The year 2008 marks 100 years since Chesterton (1874-1936) published his masterful little book, Orthodoxy. GKC was a major influence on C.S. Lewis, and it was because of Lewis that I personally began reading GKC. A couple months ago I posted Chesterton's perspective on the need for reason to be balanced by poetry and imagination.
Today I noticed that Christianity Today has interviewed Lyle Dorsett (a C.S. Lewis scholar) on Chesterton. The magazine introduces the interview with these words:
Since he published Orthodoxy
in 1908, G. K. Chesterton has inspired Christians and challenged
skeptics with his unique wit and wisdom. He delivered biting analysis
still relevant today: "A man was meant to be doubtful about himself,
but undoubting about the truth; this has been exactly reversed." And he
composed poignant prose that still touches the heart: "Love is not
blind; that is the last thing that it is. Love is bound; and the more
it is bound the less it is blind. A few days ago I began a re-reading of Orthodoxy. For any who may be interested, I have jotted down a few quotes:
On democracy and tradition:
"It is obvious that tradition is only democracy extended through time. . . Tradition may be defined as an extension of the franchise, Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about." (From ch 4, "The Ethics of Elfland")
On the wonder of being alive and the two sexes:
"I could never mix in the common murmur of that rising generation
against monogamy, because no restriction on sex seemed so odd and
unexpected as sex itself. . . Keeping to one woman is a small price for
so much as seeing one woman. To complain that I could only be married
once was like complaining that I had only been born once. It was
incommensurate with the terrible excitement of which one was talking.
It showed, not an exaggerated sensibility to sex, but a curious
insensibility to it. . . "
The delight of God might be in similar to childlike exuberance
"Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, 'Do it again'; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, 'Do it again' to the sun; and every again, 'Do it again' to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we. The repetition in Nature may not be a mere recurrence; it may be a theatrical encore
I shall post more quotes later . . .