!
Then again GHK never said distributism only amounts to "3 acres and a cow" and every family working the land, it included all kinds of smaller businesses, craftsmen, even industry.
GKC was very interested in the Irish and the land question, so this wasn't just pie in the sky. The Irish Land Acts in the 19th century were essentially that, a form of Distributism, forcing large land owners to sell off their land to small tenant farmers. And GKC was very supportive of the Irish and their resistance to Empire. Of course Ireland (thanks to the Famine) had a vastly smaller population than industrialised England, but Chesterton was no fool, his book Irish Impressions has some really powerful quotes about the fragility of large organisations and their vulnerability to shocks that made me sit up and take notice. He is an unjustly neglected economic thinker in my view.
“Capitalism is that commercial system in which supply immediately answers to demand, and in which everybody seems to be thoroughly dissatisfied and unable to get anything he wants.”
“Too much capitalism does not mean too many capitalists, but too few capitalists.”
“It cannot be too often repeated that what destroyed the Family in the modern world was Capitalism. No doubt it might have been Communism, if Communism had ever had a chance, outside that semi-Mongolian wilderness where it actually flourishes. But, so far as we are concerned, what has broken up households and encouraged divorces, and treated the old domestic virtues with more and more open contempt, is the epoch and Power of Capitalism. It is Capitalism that has forced a moral feud and a commercial competition between the sexes; that has destroyed the influence of the parent in favour of the influence of the employer; that has driven men from their homes to look for jobs; that has forced them to live near their factories or their firms instead of near their families; and, above all, that has encouraged, for commercial reasons, a parade of publicity and garish novelty, which is in its nature the death of all that was called dignity and modesty by our mothers and fathers.”
What? Lots of word salad here. Half way through I thought I was reading Kamala's next 'speech'! Not sure who you are quoting, Nick, but I sure hope you don't believe any of it. Cheers!
Hey Friends, I took up the scriptorium challenge of writing my own review, which I did a couple months ago upon completing the book. Here ye are...
This was my third attempt at Chesterton. I say "attempt" because the first, at Orthodoxy, failed: his whimsical and playful style hit me as too cutesy. My second attempt, at his biography of Assisi, succeeded, marvelously so. Here was a biography that wasn't just a collection of foot-noted facts (I find footnotes both imperious and aesthetically disgusting), but one authorial subject trying to get in the mind and heart of another soul by that rarest of scholarly vehicles: imagination. Gone was the need to forensically cover all the bases of Assisi's life lived in objective spacetime, presenting instead a glowing portrait of the insides of a man lit up by God. Chesterton's biography, or rather sketch, of Assisi made me realize how unrealized the potential is for a non-fiction writer to understand another human being through love rather than analysis. I felt the whole time like I was reading a dream.
So I came to The Everlasting Man with a 1-1 scorecard, and man did I love this book. Stylistically, it couldn't have been more beautiful, but really his skill at persuasion is both unmatched and recalling of an age when "kill your darlings" was yet to rid the world of bloviations because bloviating was still inseparable from the responsibility to make your case thoroughly. Talking about tough things requires a lot of words, actually, not just the presentation of clarified essences (for which creeds suffice, not as reductionistic idiocies, but rather as David Bentley Hart has argued, bounds that make possible the flourishing of particular ideas, much like a hedgerow makes possible a field). Chesterton makes his case for Christianity in broad strokes, never getting lost in the weeds; his appraisal of the mythological impulse as a "drawing" rather than philosophy's "diagram," and his insistence that only in Christianity do both come together, means that he doesn't have to waste words arguing point-by-point the rationalist's objections to the more mysterious truth claims Christians make (a drawing, unlike a diagram, needs no defense; both coming together means that the rational element will always be loose-fitting). And how refreshing! Apologetics, if that is what The Everlasting Man is, ought to ring the heart as much as soothe the mind. How else can one learn to live inside a story instead of an equation but by being touched in some felt place where the assemblage of explanatory facts about the world is drained out by a needy narrative thrust? I find so much Catholic writing to be fussy, stodgy, cerebral, polished rather than grimed---when grime is exactly what you get when you read the Gospel naked, let alone try to harmonize its four parts, let alone with the epistles. Jesus, in my amateur view, cannot be cleaned up and explained; he must be messed with. And so I love me an apologist, especially a Catholic (my ancestry) who seems to have no need to breakdown mystery into constituent parts; as much I learn when reading the catechesis of the Catholic Church, it'll never stop being lawerly.
