The Scandal of the Cross in

Chesterton’s Romance of Orthodoxy

Łukasz Czajka

Department of Philosophy

Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań

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Why Jesus’ death on the Cross is foolishness for

the Gentiles and scandal for the Jews?

Gentiles – rejection of resurrection, St. Paul’s failure at the Areopagus

Jews – rejection of Jesus as the true Messiah

What about Christians?

Can Jesus’ cross be also a scandal for Christian believers?

What event in the last moments of Jesus’ life may arouse controversy for Christian theologians?

Reflection on Jesus’ words - "My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46)

Gilbert K. Chesterton – Romance of Orthodoxy

Is Christianity the religion for atheists?

Crucial quote

In this indeed I approach a matter more dark and awful than it is easy to discuss; and I apologise in advance if any of my phrases fall wrong or seem irreverent touching a matter which the greatest saints and thinkers have justly feared to approach. But in that terrific tale of the Passion there is a distinct emotional suggestion that the author of all things (in some unthinkable way) went not only through agony, but through doubt. (...) He passed in some superhuman manner through our human horror of pessimism. When the world shook and the sun was wiped out of heaven, it was not at the crucifixion, but at the cry from the cross: the cry which confessed that God was forsaken of God. And now let the revolutionists choose a creed from all the creeds and a god from all the gods of the world, carefully weighing all the gods of inevitable recurrence and of unalterable power. They will not find another god who has himself been in revolt. Nay, (the matter grows too difficult for human speech) but let the atheists themselves choose a god. They will find only one divinity who ever uttered their isolation, only one religion in which God seemed for an instant to be an atheist. – G.K. Chesterton: „Romance of Orthodoxy”

Seeing Chesterton’s words through Leo Strauss eyes

The art of esoteric writing

Strauss’s hermeneutic method of close reading

An esoteric text communicates with the readers on two

levels.

At first, there is an exoteric, directly accessible to an average reader, text surface. Its content is coherent with official and conventional wisdom

of political and religious orthodoxy. Secondly, there is the esoteric, hidden from a

careless reader, heterodox depth of the text, which message came into conflict with the common views and opinions existed in a given society.

Esoteric text - two conditions that must be fulfilled

At first, the text had to be written at a time when

political and religious orthodoxy authorized the

censorship to persecution non-Orthodox authors

Secondly, it must contain in its body various errors

and antinomies that can difficult a clear

identification of the author's ideas.

Question: may Chesterton’s text be considered an

esoteric text?

Firstly, Chesterton could be afraid of unfriendly

response from the traditionalist Christian circles.

Secondly, it seems that in Chesterton’ text we can find a contradiction or at least a clear

inconsistency. The English writer at first declares

that his theses will be focused on a mystery that

even the saints were afraid to explore. However, in

the end he finishes with the thesis that he believes

that God only "seemed to be an atheist."

What is the Chesterton’s message?

Exoteric - God only "seemed to be an atheist."

Esoteric - unspoken suggestion that God himself was an atheist for a moment.

Two other interpretations of the Jesus’ doubt on the Cross

Slavoj Žižek –

postsecular philosophy

St. John of the Cross – mystical thought

Žižek’s interpretation

Comparison to Freud – ,,Father, cannot you see that I am burning?”

Fully atheistic interpretation: „When Christ dies, what dies with him is the secret hope

discernible in "Father, why hast thou forsaken me?": the hope that there is a father who has abandoned me. The "Holy Spirit" is the community deprived of its support in the big Other. The point of Christianity as a religion of atheism is not the vulgar humanist one that the becoming-man-of-God reveals that man is the secret of God (Feuerbach et. al.); rather, it attacks the religious hard core that survives even in humanism, even up to Stalinism, with its belief in History as the "big Other" that decides on the "objective meaning" of our deeds”.

Slavoj Žižek, The Puppet an the

Dwarf: the Perverse Core of Christianity

Žižek’s conclusions

What remains after such a sense of "the death of God" is community of the Holy Spirit understood as a self-organizing faithful community, which Žižek interpreters as an egalitarian political collective.

Without support of „the big Other” people are responsible for incorporating the ideal of universal love in life, doing justice in the world and making peace.

Christ of Saint John of the Cross

The Dark Night of the Soul – St. John of the Cross

The "dark night" is the experience of soul sorrow which suffers radical loneliness and abandonment by God.

The "dark night" brings devastation to the soul, changes mind into barren desert and sows the

emptiness in the heart It is not a punishment for sins, because people

who are the most devoted to God are going through the “dark night”.

The dark night of Mother Teresa’s soul

Mother Teresa’s dark night helped Her to identify herself with the feeling of abandonment of the poor on the streets of Calcutta.

The dark night of Mother Teresa is also a repetition of darkness which penetrated the Christ’s soul, it is a unique spiritual stigma.

Conclusions

Seeing doubting Jesus through the eyes of Paul the Apostle

From "My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” to "Father, into your hands I commit my spirit" (Luke 23:46).

After a loud shout of despair, Jesus uttered the last words in which he entrusted his soul to God, in whom he had just doubted.

Paul’s teaching about truly Christian hope

In spite of all the spiritual and physical suffering Jesus had faced, he shows that true faith is the faith against all adversities.

This type of faith, an account of which Christ gave dying on the cross, is a manifestation of faith described by the Apostle in beautiful words as "hope against all hope".

Thank you for your attention