Discovering GK Chesterton Feb 13 09 Web

Discovering G.K. Chesterton

What we will discuss tonight!1. Chesterton’s historical background2. His experiences with the intellectuals of his time3. Chesterton as a prophet of the impending evils to come4. Natural order of things – his view of the truth 5. His conversion and belief in the Catholic Church6. Chesterton Paradoxes7. Some books he wrote particularly Orthodoxy and Everlasting Man


• “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 is the source Man is the sourceof all knowledge for all knowledge

God – Truth

Beauty Wisdom

Man- Truth Beauty

Wisdom

God

Man

God

The Natural Order of Things

• Ordered World Chaotic World

“birth of the isms” Marxism Communism Socialism Fascism Atheism Individualism Capitalism Materialism Secularism Moral relativism Skepticism (mutations and regeneration of the inability to know truth)

God

Man

Angels

Man


• 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 reasons1. 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

6. 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

7. “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

9. “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 attitudes1. The world does not explain itself. It is at first glance

astonishing, even in its regularities.2. The world is like a work of art. It has a meaning.3. 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."

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Discovering GK Chesterton Feb 13 09 Web