Discovering GK Chesterton Feb 13 09 Web

Discovering G.K.
Chesterton
What we will discuss tonight !
1. Chesterton’s historical background
2. His experiences with the intellectuals of his time
3. Chesterton as a prophet of the impending evils to
come
4. Natural order of things – his view of the truth
5. His conversion and belief in the Catholic Church
6. Chesterton Paradoxes
7. Some books he wrote particularly Orthodoxy and
Everlasting Man
Discovering G.K. Chesterton
• “A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a

living thing can go against it." - Everlasting Man,
1925
• Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) cannot be

summed up in one sentence. Nor in one
paragraph. In fact, in spite of the fine biographies
that have been written of him, he has never been
captured between the covers of one book
• Born in London and educated at St. Paul’s, he
went to Slade School of Art where he became a
proficient draftsman and caricaturist; , and in
1900 was asked to write a magazine article on art
criticism
Discovering G. K. Chesterton
• This lead him to become one of the most prolific

writers of all time. He wrote a hundred books,
contributions to 200 more, hundreds of poems,
including the epic Ballad of the White Horse, five
plays, five novels, and some two hundred short
stories, including a popular series featuring the
priest-detective, Father Brown.
• In 1900 he met Hilaire Belloc, and in 1901 he
married Frances Blogg.
• “Tolerance is the virtue of the man without

convictions”
In spite of his literary accomplishments, he

considered himself primarily a journalist. He
wrote over 4000 newspaper essays, including 30
years worth of weekly columns for the Illustrated
London News, and 13 years of weekly columns for
the Daily News. He also edited his own
newspaper, G.K.’s Weekly ( f.y.i. 4000= to an
essay a day for 11 years!)
• “Tradition means giving votes to the most

obscure off all classes, our ancestors.”
Orthodoxy 1908
• Chesterton was a large man, often wore a cape

and carried a swordstick. That is a walking stick
with a sword inside it. He remarked that he like
things that came to a point.
• He was absent minded and would often write to
his wife to find out what town and what
engagement he was going to because he had
forgotten
• Chesterton was equally at ease with literary and

social criticism, history, politics, economics,
philosophy, and theology. His style is
unmistakable, always marked by humility,
consistency, paradox, wit, and wonder.
• His writings are both timely and timeless
• “Once abolish the God and the government

becomes the God.”
Christendom in Dublin, 1933
• He can expound it seems on any subject. The

history of glass making, Gargoyles, Milton.
Huxley. Cheese. The Manichees. Shakespeare.
Shaw. Shirts. Tennyson. Turnpikes. Taffy. He can
quote whole passages of books from memory,
books that he has read years and years before.
Recite the terms of the Magna Carta in Old
English.
• "The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also

to love our enemies; probably because they are
generally the same people." - ILN, 7/16/10
• Chesterton debated many of the celebrated

intellectuals of his time: George Bernard Shaw,
H.G. Wells, Bertrand Russell, Clarence Darrow.
According to contemporary accounts, Chesterton
usually emerged as the winner of these contests,
however, the world has immortalized his
opponents and forgotten Chesterton, and now we
hear only one side of the argument, and we are
enduring the legacies of socialism, relativism,
materialism, and skepticism.
• After being invited to speak at Notre Dame

University in January of 1931, during his second
trip to America, Chesterton was ask to debate
with Clarence Darrow, at New York City's Mecca
Temple. The topic was "Will the World Return to
Religion?“
• By all accounts written at the time Chesterton
was joyous, sparkling and witty and totally
dominated Darrow
• Darrow, did not fare well, according to the
majority opinion of those who attended; they
were asked to vote for the winner of the
debate, and Chesterton won, 2,359 to 1,022.
One attendee said that "the trained scientific
mind, the clear thinking, the lightning
quickness in getting a point and hurling back
an answer, turned out to belong to
Chesterton. I have never heard Mr. Darrow
alone, but taken relatively, when that
relativity is to Chesterton, he appears
positively muddle-headed."
• Chesterton wrote many essays warning of the

