The Everlasting Man, by G.K. Chesterton

Gilbert Keith Chesterton’s The Everlasting Man is a dangerous book. It is not for the weak-minded, nor for those who are prone to exaggeration or to extremes of temperament and emotion. That said, you should probably read it, if you haven’t already. (If for no other reason than to impress your first year seminary professor and vault you to the top of his “well-read” list of prodigious theological talents). While most Christians are familiar (at least in a second-hand fashion) with Orthodoxy, most Chesterton scholars count The Everlasting Man as his most respected work. A book which C.S. Lewis described as one of the most influential books he had ever read must surely be worthy of our attention.

The Everlasting Man is comprised of two parts: a supernatural perspective of mankind and a human perspective of the supernatural, specifically Jesus Christ. While the book is incredibly well-written, Chesterton is at his weakest when he attempts to defend biblical integrity against the onslaught of contemporary German scholarship. It is fairly obvious, even to a novice like myself, that he is in deeper waters than he can tread. I recently read God’s Funeral by A.N. Wilson, a book which takes an honest and intellectual look at the loss of faith in Victorian England and still comes out with a hopeful optimism in Christianity. In it, Chesterton is quoted warmly, but with the proverbial grain of salt in view of his lack of his intellectual/theological credentials. The Catholic Church just did not have the brilliant minds (public, at least) at that time to compete with the aftermath of the Enlightenment and the beginning of Modernism. Chesterton himself admits that he is not a great scholar. He is, however, by far one of the greatest wits of his generation. And if what Einstein said is true, that imagination is more important than knowledge, then this book and indeed the entire Chesterton library is of more value to humankind than all the encyclopedias in all the libraries on all the college campuses on earth. Chesterton’s contemporaries surely thought his broad defense of the Catholic Church presented in The Everlasting Man to be quite narrow. And, to be fair, it is. During most of the book, Chesterton seems preoccupied with defending stock Catholic dogma, and that is the least important aspect of the book, in my opinion. But it is between this rock and that hard place that he could possibly really make the Church truly universal. It is entirely up to the reader to decide whether this bold endeavor fails or succeeds. And that is another reason why you should read it. In a paradoxical sense, it is of most benefit to those intellects who have the rare ability to sift through regurgitated dogma and arrive at the heart of the matter.

This is not a perfect work of apologetics. There are, in fact, gaping holes in his arguments. There are non-sequiters in his logic and mere opinion stated as fact. But there is far less of that nonsense than there is in most books defending materialism (exhibit A - Christopher Hitchens’ recent half-baked assault on world religions). Chesterton himself would probably agree, for while his sarcasm can be biting and his strength of opinion titanic, he retains the Catholic guilt and humility to realize that he is only a gatekeeper, a signpost directing the seeker to the Scriptures.

He is in his best form when he abandons dogmatic influence and merely tells the incredible story of the Gospel in all its glorious mystery, and in expounding, or revealing rather, the fulfillment of natural paganism in the Incarnation. Some highlights:

On the nature of humanity, countering the pseudo-Darwinist intellectuals of his age: “Art is the signature of man.”

On the meaning of myth: “It is not the voice of a priest or a prophet saying ‘these things are.’ It is the voice of a dreamer and an idealist crying, ‘Why cannot these things be?’”

“Therefore we all feel what is meant by Prometheus stealing fire from heaven, until some prig of a Pessimist or progressive person explains what it means. Therefore we all know the meaning of Jack and the Beanstalk, until we are told.”

“It is easy enough to say that the philosopher is generally the more rational; it is easier still to forget that the priest is always the more popular. For the priest told the people stories, and the philosopher did not understand the philosophy of stories. It came into the world with the story of Christ.”

“Someone once asked me whether I thought mankind grew better or worse or remained the same. It had never occurred to him that it might depend on how mankind chose to go on; and that its course was not a straight line or an upward or downward curve, but a track like that of a man going across a valley, going where he liked and stopping where he chose, going into a church or falling drunk in a ditch. The life of man is a story; an adventure story; and in our vision the same is true even of the story of God.”

And you thought Donald Miller was the first one to come up with that idea.

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I invite any and all feedback on this humble review. Tell me if you think my opinions are amateur misguides (which they most likely are), or if they make a sort of sense. A dialogue as to the merits of Chesterton’s masterpiece from an array of viewpoints would be most welcome.