Read Online The Life and Words of GK Chesterton by Wyatt North - Free Book Online
Authors: Wyatt North
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The turn of the last century produced many great thinkers as well as many great writers. Some have the distinction of being known as both. Fewer still have been adored by the masses for their public engagements and their amicable persona. Gilbert Keith Chesterton was all of those things; a true renaissance man of the modern era, whose impact on modern Christianity, and Christian apologetics, is unfortunately becoming increasingly forgotten.
Although C. S. Lewis may be a more well-known Christian apologist across the denominations, it was the works of G. K. Chesterton that helped Lewis to re-embrace his Christian faith.
Many are those that have found their way because G. K. Chesterton dared to believe in God and in miracles in an ever more secular and skeptical world.
His biographer and president of the American Chesterton Society, Dale Ahlquist, called him “the most unjustly neglected writer of our time” — a title that is not entirely undeserved.
With over 130 books to his name, including biographies, novels, essays, short story collections, poetry collections, and Christian apologetics, as well as numerous newspaper and magazine articles, book reviews, and plays, G. K. Chesterton, however often the work outside of his Catholic corpus is neglected, is undoubtedly a literary giant. He was also known in his time for being, quite literally, a giant. Standing at 6'4” and weighing approximately 300 lbs, Chesterton could have easily been an intimidating man, but his good nature, friendly tone, and often childlike whimsy made him instead a larger than life character, who fit perhaps better into one of his fantastical novels than into the real world.
He was a man who would leave his home with the wrong shoe on, forget what he was doing, and end up in a strange and unfamiliar place. His eating habits were so surprising that they were the subject of jokes and tales. He loved to attend costume parties, especially in 18th century garb. The child in him never grew up; he played games, drank milk by the pint, and reveled in the most childish of temptations, like chocolates and sticky buns.
He was also a man with a unique talent, although not always fully understood, for taking a serious topic and writing about it in a surprising and humorous way without making light of the matter. G. K. Chesterton may have been known as the “Prince of Paradox” because of this love for using humorous paradox, in particular, to make a point about otherwise serious things, but even the man himself was a man of contradictions.
He was nearly always a modest man, downplaying his own achievements and giving credits to others even when credit was not strictly necessary. But he was hardly ever a moderate man. He ate too much, he drank too much, he worked too hard, and he argued for too long. He disliked being the center of attention, but he lived his life in the limelight. Yet despite his lack of moderation, he was a pious man. In fact, one may say that it was his lack of moderation that allowed him to so fully accept Catholicism and its mystery tradition as his own. A more moderate Englishman of his time would have considered Catholicism too superstitious and too continental.
Who was he then, this man G. K. Chesterton, the friendly rival of playwright George Bernard Shaw and spiritual inspiration of C. S. Lewis, who rose from an increasingly industrial post-Victorian England skeptical of faith and especially of something as un-English as the papacy of Rome and found himself drawn to the most mysterious aspects of the Catholic religion only to be named a “defender of the faith” by the Pope? Chesterton himself, in his usual self-deprecating way, confessed to a friend that, of his own person, he felt that the biographers of the future would say: “Chesterton, Gilbert Keith. From the fragments left by this now forgotten writer, it is difficult to understand the cause of even such publicity as he obtained in his
Although C. S. Lewis may be a more well-known Christian apologist across the denominations, it was the works of G. K. Chesterton that helped Lewis to re-embrace his Christian faith.
Many are those that have found their way because G. K. Chesterton dared to believe in God and in miracles in an ever more secular and skeptical world.
His biographer and president of the American Chesterton Society, Dale Ahlquist, called him “the most unjustly neglected writer of our time” — a title that is not entirely undeserved.
With over 130 books to his name, including biographies, novels, essays, short story collections, poetry collections, and Christian apologetics, as well as numerous newspaper and magazine articles, book reviews, and plays, G. K. Chesterton, however often the work outside of his Catholic corpus is neglected, is undoubtedly a literary giant. He was also known in his time for being, quite literally, a giant. Standing at 6'4” and weighing approximately 300 lbs, Chesterton could have easily been an intimidating man, but his good nature, friendly tone, and often childlike whimsy made him instead a larger than life character, who fit perhaps better into one of his fantastical novels than into the real world.
He was a man who would leave his home with the wrong shoe on, forget what he was doing, and end up in a strange and unfamiliar place. His eating habits were so surprising that they were the subject of jokes and tales. He loved to attend costume parties, especially in 18th century garb. The child in him never grew up; he played games, drank milk by the pint, and reveled in the most childish of temptations, like chocolates and sticky buns.
He was also a man with a unique talent, although not always fully understood, for taking a serious topic and writing about it in a surprising and humorous way without making light of the matter. G. K. Chesterton may have been known as the “Prince of Paradox” because of this love for using humorous paradox, in particular, to make a point about otherwise serious things, but even the man himself was a man of contradictions.
He was nearly always a modest man, downplaying his own achievements and giving credits to others even when credit was not strictly necessary. But he was hardly ever a moderate man. He ate too much, he drank too much, he worked too hard, and he argued for too long. He disliked being the center of attention, but he lived his life in the limelight. Yet despite his lack of moderation, he was a pious man. In fact, one may say that it was his lack of moderation that allowed him to so fully accept Catholicism and its mystery tradition as his own. A more moderate Englishman of his time would have considered Catholicism too superstitious and too continental.
Who was he then, this man G. K. Chesterton, the friendly rival of playwright George Bernard Shaw and spiritual inspiration of C. S. Lewis, who rose from an increasingly industrial post-Victorian England skeptical of faith and especially of something as un-English as the papacy of Rome and found himself drawn to the most mysterious aspects of the Catholic religion only to be named a “defender of the faith” by the Pope? Chesterton himself, in his usual self-deprecating way, confessed to a friend that, of his own person, he felt that the biographers of the future would say: “Chesterton, Gilbert Keith. From the fragments left by this now forgotten writer, it is difficult to understand the cause of even such publicity as he obtained in his
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