Chesterton's apologetics seem to turn on one argument: Christianity is true because it is like life. "We are Christians and Catholics not because we worship a key, but because we have passed a door; and felt the wind that is the trumpet of liberty blow over the land of the living." For what it's worth, I actually involuntarily uttered "Good God" out loud when reading that passage, which concludes the richest chapter of the book; and one I'll return to again and again, especially as I stare down the weariness and doubt that frequent me.
Now I've been fortunate that the so-called problem of evil, of which the most ink has been spilled over the past two millenia, has never haunted me in the middle of the night. Because if it does come to haunt, it is a problem indeed. Many have left, and continue to leave, the faith over it. After all, how can a Good God allow evil? Good luck finding a satiating response. Merely calling evil a "privation of the good," as Augustine famously did, rather than a thing in itself just kicks the question one layer back: How can a Good God allow the privation of Good? Answering, "Freedom, that's why," again begs the question, How can a Good God allow freedom to be such that it involves the privation of the Good? And so on, ad infinitum. What I gather from Chesterton, and what's increasingly occupying my worldview, is that Christianity can't satisfy these questions with logical proofs. The answer to "How can a Good God allow evil?" is not found in a rational response, but in a story. That the story of the Fall makes no sense in crude physicalist spacetime is irrelevant. The Fall is theologically true; it's the revelation that gives us a picture of what's happening with good and evil right up to the limits of our ability to know. In other words, the story of the Fall is as good as it gets by way of explanation for the presence of evil. All other inquiry will just end in more spilled ink. The good news: Christ, the second Adam, wrote in his blood the sequel. And his resurrection is as good as it gets by way of explanation for the presence of good. So that's what we got: a story with a beginning, middle, and end; take it or leave it, those of us living in the unfinished epilogue.
Chesterton illustrates this singularly linear storyline by noting that many other religions exist and represent themselves as a circle, denoting cycles upon cycles; creation and destruction being an endless loop that never resolves. But Christianity has as its central motif a cross, which is emphatically not a circle, but a split. This notion of Christ as being a decisive point in history that one must either give a "Yes" or "No" to, that Christ cannot be absorbed into other meta-frameworks (though the reverse of other meta-frameworks being fit into Christ is true) has been one of the largest stumbling blocks to me in my walk back to faith in Him. Chesterton speaks against a trend of his time that's well-alive today, and that is something like perennialism (though he doesn't name it that), the notion that all or most religious paths aim at the same God but with different ladders. I'm still confused where I stand on this matter---and I'm not sure I have to take a stand on it---but I do appreciate Chesterton's rightful rendering of scripture that it really isn't making room for a million plus ways to God, and that Christ can't be on par with other spiritual masters without his foundational claims being diluted. In that sense, the cross is truly a crossroads: once you go all-in on walking the beam, there's no looping back, and the place you're heading is not accessible by other means. I will offer, however, the pendant I wear around my neck as a possible integration: I wear a Celtic Cross, meaning a circle exists at the heart where the two axis of the cross meet. You get the decisive ends of the beams but the reality of cyclical life (Ages unto Ages) too. Still, the circle on a Celtic Cross is held within the larger vertical and horizontal axis of the cross; and that must be deliberate. In fact, if I squint hard enough, I might even see in this image that the circle is the seed, and blooming out its round body are two elements of a tree: a horizontal branch to make nest upon, and a vertical trunk that reaches deep into the soil so that one may climb above the circle in the one direction that terminates in the heavens, high above.
> I say "attempt" because the first, at Orthodoxy, failed: his whimsical and playful style hit me as too cutesy.
We could use a hell of a lot more cutesy prose. Orthodoxy, in any case, I find has absolutely golden moral (or rather philosophical) stance, and the things he examines are ever present tendencies, only the persons and ocassionally the movement names and guises have changed.
I've always wondered whether any of those for whom the problem of evil prevents them from believing in a Good God are parents, and if they consider themselves "good" parents. If God is not good because he allows evil in the world, what does that say about people who willingly bring life into that world? Surely they must know that their children will suffer loss, pain and death. It would seem that that the reality of suffering argues against any parents being "good"; in fact, by some reckoning, are they not monsters? Perhaps the answer to the problem of evil rests on the realization that even though there is the suffering in the world, both God and parents are satisfied that it is still worth it.
