Just Another Animal, Just Another Essene: Rereading Chesterton
Recently, I reread The Everlasting Man, the peak of G.K. Chesterton's mountainous output and a book I read--and read with some difficulty and little comprehension--in my backward and callow youth. The Victorian Chesterton, who does not deliver in bulleted lists and meanders to his points, can be hard for the modern reader to follow.
Chesterton is being rediscovered as Catholic thought is being rediscovered. You can see his influence in the writing of biggies such as Deal Hudson or George Weigel. While he makes sense in so many issues, I hope that his new fans don't gobble up everything he wrote as gospel. Like his friend, Hillaire Belloc, GKC tended to romanticize, downplay or ignore certain facts of history and of life.
For instance, the Romans may have been better than the Carthaginians, better enough to despise the Carthaginians for throwing their babies into sacrificial fires, but the Romans were still thugs who did plenty of killing themselves. That crusaders were often self-seeking and cruel knaves is glossed over by "The Chester-Belloc" because the Crusades kept Islam from overrunning Europe. Ah, but you see, had the crusaders not been knaves, had they been fixed on their mission, they might have wiped out the Moslem threat forever instead of leaving it for us or our descendants to deal with. In fact, Islam is overrunning Europe today.
Nevertheless, in spite of his Bad Carthaginians/Good Romans oversimplifications and other quirks, Chesterton is still very much a relevant and useful read. I shake my head when I ponder how errors, marked and refuted decades ago by popes such as Leo XIII and Pius X, by C.S. Lewis and by Chesterton--when such errors were just aliens starting to creep into the marketplace of ideas--have now overrun and monopolized that marketplace.
Two of these ideas are: "Man is just another animal," and "Christianity is just another religion." These were the main targets of GKC's antitheses in The Everlasting Man. The idea that Man is just another animal is now so pervasive that even Catholics find the ancient institution of priestly celibacy--a practice that witnesses Man’s spiritual side and destiny--puzzling and unnatural. They actually think that the invincible sexual desires that are said to enthrall us mere animals can be relieved in marriage and so prevent the victimization of boys. Why not hookers and rubber dolls? Why didn't all those dancin'-around horny pedophiles use those for relief? Yes, as GKC observes, "higher thought" such as Anthropology and Sociology and Psychology may be "high" but "not very thoughtful." Now "Man the animal" is getting set to breed and mine his fellows for body parts and then it’s just a short step to just taking the body parts from anyone who can't fight back.
That Christianity is just another religion (all of which are myths) is not only an axiom of the intellectual establishment, it is an "operative statement" of many Christians as well. Jesus was just another Essene*: one of those PBS travesties on faith suggested this a few years ago. I was surprised to read that the theory was around in Chesterton's boyhood. Among his contemporaries, there were also historians and other lights proposing that the original and pure Christianity was hijacked in an act of "papal aggression" a few centuries after Christ. Where have we read that lately?
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*The Essenes were an obscure sect that existed around the time of Christ and are believed to have collected the Dead Sea Scrolls. Because of some perceived similarities to Jesus in philosophy and practice, some have tried to shoehorn Jesus into their ranks. But if there are any similarities, there are many more differences. The Essenes are much more similar to the many heretical sects who abhorred material creation.
Copyright © 2004 by Neal J. Conway