The Modern Pagan and Ancient Christianity: Thoughts on Chesterton's Ballad of the White Horse

One of the pleasant surprises of reading classic literature is that it actually applies to the present time. “How modern!” one might think upon discovering, hidden within the pages of an assigned book, a truth applicable to his own situation. Timeless would be a better word, for there are certain truths and insights into human and divine nature which surpass confinement to the knowledge of one age, one person, one movement. Perhaps that is due to our modernist arrogance, but It may seem almost uncanny how accurately writers long dead have predicted the faults and crises of our age, in literature we consider outdated.

 Such is the case when surveying Chesterton’s epic poem The Ballad of the White Horse’– or any of Chesterton’s work, for that matter. The despairing unreasonableness of our neo-pagan culture is reflected in the ancient pagan beliefs of the Norsemen, and diagnosed directly in the Catholic King Alfred’s sad prediction that “In some far century, sad and slow….The heathen will return.” Chesterton vicariously, through his protagonists, both predicts and soundly defeats all the tenets of pagan thought that have resurfaced as theories ranging from Nihilism to determinism to hedonism.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                

The natural underlying tenet of pagan culture is that pleasure is the only way to achieve happiness. In the Ballad specifically, the Danish chieftain Harold sings of his philosophy that “the whole huge world [is] a toy”, praising wine, cloaks, gold, and women from all ends of the ancient world.¹ He claims the Wessex line of kings has been emasculated by Christianity, because the English men no longer “lust nor smite”( 131) according to natural urges, they are weak. Harold disdains sacrifice and meekness, favoring indulgence and power-seeking instead. Since without Christian revelation, paganism must assume that life is ultimately useless, it follows that worldly pleasures must be the greatest good, and by such a philosophy, to eschew them would be foolish. 

This attitude has been resurrected in the modern worldview of hedonism. In a world often termed “post-Christian” that has, in any sense, abandoned the transcendent good of the Gospel, the only good left is immediately and consistently evident: pleasure, the rush of serotonin, dopamine, and other chemicals through the human brain wooing it with a “feel-good” illusion. Therefore, those who deny the existence of all things not immediate and biologically explainable – i.e. the “modern pagans” - have taken this pleasure principle to be the key to life. The pleasure may be carnal, epicurean, intellectual, emotional, or any combination of these, but the principle is the same: satisfying or satiating basic desires is the only way to find joy and meaning. Of course, the problem is that, when overly stimulated, these reactions subsequently require greater and greater stimulus to occur, never leaving the soul fully satisfied.

A thirsting, dissatisfied soul makes it easy to see the world in a black light, and from this arises another pagans error: thinking that a dark fate controls the gods or the world, entropy is in control, and hate and destruction are natural.  Ogier, the pessimistic chieftain of the Danes, laments that fate, “the gods behind the gods” is cruel and hopeless. His response is to relinquish control to “fury, that does not fail,” looting and raping with rage and death in his heart, for he believes this is the natural and understandable destiny of man. (194) Freud brought to the modern world his theory that the human mind is comprised of a reserve of dark unacceptable impulses, or the id, and the forces which seek to restrain it. What followed was “detail of the sinning, and denial of the sin” through attempted justification of man’s fallen tendencies. From there man can justify any “unacceptable impulse” he feels, so is it surprising that the urges to kill or destroy others who are dissimilar to us came back with new vehemence? For of course, it is easy and just to do so, and our own race or culture must survive! Determinism stands up and declares that man’s bad actions are completely predictable and understandable based on his psyche and his previous actions. The world, affected by this incorrect definition of sin, either trivializes or glorifies evil rather than despising it.

 On the polar opposite of justification, less subtle but just as harmful, lies preoccupation with demons, the idea that evil is powerful, majestic, and worthy of fear if not respect. Because the goodness of creation and an almighty good creator have been denied, it is easy to assume spiritual forces of darkness are in control. If the whole world is destined by man’s behavior for a certain fate, what reason have the pagans to believe it is a joyous or wholesome one?

In fact, it easily follows in pagan thinking that life has no ultimate meaning, especially since it is difficult to imagine people surviving death. The Norse chieftains’ harp songs ignore the truth about death, in different ways: Harold by his childish seeking of sensual pleasure, Elf by the dramatization of human tragedy, and Ogier by allowing passion and anger to be the dictators of his life. Guthrum, however, more educated and older than the others, correctly sees that death is inevitable and nothing can solve it. He is skeptical and jaded of the present world, saying man will eventually “hunger without hope/even for evil gods”( 254-255), i.e. there is nothing beyond the hopelessness of death. For the modern pagans, this idea is taken even further, and what is beyond the immediately sensible (sight, touch, hearing, etc.) is assumed to be nonexistent. Materialism, Nihilism, Anti-intellectualism, and other such philosophies deny transcendent realities, and thereby deny final meaning in life, simply on the basis that they haven’t experienced these realities, or that science cannot predict and measure them. Life after death is a transcendent reality that on its own may be difficult to believe, and they therefore reject it as impossible. 

However, a world with no higher purpose than to satisfy the self’s basest urges, in which nothing exists beyond the material, cannot be fulfilling to the human soul – and if this life is not fulfilling, and no other can be perceived, who can say that long lasting fulfillment is possible at all? This abyss of meaning corresponds with the new pagan’s idea that life cannot go on after death. Thus, there must be nothing worth living for besides the self, and so goes the circular, self-confirming logic of heathenism. No wonder cynicism is the curse of this generation, and that its most prominent fruit is despair!

                                                                                                                                                                                             

It is clear that the destructive ideas of the modern age are not new evils, but tiredly resurrected shadows of paganism have erupted from its dormant grave. How have such errors spread? It is true they are no longer learned from a pre-existing pagan culture, nor violently forced upon people conquered by heathen warriors. Considering that Alfred and the Danes lived in the age of conquests, whereas we live in the age of information, the answer is obvious: the pagans now are warriors of the intellect, their weapons technology and the written word, or “scroll and pen” (281) Chesterton warns, just because the new methods may seem “mild as monkish clerks” (257)  does not mean they are not devastating; in fact, he predicts they will make Christians look back on the past and long for the days “when pagans still were men.” (261) For this battle will be even more challenging than Alfred’s. The Danes were brave, having a culture with noble elements, and worshiped false gods merely because they knew nothing better. Some, like the chief Guthrum, tired of hopelessness, might have been open to conversion. Pre-Christian pagans saw Christianity as something new, maybe foolish, but interesting and worthy of conquering, where by contrast, proponents of Freudianism, Hedonism, Marxism, and the like sneer at Christianity as something old and restricting. To the modern mind, infected by these philosophies, the Church is not a worthy enemy to soundly beat in battle, but an ancient oppressor to shout out against, mistrust, and overthrow. Some even, rather than acknowledge that “fate is cruel,” pretend that their dark worldview is filled with light and it is She who spreads darkness.  Some embrace the darkness as their god, and reject redemption in the form of charity and sacrifice.

 With such a convoluted battlefield, it is clear Christians need the trust and daring utilized by King Alfred and his men in The Ballad of the White Horse more so than ever before. Comfort, even may be found, in the knowledge that the devil, inventor of all false dichotomies past and present, is the same villainous liar, and Christ, whose side we stand on, must rise triumphant over all forms of evil in the end.