Yeah, that's interesting about the role of being a parent might play in struggling with good and evil. I'm not a parent, but I've never assumed that I deserve any less suffering than anyone else, so it's never felt like a "Why me?" even when I've been in hell with disease and loss. But I bet it might be different if I saw my child face that kind of hell.
And what of beyond this life? The idea of hell itself? That's the one that really gets me. If someone really believed in hell how could they have children with the chance that they might go there? I consider myself Catholic but never could reconcile the idea of a loving God and hell. Some Catholics say there is a hell but we can hope that it is empty. Maybe we could have thoughts on this in the November salon.
I broadly share Our Dear Abbot's opinions about GKC, although I (mostly) find his wit more endearing than off-putting (but, yes, often excessive!)
To anyone who has not yet read them, I can heartily recommend (at least) "Orthodoxy" (not actually about "Eastern" Orthodoxy) and "What I Saw In America" - the former is GKC's own spiritual autobiography (which often rhymes with my own) and the latter is a trip report of a lecture tour he made of the USA in 1921. His observations about the USA of the time are fascinating, and several of his predictions about the direction of The Machine with respect to agriculture have sadly come all too true.
One could dream of a similar report about the USA by Brother Paul after his recent excursion over here :-)
Gosh Paul. The way you’ve described it this book sounds like hard work to read. I like the idea of a group of people reading a book and sharing and discussing their thoughts though. Plus I like to push the boundaries of what I read and think. I’ll give it a go.
> The way you’ve described it this book sounds like hard work to read.
It literally flies by. At least it did for me.
I find that a lot of the complains in this review are based more on modern dispositions and biases about editorial style and prose, than about its actual content.
It's more about judging its editorial (or aesthetic merits) and perhaps whether it's entertaining enough for the modern reader. I think the opposite should be the real concern: whether the modern reader is prepared and worthy of such older works.
I struggle with GKC and do worlds better with the apologetics of CS Lewis. I've wondered whether it's because Lewis is so much closer to me in time, but maybe he's just a better/clearer writer for a non-genius reader. Since Lewis gave credit to GKC for his own path to Christianity, maybe I'm getting GKC-via-Lewis as it were.
I had became interested in GKC when I learned that C S Lewis had been influenced by him (this was in the 1990s when I was in my 40s). It was Orthodoxy & The Everlasting Man that I read - I have not read his fiction beyond Father Brown. The 'Chestertonian paradox' that was 'to clever by half' for some was what I liked most about his writing. Different strokes for different folks... Lewis also finds reality in paradox, and I have come to think of paradox as a sign of things that are true.
Three in One, First are Last, Loose Life to Save It, Give to Receive, etc
I really enjoyed the Fr. Brown mysteries as pure entertainment but I did find a lot of Chersterton's theological writings "muddled" as you described them. "Orthodoxy" stopped me in my tracks less than half way through. Still have not read "The Ball and The Cross" which I think is set in England where beer is banned and Islam is ascendent, sounds fun. Since they are towering figures I was reluctant to try my hand writing about them but I am working on a novel with Chesterton and Belloc. They are a pair like Holmes and Watson solving a theological murder thriller, a bit like "The Man Who Was Thursday." Chesterton is playing the Holmes role in my story.
Chesterbelloc, was the name coined by Bernard Shaw for the chimeric union of Chesterton and Belloc. Shaw suggested that Chesterton had adopted the poltical views of Belloc. Chesterbelloc invented the economic/political theory of "Distributism" together as an alternative to capitalism and socialism. Belloc wrote for Chesterton's magazine. Those are the few scraps I know. I don't think that there is a recent book on their friendship, unlike Tolkien and Lewis. I like Chesterton's quote about capitalism, "The problem with capitalism is that there are not enough capitalists." Distributism aimed to spread access to land and capital across the wider society. Belloc supported this view in his writing and decried the controlled media of his day.
I'm glad you tackled this and reviewed. I've yet to read it and was thinking it might be a good deep winter read...I grew up with a mother who revered GKC and had a library of his work.... as a rebellious teen I avoided him. Except Father Brown.
Paul, between your early love of G.K. Chesterton (with no patience for his Christian books) and your self-disparaging comments at your recent lecture in Birmingham as being such a reluctant and unexpected Christian, you are beginning to sound suspiciously like a latter day C.S. Lewis. I would say this is just the way the English speak, but I don’t think most are speaking about Chesterton.