impending dangers that would befall man
because of “modern thought”
• Birth control, euthanasia, abortion, bigotry,
credibility of the media, healthcare, feminism,
failure of public education, big government, big
business, separation between Church and State,
the cult of fame (“the Hollywood left”), the
litigious society and on and on.
• "Progress should mean that we are always

changing the world to fit the vision, instead we
are always changing the vision." - Orthodoxy,
1908
The Natural Order of Things
• Christendom Modern Thought
God – God
Truth
Beauty Man- Truth
Wisdom Beauty
Wisdom
Ma
n
God is the source Man is the source

of all knowledge for all knowledge
• Ordered World Chaotic World
Man
God
“birth of the isms”
Marxism
Communism
Socialism
Angel Fascism
s Atheism
Individualism
Capitalism
Materialism
Secularism
Moral relativism
Ma Skepticism
n
(mutations and regeneration of the

• All of these “isms” downplay the importance and

significance of God
• All devalue and deny the dignity of man
• Man is seen in terms of how productive he or she
can be. That is where the value lies not in man’s
intrinsic dignity that comes from his soul “which
is created in the image of God”
• Chesterton recognized the “Culture of Death”

long before John Paul II gave it it’s proper name.
• He understood we are fighting a battle.
Chesterton says we all wake up on the battlefield.
We know there is a fight going on. We see the
effects of it everywhere. But it often takes a long
time to realize what the fight is about or who is
fighting whom.
• So it comes to this. Man has evolved beyond the

thinking of “primitive man” rejecting truth &
tradition. Science and technology, individual
thinkers are the new god. Man has no need of
God any more
• Chesterton was right. Where’s the proof?
• In the 20th century it is estimated that between
167,000,000 to 175,000,000 people were killed
for their beliefs
• 49,000,000+ abortions since Roe v Wade
• “The Church had learnt, not at the

end but at the beginning of her
centuries, that the funeral of God is
always a premature burial.“
Crimes of England 1915
• So what did Chesterton argue for? What was it he

defended? He defended "the common man" and
common sense. He defended the poor. He
defended the family. He defended beauty. And he
defended Christianity and the Catholic Faith.
These don’t play well in the classroom, in the
media, or in the public arena. And that is probably
why he is neglected.
• When learned men begin to use their reason,

then I generally discover that they haven't got
any." - ILN 11-7-08
• G. K. Chesterton began his writing career by

defending religion against the atheism and
agnosticism of his age.
• Soon he was defending his religion Christianity
• He noticed that much of modern society was
derived from liberalized and Protestantized
Christianity that had fallen from it’s origins
• He converted to Catholicism
• If there were no God, there would be no atheists."

- Where All Roads Lead, 1922
• He called his conversion the chief event of his life

• “The difficulty of explaining why I am Catholic is
that there are ten thousand reasons all
amounting to one reason: that Catholicism is true.
I could write ten thousand separate sentences
beginning with the words, The Catholic Church is
the only thing that…
• In his Book “Why I am a Catholic” He explores

these reasons
2. The Catholic Church “is the only thing in which
the superior cannot be superior in the sense of
supercilious” (–adjective haughtily disdainful or
contemptuous.) The Church is a higher nature
than the world. It is heavenly. It informs every
other kind of knowledge. It does not to act
superior or puff itself up.
1. The Catholic Church is….(continued)

