Of Caves, Rationalism, and Redemption

But for the occasional spelunker, people rarely venture too far into caves.  While childhood fears of scary creatures may trigger such evasion – after all, Bilbo Baggins did meet Gollum in a cave – the average man would rather stay above ground than explore locales even fancifully associated with bats, spiders and trolls.  Trolls may or may not be lurking in the corners, but we’re haunted by their cold, impersonal darkness which surround human senses with tones of eeriness and even death.  

On the other hand, though, these same caverns captivate our attention.  Christians gather every Easter Sunday to celebrate an empty cave, Discovery Channel specials speak of primitive men who lived in caves, and many people know nothing of Plato’s Republic except for men shackled within an allegorical cave.  Allegory and troll tales aside, the caves’ true stories speak of our utmost value and need for redemption.  Looking at caves, we find truths that smash the humanistic illusions fettering people in rationalism, because such truths proclaim the stamp of God in us all.

THE FALL OF CULTURE

Illuminating many of his views on forms and ideals, Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” (in book IV of the Republic) addresses his critique against general culture: People have become so comfortable with an illusion of reality that we refuse the pursuit of truth.  We prefer shadowy images on the wall of a cave over the unfettered truth of the real world.  Secure in our illusions, we resist any notion that threatens our perceptions, thereby closing our eyes to anything more than a limited glimpse of reality.  

In The Everlasting Man, G.K. Chesterton returns to the cave to free mankind from the illusory shackles of common culture.  Unlike Plato, Chesterton does not condemn the men in caves; rather, he heralds glorious truths about them.  Ever the champion of wonder, Chesterton speaks to the glory of mankind that far surpasses the common image of earliest man.  Chesterton’s two cavemen – the pre-historic man and the God-Man – stand to proclaim the majesty of humanity, while the secular humanist ignores the barest of facts found in the cave.

Science cannot study pre-historic man, for it cannot gather a handful of such men and chart their behavior over time.  True science can speak only of present evidence.  In the absence of such pre-historic evidence, common beliefs regarding the caveman rise only from stories of Bedrock’s most notable family, fanciful interpretations of archaeological findings, and the general longing to believe in humanity’s progress.  From these shaky foundations, we are asked to conclude that pre-historic man was an ignorant, non-verbal, and non-religious barbarian whose “chief occupation in life was knocking his wife about.”[i]  Through waving his club, dragging his wife, and beating on stones to communicate, this caveman made his mark on the archaeological landscape. 

Museum archives must be full of vast amounts of pre-historic evidence, considering the confidence with which “experts” inform the masses about such barbarians.  In reality, of course, these experts lack archaeological evidence to support the pictures they paint, and they have paid too little attention to the available evidence. As Chesterton writes,

“…the curious thing is this: that while ten thousand tongues of more or less scientific or literary gossip seemed to be talking at once about this unfortunate fellow, under the title of cave-men, the one connection in which it is really relevant and sensible to talk about him as the cave-man has been comparatively neglected…In fact people have been interested in everything about the cave-man except what he did in the cave…What was found in the cave was not the club, the horrible gory club notched with the number of women it had knocked on the head….”[ii]

When observers actually venture into caves to study the evidence, they see lines on walls.  The organization of these lines could only be the work of human hands, because these lines resemble artistic representations of animals.  In the caves, we find no ignorance, no barbarianism; we find art. 

Elaborately constructed histories of prehistoric man (which structurally are problematic), recreate time before civilization, when available evidence allows the recreations to the time before narratives alone.  Yet, despite the limitations, such rich pre-histories the anthropologists give us!  They speak even of the Missing Link with such familiarity that one might think they know as much of him as of Hitler or Churchill.  But such stories have no basis.  Violent though he may have been, the possibility remains that “when the cave-man’s finished jumping on his mother, or his wife as the case may be, he loves to hear the little brook a-gurgling, and also to watch the deer as they come down to drink at the brook.”[iii] Though such a  statement may be as imaginative as the so-called histories, to be precise we can go no further than to speak of what this man actually did in the cave.  Whether he painted on these walls as decorations for a cave-infant’s nursery or to communicate with members of his herd, the caveman produced images that only a creative, appreciative, and intelligent man could paint.

