Christian apologists come and go with their books of the month, but few 20th Century writers could get to the heart of Christian thinking like G. K. Chesterton. His solid understanding of the world and how it should work provide channels of rationality that have been seeming lost by so much modern rhetoric. In fact, he simply pulls back the curtain on what so many think of as logical facts to reveal that they are, in truth, just crafted suppositions. A book on how to think rightly that ends up pointing to the divinity of Christ might not seem like the next book to put on your shelf, but if you’re a thinker – regardless of viewpoint – it will help you do that better.

In Protestant circles (and without), C.S. Lewis rightfully gets tons of praise as the preeminent apologist for rational Christian thought. However, Chesterton with an equally broad body of work has written some of the most accessible books on the depth of the Christian thought life. His treatise Orthodoxy reveals that truth is always simple and complicated and should not be disentangled. The Everlasting Man at its core is a blueprint for why so much highly touted science is in fact unsupportable by facts. Objective criticism is always needed to make a logical progression, but more and more, thinkers are turning to the subjective whims of thought to provide insight. Chesterton methodically presents why present day thinkers need to return to a true logic to understand our world.

Starting with the caveman, Chesterton reveals how more and more stories are told about the “prehistoric” man – as if the scientists don’t realize that prehistory means that we don’t know the stories. Supposition and conjecture to develop theory is always important in scientific endeavor, but there’s a point where many believe a whole stack of theories equate to reality. Many might believe that Earth resides in the arm of the Milky Way more than they would believe that there’s beautiful gardens in the city. But one you could go and prove, and the other will remain a supposition – even if it is true. While in no way reading like a textbook – it is always engaging – little by little the reader starts to see that there’s purpose behind science. This purpose is not always to reveal truth. You can help make it be though.

I will add that Chesterton does point truth seekers to the fount of Truth. He tries as best he can to show how the divinity of Christ is the logical way to understand the progress of the world. It’s not done in a Josh McDowell-like stacking of facts. He does it by asking you to think objectively and refrain from self-made rhetoric. Whether he ultimately succeeds is your call, but I felt like it was worth reading about.

7 stars out of 10

Photo credit: Irish Dominican Photographers via Visual hunt / CC BY-NC-SA