In the early 1900s, the Catholic writer G. K. Chesterton was dubbed the “Prince of Paradox” by his contemporaries for his unusual use of rhetoric in defending the Catholic Church. Today, Chesterton’s writing remains popular not only among Catholics but also among Protestants who might otherwise avoid Catholic religious authors. Critics have suggested that analogies were the single most distinctive part of Chesterton’s rhetorical style.1 But what made Chesterton’s analogies unusual, and why did they work so well to represent the faith? Chesterton, influenced by the Catholic understanding of the sacraments, used analogy to support divine revelation by explaining the metaphysical in terms of the physical. First, I will introduce samples from Chesterton’s writing and analyze them to show how his analogies use a recurring rhetorical formula to explain metaphysical and spiritual realities with physical, human imagery. Second, I will draw from other commentators’ work and extend their criticism to describe how Chesterton believed that analogy could support divine revelation in ways that reason could not. Finally, I will show that these two qualities, by paralleling the analogical nature of the sacraments, are what make Chesterton’s analogies effective in expressing the Catholic faith.
I will begin with Chesterton’s rhetorical formula for analogy. Hilaire Belloc, Chesterton’s friend and collaborator, notes that Chesterton’s analogies illustrate “some unperceived truth by [their] exact consonance with the reflection of a truth already known and perceived.”2 We can observe this kind of analogy throughout Chesterton’s writings; to illustrate, I offer two examples from his spiritual autobiography, Orthodoxy. In the first example, Chesterton outlines the claim that ghosts do not exist because they have never been documented scientifically, a materialistic claim in opposition to the Catholic belief in the soul. Chesterton then responds that “the fact that ghosts prefer darkness no more disproves the existence of ghosts than the fact that lovers prefer darkness disproves the existence of love.”3 This is a common form for Chesterton’s analogies and illustrates exactly what Belloc described—Chesterton illustrates an unperceived truth (that ghosts may exist despite being generally unobserved) by comparing it with a truth already known and perceived (that sex exists despite being generally unobserved).
While Belloc defines analogy well, he passes over the fact that Chesterton’s analogies nearly always illustrate a metaphysical truth in physical imagery. As Anna Walczuk writes, Chesterton believed that “to get a foretaste of the metaphysical, one has got to have a solid hold upon the physical,” and so his analogies nearly always illustrate the spiritual in terms of the physical or tangible world.4 In this example, Chesterton does in fact illustrate the spiritual in terms of the physical, as he writes about ghosts using the image of lovers. This tendency toward physical imagery coincides with other parallel propensities in Chesterton’s imagery. As his imagery moves from spirits to bodies, it also moves from the inhuman to the human, from the natural to the urban, and from the primitive to the technological. In nearly every instance, Chesterton brings his imagery more deeply under the influence of humankind. E. C. Marsh, although he criticizes Chesterton for being flippant in his analogies, notes this pattern and cites passages in which Chesterton compares natural or primitive objects (like wind or arrows) to city life (like a cab or train).5 To some readers, these images of technology and city life might seem to contradict Chesterton’s movement toward human imagery. However, Alzina Stone Dale, in her biography of Chesterton, offers some insight on why he saw city life as an expression—not a contradiction—of humanity. As Dale explains, Chesterton enjoyed walking through London, loved the city atmosphere, and viewed the city’s features as symbols of a metaphysical reality.6 Every part of the city, from the cobblestones to the universities, reflected something of the principles of those who had built it. To Chesterton, urban imagery was human imagery.
In a second example we see this pattern clearly as Chesterton moves from the sky to the coal cellar; after an opponent claims that Buddhism and Christianity are essentially identical because “both Christ and Buddha were called by the divine voice coming out of the sky,” Chesterton quickly retorts, “as if you would expect the divine voice to come out of the coal cellar.”7 If Christ and Buddha are similar because both claimed to be sent by God, then both Christ and Buddha are like every other religious prophet, because all religious prophets claim to be sent by God; this is the core of Chesterton’s argument, but he does not leave it in those words. As our pattern suggests, Chesterton’s imagery moves from the sky—natural, inhuman, and even spiritual—to the coal cellar—concrete, urban, and built by humans for human use. In both of our examples, we see that Chesterton uses the same rhetorical formula as he explains metaphysical and spiritual realities in physical, human imagery.
Next, I would like to describe how Chesterton believed that analogy could support divine revelation in ways that reason could not. To understand Chesterton’s view of the relationship between analogy, revelation, and reason, we must first understand what Chesterton believed were the limitations of reason. As we will see, Chesterton did not believe that all truth is entirely discernible by reason. In fact, Chesterton most confidently held a belief only when he had verified it by some means other than reason, such as divine revelation, popular belief, or analogy. Quentin Lauer, in his biography of Chesterton, builds toward this understanding with several relevant points. First, Chesterton was often willing to rely on a good argument even if it yielded only a strong probability instead of complete certainty.8 Second, Chesterton was often willing to rely on a belief grounded in experience or revelation even if the belief had no apparent logical proof.9 Third, Chesterton believed that instinct and revelation are better suited than logic to finding truth; the role of logic is to support a truth once it has been found.10 Together, these observations show us that reason was not Chesterton’s only—or most trusted—means of approaching truth. Gary Ward grounds this idea succinctly in Chesterton’s own writing. In summarizing the second chapter of Orthodoxy, he writes that “isolated reason…is sterile. It can prove anything because, with its complete impartiality, it can choose any hypothesis to work from.”11 In other words, reason may keep us from making unsound arguments, but it can do nothing against unsound premises. Analogy though, by relating our reasoning to experience, can uncover problems both in the arguments and premises. None of these ideas should be surprising when we consider that Chesterton was a journalist by trade. Chesterton’s approach to truth was through experience, and his writing generally took the form of an appeal to the common man, not to the logician. Of course, Chesterton saw reason as a good thing, but he did not believe that it was the only means of proving truth, and even less the only means of finding it. With this understanding of Chesterton’s limited faith in reason, I will now explore how he relied on analogy instead.
