The Apostle of Common Sense by Dale Ahlquist

(San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2003), 190

I started reading this on my Kindle before meeting Dale Ahlquist at a Chesterton Academy of St. Benedict event.

Preface

Dale Ahlquist read The Everlasting Man on his honeymoon
Chesterton's faith cannot be ignored and is not just one aspect of his work, but the "dome over it all"

Chapter 1: An Introduction to the Apostle of Common Sense

"G.K. Chesterton was the best writer of the twentieth century. He said something about everything, and he said it better than anybody else."
"Students should not consider themselves educated until they have read him. Furthermore, reading Chesterton is almost a complete education in itself."
"Why is Chesterton neglected? Because the modern world finds it much more convenient to ignore him than to risk engaging him in an argument, because to argue with Chesterton is to lose."
Chesterton doesn't avoid controversy, and he doesn't avoid religion and politics, because we are commanded to love God and our neighbor (the subject of both)
Chesterton is a Complete Thinker, and utterly consistent because his faith touched everything.
His ideas aren't exotic, but he expresses them better than anyone else can and represents common sense.

Chapter 2: Orthodoxy

If you only read one book by Chesterton it has to be Orthodoxy: "This is the trunk of the tree from which all other branches of Chesterton grow. It is a masterpiece of rhetoric; it has never been out of print since it was first published in 1908, and it is simply one of the best books written in the twentieth century."
The first steps are the most important—the difference between getting home and getting lost—and the first step is to accept the reality of sin. The next step is to accept the limits of reason and accept the concept of paradox, one of the most important themes throughout Chesterton's writing.
Chesterton rejects determinism (fatalism) and holds up free will as one of the most sacred truths of Catholic theology. Freedom is glorious, but freedom is enjoyed only within the rules.
"Chesterton discovered that paradox is the key to truth, and that the ultimate paradox is the key to the ultimate truth. And the ultimate paradox is Jesus Christ: fully God and fully man."
Only truth brings freedom, and truth does not change.

Chapter 3: Heretics

Heretics is one of Chesterton's most important and most neglected books.
Religion is never irrelevant because we all hold some "religion" that determines how we act. Religion deals with everything.
"The Christian faith is common sense. Heresy, it turns out, is usually a distinct lack of common sense. A heresy is at best a half-truth, but usually even less than that. A heresy is a fragment of the truth that is exaggerated at the expense of the rest of the truth. Heresy is not so much a false doctrine as an incomplete doctrine."
"The reason why Chesterton is an apostle of common sense is that he is a complete thinker. The reason he could recognize heresy is because he could exposure incomplete thinking."
"The Christian mystic, says Chesterton, is the most practical man of all. He does the right thing for the right reason."
"It was the anti-Christian writers who pointed out all the common sense in Christianity. in the same way it is often the agnostics and scoffers who provide some of the best evidence for the very existence of God."
You cannot have progress unless you have established what your goal is: "Nobody can be progressive without being doctrinal...For progress is by its very name indicates a direction."
Scientism: "Take away the supernatural and what remains is the unnatural."
The chapter "On Certain Modern Writers and the Institution of the Family" is the quintessential Chesterton essay: If we can get along in a family, we can get along in other lesser human institutions.

Chapter 4: What's Wrong with the World

"The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried."
Hudge is Big Government, Gudge is Big Business
The society is in danger when the common man—without religion, home, and family—is not even sure what he wants anymore.
Generalism: Specialization is the enemy of democracy and the enemy of religion. Women have been the key persons preventing the degeneration into specialization.
- "Chesterton quite frankly does not want women to become involved in government—not because he does not want women to have more power, but because he does not want government to have more power."
"Education is only truth in a state of transmission."
"Chesterton's solution is that we have to repent and return to the Christian ideal. The only step forward is a step back."

Chapter 5: The Catholic Church and Conversion

The heresies that have attacked human happiness in this time were all variations of presumption or despair.
Chesterton was never a Protestant in the sense of being anti-Catholic
"To become Catholic is not to leave off thinking, but to learn how to think."
"The Catholic Church is the only thing which saves a man from the degrading slavery of being a child of his age."
"I know that Catholicism is too large for me, and I have not yet explored its beutiful and terrible truths. But I know that Universalism is too small for me; and I could not creep back into that dull safety, who have looked on the dizzy vision of liberty."

