cover image The Christian Imagination: G.K. Chesterton on the Arts

The Christian Imagination: G.K. Chesterton on the Arts

Thomas C. Peters. Ignatius Press, $12.95 (154pp) ISBN 978-0-89870-757-1

Peters (Battling for the Modern Mind: A Beginner's Chesterton, 1994) has written a potentially timely book, but one which suffers from a plodding hand. Chesterton, writing from 1900 to 1936, ingeniously and hilariously engaged London's great literary figures and social politicians in ""duels"" over the state and truth of Christianity, moral relativism and scientific determinism. Peters attempts to explain how Chesterton's uniquely Christian imagination enhanced his arguments. Unfortunately, Peters opaquely imbeds his ideas in a list-like series of densely discussed philosophical, religious and aesthetic topics, barely connected by the words ""artist"" and ""imagination."" While Chesterton speaks of imagination in ordinary terms, Peters pontificates beyond, trying to show how ""Christian"" Chesterton and these concepts are by giving parallels from the Bible to which Chesterton never alludes. (For example, ""childlike wonder"" supposedly relates to Jesus' reference to ""the nearness of the child to the kingdom of God."") In addition, Peters indiscriminately mixes quotations from Chesterton's pre-Christian and post-Christian works as if they were all written from a Christian perspective. Readers new to Chesterton will find this a boring, confusing book, uneasily dependent upon Peters's sometimes unconvincing explanations and almost unreadable in places. A better choice is Alzina Stone Dale's engaging, excellent The Art of G.K. Chesterton (1985), which delightfully combines a biography of Chesterton with an insightful treatise on his art. (Mar.)