G.K. Chesterton
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The Wild Knight of Dogma: Chesterton and the Perilous Edge “Orthodoxy is not only… the only safe guardian of morality or order,” G.K. Chesterton writes, “but it is also the only logical guardian of liberty, innovation, and advance” (O, 133). In the final chapters of Orthodoxy, Chesterton invites his readers to see not the heaviness…
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In his introduction to Orthodoxy, G.K. Chesterton recounts his journey of examining the great questions of life, only to believe he was alone in his discoveries. He eventually realized he was in the “ridiculous position of being backed up by all of Christendom,” finding that his “fancied” modern ideas were, in fact, “eighteen hundred years…
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Following the Western tradition of spiritual autobiography—established by writers such as St. Augustine and Thomas Merton—G.K. Chesterton compiled his religious views in his most celebrated work, Orthodoxy. Written as a sequel to the critiques found in his earlier book, Heretics, Orthodoxy serves as both a formal apologetic and a personal testimony of his conversion to…
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“For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible… all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” — Colossians 1:16-17 Lately, I have been convicted of a quiet failure: I have stopped practicing the discipline…
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“Seeing is not believing—it is only seeing.” — George MacDonald, The Princess and the Goblin Our modern society is obsessed with the material. We aren’t necessarily “materialistic” in the sense of craving jewelry or yachts, but we are addicted to physical matter. We are a people who demand to have our feet firmly planted on…
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“An open mind is really a mark of foolishness, like an open mouth. Mouths and minds were made to shut; they were made to open only in order to shut.” — G.K. Chesterton In my first year of university, a professor opened class with a quote from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s essay The Crack-Up: “The test…
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I’ll admit from the start: I am a little leery of qualifying anything with the word good. In our relativistic age, “good” often feels as empty as saying a building is “strong because it’s strong.” It either means nothing, or it means something entirely different to you than it does to me. G.K. Chesterton famously…