Chapter 6: The Thing: Why I Am a Catholic

"Catholic" means "universal", and Chesterton shows how The Thing applies to everything else
The Catholic position is one of common sense.
Calvinists are obsessed with the sovereignty of God, Lutherans with the grace of God, Methodists with the sin of man, Baptists with the Bible, Quakers with simplicity, Muslims with the Oneness of God, communists with the equality of men, feminists with the equality of men and women, materialists with creation apart from the Creator, spiritualists with the rejection of materialism, etc...All take one of the Church's mystical ideas and exalt it above the rest, losing the moderating and balancing measures of The Thing, the Catholic faith.
"They insist on talking about Birth Control when they mean less birth and no control."
"A convinced Catholic is easily the most logical person walking about the world today."
A person who rejects the faith altogether is more consistent than a person who rejects just parts of the faith, keeping the parts that please him.

Chapter 7: The Well and the Shadows

"The Thing" is the complete and integrated Catholic worldview. The Catholic Church is the Well, everything else is the Shallows.
Other worldviews eventually attack free will and thus human dignity. Chesterton always defends freedom and dignity.
"One of the chief features of the state of Peace we now enjoy is the killing of a considerable number of harmless human beings."
Paganism is replacing Protestantism, but can be checked by a return to Thomistic philosophy, which is the philosophy of common sense.
"If individuals have any hope of protecting their freedom, they must protect their family life."
Chesterton says nothing has done more to destroy the family than rampant and unbridled capitalism, and the solution is independent people and families living simpler lives.

Chapter 8: St. Francis of Assisi

Chesterton describes St. Francis as a soldier, fighter, builder, reformer, jester, clown of God, troubadour, poet, beggar, little poor man, and finally as a mirror of Christ.
Francis was able to bring reform to the Church without a revolution.
St. Francis was a romantic, a lover, a lower of God.
"It is the highest and holiest of the paradoxes that the man who really knows he cannot pay his debt will be forever paying it. He will be forever giving back what he cannot...be expected to give back. he will be always throwing things away into a bottomless pit of unfathomable thanks."
"He was a poet whose life was a poem."
He did not worship nature, he worshipped the Creator.
He never lost his balance because he never lost his sense of humor.
"He cared chiefly for the best kind of giving which is called Thanksgiving."

Chapter 9: St. Thomas Aquinas

"Without consulting any texts whatsoever, Chesterton rapidly dictated about half the book to his secretary, Dorothy Collins. Then he suddenly said to her, “I want you to go to London and get me some books.” “What books?” asked Dorothy. “I don’t know”, said G. K. So Dorothy did some research and brought back a stack of books on St. Thomas. G.K. flipped through a couple of books in the stack, took a walk in his garden, and then, without ever referring to the books again, proceeded to dictate the rest of his book to Dorothy. Many years later, when Evelyn Waugh heard this story, he quipped that Chesterton never even read the Summa Theologica, but merely ran his fingers across the binding and absorbed everything in it. But, of course, Chesterton had read at least parts of the Summa. What is amazing is that he read it long before he became a Catholic and thirty years before writing his book on St. Thomas Aquinas."
Étienne Gilson, probably the most highly respected scholar of St. Thomas in the twentieth century, a man who devoted his whole life to studying St. Thomas, had this to say about Chesterton’s book: "I consider it as being without possible comparison the best book ever written on St. Thomas. Nothing short of genius can account for such an achievement."
Chesterton describes Thomas as the Saint of Common Sense, a philosopher who used reason reasonably.
St. Thomas justifies both faith and reason against those who would reduce man's knowledge to one or the other.
"When the world forgot romance, it discovered ST. Francis. When it forgot reason, it discovered St. Thomas Aquinas. The Church always has exactly what the world is lacking."

