During the time of the early Church, the Gospels were written in order to maintain the integrity and reality of Christ’s shocking presence here on earth. Of the many aspects depicted of Christ by the evangelists, one characteristic of Christ stands out. The Greek word θαύμα used by the evangelists, meaning “wonder” or “awe” or “astonishment,” can be found over twenty-five times within the Gospels to describe the manner of reaction from coming in contact with Christ. Whether they are his disciples, the Pharisees, the sick, the sinners, or agnostics, Jesus left people in θαύμα, in “shock.” There has been recent commentary on the shocking aspect of Jesus’ identity written by Catholic philosopher Peter Kreeft which is aptly named Jesus Shock. Kreeft describes the shocking nature of Christ and how man must choose to accept this shock into their life. It is from this vein of θαύμα which G.K. Chesterton creates the character Innocent Smith in his novel Manalive. Chesterton characterizes the man Jesus in writings such as Orthodoxy, Heretics, and The Everlasting Man, as a shocking man alive. Notably, Chesterton states, “We should be shocked if we really imagined the nature of Christ” (The Everlasting Man Chesterton 197). Innocent Smith, the main character of Chesterton’s Manalive, shocks and attempts to re-liven the other characters by performing actions which rattle and astonish. Although not a perfect Christ-character itself, Chesterton’s depiction of Innocent Smith throughout the novel draws from many qualities and insights that Chesterton sees in the figure of Christ: the man alive!
The first notable characteristic or image resonating in Innocent Smith from Chesterton’s writings on Jesus Christ must include his reference as a doctor. “In each case the scare was so wholesome that the victim felt that the victim himself has dated from it as a new birth. [Innocent] Smith, so far from being a madman, is rather a mad doctor—he walks the world curing frenzies and not distributing them” (Manalive Chesterton 75). Smith shocks the other characters within Manalive into realizing that their life is worth living, while treating them as the “sick”, those who need healing. Each person is boring, stale, and stagnant. To Smith, it is the bored characters who are maniacs, for they do not embrace a life worth living. In The Everlasting Man, Chesterton depicts Christ as “a strong-minded doctor dealing with homicidal maniacs” (The Everlasting Man Chesterton 189). To Chesterton, Christ has come to save man from the sickness of sin. Jesus said, “Those who are healthy do not need a physician, but the sick do. I have not come to call the righteous to repentance but sinners” (Luke 5:31-32). Christ desires a change of heart, lest man’s soul dies from the deathly wage of sin. Even Kreeft states, “The opposite of shock is boredom… The medievals called it sloth… [sloth] is spiritual anorexia” (Kreeft 43). Boredom, the lacking of shock, leads man to sin, a lacking of the good. Jesus came to bring shock as his main remedy. Similarly, Innocent Smith saves the lives of his “patients” through his shocking behavior by bringing them to new life.
One of the difficult quandaries which face the jury of Smith’s peers is this basic question: “Whether this [shocking] Smith is a man or a monster” (Manalive Chesterton 48). The fact that they have to explore whether Smith is real or mad demonstrates the inherent mystery of Smith’s shocking nature. Moon comments on Smith by saying, “I am by no means sure that I believe [Smith’s motives] myself, but I am quite sure that [Smith’s motives] are worth a man’s altering and defending” (Manalive Chesterton 122). Yet, the peers of Innocent Smith have only one conclusion: Smith is “really innocent” of any madness or lies (Manalive Chesterton 14). Even if someone is astonishing or wonderful, certainly their credibility will always be questioned.
In Kreeft’s Jesus Shock, it states, “Jesus-shock breaks your heart in two and forces you to choose which half of your heart you will follow” (Kreeft 41). There is no middle ground. Either Christ is a loony man or Chris is the Lord. Just as how Smith’s good intentions are questionable or mysterious, Chesterton makes the point in Orthodoxy to remark that, “If a man says that he is Jesus Christ, it is no answer to tell him that the world denies his divinity; for the world denied Christ’s” (Orthodoxy Chesterton 15). To better demonstrate Jesus’ mystical identity, Chesterton comments, “I have imagined the monster that man [Jesus] might have seemed at first to the mere nature around him” (The Everlasting Man Chesterton 197). Also, Chesterton points out that, “The only explanation which immediately occurred to my mind was that Christianity did not come from Heaven, but from Hell. Really, if Jesus of Nazareth was not Christ, he must have been the Antichrist” (Orthodoxy Chesterton 86). Chesterton articulates that the shocking aspect of Christ, and Innocent Smith in Manalive, needed deliberation. Once again, just because Smith, like Jesus, induces θαύμα, “shock,” does not take away his credibility as one whose mission is to re-liven the hearts and souls of his peers.
