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143rd out of 1,901 books
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1,846 voters
The Everlasting Man
What, if anything, is it that makes the human uniquely human? This, in part, is the question that G.K. Chesterton starts with in this classic exploration of human history. Responding to the evolutionary materialism of his contemporary (and antagonist) H.G. Wells, Chesterton in this work affirms human uniqueness and the unique message of the Christian faith. Writing in a ti...more
Paperback, 260 pages
Published
June 1st 2006
by Regent College Publishing
(first published 1925)
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A brilliant study of comparative religion from earliest known human history to recent times. Chesterton looks at the essence of each religion and what makes them different to Christianity, so that you gradually realise that there is very little in which they can be compared, much less considered similar. There is no political correctness is what he says, if there were, the differences would have been neutralised until everything tasted more or less the same.
However, Chesterton may be best read...more
Men and women have become Christians solely from reading this one book. If you are not a Christian, beware this book. It will possibly convert you. If it does not, then it will probably irreparably harden your heart. A book to save you eternally or to damn you to hell forever. Amazing.
21 likes · like · see review
Jul 22, 2008
Edward Waverley
rated it
5 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
people with a profile on MySpace.
Recommended to Edward by:
CS Lewis
Was Jesus the son of God? I think one of the most fascinating attempts to answer that question was mounted in the early 20th century by the two famous friends and literary rivals HG Wells and GK Chesterton, respectively the agnostic extraordinaire and the Catholic par excellence. For Wells, so emphatic was his need to debunk the notion of Christ's divinity that he took a break from his novels and switched to a series of writings on history, the most famous of which ws his "Outline of History." C...more
10 likes · like · see review
Aug 21, 2007
Brian
rated it
5 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
To Any Open Minded Person (but any Catholic it is a must)
Chesterton is a genius. Period.
This book, more than most others that are on the subject of Christian apologetics, blew me away. I can't really put into words anything more than that. Maybe until I read it again. My mind was just stretched to its limits in the scope and density of his arguments.
Chesterton covers every argument for Christ & Christianity and its need and place in history.
I recommend this book to any Christian and most especially to any Catholic to read in their lifetime. At...more
This book, more than most others that are on the subject of Christian apologetics, blew me away. I can't really put into words anything more than that. Maybe until I read it again. My mind was just stretched to its limits in the scope and density of his arguments.
Chesterton covers every argument for Christ & Christianity and its need and place in history.
I recommend this book to any Christian and most especially to any Catholic to read in their lifetime. At...more
7 likes · like · see review
I've now read "The Everlasting Man" for the second time. It has some of the drawbacks other reviewers have noted--racial epithets that don't go down well in the twenty-first century, Eurocentrism (more below), a style that sometimes obscures the main point.
However, these are superficial criticisms. For the most part, it presents an examination of certain logical fallacies about the Christian faith that you sometimes hear today. The science of evolution may have moved on from what it was in Chest...more
However, these are superficial criticisms. For the most part, it presents an examination of certain logical fallacies about the Christian faith that you sometimes hear today. The science of evolution may have moved on from what it was in Chest...more
Mar 03, 2008
shaun mccormick
rated it
5 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
every single person on earth
Shelves:
christian
The best book I have ever read.
A wonderful chronicle of how the entirety of history reaches its pinnacle in Jesus. From the start, Chesterton takes the poetic road; he swipes at the theory of evolution by asserting the necessity of art, the desire to create, and the noticing of beauty in unattractive things.
Sweeping into the mythologies, he shows how civilizations actually decline into polytheism from monotheism, rather than the generally-accepted opposite. He then shows how the Roman empire was...more
A wonderful chronicle of how the entirety of history reaches its pinnacle in Jesus. From the start, Chesterton takes the poetic road; he swipes at the theory of evolution by asserting the necessity of art, the desire to create, and the noticing of beauty in unattractive things.
