I don’t actually hate Chesterton, but I thought it would be very Chestertonian to say that after just saying that I love him. I realized as I was reading his book on St. Thomas Aquinas that his style is such that he seems incapable of saying anything without a contradiction, a contrast, or a paradox. “On the one hand X does Y to Z, but perhaps in actuality Z does Y to X.” Sentences like that are inextricable from Chesterton’s writing; not a paragraph can finish without one. It is a delightfully entertaining style. The question is that of how instructive it can be for those subjects that are fairly orderly or straightforward and do not lend themselves easily to paradox.

This works out really well in his fiction: for one he is undeniably a master of paradoxes, and in fiction you can put in paradoxes where ever you wish if you are capable (as he is) of working them out to great wonderment. It also works like a charm when he is talking about such paradoxical things as the life of St. Francis.

I’m not sure it is so well suited to the life of St. Thomas though. Chesterton himself admits as he contrasts Thomas and Hegel: “For St. Thomas it is impossible that contradictories should exist together, and again reality and intelligibility correspond […]” (p. 146) Thomisim is a philosophy of common sense, and in Thomism everything is above all orderly. But Chesterton thrives on apparent contradiction; every paragraph of the book is full of what seems at first glance to be chaotic nonsense. (Needless to say, it turns out not to be so.)

I suppose what I’m trying to say is that Chesterton’s approach is not the best way to approach the Church’s great doctor. However, it is delightful and meshes naturally with most of his subjects. It’s nearly impossible not to like Chesterton. (Especially after what he has to say about Luther and Calvin. Good jolly chap.)