For myself, I have been a lover of Chesterton (his fiction, non-fiction, and journalism) since discovering him unexpectedly in college via my deep reading in Mr. Lewis. Truly, his conceptualization of politics as a fight between “Hudge and Gudge” as represented in his book “What’s Wrong With the World” is a perpetual model of political satire in our modern age. His book “Man Alive” while not one of his better novels, was truly a comfort to me in the depths of my depression after the break down of my first marriage, when I struggled to see that there remained a good God in the heavens.
I recently published an essay (award winning, I might add) in intentional emulation of his style on my Substack entitled “In Defense of Zombie Movies” which I (self interestedly, of course) highly recommend.
Let me leave you with my favorite Chesterton quote, first encountered not in the original play review where (I believe) it appeared, but in the pages of the book of Peter Blegvad comics “Leviathan” my roommate introduced me to in college:
“Children are innocent and love justice, while most of us are wicked, and naturally prefer mercy.”
''To clever by half''..exactly my take on GKC..I can imagine him grinning when writing his word plays, but leaves the normal reader confused. I also concur that his novels are more readable.
Here is one instance where the student outperformed his master...with C.S Lewis being much more readable than GKC even though, as Paul has mentioned somewhere ''that they are both basically saying the same thing''.
“We are now standing in the face of the greatest historical confrontation humanity has ever experienced. I do not think the wide circle of the American Society, or the wide circle of the Christian Community realize this fully. We are now facing the final confrontation between the Church and the anti-church, between the Gospel and the anti-gospel, between Christ and the antichrist. This confrontation lies within the plans of Divine Providence. It is, therefore, in God’s Plan, and it must be a trial which the Church must take up, and face courageously…
We must prepare ourselves to suffer great trials before long, such as will demand of us a disposition to give up even life, and a total dedication to Christ and for Christ. With your and my prayers, it is possible to mitigate the coming tribulation, but it is no longer possible to avert it, because only thus can the Church be effectually renewed. How many times has the renewal of the Church sprung from the shedding of blood? This time too, it will not be otherwise. We must be strong and prepared and trust in Christ and in his Holy Mother and be very, very assiduous in praying the holy rosary.”
I'm one of those who found this a hard slog, though not without some fine moments along the way. I read hard stuff for a living. I've read plenty of authors from his era and place who I found more lucid and engaging, and I can find expansive authors just as compellng as spare ones. This was just uncommonly hard to give my attention to. Got 88% through my 37¢ Kindle edition and called it good.
The paradoxes would be a strength if he used 1/10th of them. The gravity he (appropriately) writes with at times becomes ponderousness. And the "broad strokes" he sketches the pagan and modern perspectives left me wondering at times what might have been left out or oversimplified. As I read, I imagined Wendell Berry writing Life is a Miracle simply generalizing about "those materialists" instead of drilling down on E.O. Wilson's "Consillience." It might have been an interesting book, but likely a much weaker one. I realize Chesterton isn't doing close reading or academic cultural history, but some of his accounts of the past and his present seemed too thin to lean on.
But there were fine moments. I also liked his reading of the Nativity, and here and there he drops some real stunners. I put a few in my notebook. This was the first time I'd read Chesterton at book length and I don't see myself giving him another go, though some of the fiction described by Paul and others does sound intriguing.
I think one of the best parts of TEM is the passage where GKC describes the paradox of the infant Christ in the manger helpless below the lowing heads of the livestock He created. That one brought this reader to tears.
I thought that was very striking too.
Glad you thought that, too. GKC was also quite funny.
3 acres and a cow is all very well, but doesn’t the UK have 20M families and 15M acres of arable land? I guess GKC was banking on the policy being like insurance, i.e. don’t everyone make a claim at once or you’ll bankrupt the company.
Then there is the problem of inheritance.
Writers can be great writers but not necessarily ahead of the game.
I wonder what the modern equivalent would be, if there is, or can be, a modern equivalent.
A cubicle and a free subscription to Microsoft Office 360 for a year. In comparison to GKC's times, the modern humans are fundamentally different species (and by no means better)
The horror. The horror.
It's a fair point. But I don't think he necessarily meant arable land, and that everyone should return to subsistence farming. I think he meant more broadly that what should be distributed in society is land, not wealth: because land ownership and its wide distribution is how wealth can then be created broadly. For GKC, the 'Redistribution of wealth' as in socialism, and the 'free market creation of wealth' in a system that naturally privileges capital over labour, will both tend towards monopoly, and end (if they don't already begin) in tyranny. It's interesting that Chesterton certainly didn't believe in the abolition of private property ("the socialist tries to solve the problem of pickpockets by banning pockets"), or in compulsory common ownership - but he did believe in the benefits of common land, as this used to exist far more widely in England.