Rather than speaking of these pre-historic men with the majesty Rousseau would assign to the “noble savage,” rationalists prefer to support their humanistic agendas by speaking of ignorant, violent cavemen.  A naturalistic, evolutionary view of human history requires that people have progressed.  Humanists point to this progression as a means to extol the glory of humanity as they proclaim, “look at all man overcame.”  They claim that, in the same way that J. Seward Johnson’s aluminum giant of “The Awakening” pulls himself from the mud along the Potomac, mankind has arrived through its own might and will to succeed, or by the driving force of an impersonal natural selection.  Of course, this demonstrates humanity’s dominance over nature as we have evolved to subdue it.  In this naturalistic pursuit to define people and their ancestry, the rationalist leaves man in the cave, binding him to fanciful interpretations of shadows dancing on the walls.  Thus “progress” destroys humanity’s uniqueness.  As an evolutionary product, people loses their will, passions, and desires; for we are little more than the result of deterministic instincts.  Rather than liberating mankind, such a view leaves him shackled to the chemicals in our heads and environmental stimuli. The rationalist thinks he exalts mankind, but he does the opposite, “…for, in worshipping man, man became unmanly.[iv] 

This narrow adherence to rationalism brought such great concern to Chesterton that he credited it with the fall of great civilizations and the deconstruction of any value in humanity.  The decay of Rome brought about the “end of the world” because, while nothing left could conquer Rome, nothing left could improve it either.  Rationalism and pessimism arose out of the boredom found in Rome’s glory.  Romans abandoned the beauty of their arts – their poetry, their myths - and without myths, their philosophies became “a bore and a joke,” and they turned to immorality in substitution.[v]  As their myths died, they gave up their gods; as they gave up their gods, their cultures died.  In setting man as the measure of knowledge and value, the humanist had no more room for the Divine, for he sought to replace his “God-shaped vacuum” with a predictable series of factors: instincts, social convention, and personal preference or convenience. Clinging to rationalism and abandoning mystic wonder, the greatest of ancient cultures lost its standards for wisdom and beauty.  Plato’s ideals vanished, leaving behind empty forms, empty concepts.  The Romans were left with no reference point for truth; so when Pontius Pilate asked Christ, “qui veritas?” he asked not in mockery, but from within a void.  Such a loss of understanding can only leave man in despair.  In his despair, man lost the ability to see the world as he ought.  He could no longer see the ideals that Plato proclaimed, and he welcomed the chains which left him staring at shadows on walls.

As the culture was dying, however, in the Eastern part of the empire a faction of people claimed that God had died, and that some of them had actually seen Him die.  Oddly, these people seemed “unnaturally joyful” about this death.  These men and women who stood against empire-wide despair “…were a scratch company of barbarians and slaves and poor and unimportant people; but their formation was military; they moved together and were very absolute about who and what was really a part of their little system; and about what they said, however mildly, there was a ring like iron.”[vi] 

A WORLD UPSIDE DOWN

Chesterton points to this awkward group of Jews to introduce the events surrounding the death of Christ and growth of the Church. Christ had come; He had come into a dying world to “set up His colossal realism” against the trappings of secularism.[vii]  Christ’s coming to Earth brought a new creation of the world – a second half of human history that began in a cave, as did the beginning sketch of human history.  The Son of God came to earth as man, a man born in a stable -- a cave -- in Palestine.  Chesterton’s conviction of the Incarnation’s importance surfaces clearly as he proclaims:

“…Glory to God in the Lowest

The spout of the stars in spate –

Where the thunderbolt thinks to be slowest

And the lightning fears to be late:

As men dive for the sunken gem

Pursuing, we hunt and hound it,

The fallen star that has found it

In the cavern of Bethlehem.”[viii]

Christ’s incarnation in Bethlehem brought hope to a dying world.  Far from abandoning the world that had rejected Him, He proclaimed the value and wonder of His creation by taking on its form and taking His first breath inside the lowliest of places – a cave.  The Word became flesh, and in doing so “also was a CaveMan, and had also traced strange shapes of creatures , curiously coloured, upon the wall of the world; but the pictures he had made had come to life.”[ix]

Possibly the Church has overlooked the uniqueness and importance of Christ’s birthplace. Christ’s incarnation, the truest eucatastrophe[x], turned the world upside down, and the cave of His birth screams this same truth.  The cave indicates the complete humanity of Christ.  It reminds us of us His hatred for the ruin that sin brought into the world – hatred such that He fixed it.  It reminds us of His love for the creation – love such that He took the time to repair it, and stooped low to do so, for “in Bethlehem it was Heaven that was under the earth.”[xi]  In looking to the Savior born in a cave, we embrace what Paul proclaims in Philippians 2.  Christ exalted Himself by taking the form of a servant … such a servant that shepherds came to the most lowly of places to behold His birth. 

