The Key Teachings of G. K. Chesterton

This is a companion to G. K. Chesterton, not a book by him. Written by Ochorus, it sets out in fifteen short chapters the teaching for which Chesterton is chiefly remembered — the wonder and gratitude he learned in the nursery, the madman who has lost everything except his reason, the thought that stops thought, the cosmic loyalty that loves the world enough to change it, the furious opposites that Christianity holds together, orthodoxy as the great adventure, joy as the gigantic secret of the Christian, tradition as the democracy of the dead, humility in its right place, the dignity of ordinary life, the man in the cave and the God in the cave, the strangest story in the world, the five deaths of the faith, and the holy gaiety of St Francis. It adds a chapter on his life, a conclusion, and a guide to his books.

It is important to be clear about what this book is and is not. It is an independent work of exposition, summary and appreciation, not published by, affiliated with, or endorsed by any society or body devoted to Chesterton’s memory or his cause. Two of his greatest books, Orthodoxy (1908) and The Everlasting Man (1925), are in the public domain and in the Ochorus library, and short sentences from them are quoted sparingly here, each checked against the library’s own text and named by book and chapter. Nothing is quoted from his later works that are still in copyright; those are described in our own words. Scripture is quoted from the Authorised (King James) Version.

Chesterton wrote Orthodoxy as a member of the Church of England and was received into the Roman Catholic Church in 1922. This volume says plainly where evangelical readers will differ from his later convictions — on the authority of the Church, on Mary and the saints, on the sacraments — and where his politics and economics are opinion rather than doctrine. It also faces honestly the antisemitic passages in some of his writing, which a fair modern companion must name. He would have wanted the argument, and he would have wanted readers to go past him to Christ.

The best way to use this book is beside his own. Orthodoxy and The Everlasting Man are both in the Ochorus library; read them alongside these chapters.