Hostname: page-component-f554764f5-sl7kg Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-04-20T17:50:58.964Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Chesterton and Holiness

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Aidan Nichols OP
Aidan Nichols OP*
Affiliation:
St. Michael's Theological College, Kingston, Jamaica
*
[email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content.
Image of the first page of this content. For PDF version, please use the ‘Save PDF’ preceeding this image.'
Type
Original Article
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 102 , Issue 1099 , May 2021 , pp. 368 - 383
Copyright
Copyright © 2020 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

1 Letter to the Editor, Chesterton Review XII. 4 (1986), p. 584.

2 Oddie, William, ‘Introduction’, in idem. (ed.), The Holiness of G. K. Chesterton (Leominster: Gracewing, 2010), pp. 2-3.Google Scholar

3 Chesterton, G. K., Autobiography (Thirsk: House of Stratus, 2001 [1936]), p. 1.Google Scholar

4 See on this topic Dale, Alzina Stone, The Art of G. K. Chesterton (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1985).Google Scholar

5 G. K. Chesterton, Autobiography, op. cit., p. 58.

6 Ibid.

7 Idem., Orthodoxy (London: John Lane, 1909 [1908]), p. 130.

8 William Oddie, ‘Introduction’, art. cit., p. 13.

9 Maritain, Jacques, ‘L'Expérience naturelle et le vide’, in idem., Quatre essais sur l'esprit dans sa condition charnelle (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1939), pp. 132-177.Google Scholar What Maritain had in mind was a touching of ‘the substantial esse of one's soul and, in that and by that, of the divine Absolute’, ibid., p. 164.

10 Aidan Nichols, O. P., A Grammar of Consent. The Existence of God in Christian Tradition (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1991), pp. 165-172Google Scholar; idem., G. K. Chesterton, Theologian (Manchester, NH: Second Spring, 2009), pp. 107-118.

11 See on Chesterton's discovery of metaphysical realism, Aidan Nichols, O. P., G. K. Chesterton, Theologian, op. cit., pp. 55-86.

12 Jacques Maritain, ‘L'Expérience naturelle et le vide’, art. cit., p. 165.

13 Ibid., p. 164.

14 Cited William Oddie, ‘Introduction’, art. cit., pp. 11-12.

15 Groves, Reginald, Conrad Noel and the Thaxted Movement. An Adventure in Christian Socialism (London: Merlin Press, 1967).Google Scholar

16 Oddie, William, Chesterton and the Romance of Orthodoxy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), p. 189.Google Scholar

17 For a fuller discussion, see Aidan Nichols, O. P., G. K. Chesterton, Theologian, op. cit., pp. 87-106.

18 Coates, John D., Chesterton and the Edwardian Cultural Crisis (Hull: Hull University Press, 1984)Google Scholar, a study which also covers Chesterton's critique of the Nietzscheans, G. B. Shaw and H. G. Wells, on whom more anon.

19 Chesterton, G. K., The Defendant (London: J. Dent, M., 1914 [1901]), p. 14.Google Scholar

20 Cited in Ker, Ian, G. K. Chesterton. A Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), p. 106.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

21 Ibid., p. 84.

22 G. K. Chesterton, The Defendant, op. cit., p. 85.

23 John O'Connor published his reminiscences of their relations in the year following Chesterton's death: Father Brown on Chesterton (London: Muller, 1937).