Sweeping into the mythologies, he shows how civilizations actually decline into polytheism from monotheism, rather than the generally-accepted opposite. He then shows how the Roman empire was...more
The Everlasting Man is a strange kind of Christian apologetics, which relates the story of man from the beginning of time. Chesterton gives a delightful thrashing to the anthropologists who draw amazing conclusions from minimal evidence; emphasizes that whether or not evolution is true, it offers absolutely no reasonable explanation for the vast divide between man and the animals; pokes some fun at the silliness of comparative religion; and teases the historical critics who draw insupportable cl...more
A Chesterton is a lot like a Bruckner symphony: brilliant in a way, but redundant and ragged on the edges. Much like I love Bruckner's 4th but find his other symphonies mere re-runs, I absolutely adored "Orthodoxy" but didn't learn anything new from "The Everlasting Man." Everything I really loved about this book was already said in Orthodoxy, and I didn't much care for any of the new material.
In this work, Chesterton tackles a particular materialist assault on Christianity in his day. He divide...more
In this work, Chesterton tackles a particular materialist assault on Christianity in his day. He divide...more
Chesterton, G.K., The Everlasting Man, Ignatius Press
Part of the difficulty in reviewing this book is the vague way in which Chesterton assumes you know his thesis. He states something like an outline of the thesis early on (e.g., Jesus is not the same as other religious teachers for the following reasons, whose contraries entail reductios), but only tangentially advances the thesis at unexpected places in the book. The book is actually quite difficult to follow, as are many of Chesterton’s work...more
Part of the difficulty in reviewing this book is the vague way in which Chesterton assumes you know his thesis. He states something like an outline of the thesis early on (e.g., Jesus is not the same as other religious teachers for the following reasons, whose contraries entail reductios), but only tangentially advances the thesis at unexpected places in the book. The book is actually quite difficult to follow, as are many of Chesterton’s work...more
I read this to give me a different perspective from Peter Watson's 'A History of Ideas' which is an epic scholarly work of modern atheistic scepticism. Chesterton, writing in another age, with a different mindset, and a completely different style offers a piece of scepticism against modern scepticism. It is wonderfully written in Chesterton's usual witty style, but also as a man writing at a time when general literacy was much higher and broader than it is now, quite densly rich. When you adjust...more
Chesterton writes this book to fend off the same arguments that continue today -evolutionist philosophy, materialism, comparative religion.
He brings out a point I had not considered before. Humanism would have us believe that society is evolving to ever higher civilization. Chesterton points out that history does not bear this out. Egypt, Babylon, the Mayans all had advanced civilizations that disintegrated because of the nature of man. It brought to mind a conversation I had with a young man in...more
He brings out a point I had not considered before. Humanism would have us believe that society is evolving to ever higher civilization. Chesterton points out that history does not bear this out. Egypt, Babylon, the Mayans all had advanced civilizations that disintegrated because of the nature of man. It brought to mind a conversation I had with a young man in...more
Pretty fantastic and amazing although potentially difficult for a reader who knows little of Chesterton and his time-period. This was my first encounter with Chesterton and I have to say that his writing is exactly what I imagined it to be: powerful, forceful and persuasive on account of its call to the spirit of the reader. And it's just this spirit that is so important to Chesterton's understanding of the human and human history. It was a joy to read someone whose humanism was not only the fou...more
I've read this twice now, and I continue to think this is a vastly overrated book. Pieces of it are beautiful and rather brilliant, but only slight pieces. There's the argument about not dismissing ideas simply because they fell out of fashion - were they actually disproved? The answer is, yes, and the book falls short because the author's intelligence was strangled by his Euro-centric, racist, sexist beliefs. He is entirely blind to the crimes of Western Culture, and he seems to have sincerely...more
2 likes · like · see review
This book was a disappointment. If I could, I would give it lower than 1 star. The fact that is, actually, awful came as a big surprise. The reviews are glowing, and I am a big fan of C.S. Lewis, so I figured if it changed Lewis’s life, it must be worthwhile.
