Kierra Gilbert

Gilbert Keith (G.K) Chesterton’s accomplishments cannot be summed up in one sentence, nor in one single paragraph. Let’s just come right out and say it: G.K. Chesterton was the best writer of the 20th century. He would always have something to say about everything and he indeed said it better than anybody else. He was very good at expressing words, emotions, and himself. Therefore, and more importantly, he had something very good to expose. The reason he was the supreme writer of the 20th century was because he was also the greatest philosopher of the 20th century.

Born in London, G.K. Chesterton received his education at St. Paul’s that he attended on the weekdays, but never went to college (he did attend art school at one point). He was a high profile public intellectual of the early twentieth century. His occupation consisted of him being an activist, public speaker, author, and a journalist. He was at ease with politics, economics, history, theology, and philosophy.

His style was shown as always marked by wonder, wittiness, humility, and stability. Often referred to as the “Prince of Paradox”, Chesterton early discovered the worth of paradox as “truth standing on its head to gain attention”. He was viewed as a man who had strong views on literary, social criticism and had a whimsical way with words. He wrote a variety of genre such as essays articles, fantasy, Christian apologetics, Catholic apologetics, mystery, and poems.

In Chesterton’s essays: About Beliefs, Revival of Philosophy, and If I Only Had One Sermon to Preach, Chesterton had various things to write about, such as the Resurrection, knowledge, and pride. His views were quite similar to how he interpreted those fundamental terms in his life and his different perspective on it. In each essay, he focuses on how these things make up our everyday lives.

The historical case for the Resurrection is that everybody else, except the Apostles, had every possible motive to declare what they had done with the body, if anything had been done with it. The Apostles might have hidden it in order to announce a sham miracle, but it is very difficult to imagine men being tortured and killed for the truth of a miracle which they knew to be a sham. (Chesterton, 317)

Christians live by Scripture and faiths. A Catholic, for example, follows the Apostle’s Creed as a synopsis of his faith. And, of course, the most rudimentary set of principles that bore us all is the Ten Commandments, which forms the base for all Christian moral teachings. In so many ways, we find ourselves in a world of laws and rules—we must fear the Lord, we must go to church on Sunday, and we must avoid sin. But one of the unspoken rules of Christianity often escapes us sometimes—that humanity is a holy gift from God that must be enjoyed. Although we recall this every once in a while; for example, when a striking sunrise takes our breath away—the majority of the time, we do not know what it is to truly enjoy our day-to-day lifestyle.

The true joy of living, unfortunately, is often eaten up by following rules, endless creeds and by the hunt of empty pleasures that gives us the true meaning of happiness. G.K. Chesterton believed that the “list of rules” that so many of us associate with spiritual deadness can when properly understood at the moment, lead us to a radically new appreciation of the joy of life. Therefore, the problem is that too few of us truly understand and appreciate what we are given—the deep-down roughness and exquisiteness of life.

Chesterton mentions in If I Only Had One Sermon to Preach and Revival of Philosophy that pride is something that attacks when we are strong and knowledge can give a man control and power. Of the many manifestations and signs of pride—arrogance, stubbornness, boastfulness, willfulness, disobedience, presumption—mystical pride does not rapidly express itself in a way that is noticeable as these other attributes. In our self-indulgent age of self-esteem and self-fulfillment, we want Chesterton to retell us just where the real endangerment lies. Which is why in fact, he wrote that if he had just one sermon to address, it would be a lesson against the sin of pride.

Chesterton defined pride well as thinking oneself as a higher superior—as Satan thought when he had fallen. Chesterton believed that pride was specifically treacherous because, while people fall into the other evils through weakness, pride attacks us where we are at our peaks–even where we are upright. Chesterton mildly agrees with the statement that every knowledge is similar to historical knowledge. His emphasis on common sense and the common person concurs with this belief that history is accessible to ordinary ways of thinking.

Therefore, the knowledge of God stays central to Chesterton’s own thoughts on how one may understand human knowledge first hand. Tension that is ever present that can be known without being fully understood and what can be understood without being fully known is always present. The first hint of the tension that is between revelation and anonymous in Chesterton’s hermeneutic (the branch of knowledge that deals with interpretation, especially of the Bible or literary texts).

Pride, knowledge and the Resurrection are attributes that Chesterton had key pinpoints about in his particular essays. Chesterton wants us to realize that we are worthy of doing great things, as long as we remember how we handle it. These are crucial ways of how Chesterton viewed life through different perspectives. It is nice to have pride in oneself and it is very important to be knowledgeable.