Definitely a more insightful response than my somewhat tongue-in-cheek poke at the idea!
> 3 acres and a cow is all very well, but doesn’t the UK have 20M families and 15M acres of arable land?
That's the " total croppable area" (from what I see), the utilised agricultural area is 42M acres, so 2.1 for each family!
Then again GHK never said distributism only amounts to "3 acres and a cow" and every family working the land, it included all kinds of smaller businesses, craftsmen, even industry.
GKC was very interested in the Irish and the land question, so this wasn't just pie in the sky. The Irish Land Acts in the 19th century were essentially that, a form of Distributism, forcing large land owners to sell off their land to small tenant farmers. And GKC was very supportive of the Irish and their resistance to Empire. Of course Ireland (thanks to the Famine) had a vastly smaller population than industrialised England, but Chesterton was no fool, his book Irish Impressions has some really powerful quotes about the fragility of large organisations and their vulnerability to shocks that made me sit up and take notice. He is an unjustly neglected economic thinker in my view.
I wonder how GKC defined "capitalism".
“Capitalism is that commercial system in which supply immediately answers to demand, and in which everybody seems to be thoroughly dissatisfied and unable to get anything he wants.”
“Too much capitalism does not mean too many capitalists, but too few capitalists.”
“It cannot be too often repeated that what destroyed the Family in the modern world was Capitalism. No doubt it might have been Communism, if Communism had ever had a chance, outside that semi-Mongolian wilderness where it actually flourishes. But, so far as we are concerned, what has broken up households and encouraged divorces, and treated the old domestic virtues with more and more open contempt, is the epoch and Power of Capitalism. It is Capitalism that has forced a moral feud and a commercial competition between the sexes; that has destroyed the influence of the parent in favour of the influence of the employer; that has driven men from their homes to look for jobs; that has forced them to live near their factories or their firms instead of near their families; and, above all, that has encouraged, for commercial reasons, a parade of publicity and garish novelty, which is in its nature the death of all that was called dignity and modesty by our mothers and fathers.”
What? Lots of word salad here. Half way through I thought I was reading Kamala's next 'speech'! Not sure who you are quoting, Nick, but I sure hope you don't believe any of it. Cheers!
Those are GKC quotes. Not sure what exactly you find to be "word salad". I don't think the term means what you think it means.
If anything those are incredibly prescient.
Thank you. This is an easily neglected book, but so full of insights, esp on paganism.
Hey Friends, I took up the scriptorium challenge of writing my own review, which I did a couple months ago upon completing the book. Here ye are...
This was my third attempt at Chesterton. I say "attempt" because the first, at Orthodoxy, failed: his whimsical and playful style hit me as too cutesy. My second attempt, at his biography of Assisi, succeeded, marvelously so. Here was a biography that wasn't just a collection of foot-noted facts (I find footnotes both imperious and aesthetically disgusting), but one authorial subject trying to get in the mind and heart of another soul by that rarest of scholarly vehicles: imagination. Gone was the need to forensically cover all the bases of Assisi's life lived in objective spacetime, presenting instead a glowing portrait of the insides of a man lit up by God. Chesterton's biography, or rather sketch, of Assisi made me realize how unrealized the potential is for a non-fiction writer to understand another human being through love rather than analysis. I felt the whole time like I was reading a dream.
So I came to The Everlasting Man with a 1-1 scorecard, and man did I love this book. Stylistically, it couldn't have been more beautiful, but really his skill at persuasion is both unmatched and recalling of an age when "kill your darlings" was yet to rid the world of bloviations because bloviating was still inseparable from the responsibility to make your case thoroughly. Talking about tough things requires a lot of words, actually, not just the presentation of clarified essences (for which creeds suffice, not as reductionistic idiocies, but rather as David Bentley Hart has argued, bounds that make possible the flourishing of particular ideas, much like a hedgerow makes possible a field). Chesterton makes his case for Christianity in broad strokes, never getting lost in the weeds; his appraisal of the mythological impulse as a "drawing" rather than philosophy's "diagram," and his insistence that only in Christianity do both come together, means that he doesn't have to waste words arguing point-by-point the rationalist's objections to the more mysterious truth claims Christians make (a drawing, unlike a diagram, needs no defense; both coming together means that the rational element will always be loose-fitting). And how refreshing! Apologetics, if that is what The Everlasting Man is, ought to ring the heart as much as soothe the mind. How else can one learn to live inside a story instead of an equation but by being touched in some felt place where the assemblage of explanatory facts about the world is drained out by a needy narrative thrust? I find so much Catholic writing to be fussy, stodgy, cerebral, polished rather than grimed---when grime is exactly what you get when you read the Gospel naked, let alone try to harmonize its four parts, let alone with the epistles. Jesus, in my amateur view, cannot be cleaned up and explained; he must be messed with. And so I love me an apologist, especially a Catholic (my ancestry) who seems to have no need to breakdown mystery into constituent parts; as much I learn when reading the catechesis of the Catholic Church, it'll never stop being lawerly.
