Chesterton’s primary argument is that two things in history stand out utterly unlike everything else: the creature called man and the man called Christ.Ĭhesterton begins by sorting out what belongs to myth and what to man. He wrote that Wells presented an admirable “accumulation of history” that was “only wrong as an outline” because it described a gradual evolution of both man and religion. Chesterton wrote explicitly in response to The Outline of History by H.G. The task he set himself in The Everlasting Man was to craft simultaneously an apologetic and a rebuttal. Chesterton published The Everlasting Man in 1925, and soon after he converted to Catholicism. He was a sort of philosopher, or at least an unapologetic apologist. He was outspokenly Anglican and then Catholic. Chesterton himself did not share this viewpoint. Chesterton lived in the early 20th century amid the heady, rational modernism of that age, which felt that humankind, though originating in mere, unguided evolution, had now progressed beyond the need for religion - or at least for sharp religious divisions.

TheĪims to put these important theological classics on every Christian’s bookshelf in … Read moreĪims to put these important theological classics on every Christian’s bookshelf in colorful, well-crafted, and affordable volumes, with introductions written by those that love the books and their heritage.G.K. This faithful sacrifice has become a rich inheritance for the Church in our day, even though it is often neglected. Not all paid with blood, but each spent his life fighting for the truth. Paid a high price for the words you see before you. THE CHRISTIAN HERITAGE SERIES: The authors in the It was here that a homeless couple had crept underground with the cattle when the doors of the crowded caravanserai had been shut in their faces.Īnd it was here beneath the very feet of the passers-by, in a cellar under the very floor of the world, that Jesus Christ was born.” ~ From The second half of human history, which was like a new creation of the world, also begins in a cave. “This sketch of the human story began in a cave the cave which popular science associates with the cave-man and in which practical discovery has really found archaic drawings of animals. What makes Christianity so different is that it tells of the story of the true man, the final man, the everlasting man, who came down in history and transformed it. What truly gives man his dignity is the fact that he is so different from the beasts. Lewis, Chesterton shows that once man is reduced to animal, history becomes utterly meaningless. Why not engage the same subject matter Wells had taken up, but from a perspective fully appreciative of the unique place Christianity held in human history? The result isĪ humorous defense of Christianity which inspired C.S. Wells wrote a two-volume work which became a best-seller,

Chesterton the everlasting man