2. “the only thing that really prevents a sin from
becoming secret” It doesn’t explain away sin or
dismiss or deny sin.
3. “is the only thing that talks as if it were the
truth; as if it were a real messenger refusing to
tamper with a real message”
The Church speaks with authority and
cannot tamper with its message
4. The Catholic Church “is the only thing that frees

a man from the degrading slavery of being a
child of his age” The way of the world and the
way of Christ are diametrically opposed. Jesus
Christ is the same yesterday, today & forever.
To be a child of his age is degrading. But to
transcend age is exhilarating.
5. “is the only type of Christianity that really
contains every type of man; even the
respectable man”
• Chesterton paradox. Most religions appeal to the

poor, and the humble, to the common man. The
sophisticated, the educated, the wealthy often
reject religion but Catholic Church has a way of
“bringing them to their knees” Our Church is truly
universal as its name implies
8. The Catholic Church “is the only large

institution that attempts to change the world
from the inside working through wills and not
laws”
• Every other large institution relies on power,

forcing different mechanisms and environments
and behaviors on people.
• That’s the difference between power & authority
11. “is the only institution that ever attempted to

create a machinery of pardon…” The Church
like Christ seeks souls to forgive and thus save
8. “is the only thing that ever founded a

civilization on first love, on the single and
romantic view of sex; we have the only scheme
that believes in chivalry; we alone serve St.
George and St. Valentine. We alone among the
great religions of the world have a creed that
interprets mystically these physical things; we
alone believe in the resurrection of the body.”
• The Church has already changed the world.

Though some won’t admit it our civilization is
based on the Church’s teachings. The high view
of marriage, and the family, the proper respect
for the body, are all based on the sacraments
10. “is the only continuous intelligent institution
that has been thinking about thinking for two
thousand years”…
10. The Catholic Church “is the only philosophy

operating from first principles and not from
fashionable prejudices” First principle - Men
desire happiness. The things the Church derives
its philosophy from are self evident, they are
common sense. From their we can build the
truths of redemption and revelation
11. The Catholic Church “is the only Church that

can claim to be the Church” The most
unacceptable and most unpalatable claim of the
Catholic Church, Chesterton is one of the
greatest ecumenical writers who is revered by
Catholics, Protestants and even non-Christians
yet he recognized who the Protestants were and
have become today.
12. The Catholic Church “is the only institution that

is not only right but always right where
everything else is wrong”
Church The World
humility pride
free will determinism
responsibility irresponsibility
doctrine sentimentalism
last things (judgment) progress
embraces life culture of death
• "The Christian ideal has not been tried and found

wanting; it has been found difficult and left
untried." - Chapter 5, What's Wrong With The
World, 1910
• Chesterton wrote about famous people

• Robert Browning, poet
• G.F. Watts, painter
• Charles Dickens, writer
• George Bernard Shaw, philosopher
• William Blake, poet
• Lord Kitchener, Field Marshall
• William Cobbett, journalist
• Robert Louis Stevenson, writer
• St. Francis of Assisi

• St. Thomas Aquinas
• “Men invent new ideals because they dare not

attempt old ideals. They look forward with
enthusiasm, because they are afraid to look
back”
What’s Wrong with the World, 1910
• St. Francis of Assisi – Chesterton enjoyed a

lifelong friendship with Saint Francis of Assisi. As
a small boy, long before he had an inkling of the
nature of Catholicism, Chesterton was read a
story by his parents about a man who gave up all
his possessions, even the clothes he was wearing
on his back, to follow Christ in holy poverty.
• For Chesterton, Francis is a great paradoxical

figure, a man who loved women but vowed
himself to chastity; an artist who loved the
pleasures of the natural world as few have loved
them, but vowed himself to the most austere
poverty, stripping himself naked in the public
square so all could see that he had renounced his
worldly goods; a clown who stood on his head in
order to see the world aright.
• There are two ways of dealing with nonsense in

this world. One way is to put nonsense in the
right place; as when people put nonsense into
nursery rhymes. The other is to put nonsense in
the wrong place; as when they put it into
educational addresses, psychological criticisms,
and complaints against nursery rhymes." (ILN 10-
15-21)
• “This book makes no pretence to be anything but

a popular sketch of a great historical character
who ought to be more popular. Its aim will be
achieved , if it leads those who have hardly ever
heard of St. Thomas Aquinas to read about him in
better books”
Introduction note for Saint Thomas Aquinas “
The Dumb Ox”
• The story goes like this….Chesterton sends his