Still, the cave could not contain Christ, neither in His birth nor in His death.  Springing forth from the cave in Bethlehem, He reclaimed the value of the entire created order.  Becoming physical man, Christ brought hope for physical renewal, but proclaimed a truth that Gnostics somehow ignore.  Indeed Christ came to make all things new, but His incarnation promises the value of the present creation.  He addressed man’s physical needs and longings to teach spiritual truths; He spoke of a full spectrum of creation: rocks, seeds, yeast, animals, and vineyards; He healed physical ailments to restore the body; He acknowledged the Father’s appreciation for “insignificant” parts of creation – sparrows and lilies.  And when He conquered the cave outside Jerusalem, it was not His spirit alone that rose; His body actually rose, and He let His followers touch it.  In conquering this cave and death, Christ proclaimed restoration.  Such restoration provides a foretaste of Heaven and the new earth, but it also confirms that the physical world has value now.  For Christ did not abandon His creation, but became it that He might accomplish this redemptive work.  How can we refuse to attribute such value to creation, when the Creator clearly did not!

SIGNATURES OF AN IMAGE BEARER

The Caves that tell stories of pre-historic people remind us of their God-given wonder.  Theologians speak of man’s creation in relation to God’s image – that he has rational, spiritual, moral, creative, and relational abilities for exercising his role as God’s viceroy over the rest of creation.  The pictures on these walls proclaim many of these truths, distinguishing between man as an image-bearer and man as the product of an irrational, impersonal process that would connect him naturalistically to all living organisms.

Chesterton points to many of these distinguishing factors: “he cannot sleep in his own skin … he is wrapped in artificial bandages; he is propped on artificial crutches called furniture … alone among the animals, he is shaken with laughter; as if he had caught some secret in the very shape of the universe hidden from the universe itself.”[xii] The evolutionist stands in the cave and tries to deduce an impersonal process that would connect man to the world around him.  Were man the product of such a process, we should expect to see that monkeys began drawings and man finished them – or that that a Pithecanthropus drew reindeer badly and Homo Sapiens drew them well, or that a refined, house-broken dog draws a man in a better way than a primitive jackal or early dog-ancestor did.  Yet we find no such evidence.  In the cave, we find only man – as man – thinking, processing, and creating.  Art – the signature of man – sets him apart from everything else.  Because of this invisible pane of glass between man and the rest of creation, Chesterton claims that “every sane sort of history must begin with man, as man, a thing standing absolute and alone…Man is the microcosm; man is the measure of all things; man is the image of God.”[xiii]

Men tend to seek value in their ancestry.  In his Aeneid, Virgil exalts Rome by building its lineage upon the splendor of Troy.  Instead of attributing man with a glorious past, the evolutionist proclaims a barbaric one.  In search of his own worth, Prince Caspian remarked to Aslan, “I was wishing that I came from a more honourable lineage.” Aslan does not leave Caspian in despondency, but rather encourages him: “You came from Lord Adam and Lady Eve and that is both honour enough to erect the head of the poorest beggar and shame enough to bow the shoulders of the greatest emperor in earth.” C.S. Lewis understood that people have value without pulling themselves through an evolutionary process, for “humanity does not pass through phases as a train passes through stations: being alive, it has the privilege of always moving yet never leaving anything behind.  Whatever we have been, in some sort we are still.”[xiv]  Indeed.  Adam was created in God’s image, and as his descendants we still bear that stamp.  Rome was great, because its mighty heritage was as well.  Similarly, evolutionists degrade man because of their treatment of his heritage.  They cannot have it both ways – a glorious man with a frightful past. In imagining men as ignorant, wonderless barbarians they relegate themselves to the same, for as Screwtape tells Wormwood, “all mortals tend to turn into the things they are pretending to be.”[xv]

By embracing rationalism, modern people remain willfully chained in the cave.  They see images on walls, and though they have grand interpretations, they ignore reality.  By embracing Christ, redeemed people have a different sort of bondage that affects their new view of everything else.  In Romans 1, Paul claims to be a slave to Christ, but in Galatians 5:1, He claims that this very same union to Christ sets men free.  He urges men to be free, but calls the church at Colossi to remember his own chains. 