24 Cited in Ian Ker, G. K. Chesterton, op. cit., p. 87.

25 G. K. Chesterton, Autobiography, op. cit., p. 115.

26 Idem., Robert Browning (London: Macmillan, 1967 [1903]), p. 49.

27 For Chesterton as ‘virtue ethicist’, see Aidan Nichols, O. P., G. K. Chesterton, Theologian, op. cit., pp. 161-182.

28 ‘[I]t sounds, this wonderful voice, imperiously whispering: in all of its immeasurableness the world's being does not belong to it, it is given to the world’, thus Bulgakov, Sergei, Unfading Light. Contemplations and Speculations (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2012), p. 181Google Scholar; ‘Creation by its very existence witnesses to and proclaims its creaturehood’, thus Florovsky, Georges, Collected Works, III. Creation and Redemption (Belmont, MA: Nordland, 1976), p. 45.Google Scholar

29 Idem., Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens (London: J. M. Dent, 1911), p. 128.Google Scholar

30 Saward, John, Perfect Fools. Folly for Christ's Sake in Catholic and Orthodox Spirituality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

31 Idem., Orthodoxy, op. cit., p. 249.

32 Ibid., p. 255.

33 Balthasar, Hans Urs von, Theo-drama. Theological Dramatic Theory, IV. The Action (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius, 1994), pp. 323-350.Google Scholar

34 See Ian Ker, G. K. Chesterton, op. cit., pp. 237-238.

35 Chesterton, G. K., The Victorian Age in Literature (London: Williams and Norgate, 1925), p. 37.Google Scholar

36 Ian Ker, G. K. Chesterton, op. cit., p. 428.

37 Chesterton, G. K., ‘Where All Roads Lead, I. The Youth of the Church’, Blackfriars III. 31 (1922), pp. 371-376CrossRefGoogle Scholar; III. 32 (1922), pp. 463-469; ‘Where All Roads Lead, II. The Case for Complexity’, Blackfriars III. 33 (1922), pp. 491-495Google Scholar; ‘Where All Roads Lead, III. The History of a Half-truth’, Blackfriars III. 34 (1923), pp. 555-560Google Scholar; III. 35 (1923), pp. 617-622; ‘Where All Roads Lead, IV. A Note on Comparative Religion’, Blackfriars III. 36 (1923), pp. 703-707Google Scholar; III. 37 (1923), pp. 737-741.

38 Ian Ker, G. K. Chesterton, op. cit., p. 489.

39 See Ward, Maisie, Gilbert Keith Chesterton (London: Sheed and Ward, 1944), p. 525.Google Scholar

40 Lewis, C. S., ‘Myth became Fact’, in idem., Undeceptions. Essays on Theology and Ethics (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1971), pp. 39-43.Google Scholar

41 Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Glory of the Lord. A Theological Aesthetics, IV. The Realm of Metaphysics in Antiquity (Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark, 1989), p. 216.Google Scholar

42 Aidan Nichols, O. P., G. K. Chesterton, Theologian, op. cit., pp. 127-131 (anthropology), 150-159 (Christology).

43 Ian Ker, G. K. Chesterton, op. cit., pp. 545-546.

44 Cited William Oddie, ‘Introduction’, art. cit., p. 6.

45 Ibid., p. 9.

46 Cited ibid.

47 Ker, Ian, ‘Humour and Holiness in Chesterton’, in Oddie, William (ed.), The Holiness of G. K. Chesterton, op. cit., pp. 36-53.Google Scholar

48 Saward, John,‘Chesterton's Sanctity: The Spirit of Childhood and the Metaphysics of Wonder’, in Oddie, William (ed.), The Holiness of Chesterton, op. cit., pp. 20-35Google Scholar, and here at p. 26. For an anthology of excerpts see: Chesterton, G. K., The Spirit of Christmas, ed. Smith, Marie (London: Xanadu, 1984).Google Scholar

49 Ward, Maisie, Return to Chesterton (London: Sheed and Ward, 1952), p. 237.Google Scholar

50 Gilley, Sheridan, ‘Chesterton: The Journalist as Saint’, in Oddie, William (ed.), The Holiness of G. K. Chesterton, op. cit., pp. 102-123Google Scholar, and here at pp. 108-109.

51 Farmer, Ann, Chesterton and the Jews: Friend, Critic, Defender (Kettering, OH: Angelico Press, 2015).Google Scholar