Chapter 10: The Everlasting Man

Everlasting Man is one of his most important works, and is a big-picture history of the world and defense of Christianity in response to H.G. Wells' The Outline of History (Wells tried to treat man as just another animal and Christ as just another man)
Myths are stories about an ache for the eternal
The purpose of Everlasting Man is to get us to look at Christianity as a true outsider might
"There must surely have been something not only mysterious but man-sided about Christ if so many smaller Christs can be carved out of him."
The soul of Christendom is common sense

Chapter 11: The Outline of Sanity

A collection of essays
We think of only Socialism (the natural result of which is the government owns all property and controls all aspects of life) and Capitalism (the natural result of which is one person owning everything and everyone else owning nothing) as the economic systems, but he argues for a third. Chesterton proposes Distributism: freedom and responsibility, security based upon the widespread ownership of private property. The name comes from "distributive justice" in Rerum Novarum
Socialism does not accomplish any of the things it sets out to do because it does not trust the common man and leaves nothing to common sense
Chesterton prophesies "big business" with "The Bluff of the Big Shops"
Distributism is democracy, because democracy can only work if property is widespread. Peasantry is self-support, self-control, and self-government.
It is very possible to be happy without being rich! "The aim of human polity is human happiness...There is no obligation on us to be richer, or busier, or more efficient, or more productive, or more progressive, or in any way worldlier or wealthier, if it does not make us happier."
We need a moral movement: Distributism can happen is we do it
Ahlquist cites the NIV at the end of this chapter

Chapter 12: The Superstition of Divorce

Marriage is not just a contract but something mystical and elemental. It is part of the very foundation of humanity and connected directly to the divine. It is a sacrament.
Chesterton shows how the natural reasons for marriage support the supernatural reasons, and how when the family breaks apart the whole society breaks apart.
"Capitalism is at war with the family for the same reason which has led to its being at war with the Trade Union. It desires its victims to be individuals, or to be atoms."
The family is the strongest institution in a society because it is the one that people build spontaneously for themselves.
Divorce is not an act of freedom, but an act of slavery.
We need laws to support and keep together the family, but also an economic system that does not pressure them to split.

Chapter 13: Eugenics and Other Evils

"Eugenics" was coined by Francis Galton
The philosophy behind eugenics is still with us. The same arguments are used to justify birth control, abortion, and euthanasia.
Chesterton's attack of evil is always wrapped around a defense of what is good.
"He has not the right to administer death as the cure for all human ills."
"Evil always takes advantage of ambiguity."
Chesterton predicted that the eugenics mentality would result in a "war upon the weak"
The fact that babies are unwanted goes back to the fact that our society has created a whole class of people that are unwanted. They are the permanently poor.

Chapter 14: Father Brown

Chesterton loved mystery stories. The sharp transition from ignorance is good for humility and similar to revelation.
Readers want enlightenment, not mystification, and the heart of every complicated detective yarn must be the discovery of a simple truth.
Father Brown's talent is his ability to understand the human heart. As a priest he understands that every man can be a murderer, and that every man can be a saint. Reason is tied to justice, but justice to mercy. Father Brown wants to solve the crime, but also to save the criminal.
Sin: "No man's really any good till he knows how bad he is."
The best is footnote #8 on the chapter on Fr. Brown where he chastises you for looking for the story he said he wouldn't give away!

Chapter 15: Conclusion: Chesterton for Today

"A society is in decay when common sense has become uncommon."
We are confused because we have lost our common sense.
Chesterton makes conclusions and speaks with confidence about what he believes (the modern mind cannot make up its mind). "The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid."
Frank Sheed: "When a man is as right as that in his forecasts, there is some reason to think he may be right in his premises."
We have to hate the world enough to want to change it, but love it enough to think it worth changing.
"Before the Liberal ideal is dead or triumphant, we shall see wars and persecutions the like of which the world has never seen."
Chesterton was a complete thinker because his Catholic faith informed all of his thinking.
His poem "The Donkey" is a little poem every child should memorize, and every college student should study "The Ballad of the White Horse.

Topic: G.K. Chesterton

Source

Formed e-book

Created: 2023-11-01-Wed
Updated: 2024-06-19-Wed