For any of you that have ever read anything by this man to the left, you know that it is a wonderful (as well as, at times, challenging) experience. The man, for those of you who don't know, is G.K. Chesterton, one of the very greatest authors in the 20th Century, if not in all of history. The book which I want to comment on a bit here today, called
The Everlasting Man, is one of his most influential works. Many (if not all) of you will have heard of C.S. Lewis (Chronicles of Narnia, Screwtape Letters, Mere Christianity, etc.)--what you may not know is that Lewis largely attributes his conversion process to this book from Chesterton. Knowing that, I knew that this book would be something special-and probably especially difficult. While it was, at times, difficult to process, it was worth every second of the struggle.
I will not try to give an overview of this entire book, because Chesterton himself took ten very dense pages to summarize the book in conclusion, and I won't pretend to have the ability that he himself had. Rather, I want to give an explanation of the overall point he tries to make briefly, and then spend the majority of this post commenting on one particular idea he presented.
The Point
As Chesterton himself explains in the book, The Everlasting Man is primarily a historical look at man. Chesterton, a Catholic, says that this is not about defending Catholicism against Protestantism, but against the various Pagan religions which can tend to be the light through which we view history. Rather than seeing Christianity as the next step in the development of man, as some people in his time wanted to say, Chesterton spends this volume of work explaining that Christianity, and specifically the person of Christ, are unique and new. The first half of the book is on "The Creature Called Man," and the second half is on "The Man Called Christ." I cannot summarize this book in any way better than this, and so I present what Chesterton himself says is the goal: the book's "thesis is that those who say Christ stands side by side with similar myths, and his religion side by side with similar religions, are only repeating a very stale formula contradicted by a very striking fact." The book, then, takes this as its basis; weaving through the process of the development of the various myths, stories, and religions of world history, Chesterton shows the way that Christianity cannot simply be another myth. I will not attempt to sketch his argument; for that, you must dive into this book headfirst, allowing yourself plenty of time to think through the points he makes. I will, though, assure you that it is worth the effort.
The Uniqueness of Christ
Here, from the third chapter of the second part of The Everlasting Man, is a passage which lays out a point I would like to reflect on a bit:
For in that second cavern [the tomb of Christ] the whole of that great and glorious humanity which we call antiquity was gathered up and covered over; and in that place it was buried. It was the end of a very great thing called human history; the history that was merely human. The mythologies and philosophies were buried there, the gods and the heroes and the sages. In the great Roman phase, they had lived. But as they could only live, so they could only die; and they were dead.
On the third day, the friends of Christ coming at daybreak to the place found the grave empty and the stone rolled away. In varying ways they realised the new wonder; but even they hardly realised that the world had died in the night. What they were looking at was the first day of a new creation, with a new heaven and a new earth; and in a semblance of the gardener God walked again in the garden, in the cool not of the evening but of the dawn.
Go ahead and read that 2, 3, 17, 12938 times if you'd like; it's still going to be beautiful. What Chesterton is getting at in this point of the book is something so incredible that even this beautiful prose can't possible capture it. The person of Christ is not simply another god in another myth or religion. He is, in so many varied ways, totally new and unique. The uniqueness of this person is captured in the boldness of the claim He made: He was a man who was killed, and yet rose again from the dead because He was not just a man, but He was also God. And when the God-man died, He died not to stay dead, but to bring about a new creation. This new creation is lived out here and now in the Church of Christ which has endured 2,000 years and is still here today.
One of the most beautiful parts of what Chesterton shows of this is his reflection on the endurance of the Church, but I will let you read the book for that. For now, I will leave it with that passage above, reflecting on the fact that God, who created everything, came as man into that creation, ushering in a new creation by His death and Resurrection so that we didn't have to live in brokenness but could have new life.
In modern times, the arguments of this book will be even more offensive than they were 100 years ago. In a day and age when the popular view of world religions is a bunch of different ways to be a 'good' person, Chesterton's assertion that Jesus Christ and the religion which bears His name are utterly unique would offend many people, and yet that seems to be the point. Chesterton is not trying to offend, and yet the boldness of the claim, a claim for which countless men and women have died and are still dying every day, is by its very nature offensive. Christ came and ushered in a new creation, offending our human sensibilities because no one but Him would dare claim that God became man. No other religion has nor will claum this, because it is such a bold claim that it is nothing short of ridiculous and offensive if it is not true. And yet, Christianity has endured 2,000 on a Truth which is so crazy that it can only be true to have survived.
With Chesterton, then, we can have confidence in this Church by the virtue of its ability to withstand all manner of trial and difficulty for these years. We can stand in confidence on the Church which Christ established that lives on in the world today.
"Had Christianity merely appeared and disappeared, it might possibly have been remembered or explained as the last leap of the rage of illusion, the ultimate myth of the ultimate moo, in which the mind struck the sky and broke. But the mind did not break. It is the one mind that remains unbroken in the break-up of the world."
If you are looking to pick up a copy of The Everlasting Man, here is a link to get it on Amazon! The Everlasting Man
You can see other book reviews that I have done by going to this link: My Library .
