Showing posts with label Chesterton. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Chesterton. Show all posts

Thursday, October 13, 2022

A Dangerously Clear Head

True story: When I was in my early university career, I was friends with a girl whose father taught history there. One of his students exhibited a most peculiar propensity in his essays; and that is, that no matter what question he was asked, he always answered, “God did it.”

What caused the Napoleonic Wars?

“God did.”

Thursday, October 24, 2019

A Dangerously Clear Head

The most recent version of this post is available here.

Monday, January 02, 2017

A Dangerously Clear Head

The most recent version of this post is available here.

Thursday, January 28, 2016

Quote of the Day (16)

This entire G.K. Chesterton essay is worthy of consideration, but my favourite bit is this splendid, gleeful demolition of the anti-Christian argument from Incarnation mythology:

“Mr. Blatchford and his school point out that there are many myths parallel to the Christian story; that there were Pagan Christs, and Red Indian Incarnations, and Patagonian Crucifixions, for all I know or care. But does not Mr. Blatchford see the other side of this fact? If the Christian God really made the human race, would not the human race tend to rumours and perversions of the Christian God? If the center of our life is a certain fact, would not people far from the center have a muddled version of that fact? If we are so made that a Son of God must deliver us, is it odd that Patagonians should dream of a Son of God?”

Chesterton goes on to break that down further ...

Wednesday, August 26, 2015

Does the Bible Need a Disclaimer?

Perhaps a little something like this?
The following ultra-litigation-conscious, politically correct disclaimer comes from the first page of a current reprint of G.K. Chesterton’s The Everlasting Man on my bookshelf:

“This book is a product of its time and does not reflect the same values as it would if it were written today. Parents might wish to discuss with their children how views on race have changed before allowing them to read this classic work.”

I had to laugh out loud at the naivete of anyone worried about modern children reading Chesterton. The publishers are, regrettably, quite safe from legal repercussions on that front.

Monday, October 27, 2014

Inbox: Dangerously Clear-Headed

The most recent version of this post is available here.

Thursday, May 01, 2014

Chesterton on Freedom

Immanuel Can recently posted on the subject of the meaning of freedom, which puts me in mind of a passage from Chesterton that I happened to read today:
     “It is impossible to be an artist and not care for laws and limits. Art is limitation; the essence of every picture is the frame. If you draw a giraffe, you must draw him with a long neck. If, in your bold creative way, you hold yourself free to draw a giraffe with a short neck, you will really find that you are not free to draw a giraffe. The moment you step into the world of facts, you step into a world of limits. You can free things from alien or accidental laws, but not from the laws of their own nature. You may, if you like, free a tiger from his bars; but do not free him from his stripes. Do not free a camel of the burden of his hump: you may be freeing him from being a camel. Do not go about as a demagogue, encouraging triangles to break out of the prison of their three sides. If a triangle breaks out of its three sides, its life comes to a lamentable end. Somebody wrote a work called ‘The Loves of the Triangles’; I never read it, but I am sure that if triangles ever were loved, they were loved for being triangular. This is certainly the case with all artistic creation, which is in some ways the most decisive example of pure will. The artist loves his limitations: they constitute the THING he is doing.”
 G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
Originally published in 1908. Entirely relevant.

That’s the funny thing about truth ...