7 Compare

[John]

7. How does The Everlasting Man compare with the other works by Chesterton that we have? How does it compare with other apologetic works, either that you have read or that we've read as a group?

[Manuel]

In my opinion this is the best apologetic work Chesterton ever wrote. Not far behind comes Orthodoxy and a little further still Heretics. These three are his best apologetic works.

Then he has a lot of biographies, a few of which we have read here. The best for me is that about Saint Thomas Aquinas (I have read seven, including his own autobiography).

Another group of works deals with history and literary critics. This is not too far from the previous group, as Chesterton's biographies usually tend to be critical studies of the persons, rather than traditional biographies. Of these I have read three.

The fourth set of "Chestertonia" is made of collections of short articles, of which I've read four. Of these, my favorite is "All things considered."

Finally, there is a set of miscellaneous works, such as his debate with Shaw, with Belloc as moderator.

This is all I have to say about Chesterton's essays. Another tremendous field is made by his fiction, but that would need another long comment :-)

[Madeleine]

I would agree, although I haven't made it all the way through his other apologetic works, I read this one because I was curious about how it convinced C.S. Lewis to believe. It wasn't until I reached the final chapters that it all came together. What a powerful insight! But without his laying the groundwork of our historical attempts to fathom the redemption and the how of it, it is easy to miss in a casual reading.

[Manuel]

I'd like to include here a comparison, not with other works by Chesterton, but rather with works by other authors that we have read. In fact, with "The Benedict Option" by Dreher and "The Restoration of Christian Culture" by Senior.

Let us consider chapter 6 in the second part of "The Everlasting Man," titled "The five deaths of the faith." Here Chesterton asserts that the Catholic Church has actually died at least five times during its history, but then it has always resurrected. And the way in which it resurrected was always surprising and unpredictable.

Thus, when Arianism seemed to have won the battle, suddenly Athanasius appeared and sent Arianism to the level of a great heresy, as important in its time as Protestantism many centuries later. Thus, when Catholic Europe was about to be overwhelmed by Islam, the Crusades suddenly inverted the issue. And so forth.

Nowadays, the Catholic Church seems to be overwhelmed by atheism. The answer to this, when it happens (it will happen sooner or later) won't be predictable. It won't be a return to the nineteenth century, as the two books I mentioned defend. It will be something new. It could be the collapse of our civilization, or it could be completely different. I won't probably see it, but I am convinced something like that will happen, perhaps sooner than we expect.

[John]

Manuel wrote: "I'd like to include here a comparison, not with other works by Chesterton, but rather with works by other authors that we have read. In fact, with "The Benedict Option" by Dreher and "The Restorati..."

I haven't gotten there this time yet, but does Chesterton say the Church has died, or that it has appeared to be dead or near death? Perhaps he is being poetic.

I agree the Church will never die, and as bad as things appear to be now, they will turn around at some point, in some unexpected way.

While I agree with you about Senior, I'm not sure that's a fair criticism of Dreher, which is about, I think, forming small christian intentional communities in which the faith can be nourished and protected against the coming storms. Perhaps to form the seedbed from which our future Athanasius can grow.

[Manuel]

John wrote: "I haven't gotten there this time yet, but does Chesterton say the Church has died, or that it has appeared to be dead or near death? Perhaps he is being poetic."

The title of chapter 6 is "The five deaths of the faith." But yes, you are right, he really means that it appeared to be dead, that everybody thought it was dead, but then it resurrected. Of course, it is a poetic way of comparing the Church to Christ Himself.

[Mariangel]

Dreher did have a whole chapter about technology, where he argued that it's not morally neutral and should be discarded. True, he was less violent in his language about it than Senior, but it is there.

John wrote: "Dreher, which is about, I think, forming small christian intentional communities in which the faith can be nourished and protected against the coming storms."

One could also say that Senior is about families forming their children on the Great Books and on the appreciation of music and the beauty of nature as the soil where Christianity can grow and flourish.