Chesterton's apologetics seem to turn on one argument: Christianity is true because it is like life. "We are Christians and Catholics not because we worship a key, but because we have passed a door; and felt the wind that is the trumpet of liberty blow over the land of the living." For what it's worth, I actually involuntarily uttered "Good God" out loud when reading that passage, which concludes the richest chapter of the book; and one I'll return to again and again, especially as I stare down the weariness and doubt that frequent me.
Now I've been fortunate that the so-called problem of evil, of which the most ink has been spilled over the past two millenia, has never haunted me in the middle of the night. Because if it does come to haunt, it is a problem indeed. Many have left, and continue to leave, the faith over it. After all, how can a Good God allow evil? Good luck finding a satiating response. Merely calling evil a "privation of the good," as Augustine famously did, rather than a thing in itself just kicks the question one layer back: How can a Good God allow the privation of Good? Answering, "Freedom, that's why," again begs the question, How can a Good God allow freedom to be such that it involves the privation of the Good? And so on, ad infinitum. What I gather from Chesterton, and what's increasingly occupying my worldview, is that Christianity can't satisfy these questions with logical proofs. The answer to "How can a Good God allow evil?" is not found in a rational response, but in a story. That the story of the Fall makes no sense in crude physicalist spacetime is irrelevant. The Fall is theologically true; it's the revelation that gives us a picture of what's happening with good and evil right up to the limits of our ability to know. In other words, the story of the Fall is as good as it gets by way of explanation for the presence of evil. All other inquiry will just end in more spilled ink. The good news: Christ, the second Adam, wrote in his blood the sequel. And his resurrection is as good as it gets by way of explanation for the presence of good. So that's what we got: a story with a beginning, middle, and end; take it or leave it, those of us living in the unfinished epilogue.
Chesterton illustrates this singularly linear storyline by noting that many other religions exist and represent themselves as a circle, denoting cycles upon cycles; creation and destruction being an endless loop that never resolves. But Christianity has as its central motif a cross, which is emphatically not a circle, but a split. This notion of Christ as being a decisive point in history that one must either give a "Yes" or "No" to, that Christ cannot be absorbed into other meta-frameworks (though the reverse of other meta-frameworks being fit into Christ is true) has been one of the largest stumbling blocks to me in my walk back to faith in Him. Chesterton speaks against a trend of his time that's well-alive today, and that is something like perennialism (though he doesn't name it that), the notion that all or most religious paths aim at the same God but with different ladders. I'm still confused where I stand on this matter---and I'm not sure I have to take a stand on it---but I do appreciate Chesterton's rightful rendering of scripture that it really isn't making room for a million plus ways to God, and that Christ can't be on par with other spiritual masters without his foundational claims being diluted. In that sense, the cross is truly a crossroads: once you go all-in on walking the beam, there's no looping back, and the place you're heading is not accessible by other means. I will offer, however, the pendant I wear around my neck as a possible integration: I wear a Celtic Cross, meaning a circle exists at the heart where the two axis of the cross meet. You get the decisive ends of the beams but the reality of cyclical life (Ages unto Ages) too. Still, the circle on a Celtic Cross is held within the larger vertical and horizontal axis of the cross; and that must be deliberate. In fact, if I squint hard enough, I might even see in this image that the circle is the seed, and blooming out its round body are two elements of a tree: a horizontal branch to make nest upon, and a vertical trunk that reaches deep into the soil so that one may climb above the circle in the one direction that terminates in the heavens, high above.
> I say "attempt" because the first, at Orthodoxy, failed: his whimsical and playful style hit me as too cutesy.