First and foremost, while some of the arguments were persuasive, Chesterton goes out of his way to complicate them. Chesterton did what academics often do which is to take a concept and coat it with complicated language for no obvious purpo...more
First and foremost, while some of the arguments were persuasive, Chesterton goes out of his way to complicate them. Chesterton did what academics often do which is to take a concept and coat it with complicated language for no obvious purpo...more
Aug 07, 2012
Simcha
is currently reading it
Currently reading the book; his language is such that it is not a book one can simply "breeze" through but requires full use of mental faculties. 1-2 chapters a day is all my attention span allows- he has some profound insights to the human condition/human nature.
Favorite quotes thus far:
p. 8 "So also in the specially Christian case we have to react against the heavy bias of fatigue. It is almost impossible to make the facts vivid, because the facts are familiar and for fallen men it is often tr...more
Favorite quotes thus far:
p. 8 "So also in the specially Christian case we have to react against the heavy bias of fatigue. It is almost impossible to make the facts vivid, because the facts are familiar and for fallen men it is often tr...more
I purchased this book at the same time that I picked up Surprised by Joy by CS Lewis. It was interesting then, that Lewis cites The Everlasting Man as one of the most influential books he read on his journey away from atheism. Knowing that this book influenced Lewis, it was not surprising to see large hints of Lewis' famous trilemma in here. Chesterton argues, like Lewis later, that it makes little sense to call Jesus a great teacher since he said things only a madman would say. Thus we get Lewi...more
Chesterton's most mature and complete work of history and theory, The Everlasting Man verily bristles with insight, marvel, delight of the mind.
Everything Chesterton writes is fruitful. I say this as a writer myself. There is nothing better to read than Chesterton when you are having difficulty thinking and writing.
Everything Chesterton writes is fruitful. I say this as a writer myself. There is nothing better to read than Chesterton when you are having difficulty thinking and writing.
The only reason the book doesn't get a fifth star is because of its painfully euro-centric approach to historiography, philosophy, etc., along with a good many monolithic generalizations. If you can overlook that, however, the prose itself can be quite literally breath-taking at times.
This book is basically an extended argument for the truth of Christianity's central doctrine of the Incarnation. Chesterton crafts his arguments with style, grace, humor, and deep intelligence. It requires patience -- the book demands attention and work and Chesterton's use of schemes and tropes is scintillating to the point of maddening -- but it is a thoroughly rewarding read.
...There's this one part at the end where he talks about the dawn as 'God kindling the morning fires for the world' --...more
...There's this one part at the end where he talks about the dawn as 'God kindling the morning fires for the world' --...more
I recently heard that someone has been going around saying that "Chesterton is the Besterton," and I have lived in a state of secret fear since, because that horrifically nerdy little rhyme sounds distressingly like something I would say. Anyway, I love him, despite his terrible racism (cut the guy a break, he lived in an all-white community some 70 years before the civil rights movement) and his insistance on mentioning Calvinism in the same breath as the other great heresies. One of his biogra...more
It says something for Chesterton that C.S. Lewis drew heavily on his ideas, and credits Chesterton with leading him back to Christianity. Chesterton's erudition and rapier-like wit are both on display in this work. I must say that I was more than a bit disgruntled with reading a new edition obviously rushed to reprint status without benefit of a copy editor to clear up the multitude of scanner induced erors (e.g. the frequent appearance of the term "modem" in a work dating from the early 20th ce...more
You can read my full review at Quieted Waters.
