Apologetics; Chesterton, G. K. (Gilbert Keith), 1874-1936; Christianity -- Essence, genius, nature
This answer was like the slash of a sword; it sundered;
it did not in any sense sentimentally unite. Briefly, it divided
God from the cosmos. That transcendence and distinctness of the
deity which some Christians now want to remove from Christianity,
was really the only reason why any one wanted to be a Christian.
It was the whole point of the Christian answer to the unhappy pessimist
and the still more unhappy optimist. As I am here only concerned
with their particular problem, I shall indicate only briefly this
great metaphysical suggestion. All descriptions of the creating
or sustaining principle in things must be metaphorical, because they
must be verbal. Thus the pantheist is forced to speak of God
in all things as if he were in a box. Thus the evolutionist has,
in his very name, the idea of being unrolled like a carpet.
All terms, religious and irreligious, are open to this charge.
The only question is whether all terms are useless, or whether one can,
with such a phrase, cover a distinct IDEA about the origin of things.
I think one can, and so evidently does the evolutionist, or he would
not talk about evolution. And the root phrase for all Christian
theism was this, that God was a creator, as an artist is a creator.
A poet is so separate from his poem that he himself speaks of it
as a little thing he has "thrown off." Even in giving it forth he
has flung it away. This principle that all creation and procreation
is a breaking off is at least as consistent through the cosmos as the
evolutionary principle that all growth is a branching out. A woman
loses a child even in having a child. All creation is separation.
Birth is as solemn a parting as death.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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