We could use a hell of a lot more cutesy prose. Orthodoxy, in any case, I find has absolutely golden moral (or rather philosophical) stance, and the things he examines are ever present tendencies, only the persons and ocassionally the movement names and guises have changed.
Cool, I should try it again then!
I've always wondered whether any of those for whom the problem of evil prevents them from believing in a Good God are parents, and if they consider themselves "good" parents. If God is not good because he allows evil in the world, what does that say about people who willingly bring life into that world? Surely they must know that their children will suffer loss, pain and death. It would seem that that the reality of suffering argues against any parents being "good"; in fact, by some reckoning, are they not monsters? Perhaps the answer to the problem of evil rests on the realization that even though there is the suffering in the world, both God and parents are satisfied that it is still worth it.
Yeah, that's interesting about the role of being a parent might play in struggling with good and evil. I'm not a parent, but I've never assumed that I deserve any less suffering than anyone else, so it's never felt like a "Why me?" even when I've been in hell with disease and loss. But I bet it might be different if I saw my child face that kind of hell.
And what of beyond this life? The idea of hell itself? That's the one that really gets me. If someone really believed in hell how could they have children with the chance that they might go there? I consider myself Catholic but never could reconcile the idea of a loving God and hell. Some Catholics say there is a hell but we can hope that it is empty. Maybe we could have thoughts on this in the November salon.
What an insightful comment!
I broadly share Our Dear Abbot's opinions about GKC, although I (mostly) find his wit more endearing than off-putting (but, yes, often excessive!)
To anyone who has not yet read them, I can heartily recommend (at least) "Orthodoxy" (not actually about "Eastern" Orthodoxy) and "What I Saw In America" - the former is GKC's own spiritual autobiography (which often rhymes with my own) and the latter is a trip report of a lecture tour he made of the USA in 1921. His observations about the USA of the time are fascinating, and several of his predictions about the direction of The Machine with respect to agriculture have sadly come all too true.
One could dream of a similar report about the USA by Brother Paul after his recent excursion over here :-)
Paul - In light of your reading of TEM, I'm curious to know your thoughts on a comment I made (albeit rather late) on your essay "Into the Void".
https://paulkingsnorth.substack.com/p/into-the-void/comment/72533125?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=984xw
Gosh Paul. The way you’ve described it this book sounds like hard work to read. I like the idea of a group of people reading a book and sharing and discussing their thoughts though. Plus I like to push the boundaries of what I read and think. I’ll give it a go.
> The way you’ve described it this book sounds like hard work to read.
It literally flies by. At least it did for me.
I find that a lot of the complains in this review are based more on modern dispositions and biases about editorial style and prose, than about its actual content.
It's more about judging its editorial (or aesthetic merits) and perhaps whether it's entertaining enough for the modern reader. I think the opposite should be the real concern: whether the modern reader is prepared and worthy of such older works.
I struggle with GKC and do worlds better with the apologetics of CS Lewis. I've wondered whether it's because Lewis is so much closer to me in time, but maybe he's just a better/clearer writer for a non-genius reader. Since Lewis gave credit to GKC for his own path to Christianity, maybe I'm getting GKC-via-Lewis as it were.
I had became interested in GKC when I learned that C S Lewis had been influenced by him (this was in the 1990s when I was in my 40s). It was Orthodoxy & The Everlasting Man that I read - I have not read his fiction beyond Father Brown. The 'Chestertonian paradox' that was 'to clever by half' for some was what I liked most about his writing. Different strokes for different folks... Lewis also finds reality in paradox, and I have come to think of paradox as a sign of things that are true.
Three in One, First are Last, Loose Life to Save It, Give to Receive, etc
I really enjoyed the Fr. Brown mysteries as pure entertainment but I did find a lot of Chersterton's theological writings "muddled" as you described them. "Orthodoxy" stopped me in my tracks less than half way through. Still have not read "The Ball and The Cross" which I think is set in England where beer is banned and Islam is ascendent, sounds fun. Since they are towering figures I was reluctant to try my hand writing about them but I am working on a novel with Chesterton and Belloc. They are a pair like Holmes and Watson solving a theological murder thriller, a bit like "The Man Who Was Thursday." Chesterton is playing the Holmes role in my story.
I would like to know what there is written on the kinship of Chesterton and Belloc.
