21 August 2011

Pagans, poets and myth

From Chesterton's Everlasting Man

Paganism lived upon poetry; that poetry already considered under the name of mythology.


Chesterton reverses the logic of those who claim that Genesis as other than factual can tell us anything. Claims that poetry produces the rational realism of Christian thesim are simply wrong: poetry is bundled with myth to keep us from understanding, not to introduce us to it!