Considering TBATC as a whole from the perspective of just having finished it, I'm not sure whether it is better or worse than Manalive. It's a little harder to understand, but I think that may be due to subtlety. It's also not as moving, but that's not surprising since it's not about how one man should live, but how a society should run.
The story focuses on the continually frustrated struggle of two Scotchman to have a duel for the honor of the Virgin Mary. One is Mr. Turnbull, a fiery atheist who has never in his life been taken seriously, putting out a little newspaper that continually defies the world with his blasphemies. The other is Evan MacIan, a young Scotchman just come to London to make his way in the world. He's a Roman Catholic, grown up in the wildest parts of the highlands, away from the Presbyterian influence of that country. He's also a Jacobite, and steps into London from an isolation that dates back to that era of rebellion. When he reads in the window of Turnbull's shop that the Mother of God is a common harlot, covering her misdeed with a fanciful mythology, he breaks the shop window in a fury to reach Turnbull, and challenges him to a duel.
However, it's not as easy as it sounds, apparently, to fight a duel in early 20th century England. They must flee magistrates, police, liberal Christians, pagan professors, drunken Gentlemen, and an increasing mutual sense of phileo. The story all ends up in an insane asylum with Dr. Lucifer - and a spectacular miracle.
The story is a warning against the effects of modernism on society, it's a not designed to showcase a debate between Christians and atheists. Turnbull and MacIan are equally protagonists, and by the end of the book, they find themselves on the same side against modernity's proffered insanity. Perhaps it can offer advice for an era in which many people are concerned about the relationship of the Church and the State, though I'm not sure anyone wants to hear what Chesterton has to say. Here is what I think is the point of the book - MacIan is speaking to Turnbull:
That's a good question.
"When I saw that, I saw everything; I saw the Church and the world. The Church in its earthly action has really touched morbid things--tortures and bleeding visions and blasts of extermination. The Church has had her madnesses, and I am one of them. I am the massacre of St. Bartholomew. I am the Inquisition of Spain. I do not say that we have never gone mad, but I say that we are fit to act as keepers to our enemies. Massacre is wicked even with a provocation, as in the Bartholomew. But your modern Nietzsche will tell you that massacre would be glorious without a provocation. Torture should be violently stopped, though the Church is doing it. But your modern Tolstoy will tell you that it ought not to be violently stopped whoever is doing it. In the long run, which is most mad--the Church or the world? Which is madder, the Spanish priest who permitted tyranny, or the Prussian sophist who admired it? Which is madder, the Russian priest who discourages righteous rebellion, or the Russian novelist who forbids it? That is the final and blasting test. The world left to itself grows wilder than any creed. A few days ago you and I were the maddest people in England. Now, by God! I believe we are the sanest. That is the only real question-- whether the Church is really madder than the world. Let the rationalists run their own race, and let us see where they end. If the world has some healthy balance other than God, let the world find it. Does the world find it? Cut the world loose," he cried with a savage gesture. "Does the world stand on its own end? Does it stand, or does it stagger?"
3 comments:
I like your series of posts on Chesterton, although I wish I wasn't the only one commenting.
At any rate, that's a very good point and one that atheists seem to be blind to: sure, the church has done some evil things. However, a nontheistic worldview has lead to much worse in the 20th century. As the ball and cross suggests, the most deadly thing is not atheism, but a kind of malevolent apathy. The atheist and the Christian were still fighting, and fighting eachother, but the movement took them somewhere important.
Thanks, Eric. Have you read this book, yet? It's not too long, either. I think this is the last of the Chesterton books I got for Christmas, so I'm afraid it will be the end of this series of posts.
Here's another interesting quote from the book:
"I had a dream," said MacIan, "in which I saw the cross erect and
the ball invisible. They were both dreams from hell. There must
be some round earth to plant the cross upon. But here is the
awful difference--that the round world will not consent even to
continue round. The astronomers are always telling us that it is
shaped like an orange, or like an egg, or like a German sausage.
They beat the old world about like a bladder and thump it into a
thousand shapeless shapes. Turnbull, we cannot trust the ball to be always a ball; we cannot trust reason to be reasonable. In the end the great terrestrial globe will go quite lop-sided, and only
the cross will stand upright."
The more I think about this, the more I'm convinced that it is true. Chesterton really gets it.
Yes, I read the book, and I think it is one of my favorites, though I've liked pretty much all the GKC that I have read. The craziest one is Napoleon of Notting Hill.
That is a very deep insight of GKC and it seems to go down many levels. Yet, it is also a strange image, since the cross is supposed to represent the joining of God and man. The way GKC uses the image the cross seems to be God and the ball seems to be man, and sticking them together is their unification.
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