Freedom in bondage is a paradox.  Chesterton liked paradoxes and claimed that Christianity has more paradoxes than other philosophies.  But everyone has to face contradictions and paradoxes; nobody lives in complete consistency.  The Christian does not avoid this conundrum; he “puts the contradiction into his philosophy,” while determinists and rationalists put it into their habits.[xvi] For the person who rejects mystery and paradox in his adherence to rationalism has thereby embraced madness; he finds that “…all the straight roads of logic lead to some bedlam or anarchism or to passive obedience, to treating the universe as a clockwork of matter or else as a delusion of the mind.  It is only the mystic, the one who accepts the contradictions, who can laugh and walk easily through the world.”[xvii] In fear of wonder and paradox, the rationalist cannot accept the reality of what he sees in caves. 

The Christian accepts the contradictions and finds freedom in Christ. He is “the way, the truth and the life,” and this same truth has set people free.[xviii]  In gazing at walls in light of the truth of Christ, people may glory in the wonder of their own creation.  People are great because of our God, who has reflected His greatness in each of us.  In contemplation of the greatness of humanity as an image bearer of God, we learn to value the things put under our feet.  We see that these cavemen took care to paint pictures of the world around them.  As they reflected the signature of God in their lives, they brought value to art, to rocks, to reindeer, and to the women they clubbed!  For, being made by the God who came into the world to redeem all things, the rest of the physical world reflects Him as well, and therefore has value.

Because God came to earth in a cave, brought redemption through His victory over the cave, and reflected His very nature through images painted on walls of a cave, people is freed from the illusion of rationalism.  The cave’s mouth opens to speak forth the Divine stamp upon all people and all the created order. Even as the Magi, the standards of rationalism and philosophy from the East, journeyed to Palestine and found something God-like in a cave, may we look into the cave with the same zeal for discovery and find something God-like.  Oh, that the Christian return to the cave to remember the paradoxical freedom that comes from a perspective bound in union with Christ, and exclaim with Chesterton, “Was there not once a thing that taught us that we were free in our souls? Did it not surround itself with tortures and dungeons in order to force men to believe their souls were free?  If there was, let us return … Put me in those dungeons [those caves] if by that means I may possibly believe it again.”[xix] 

“O to grace how great a debtor daily I’m constrained to be;

Let that grace now, like a fetter, bind my wandering heart to Thee.

Prone to wander Lord, I feel it – prone to leave the God I love:

Here’s my heart, O take and seal it, seal it for Thy courts above.”

– Notes –

[i] Chesterton, G.K. The Everlasting Man. San Francisco: Ignatius Press (1993). 27

[ii] Ibid, 28.

[iii] Ibid, 31.

[iv] Ibid, 153.

[v] Ibid, 161.

[vi] Ibid, 163-4.

[vii] Chesterton, G.K. “The Blatchford Controversies” in The Collected Works of G.K. Chesterton. Vol.1. ed. David Dooley.  San Francisco: Ignatius Press (1986). 378.  This series of three articles appeared in the Clarion between July and August of 1904 in response to the attacks on Christianity by Robert Blatchford, editor of the Clarion.

[viii]Chesterton, G.K. “Gloria in Profundis” in G.K. Chesterton Collected Works, Vol.10.  San Francisco: Ignatius (1994) 138.  

Lines 25-32

[ix] Everlasting Man, 169

[x] J.R.R. Tolkein. “On Fairy Stories” in The Tolkien Reader.  New York: Del Rey (1986).  Tolkein uses the word eucatastrophe in attempt to restore the catastrophe of tragic stories.  In eucatastrophe, the plot of the story comes full circle to give a glimpse of Redemption.  The ultimate eucatastrophe, the incarnation, rights the tragedy of sin to bring about the true “happy ending.”

[xi] Everlasting Man 173.

[xii] Ibid, 36.

[xiii] Ibid, 35.

[xiv] Lewis, C.S. The Allegory of Love. London: Oxford University Press (1986) 1.

[xv] Lewis, C.S. The Screwtape Letters.  San Francisco: Harper Collins (2003). 290. 

[xvi] Blatchford, 383.

[xvii] Ibid, 384

[xviii] John 14:6 and 8:32

[xix]Blatchford, 395.