The Everlasting Man is second in my series of books to fill my year with G. K. Chesterton. I continue to appreciate Chesterton for his wit, eloquence, and admiration for beauty and joy; while I am beginning to have some hesitation with his overall body of work....more
This particular title splits into two parts, divided by Christ’s advent. Chesterton’s first half focuses on the world before Jesus and the way in which its religions developed. He lists and des
C.S. Lewis suggests that after reading a new book, one should not read another until he has read an old book in between. This is the only way to free oneself from the bias that enslaves every age. His comment refers to the ancients, not a contemporary like Chesterton, whose works were published in the early Twentieth Century. But for us Chesterton is old enough and should be read by anyone who is serious about understanding his own condition. The Everlasting Man is a brief history of the world t...more
Nov 01, 2012
Maggie
rated it
4 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
non-fiction,
religious-inspirational-books
my goodness. what a timely book. even though there are cultural time-place indicators (which can be interesting in their own right even as they are no longer are relevant to chesterton's thesis) overall this book proves how lasting indeed thought about religion and its origins is. simply worth reading, twice. as i shall do. i just listened to an audio version of it where the reader was rushing through parts i would have like slowing down over and thinking about. but no problem. i have the kindle...more
I felt like the majority of this book was Chesterton discussing why historians and scientists had no clue what they were doing. He attempted, somewhat eloquently and somewhat humorously, to show that Christianity was different than all mythology and philosophy. I think he does manage to show how Christianity combined elements of mythology and philosophy in a unique way. While that may be the case, it doesn't by any means make it true. His ease with dismissing science was very difficult for me to...more
The Everlasting Man is a Christian apologetic, that is, a reasoned attempted to defend and argue for Christian faith. An orthodox Catholic, Chesterton wrote The Everlasting Man in part to rebut H.G. Wells’s Outline of History (which I have not read). As such, it is ostensibly structured to follow the history of the world. Published in 1925, it was in keeping with a general attempt to respond to Darwin’s On the Origins of Species (published 66 years earlier) and a tremendous growth in scientific...more
I was blown away by this. Like, enough that I bought a text copy so that I could re-read a little more carefully and in depth. Picked up at random from one of Audible's $5 book sales, and while I would probably not go so far as to say it was transformative, it will definitely have a huge impact on how I think about things.
Chesterton does a brilliant job of teasing out the unique standing of man, in relation to the rest of the world and of Christ in relation to the rest of religions and myths.
Th...more
Chesterton does a brilliant job of teasing out the unique standing of man, in relation to the rest of the world and of Christ in relation to the rest of religions and myths.
Th...more
It is always such a delight to read Chesterton. This book is what might be called an outline of history, though I'm sure many historians would find fault with his methods. He has a unique way of cutting past all the clutter of what you think you know to reveal what should be obvious. He questions what many moderns take for granted because they really haven't thought through the implications of what we say. And in the process, he makes a good apologetic for Christianity that would eventually insp...more
4.5 stars (less than 5 only because some parts in the book are a little dry and hard to get through, but not often). I came across a reference to this book while reading another work that I can't remember (most likely it was C.S. Lewis or some such) and always wanted to read it.
Chesterton excellently lays out strong arguements for the existence and even the necessity of Christianity. The interesting thing is that Chesterton makes his arguement from the point of view of someone who is not Christ...more
Chesterton excellently lays out strong arguements for the existence and even the necessity of Christianity. The interesting thing is that Chesterton makes his arguement from the point of view of someone who is not Christ...more
As I read the early chapters of this book, I was entertained and nodding the assent of the already convinced, but I wondered how Chesterton's arguments would have been affected by the Holocaust, the Stalinist purges and all of the other tragedies of the 20th century. But, as he built to a crescendo of praise for the Church Militant and Triumphant, my skepticism was brushed aside. I'm not sure how well all of his assertions would hold up in today's court of opinion, but this is a go-to book for t...more
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Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) cannot be summed up in one sentence. Nor in one paragraph. In fact, in spite of the fine biographies that have been written of him (and his Autobiography), he has never been captured between the covers of one book. But rather than waiting to separate the goats from the sheep, let’s just come right out and say it: G.K. Chesterton was the best writer of the twent...more
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“There are two ways of getting home; and one of them is to stay there.”
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“Nobody understands the nature of the Church, or the ringing note of the creed descending from antiquity, who does not realize that the whole world once very nearly died of broadmindedness and the brotherhood of all religions.”
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