Chesterbelloc, was the name coined by Bernard Shaw for the chimeric union of Chesterton and Belloc. Shaw suggested that Chesterton had adopted the poltical views of Belloc. Chesterbelloc invented the economic/political theory of "Distributism" together as an alternative to capitalism and socialism. Belloc wrote for Chesterton's magazine. Those are the few scraps I know. I don't think that there is a recent book on their friendship, unlike Tolkien and Lewis. I like Chesterton's quote about capitalism, "The problem with capitalism is that there are not enough capitalists." Distributism aimed to spread access to land and capital across the wider society. Belloc supported this view in his writing and decried the controlled media of his day.
I'm glad you tackled this and reviewed. I've yet to read it and was thinking it might be a good deep winter read...I grew up with a mother who revered GKC and had a library of his work.... as a rebellious teen I avoided him. Except Father Brown.
Paul, between your early love of G.K. Chesterton (with no patience for his Christian books) and your self-disparaging comments at your recent lecture in Birmingham as being such a reluctant and unexpected Christian, you are beginning to sound suspiciously like a latter day C.S. Lewis. I would say this is just the way the English speak, but I don’t think most are speaking about Chesterton.
For myself, I have been a lover of Chesterton (his fiction, non-fiction, and journalism) since discovering him unexpectedly in college via my deep reading in Mr. Lewis. Truly, his conceptualization of politics as a fight between “Hudge and Gudge” as represented in his book “What’s Wrong With the World” is a perpetual model of political satire in our modern age. His book “Man Alive” while not one of his better novels, was truly a comfort to me in the depths of my depression after the break down of my first marriage, when I struggled to see that there remained a good God in the heavens.
I recently published an essay (award winning, I might add) in intentional emulation of his style on my Substack entitled “In Defense of Zombie Movies” which I (self interestedly, of course) highly recommend.
Let me leave you with my favorite Chesterton quote, first encountered not in the original play review where (I believe) it appeared, but in the pages of the book of Peter Blegvad comics “Leviathan” my roommate introduced me to in college:
“Children are innocent and love justice, while most of us are wicked, and naturally prefer mercy.”
''To clever by half''..exactly my take on GKC..I can imagine him grinning when writing his word plays, but leaves the normal reader confused. I also concur that his novels are more readable.
Here is one instance where the student outperformed his master...with C.S Lewis being much more readable than GKC even though, as Paul has mentioned somewhere ''that they are both basically saying the same thing''.
“We are now standing in the face of the greatest historical confrontation humanity has ever experienced. I do not think the wide circle of the American Society, or the wide circle of the Christian Community realize this fully. We are now facing the final confrontation between the Church and the anti-church, between the Gospel and the anti-gospel, between Christ and the antichrist. This confrontation lies within the plans of Divine Providence. It is, therefore, in God’s Plan, and it must be a trial which the Church must take up, and face courageously…
We must prepare ourselves to suffer great trials before long, such as will demand of us a disposition to give up even life, and a total dedication to Christ and for Christ. With your and my prayers, it is possible to mitigate the coming tribulation, but it is no longer possible to avert it, because only thus can the Church be effectually renewed. How many times has the renewal of the Church sprung from the shedding of blood? This time too, it will not be otherwise. We must be strong and prepared and trust in Christ and in his Holy Mother and be very, very assiduous in praying the holy rosary.”
~Blessed John Paul II
Magnificat, Oct, 2013, Vol. 15, No. 8, pp 308-309
From a speech by then Cardinal Karol Wojtyla in Philadelphia, PA, in 1976.
I'm one of those who found this a hard slog, though not without some fine moments along the way. I read hard stuff for a living. I've read plenty of authors from his era and place who I found more lucid and engaging, and I can find expansive authors just as compellng as spare ones. This was just uncommonly hard to give my attention to. Got 88% through my 37¢ Kindle edition and called it good.
The paradoxes would be a strength if he used 1/10th of them. The gravity he (appropriately) writes with at times becomes ponderousness. And the "broad strokes" he sketches the pagan and modern perspectives left me wondering at times what might have been left out or oversimplified. As I read, I imagined Wendell Berry writing Life is a Miracle simply generalizing about "those materialists" instead of drilling down on E.O. Wilson's "Consillience." It might have been an interesting book, but likely a much weaker one. I realize Chesterton isn't doing close reading or academic cultural history, but some of his accounts of the past and his present seemed too thin to lean on.
But there were fine moments. I also liked his reading of the Nativity, and here and there he drops some real stunners. I put a few in my notebook. This was the first time I'd read Chesterton at book length and I don't see myself giving him another go, though some of the fiction described by Paul and others does sound intriguing.