And that, too, is something Jesus and Innocent Smith hold in common: A shocking mission. Reverend Raymond Percy offers this insight to Smith: “I believe the maniac was one of those who do not merely come, but are sent; sent like a great gale upon ships by Him who made His angels wings and His messengers a flaming fire” (Manalive Chesterton 94). In The Everlasting Man, Chesterton makes note that, “Jesus displayed a divine precocity and began his mission” (The Everlasting Man Chesterton 189). It is with this divine precocity and shocking methodology that Chesterton affirms Smith’s Christo-related mission: the “[shocking] Smith” holds a pistol to the head of Modern Man. But [he] shall not use it to kill him. Only to bring him to life” (Manalive Chesterton 74). Interestingly enough, Kreeft brings to light this insight into Christ’s mission here on earth: “So what did God do next? The craziest thing of all, the deed no sage, no saint.., and no devil ever dreamed of: He became a human zygote… And then He gave Himself… to our souls” (Kreeft 48). Christ came to bring life. This wonderful parallel to Jesus can be plainly illustrated in the Gospels as well: “I came so that [man] might have life and have it more abundantly” (John 10:10). This clearly shocking mission of Jesus can be seen reflected by the mission of Innocent Smith to the characters of Beacon House: bring people to a greater fullness of life through mission received from a “divine revelation.”
Jesus and Innocent Smith, the shocking men alive, are also paradoxically plain. In Heretics, Chesterton articulates that because Jesus attracted crowds as a teacher and great mind, that he appealed to every person, everyman. “This plainness,” states Chesterton, “is the note of all very great minds” (Heretics Chesterton 132). Notably, Kreeft mentions, “Everything [Jesus] does is a surprise… [Jesus] would rather be known as crazy than rational” (Kreeft 47). Because of Jesus’ refreshingly original teachings, He can effectively carry out His shocking mission. In a similar way, the characters of Beacon House describe Smith as, “a man of business, a plain, practical man: a man of affairs; a man of facts and the daylight” (Manalive Chesterton 30). The plain aspect of Smith allows him to effectively façade his shocking agenda upon those of Beacon House. Smith sees very clearly the stale and hardened hearts of the Beacon House folk, and executes the only plain act: something maniacal. Now, Smith’s very “unorthodox” methods for shock, such as shooting his friends or traveling the world just to return home again, are the epitome of his originality, his plainness. “I don’t want people to anticipate me as a well-known practical joke,” says Smith,” I want both my gifts to come virgin and violent” (Manalive Chesterton 73). By being plain, both Jesus and Innocent Smith are paradoxically shocking and original.
Although Innocent Smith is a married man, and Jesus is explicitly not, there is still much consistent with the shocking perspective of marriage held by both Smith and Jesus. The people whom Smith encounters hold very pessimistic views of marriage. For example, Michael Moon, an Irishman who desires to woo the rich young lady Rosamund Hunt, says the following about marriage:
Imprudent marriages!... And pray where in earth or heaven are there any prudent marriages? Might as well talk about prudent suicides…. You never know a husband till you marry him. Unhappy! Of course you’ll be unhappy!... Disappointed! Of course we’ll be disappointed! (Manalive Chesterton 31)
The characters feel that marriage is nothing more than a contract between two people who cannot keep up their ends. That is why they are unhappy; that is why they are disappointed. Their unhappiness and disappointment derive from a stale understanding of what marriage was created for. They are bored with the concept of marriage. In light of Kreeft’s concept of boredom, he states that, “Recognizing beauty is the only remedy for boredom. Beauty relieves boredom because beauty is the object of love” (Kreeft 56). Beauty is more than just an abstraction: it is a tangible object of a loving communion in the example of marriage. Now, Innocent Smith combats this decayed concept of marriage by having engaged in multiple honeymoons with the same woman under different names. Although he is charged with adultery and polygamy, such awful charges, the jury comprising of the other characters come to the conclusion that, “It is just because he does not want to commit adultery that he achieves the romance of sex; it is just because he loves one wife that he has a hundred honeymoons” (Manalive Chesterton 123). It is by love, coming into communion with his wife, that Smith shocks life into his marriage. Meanwhile, Chesterton mentions in The Everlasting Man that, “[Christ] does not suggest anything at all, except the sacramental view of marriage” (The Everlasting Man Chesterton 194). Jesus calls mankind to a higher standard, living in the goodness created by God. And although Smith’s marriage is not explicitly sacramental, it is “holy” in the sense that it is set apart from other marriages for a greater good. Instead of having sex for sex’s sake, in adultery, or marrying for the sake of marrying, in polygamy, Smith does not commit adultery or polygamy so that he can better live the good of sex and the good of marriage. The shock of life injected by Smith into his marriage through faithfulness and unity also injects life into the vision of the other characters’ marriages.