aide to the library to pick up as many books on
St. Thomas Aquinas as he can find. He returns
and places them on Chesterton’s desk.
Chesterton casually peruses through a few pages
of each book, and in a matter of minutes, calls
the aide and tells him to return the books. He
then proceeds to write his book.
• Etienne Gilson who had written what was

considered the best book on Aquinas at that time
regarded Chesterton’s book as better.
• Chesterton captures St. Thomas as a man who

enjoyed banquets, conviviality, jokes and pranks.
His inner certitude about religious truth permitted
him to accept the world and its freedom and it
endowed him with a childlike innocence.
• “Love means loving the unlovable - or it is no

virtue at all”
Heretics, 1905
• Chesterton loved paradoxes, he believed that

they taught great lessons in the truth.
• The Paradoxical Nature of Hatred
“It is a great mistake to suppose that love unites
and unifies men. Love diversifies them, because
love is directed towards individuality. The thing
that really unites men and makes them like to
each other is hatred.”
• The Paradoxical Nature of Reason

“ It is idle to talk always of the alternative of
reason and faith. Reason is itself a matter of
faith. It is an act of faith to assert that our
thoughts have any relation to reality at all. If
you are merely a skeptic, you must sooner or
later ask yourself the question, "Why should
anything go right; even observation and
deduction? Why should not good logic be as
misleading as bad logic? Are they not both
movements in the brain of a bewildered ape?"
• The Paradoxical Nature of Faith

“In a paradox that doesn't disturb me now in the
least, it may be that I shall never again have such
complete assurance that [Catholicism] is true as I
did when I made my last effort to deny it.”
• The Paradoxical Nature of Courage

“Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It
means a strong desire to live taking the form
of a readiness to die. "He that will lose his life,
the same shall save it," is not a piece of
mysticism for saints and heroes. It is a piece
of everyday advice for sailors or
mountaineers.
“The paradox of courage is that a man must
be a little careless of his life even in order to
keep it.”
• The Paradoxical Nature of Individualism

“Individualism is the foe of individuality. Where
men are trying to compete with each other they
are trying to copy each other. They become
featureless by "featuring" the same part.
Personality, in becoming a conscious ideal,
becomes a common ideal.”
• Two of what most people would call Chesterton’s

greatest works are Orthodoxy” first published in
1908 and “The Everlasting Man” published in
1925. It is necessary to comment briefly on them.
C.S. Lewis who was
previously an atheist points to Orthodoxy as a
reason for his conversion.
• Orthodoxy – In the preface titled “In Defense

of Everything Else” Chesterton explains that
he had written a series of essays called
“Heretics” in which critics complained that he
never really spelled out his philosophy and so
he sets out to explain why he thinks Christian
Faith is the truth.
• He argues that human beings are curious

beings and have a spiritual need adventure
and security
• Christianity satisfies this need more than any

other worldview
• Truth is a standard independent of the human
mind that "measures" the mind and serves as its
goal.
• In regard to the really big questions, reason on its
own is severely limited and requires the light of
faith and authority in order to attain the truth.
(Aquinas & Augustine)
• Chesterton looks at Enlightment thinking such

as:
• Academic Skepticism
• Pragmatism
• Nietzscheanism
• Quietism
and concludes that their reasoning is unreliable
with respect to metaphysics and moral
philosophy
• Five Pre- Christian basic attitudes

2. The world does not explain itself. It is at first
glance astonishing, even in its regularities.
3. The world is like a work of art. It has a meaning.
4. The world is beautiful and admirable in its
design despite its defects.
4. The proper form of thanks for the world is some

form of humility and restraint
5. In some way all good is a remnant to be stored
and held sacred out of some primordial ruin.
• He highlights the paradoxes of Christianity

