We will begin our reading of Chesterton’s St. Thomas Aquinas. We will be able to transition slowly away from our study of the life and character of St. Francis because in the first chapter, “On Two Friars”, Chesterton compares and contrasts the lives and times of those two friars, St. Thomas and St. Francis. I think having read his book on St. Francis so recently will give us a readier understanding of what he has to say as opposed to jumping into the discussion cold turkey, so to speak.

This first chapter is a rather long on (as is Chapter 3 as well), so I’m writing this email a little earlier than usual to encourage you all to not put off the reading until the evening before. It is probably 50% (or more) longer then the usual chapters in St. Francis of Assisi.

I found that I have an audiobook of St. Thomas Aquinas, and I’ve been listening to it on my commute. I read it years ago and remember really liking it, but listening to it now, I absolutely love it. I think we are going to have a lot of fun discussing it.

The drawback of an audiobook such as this is that the insights come so fast, and one after the other! Reading them, at least you can pause to absorb what you jus tread before going on. With the audiobook, it’s like being trapped in a batting cage by a pitching machine that has gone berserk.

I’m going to close this email with a quote, not from Chesterton, but from Etienne Gilson, a Thomas scholar. Some people say THE Thomist scholar of his day, or even of the Twentieth Century. He had written many books and in many scholarly journals about St. Thomas; and after reading Chesterton’s St. Thomas Aquinas, he had this to say:

I consider it without possible comparison the best book ever written on St. Thomas. Nothing short of genius can account for such an achievement. Everybody will no doubt admit that it is a “clever” book, but the few readers who have spent twenty or thirty years in studying St. Thomas Aquinas, and who, perhaps, have themselves published two or three volumes on the subject, cannot fail to perceive that the so-called “wit” of Chesterton has put their scholarship to shame. He has guessed all that which they had tried to demonstrate, and he has said all that which they were more or less clumsily attempting to express in academic formulas. Chesterton was one of the deepest thinkers who ever existed; he was deep because he was right; and he could not help being right; but he could not either help being modest and charitable, so he left it to those who could understand him to know that he was right, and deep; to the others, he apologized for being right, and he made up for being deep by being witty. That is all they can see of him.

Now that is some high praise!

Until then, I remain
Yours,

Spencer

“Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.”
– G. K. Chesterton, What’s Wrong with the World