CHESTERTON THE APOLOGIST

John Warwick Montgomery

The sages have a hundred maps to give

That trace their crawling cosmos like a tree,

They rattle reason out through many a sieve

That stores the sand and lets the gold go free:

And all these things are less than dust to me

Because my name is Lazarus and I live.

                      --G. K. Chesterton (1922)

When we think of Chesterton today, we think of Father Brown, the quintessential priest-detective. But, like Conan Doyle, who believed his more serious writings were more important than his Sherlock Holmes stories, Chesterton’s central thrust (even in the persona of Father Brown) was elsewhere.  At heart, Chesterton was a controversalist, or, better, an apologist.  What he really wanted to achieve was to bring his contemporaries (and us!) back to sanity by showing the truth of classic Christian orthodoxy.

True, he seems to discount his apologetic role.  In one of his most important books, Orthodoxy, he claims that he is doing spiritual autobiography, not apologetics.  He goes so far as to declare:  “I never read a line of Christian apologetics.”  But in effect this put him in the same category of originality as Wittgenstein, who refused to read traditional philosophy and thereby created something truly original himself.

Chesterton’s apologetic impact

The proof of the pudding in Chesterton’s case is the influence he has had on contemporary and subsequent defenders of the faith.  Etienne Gilson, the great medievalist, said that Orthodoxy was the best apologetic the 20^th century had yet produced.  When Chesterton died, Charles Williams of the Oxford Inklings lamented, “The last of my Lords is dead.”  In his obituary for Chesterton, T. S. Eliot stated flatly that Chesterton “did more than any man of his time” to “maintain the existence of the [Christian] minority in the modern world.”

Chesterton’s impact on C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien was immense.  When Lewis asserts concerning the gospel story that “here and here only in all time the myth must become fact; the Word, flesh; God, Man,” and Tolkien declares, “this story is supreme; and it is true. Art has been verified. Legend and history have met and fused,” they are echoing Chesterton:

“In answer to the historical query of why it was accepted, and is accepted, I answer for millions of others in my reply: because it fits the lock; because it is like life. It is one among many stories; only it happens to be a true story. It is one among many philosophies; only it happens to be the truth.”

And when C. S. Lewis, in the final volume of the Narnian Chronicles, has the children find in Narnia companions they thought they would never see again and learn that in God’s kingdom “no good thing is ever lost,” he picks up from where Chesterton left off:

“Paradise is somewhere and not anywhere, is something and not anything. And I would not be so very much surprised if the house in heaven had a real green lamp-post after all.”

Chesterton’s attack on enemy territory

Chesterton’s influence apologetically was—and is—due to his special approach to the defence of the faith.  Several elements come together to produce a unique apologetic style.

First, though the word “apologetics” means literally “defence,” Chesterton was never defensive.  As one commentator put it, he “wrestled the initiative from the skeptics and presented the historic faith upon a note of triumphant challenge.”

Thus, Chesterton goes after the fallacious and irrational presuppositions of unbelief, showing, often by way of epigrammatic gems, that the self-styled rationalist is as naked as Hans Christian Andersen’s emperor in the tale of “The Emperor’s Clothes.”  An example or two will show Chesterton’s withering logic.

He observes that “the man who denies original sin believes in the Immaculate Conception of everybody.”

Over against the argument that we must remain agnostic and never claim that God has in fact revealed himself in this world: “We don’t know enough about the unknown to know that it is unknowable.”

To those who think Evolution eliminates God’s creative activity:  “It is absurd for the Evolutionist to complain that it is unthinkable for an admittedly unthinkable God to make everything out of nothing, and then pretend that it is more thinkable that nothing should turn itself into everything.”

Chesterton never tires in pointing out the unjustified and unrecognised dogmatism of the unbeliever—in contrast with the open and attractive worldview of the orthodox Christian:  “The Christian is quite free to believe that there is a considerable amount of settled order and inevitable development in the universe. But the materialist is not allowed to admit into his spotless machine the slightest speck of spiritualism or miracle.”

Chesterton’s concern with facts

In today’s apologetic climate, there are two major schools of thought: the Presuppositionalists (who hold that because of sin, the unbeliever always starts from his or her presuppositions of unbelief, and that only by starting from the true presupposition of Christian truth can one achieve anything) and the Evidentialists (who argue that we can and must convince the unbeliever of revelational truth by presenting the factual evidence for Christian verities).

Chesterton would certainly have joined the Evidentialist camp.

True, he was concerned with the unbeliever’s presuppositions—but only to demonstrate the fallacious nature of them.  He did not think that believers and unbelievers operate, as it were, in hermetically sealed philosophical compartments.  His apologetic echoes through formal research reports. OBJECTIVE: To allow the student to analyze and research specific aspects of management and leadership theories for increased understanding and application of successful administrative principles. To enable the student to integrate biblical perspectives with management and leadership theories for the enhancement of the leadership within his/her organization. To challenge the student to gain familiarization with the research process and the presentation of formal research reports. AD 682 Level III Christian Management Project (3 SCH) PURPOSE: To provide opportunities for graduate students to relate basic management principles to managerial situations and to examine and analyze the meaning and scope of various management and leadership theories through a project approach and relate these to the church/Christian organization and span>

Chesterton’s point—here and in general—is that the facts are on the side of Christian orthodoxy.  If one is willing to investigate those facts, the truth of the faith will become plain.  It is unbelieving dogmatism which keeps a fallen race from the gospel, not an absence of factual evidence for it.