• He goes into the doctrines of
Original Sin
Miracles
Divine Transcendence
Trinity
Hell
Divinity of Christ
• He finally looks at the arguments against

Christianity and the rationality and truth of it.
• “All the real argument about religion turns on the

question of whether a man who was born upside
down can tell when he comes right way up. The
primary paradox of Christianity is that the
ordinary condition of man is not his sane or
sensible condition; that the normal itself is an
abnormality.... It is only since I have known
orthodoxy that I have known mental
emancipation"
• Beginning with an insightful study on the nature

of man, Chesterton argues that the central
character in history is Jesus Christ, the Everlasting
Man
• No other explanation of the world fits the
evidence
• Exploding the stale formula of Christ as the pale
product of human imagination, he asserts the
glory and unassailable logic of Christ as the God
who, in the fullness of time, steps into his own
creation
• "There are in this world of ours only two kinds of

speakers. The first is the man who is making a
good speech and won't finish. The second is the
man who is making a bad speech and can't finish.
The latter is the longer."

Discovering GK Chesterton Feb 13 09 Web

Încărcat de

Informații document

Drepturi de autor

Formate disponibile

Partajați acest document

Partajați sau inserați document

Opțiuni de partajare

Vi se pare util acest document?

Este necorespunzător acest conținut?

Drepturi de autor:

Formate disponibile

Discovering GK Chesterton Feb 13 09 Web

Încărcat de

Drepturi de autor:

Formate disponibile

Discovering G.K.

• “A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a

• Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) cannot be

• This lead him to become one of the most prolific

• “Tolerance is the virtue of the man without

In spite of his literary accomplishments, he

• “Tradition means giving votes to the most

• Chesterton was a large man, often wore a cape

• Chesterton was equally at ease with literary and

• “Once abolish the God and the government

• He can expound it seems on any subject. The

• "The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also

• Chesterton debated many of the celebrated

• After being invited to speak at Notre Dame

• Chesterton wrote many essays warning of the

• "Progress should mean that we are always

God is the source Man is the source

• Ordered World Chaotic World

(mutations and regeneration of the

• All of these “isms” downplay the importance and

• Chesterton recognized the “Culture of Death”

• So it comes to this. Man has evolved beyond the

• “The Church had learnt, not at the

• So what did Chesterton argue for? What was it he

• When learned men begin to use their reason,

• G. K. Chesterton began his writing career by

• If there were no God, there would be no atheists."

• He called his conversion the chief event of his life

• In his Book “Why I am a Catholic” He explores

1. The Catholic Church is….(continued)

4. The Catholic Church “is the only thing that frees

• Chesterton paradox. Most religions appeal to the

8. The Catholic Church “is the only large

• Every other large institution relies on power,

• That’s the difference between power & authority

11. “is the only institution that ever attempted to

8. “is the only thing that ever founded a

• The Church has already changed the world.

10. The Catholic Church “is the only philosophy

11. The Catholic Church “is the only Church that

12. The Catholic Church “is the only institution that

• "The Christian ideal has not been tried and found

• Chesterton wrote about famous people

• St. Francis of Assisi

• “Men invent new ideals because they dare not

• St. Francis of Assisi – Chesterton enjoyed a

• For Chesterton, Francis is a great paradoxical

• There are two ways of dealing with nonsense in

• “This book makes no pretence to be anything but

• The story goes like this….Chesterton sends his

• Etienne Gilson who had written what was

• Chesterton captures St. Thomas as a man who

• “Love means loving the unlovable - or it is no

• Chesterton loved paradoxes, he believed that

• The Paradoxical Nature of Reason

• The Paradoxical Nature of Faith

• The Paradoxical Nature of Courage

• The Paradoxical Nature of Individualism

• Two of what most people would call Chesterton’s

• Orthodoxy – In the preface titled “In Defense

• He argues that human beings are curious

• Christianity satisfies this need more than any

• Chesterton looks at Enlightment thinking such

• Five Pre- Christian basic attitudes