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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