Chesterton was very much against determinism in his writings, but he wasn’t anti-sovereignty. Part of it was that he was taking a jab at determinists, or maybe a more modern term would be hyper-Calvinists. He had dealt with people who took predestination to its extreme fatalistic conclusion, so in order to bring it back towards the middle (or try to) he often made a point to see the significance in man’s freedom of the will. I like this quote because I, for one, affirm both God’s sovereignty and man’s free will (how it works is a mystery) and I also am a fan of literature. I thought this was a very good observation that he made in that he showed how literature (like Milton or Dante) spoke to the will of man and the actions we take. This is one of the reasons why fiction speaks to people on a personal level. He was saying that fiction speaks to us because we identify with the freedom of the characters’ wills in the story and the consequences of their choices…
That is what I get out of it anyways, but as always it is open for other interpretations…
maybe_someday_eternal
Mar 06 2005
08:34 pm
Chesterton was very much against determinism in his writings, but he wasn’t anti-sovereignty. Part of it was that he was taking a jab at determinists, or maybe a more modern term would be hyper-Calvinists. He had dealt with people who took predestination to its extreme fatalistic conclusion, so in order to bring it back towards the middle (or try to) he often made a point to see the significance in man’s freedom of the will. I like this quote because I, for one, affirm both God’s sovereignty and man’s free will (how it works is a mystery) and I also am a fan of literature. I thought this was a very good observation that he made in that he showed how literature (like Milton or Dante) spoke to the will of man and the actions we take. This is one of the reasons why fiction speaks to people on a personal level. He was saying that fiction speaks to us because we identify with the freedom of the characters’ wills in the story and the consequences of their choices…
That is what I get out of it anyways, but as always it is open for other interpretations…