Now, one of the most obvious parallels between Innocent Smith and Jesus is that they are shockingly connected to death. Jesus and Innocent Smith have this distinct and wonderful relationship to death by attaching their ministry in such a way that death becomes a spouse of these men to produce a “fecundity” of shock, of θαύμα. Chesterton describes the relationship of Jesus and death by articulating “We are meant to feel that Death was the bride of Christ as Poverty was the bride of St. Francis. We are meant to feel that His life was in that sense a sort of love-affair with death, a romance of the pursuit of the ultimate sacrifice” (The Everlasting Man Chesterton 207). Chesterton recognizes that death is the ultimate sacrifice one human being can make. Jesus makes this “ultimate sacrifice” by dying on the cross for man so that he may live. Death, as the bride of Christ, is joined by Christ to produce the greatest of human gifts from God: eternal life. Once again in Kreeft’s Jesus Shock, he states that Christ’s God-nature made his death even more shocking: “This man who has nerve endings all over his body and gets hungry and tired and bloody and nailed to a cross and dies—that is the ‘holy God, holy strong one, holy immortal one,’ the eternal Word of the eternal Creator Who spoke all time and space and matter into being” (Kreeft 49). That does sound quite shocking, indeed! While Chesterton recognizes this marital connection of Jesus and Death, the fecundity produced from the relationship of Innocent Smith and Death can only be described as really shocking!
Smith utilizes his partner, Death, to motivate the characters especially by means of wildly swaying, swinging, and shooting the pistol within close proximity of them. Dr. Eames’s encounter with Smith and his gun results in Eames exclaiming, “Do you mean to kill me?” (Manalive Chesterton 69). Eames is fearful for his life, and yet detects no remorse or reluctant movements in Smith’s pistol twirling. Instead Eames detects a crazed madman who embraces Death and wants his friends to encounter Death as well. When Inglewood asks Smith, “Why do you deal death out of that machine gun?" (Manalive Chesterton 19), Smith is not disconnected to Death, but, if anything, in a “love-affair” with Death. He works with Death, not to kill, but to bring life. Just like Jesus, Smith uses this romance with Death to give, to love, and to shock. In fact, the only time explicitly mentioned where Smith falls in love is with a woman who has provoked Death.
The uprush of [Smith’s] released optimism burst into the starts like a rocket when he suddenly fell in love. …What was worse, he found he had equally jeopardized a harmless lady alone in a rowing boat, and one who had provoked death by no professions of philosophic religion… He seems to have proposed to her on the bank. (Manalive Chesterton 93)
It is from this unique relationship that Smith has with Death that fruitfulness and fecundity spring forth. This fruit is the shock into life other people have gained by encountering Innocent Smith and Death. This fruit can only be appreciated in light of how the other characters, such as skeptical Dr. Pym, view the importance and origin of Death. “Brighter days, however, have dawned, and we now see death as universal and inevitable, as part of that great soul-stirring and heart-upholding average which we call for convenience the order of nature,” said Pym (Manalive Chesterton 57). Dr. Pym takes for granted the importance of death during the opening of Smith’s trial. His pessimistic attitude toward death as a problematic necessity minimizes the awareness of the goodness life brings about. Death is wrong, according to Pym, because it is inevitable and ordered; it is not shocking. And yet, it is only after the trial where the characters of Beacon House realize “we have come to think certain things [death] wrong which are not wrong at all” (Manalive Chesterton 122). The ordering and inevitability of Death is not wrong: the people of Beacon House merely needed something or someone outside themselves [Smith] to shock [Death] into their souls with life. That is the most basic paradox. And that is what, according to Chesterton, Jesus Christ did.
Jesus shocks life into humanity by His very act of death. Chesterton brings this to light by articulating, “With [the death of Christ] we come face to face with the essential fact to be realized. All the great groups that stood about the Cross represent, in one way or another, the great historical truth of the time; that the world could not save itself. Man could do no more” (The Everlasting Man Chesterton 210). Just as how the world is dead without Jesus’ self-sacrifice upon the Cross, so too does the world of Innocent Smith lack any vivacity, ambition, or energy. It takes such a man alive, full of θαύμα, to awaken these people from their slumber. They need him. For, at the beginning of Manalive, Diana Duke asks, “What is there to wake up to?” (Manalive Chesterton 28). Kreeft can point toward an answer: “Joy. Joy always includes surprise, sometimes even shock” (Kreeft 45). Smith’s shocking nature and mission demonstrates the fullest answer: Duke and the rest of the characters must be shocked into life before they die.
