Chesterton's discussion of Jesus' cry from the cross in "Romance of Orthodoxy" can be read on two levels - exoterically and esoterically. Exoterically, Chesterton states that God only "seemed to be an atheist" for a moment. However, esoterically there is an unspoken suggestion that God himself experienced doubt. This esoteric reading is supported by the political/religious context requiring cautious writing, and apparent contradictions in Chesterton's text. The cry from the cross is interpreted differently by philosophers like Žižek and mystics like John of the Cross, relating it respectively to atheism or the "dark night of the soul" spiritual experience.

1. The Scandal of the Cross in
Chesterton’s Romance of Orthodoxy
Łukasz Czajka
Department of Philosophy
Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań

3. 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

4. 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)

5. Gilbert K. Chesterton – Romance of Orthodoxy
 Is Christianity the
religion for
atheists?

6. 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”

7. Seeing Chesterton’s words through Leo Strauss eyes
 The art of esoteric writing
 Strauss’s hermeneutic method of close
reading

8. 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.

9. 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.

10. 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."

11. 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.

12. Two other interpretations of the Jesus’
doubt on the Cross
 Slavoj Žižek –
postsecular
philosophy
 St. John of the Cross
– mystical thought

13. 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

14. 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.

15. Christ of Saint John of the Cross

16. 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”.

17. 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.

18. 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.

19. 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".

20. Thank you for your attention