Since Chesterton wrote prolifically about his Catholic faith, many critics have discussed how he relied on divine revelation to guide reasoning. David Fagerberg, for example, says that doctrine (a form of divine revelation) was one means by which Chesterton could verify truths known by reason. Fagerberg says that, for Chesterton, doctrine protects healthy reasoning, corrects bad reasoning, and illuminates “truths that reason cannot deduce.”12
Chesterton’s critics, including Fagerberg, often overlook Chesterton’s use of analogy to support divine revelation itself.13 In fact, Fagerberg’s articulation applies equally well to Chesterton’s use of analogy to verify truths known by divine revelation; we might just as well say that Chesterton’s analogies protect healthy doctrine, correct bad doctrine, and illuminate truths on which doctrine is silent. We can see that analogy verifies revelation in both of our above examples from Orthodoxy. In the first, Chesterton used analogy to defend the doctrine of miracles against the reasoning of scientific skeptics, and in the second, to defend Christianity itself against the claim that it agrees with Buddhism. Although Fagerberg’s praise was meant for doctrine, it applies even more appropriately to Chesterton’s use of analogy. Philip Mitchell, who holds a similar opinion on Chesterton’s analogies, theorizes on how they work to verify divine revelation. After showing that Chesterton believed that some truths cannot be known by reason and must be accepted as doctrine on the authority of the Church, Mitchell goes on to explain that an analogy makes a kind of predictive claim about the way things ought to be, and when doctrine makes the same claim, we can take the analogy as a verification of doctrine.14 For Fagerberg, divine revelation defends healthy reasoning; for Mitchell, Chesterton’s analogies defend divine revelation. In both cases, one source of truth makes a prediction that is fulfilled by another source. And it is analogy—not reason—on which Chesterton finally relies.
We have seen now that Chesterton’s analogies explain metaphysical reality in physical imagery, and we have discussed Chesterton’s belief that analogy is needed to support divine revelation in ways that reason cannot. But why were Chesterton’s analogies so effective in representing divine revelation in the Catholic faith in particular? I believe that the answer lies in how Chesterton drew on the analogical nature of the Catholic sacraments as a model for his own analogies. Alfred Noyes, in showing the deep similarity between Chesterton’s and Lewis Carroll’s analogies, offers us a clue that both authors may have drawn on the sacraments as patterns for their own analogies, as Carroll himself came from a family of Anglo-Catholics and had studied for the Anglican priesthood.15
When Chesterton illustrates the metaphysical in terms of the physical, he parallels the sacraments, which involve both a physical act and a spiritual act simultaneously. In the Sacrament of Baptism, for example, a person is washed physically with water and, at the same time, washed from sin by God, the visible reality of water illustrating the hidden reality of God’s washing. The Catechism of the Catholic Church says that a sacrament “emphasizes the visible sign of the hidden reality of salvation.”16 This definition is a remarkable parallel to Chesterton’s rhetorical formula for analogy; Chesterton expresses metaphysical reality through physical symbols just as the sacraments express hidden reality through visible signs. This Catholic view of the sacraments influenced Chesterton deeply, and he undoubtedly saw the sacraments as analogies in which the visible work of the Church corresponds to the invisible work of God. Chesterton’s reliance on analogy instead of mere reason also parallels the Catholic teaching that the sacraments given by Christ are effective for salvation in a way that mere reason is not.17 Mere reason cannot communicate the Catholic faith—it must be grounded in the sacraments. Likewise, Chesterton uses analogy rather than mere reason to defend divine revelation. Since the Catholic faith and Catholic intellectual tradition depend on this view of the sacraments, I believe that Chesterton intentionally allowed this sacramental language to guide the imagery of his analogies. Furthermore, this sacramental language is what makes Chesterton’s analogies particularly effective in expressing the Catholic faith.
Analogy is uniquely suited to expressing the Catholic faith, but Protestants too have enjoyed Chesterton’s defenses of Christianity. While Protestantism has generally discounted the sacraments and separated the physical and spiritual realities that Catholicism unites, the analogical quality of Christianity is by no means limited to the seven sacraments of Catholicism. Every form of Christianity depends on the union of physical and spiritual realities. As Belloc notes, Christ himself used analogies in his parables in a way almost identical to Chesterton’s.18 Most importantly, the Incarnation of Christ reveals a spiritual God in a human person; Chesterton, working less miraculously but toward the same goal, reveals spiritual truths incarnated in human imagery. This incarnational foundation common to all forms of Christianity is why many Protestants are able to appreciate Chesterton’s work. On the other hand, non-Christians may find Chesterton’s analogies less convincing if they are unfamiliar with the sacraments and with the doctrine of the Incarnation.
We have seen that Chesterton used a recurring analogical formula to explain metaphysical and spiritual realities in physical, human imagery. In addition, he relied on these analogies because he believed that they could support divine revelation in ways that reason could not. Finally, Chesterton’s tendency toward physical, human imagery draws on the analogical nature of the Catholic sacraments, illustrating why his analogies are particularly effective in expressing the Catholic faith. If Catholics and other Christians can learn from Chesterton’s analogical technique, we may develop not only an ability to represent the faith more effectively, but also a fuller appreciation of the sacraments.
