The Ball and the Cross. By G.K. Chesterton, originally published in 1909.
Freud’s Last Session. By Mark St. Germain, Dramatists Play Service, Inc., 2010.
“Debates” about the clash between religion and atheism are rarely developed well in literature and drama. Such presentations tend to be ham-fisted and are often slanted one way or the other. Either the character(s) representing religion are plaster saints or pious fools, and the debates over big issues are often shallow and devoid of nuance and deep understanding of important issues.
Just because it’s difficult to handle such subject matter well, it doesn’t mean that it can’t be done in an interesting an entertaining manner. This review will address two creative works that address the clash between religion and atheism with style, wit, and intelligence. The first is a novel– G.K. Chesterton’s The Ball and the Cross, and Mark St. Germain’s play Freud’s Last Session.
Chesterton’s The Ball and the Cross is the story of two men, McIan, a staunch Catholic, and Turnbull, a public atheist running a periodical promoting secularism. Insulted by Turnbull’s treatment of the Virgin Mary, McIan challenges Turnbull to a duel. The two of them attempt to fight on multiple occasions, but they are always interrupted by people with different opinions on life and the world. The two men criss-cross the country, debating and arguing all the way, though never getting the chance to turn their swords against each other. Eventually, the pair are compelled to join forces in order to defeat a threat that could destroy England.
In one passage, the two men reflect upon their complicated intellectual sparring and how their understanding of each other’s perspectives has developed in the light of listening to each other’s ideas:
“MacIan leant his white and rather weary face back upon the cushions in order to speak up through the open door.
“Mr. Turnbull,” he said, “I have nothing to add to what I have said before. It is strongly borne in upon me that you and I, the sole occupants of this runaway cab, are at this moment the two most important people in London, possibly in Europe. I have been looking at all the streets as we went past, I have been looking at all the shops as we went past, I have been looking at all the churches as we went past. At first, I felt a little dazed with the vastness of it all. I could not understand what it all meant. But now I know exactly what it all means. It means us. This whole civilization is only a dream. You and I are the realities.”
“Religious symbolism,” said Mr. Turnbull, through the trap, “does not, as you are probably aware, appeal ordinarily to thinkers of the school to which I belong. But in symbolism as you use it in this instance, I must, I think, concede a certain truth. We must fight this thing out somewhere; because, as you truly say, we have found each other’s reality. We must kill each other—or convert each other. I used to think all Christians were hypocrites, and I felt quite mildly towards them really. But I know you are sincere—and my soul is mad against you. In the same way you used, I suppose, to think that all atheists thought atheism would leave them free for immorality—and yet in your heart you tolerated them entirely. Now you know that I am an honest man, and you are mad against me, as I am against you. Yes, that’s it. You can’t be angry with bad men. But a good man in the wrong—why one thirsts for his blood. Yes, you open for me a vista of thought.”
The title The Ball and the Cross comes from the dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral, where a cross stands on top of a ball. In the opening scenes, one character compares the ball to the world and the cross to religion, and states that the positions of the symbols ought to be reversed to illustrate the importance of secular concerns over supernatural ones. His debating partner, a monk, points out that if the cross were below the ball, then the pair of stacked symbols would come tumbling down due to the imbalance.
As the two characters develop a grudging friendship, the two of them begin to gain a deeper understanding of their own beliefs, and gradually conclude that their own honest and passionate worldviews are more important than the wishy-washy beliefs of people who are too wrapped up with their worldly concerns to give the idea of God’s existence a thought.
“He [McIan] stopped again, and went on with the same air of travailing with the truth:
“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?”…
“The world has gone mad,” said MacIan, “and it has gone mad about Us. The world takes the trouble to make a big mistake about every little mistake made by the Church. That is why they have turned ten counties to a madhouse; that is why crowds of kindly people are poured into this filthy melting-pot. Now is the judgement of this world. The Prince of this World is judged, and he is judged exactly because he is judging. There is at last one simple solution to the quarrel between the ball and the cross——”
Turnbull for the first time started.
“The ball and——” he repeated.
“What is the matter with you?” asked MacIan.
“I had a dream,” said Turnbull, thickly and obscurely, “in which I saw the cross struck crooked and the ball secure——”
“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.”
In comparison, Freud’s Last Session is an imagined conversation between two real-life figures. While there is no proof that Sigmund Freud and C.S. Lewis ever met, there is a possibility that their paths might have crossed at some point after Freud fled for London in order to escape from the Nazis. In this play, Freud’s atheistic worldview clashes with Lewis’s Christianity, and throughout their conversation, we learn about their lives and beliefs.
The play is set on September 3, 1939, in Freud’s study in London. Freud is 83 and Lewis is 40. Freud’s invitation to meet Lewis soon branches into a full-fledged, emotional debate, as both men’s biographical details blend with insight as to the nature of belief and reason, all set to the backdrop of the looming Second World War.
While Chesterton’s work clearly tips the scales towards religion at the end, Freud’s Last Session doesn’t take a side. However, McIan, Turnbull, Freud, and Lewis are all portrayed as decent, intelligent, and honorable men. Both sides of the debate are presented in fair, interesting, and intelligent manners, by exploring why people may believe or disbelieve, Chesterton and St. Germain create powerful and compelling works.
–Chris Chan
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